Censorship? There is no censorship!

[Akratus]

Social justice in general (as far as it extends to social media) has a culture of harassment. The difference between it and gamergate is that gamergate as a central set of principles denounces such behavior, and there is no such thing for it's opposition. Although obviously don't take away from this that I'm trying to paint a picture where gamergate is wholly good and the opposition isn't. Both have probably an equal amount of scumbags, because such is the nature of the internet. And obviously anti-gamergate communities and personalities are largely anti-doxxing and certainly anti-harassment. I just see a lot of shit get by unnoticed. And there's an element of an idea that who they oppose are bad guys, and deserve whatever foul tactic.

Related:
http://skepchick.org/2014/12/why-im-okay-with-doxing/
https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/04/reddits-doxxing-paradox/
https://i.imgur.com/yt8WDJy.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B3Fz_zVIIAASgO6.png:large

 

[PlanHex]

Dehumanizing the opposition and acting like they deserve harassment is endemic of both sides.
Both can denounce it all they want, it does not matter in the end. Sticking your head up your own ass and going "they do it more" is stupid, no matter if it's true or not.

edit: You realize I was talking about you too, right Akratus?

 

[Akratus]

Yes, I see both sides succumbing, if you will, to embitterment. Receiving so much flak from their perceived 'enemies' that calling them names becomes an acceptable outlet. There is one example I can name of someone on twitter calling the owner of Patreon "filth" because he disbarred fredrick brennan but in his eyes turns a blind eye to anti-gamergaters who may have doxxed people and the like. I asked him if he doesn't think that maybe stooping to the level of using such a term is such a bright idea, but obviously his responce is that it's appropriate for how agrieved he is with the subject.

I really don't like twitter and what it does to discourse.

 

[Crni Vuk]

which shows that gamergate and anti-gamergate have simply to go. They do gaming no favour and actually just hurt it more than helping it.

 

[Sander]

Removed links or not Sander, people have already retweeted the information encouraging harassment now.

Yes. Which is why I was condemning it. Not that that actually does anything.

Social justice in general (as far as it extends to social media) has a culture of harassment. The difference between it and gamergate is that gamergate as a central set of principles denounces such behavior, and there is no such thing for it's opposition. Although obviously don't take away from this that I'm trying to paint a picture where gamergate is wholly good and the opposition isn't. Both have probably an equal amount of scumbags, because such is the nature of the internet.

lolno. This ain't third-party trolls, or "just scumbags," dude. GamerGate's a conspiracy-theory movement founded on the harassment of people they don't like, based on complete and utter horseshit. And often perpetrated by its most-promoted figures. It is so insane that it actually defended 8chan's right to host child porn, because they perceived that fact as an attack on themselves. And you have consistently helped to spread all of the bullshit upon which this harassment is built. Hell, you're still doing it with those creepy, out-of-context, red-pen-filled images that pretend everything's super sinister when there are trivial explanations.

Fuck GamerGate.

PopeHat and Skepchick are correct: if you send people death threats, those people are under no obligation to keep your identity secret. "Doxxing" can help stop harassment and other behavior that harms others by building in accountability, as it did in the case of Violentacrez. We don't need a nuance-less "all doxxing is bad forever" rule, that effectively protects those who would threaten, harass and otherwise harm people. We can judge individual instances by their circumstances.

 

[Akratus]

which shows that gamergate and anti-gamergate have simply to go. They do gaming no favour and actually just hurt it more than helping it.

Well, thanks to GamerGate, the FTC has updated their standards and are now investigating Kotaku and Gawker Media. Gotta give em some credit.

 

[Sander]

which shows that gamergate and anti-gamergate have simply to go. They do gaming no favour and actually just hurt it more than helping it.

Well, thanks to GamerGate, the FTC has updated their standards and are now investigating Kotaku and Gawker Media. Gotta give em some credit.

Once again, those standards had long been updated before GamerGate came in. All you go them to do was update an FAQ slightly more quickly than they otherwise would have.

See? Conspiracy theory built on bullshit at every. single. level.

 

[Crni Vuk]

which shows that gamergate and anti-gamergate have simply to go. They do gaming no favour and actually just hurt it more than helping it.

