Comment by Hytosys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hytosys | Hacker News Reader

A broad brush[1] is acceptable if you're unable to use the Internet without being harassed by "contrarians".

I am someone who is not often harassed online, but I am involved with people who frequently experience harassment. I've been using Twitter block lists[2] and have noticed a great absence of hateful responses. This is not a long-term solution, but it lowers the number of times a day that my heart sinks. I accept any incidental losses.

The article suggests a finer brush using something like crowdsourcing. Perhaps harassment targets could pay to submit their profiles for monitoring, and the resultant block list could be made public for subscription by anyone on Block Together[2].

It would be nice to see networks take a stand against repeat harassers, but clearly people are tired of waiting around for that.

[1] https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker

[2] https://blocktogether.org/

EDIT: Without responses, I'm coming to some disappointing conclusions.

Where does 'written harassment' ends and where does groupthink begin?

Should such harassment be an actual problem, there would already be such filtered alternatives to twitter and facebook. Right now i see it as an attempt to silence unfavorable opinions.

Could you expand on your first thought? I'm not sure I understand your intended connection between harassment and groupthink.

In the hypothetical situation that harassment is prevalent, I'm curious as to what your alternatives to Twitter/Facebook would look like. What would the requirements of joining such a community be?

If you start censoring people, soon you will find yourself only allowing the opinions of the majority.

An alternative to twitter would be filtered, just as you suggest. It could even exclude "offending" opinions. There are plenty of easily offended (but very vocal) people who think all public channels should be like that. However we don't see any startup that is advocating censored speak catching up (I don't even know if there are any, but the social startup space is so overcrowded that there must be some).

I respect your point about censorship when applied to the realm of civil disagreement. This conversation unfortunately breaks down because of our dissonance in regards to the civility and rationale of Gamergate.

You demonstrate this groupthink to an extreme degree in the complete absence of nuance of your description of a well-known anti-corruption movement.

So maybe you should reflect on the conditions that have duped you into taking such a simplistic position.

How do you claim Gamergate is simply "well-known" as "anti-corruption"? Its Wikipedia page[1] and related discussion and sources disagree with your sentiment, attributing this line of thinking to "some of the [Gamergate] people".

If you want to distance yourself from the documented invasion into the lives and the distinct harassment of women in the industry, my humble suggestion is to pick a new angle from which to fight. How about Doritogate?

I fear we have gotten quite off-topic.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy

We are quite on topic as I'm giving a performative demonstration of just how a small minority uses censorship as a form of harassment in the service of their own struggle for power.

We saw this from the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot ... to Anti-Gamer-Gate. In this context claims of harassment are a smokescreen that are being used to cover up the exposed corruption. They appeal to the damsel-in-distress narrative that so many men so easily fall for. It's quite an effective strategy, and some guys like John Flynt (aka Brianna Wu) make quite a good living of it seemingly. Maybe you should also try it when your software isn't good: wear girls clothes, send yourself some threatening emails and whine about harassment on TV ... worth quite a stack of paper I hear.

BTW Wikipedia is not a credible source.

Please, the harassment is real. The chans loved to harass people long before gamergate.

That said, the anti-corruption movement is also real. And it is a fact the gg-blocklist does block well behaved non-harassers based on political views.

You both want good things. Why can't you just both agree on ending harassment and be anti-corruption? Those are really not incompatible positions, if you are will willing to look past the us-vs-them tribe mentality.

You are well intentioned but politically naive. The false claims of harassment and more generally victimhood are integral part of the corruption (and detrimental to dealing with real harassment).

Anybody using lists like ggautoblocker is far past the point where groupthink began. They're not blocking "hateful" responses - they're blocking anyone who disagrees with them.

This is just part of an ongoing slide into the sort of factionalism that ends (eventually) in bloodshed.

I'll ask this with the obvious risk of making a correlation: would you have the same opinion of kkkautoblocker — a tool that blocked anyone who associated with the leaders of a hate group?

Why do you draw a false analogy between a racist group and a distributed online movement that has been extremely successful at exposing corruption in games journalism?

Regardless of my stance on the issue, I tried my best to posit hypothetically and still failed to avoid this loaded question.

Depends entirely on the contents of those peoples tweets. What if one of those leaders of a hate group was also a linux kernel developer and regularly made interesting technical tweets?

I alluded to this dilemma in my original post: "I accept any incidental losses." This choice of course only applies to the case where people use block lists themselves, not where social networks ban people.

My suggestion is that social networks ban users wherein harassment is strictly obvious, not wherein a prejudice opinion is even only implied. This is a tricky judgement call that the article tries to dissect, and unfortunately to which I clearly have little to contribute.

Well then, my opinion on kkkautoblocker would be no different than my opinion on ggautoblocker. They're both stupid non-solutions, anyone who's actually trying to harass people will be able to circumvent them...

People should also consider that if they can't handle the vile cesspit that the internet is, using it is optional.

Yes, I would, though we both know that's a spurious comparison. For one thing, since you don't control the block list, and you don't know the people who control the list personally, you have no idea who they're blocking. Could be people who have nothing to do with the KKK.

For another... if people you don't know are being malicious to you maybe you should step back and think about your public face. People who draw a lot of trolls do so for a reason.

You are wrong. Using ggautoblocker and tools like it is people reclaiming their lives from parasites.

The only possible reason to claim that others need to pay attention to those who would spam them with threats of death rape and worse is complicity with the intended assault. It is a leech declaring that refusal to wade in the swamp is murder.

This is all nonsense. The number of people making threats is tiny, and they're on both sides. The reason those lists exist is because people on the anti-GG side have built very fragile bubbles to live in.

I am baffled that the FreeBSD movement would put their name on something like this. Horrifying.

I think it is clear to most that freebsdgirl is a free agent, and not representative of the operating system to which she has contributed.

So this isn't endorsed by the FreeBSD Foundation? Just to be clear.

Yes, that is correct. No association.

Thanks. Crisis of conscience averted!

I am guessing this isn't "strange attractor" either. Oldskool BSD people know who I mean.

Out of curiosity, what did she write in FreeBSD?

Out of even more curiosity, why does this straightforward question deserve a downvote?

As far as I can tell, her main area of work was originally on the installer. It was obviously sufficiently large that they gave her commit access and a @freebsd.org email in 2009-ish.

There are slides from a talk she did on it here: https://www.bsdcan.org/2009/schedule/events/126.en.html

I think it's fair to say that whatever disagreements people might have with her, her technical credentials do check out.

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