Well, thanks to GamerGate, the FTC has updated their standards and are now investigating Kotaku and Gawker Media. Gotta give em some credit.

Indeed. And it is just a small price that gaming had to pay for this incredible and astonishing victory over the corporate world. Gaming will never be the same again!

In other news, the real world has to fight Nestle because they steal water from African villages selling it back to them for prices they can not pay.

I swear this GG/anti-GG shit get's slowly on my nerves. Someone should give those people a kick in their nuts, because they need a hard reality check. They are not che guevara or Ghandis.

 

[Akratus]

which shows that gamergate and anti-gamergate have simply to go. They do gaming no favour and actually just hurt it more than helping it.

Well, thanks to GamerGate, the FTC has updated their standards and are now investigating Kotaku and Gawker Media. Gotta give em some credit.

Once again, those standards had long been updated before GamerGate came in. All you go them to do was update an FAQ slightly more quickly than they otherwise would have.

See? Conspiracy theory built on bullshit at every. single. level.

Maybe you should learn how to read.

"Although we were already planning on updating our Endorsement Guide FAQs to address various issues that have arisen with respect to endorsement-related practices, the fact that we recently received many complaints about undisclosed affiliate links has made it clear that the FAQs need to address that specific practice."

They wouldn't have specified the specific practice otherwise. But please, continue to lie to make your position seem stronger. Nice to know you're pro-corruption too. Even making an attempt is ludicrous, of course.

No wonder the RPGcodex is pro-gamergate. They've been smelling what's cooking for years: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...oes-to-write-itself.86114/page-9#post-2850730

And here's another thing:
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/20...-minorities-receive-for-supporting-gamergate/

Seems almost like being a part of gamergate has no influence on the level of scumbag behavior someone might partake in.

which shows that gamergate and anti-gamergate have simply to go. They do gaming no favour and actually just hurt it more than helping it.

Well, thanks to GamerGate, the FTC has updated their standards and are now investigating Kotaku and Gawker Media. Gotta give em some credit.

Indeed. And it is just a small price that gaming had to pay for this incredible and astonishing victory over the corporate world. Gaming will never be the same again!

In other news, the real world has to fight Nestle because they steal water from African villages selling it back to them for prices they can not pay.

I swear this GG/anti-GG shit get's slowly on my nerves. Someone should give those people a kick in their nuts, because they need a hard reality check. They are not che guevara or Ghandis.

Who is saying they are? Internet shoutfests have an inherent pointlessness.

 

[Hassknecht]

PopeHat and Skepchick are correct: if you send people death threats, those people are under no obligation to keep your identity secret. "Doxxing" can help stop harassment and other behavior that harms others by building in accountability, as it did in the case of Violentacrez. We don't need a nuance-less "all doxxing is bad forever" rule, that effectively protects those who would threaten, harass and otherwise harm people. We can judge individual instances by their circumstances.

I'm somewhat uncomfortable with that. It's lynch justice, in a way, to ignore authorities and just make perpetrators public and go "Alright, here's the baddie. Do what you think is right".
Yes, being all "No doxxing ever" protects the harassers. But it protects them from being harassed themselves by a possible "lynch mob". It is under no circumstances the job of the people to bring other people to "justice". That's what the authorities are for, and yes, the authorities can work slowly or not at all, but that's the sacrifice we have to make as a society if we want actual equality for all, and we certainly need to work in that field.
If we just "take matters into our own hands"... Who decides who is fit for doxxing and the pillory? Let's say some dude sends death threats, gets doxxed and chased around and dies from a heart attack. Did he deserve that? Is that justice? Is that the message you want to send? "Harass us and we will lead you to an assisted suicide, so you better get in line!"
Where do you draw the line?

 

[PlanHex]

It is so insane that it actually defended 8chan's right to host child porn, because they perceived that fact as an attack on themselves.

What, you think that wasn't ammunition for the war effort? You think he has a little spinner that decides which internet corner to search for illegal activity and he just happened to land on the place used by people he hates by pure accident the one and only time he used it?

 

[Sander]

I'm somewhat uncomfortable with that. It's lynch justice, in a way, to ignore authorities and just make perpetrators public and go "Alright, here's the baddie. Do what you think is right".
Yes, being all "No doxxing ever" protects the harassers. But it protects them from being harassed themselves by a possible "lynch mob". It is under no circumstances the job of the people to bring other people to "justice". That's what the authorities are for, and yes, the authorities can work slowly or not at all, but that's the sacrifice we have to make as a society if we want actual equality for all, and we certainly need to work in that field.
If we just "take matters into our own hands"... Who decides who is fit for doxxing and the pillory? Let's say some dude sends death threats, gets doxxed and chased around and dies from a heart attack. Did he deserve that? Is that justice? Is that the message you want to send? "Harass us and we will lead you to an assisted suicide, so you better get in line!"
Where do you draw the line?

I think that's a fair concern. I'm certainly not comfortable with the arbitrary mobs that tend to spring up when someone says something racist on social media, and the practice of calling people's employers to get them fired is a really bad thing (especially in the case of low-paying jobs). Those mostly happen in the case of someone saying something publicly, under their own identity, though.

But when people use the shield of anonymity or private communication to inflict harm, taking away that shield is not something I have an issue with. That doesn't mean I think those people deserve to be harassed and threatened themselves -- not at all. It does mean that I think that if people send death threats, others should know they're doing that. It means that if someone is using anonymous identities to publish libel, exposing who is doing that is perfectly legitimate. It means that when someone is publishing (near-) child porn on the internet, they don't get to do so anonymously (ViolentAcrez' situation).

I agree that we don't want to harass the harassers, either. I agree that there's certainly a line somewhere. I don't know where the line is, exactly. I think we can judge that on a case-by-case basis. But I certainly know that it's not at "no doxxing ever". Not unless we have institutions which can handle these issues properly, and I'm not sure we ever will.

They wouldn't have specified the specific practice otherwise.

That's not actually what it says unambiguously, but it's one possible interpretation, yes. Regardless, they're talking about updating an FAQ, not changing a policy -- they'd done that long before GamerGate. At the very, very most GamerGate brought Gawker to their attention (and it's not at all clear that you did, nor what consequences that will have). Which probably would have happened anyway, given Gawker's prominence. And for that and some amended ethics policies, we got five months and counting of harassment, death threats, people being silenced and chased from their homes, conspiracy theory bullshit being spread everywhere, lies repeated over and over and over again until masses of people believed them, and more horrible shit than I can count. Congratulations!

Incidentally, seeing as how you think GamerGate can totally claim responsibility for everything that happens that can be somehow tied to it, maybe you want to go take responsibility for all of the harassment, death threats and other horrible shit that has been tied to it. What? You think you can just go "this good stuff is ALL US but all the bad stuff is totally not us." Get the fuck out.

What, you think that wasn't ammunition for the war effort? You think he has a little spinner that decides which internet corner to search for illegal activity and he just happened to land on the place used by people he hates by pure accident the one and only time he used it?

I think he knows about 8chan because of GamerGate, and I think he certainly knew it would be consumed by people opposed to GamerGate. At the same time, that article never mentioned GamerGate, and it wasn't interpreted to be about GamerGate either. It was about 8chan hosting child porn, and doing nothing to stop it. And....well, that's exactly what 8chan did (I'm not sure they still do). I'm not sure why anyone would defend a site doing that.

If you look at the way GamerGate is being held accountable for that, it's not in the form of being held accountable for 8chan itself. People aren't going about saying GamerGate publishes child porn. They're going about saying that GamerGate defends a site's right to publish child porn, because that's how they reacted to the article. Which is incredibly fucked up.

We would not be having this conversation had GamerGaters not immediately jumped to 8chan's defense. Which is still what they do. It's not like this was a knee-jerk reaction and then they came to realize they were wrong -- they're still defending it! They're still attacking FoldableHuman for "distributing child porn" or whatever the fuck their conspiracy theory this has twisted into.

I mean for fuck's sake, how is your reaction to "this site hosts child porn", "how can we rationalize this"? How are we not universally condemning 8chan? This is ludicrous.

 

[Hassknecht]

I'm somewhat uncomfortable with that. It's lynch justice, in a way, to ignore authorities and just make perpetrators public and go "Alright, here's the baddie. Do what you think is right".
Yes, being all "No doxxing ever" protects the harassers. But it protects them from being harassed themselves by a possible "lynch mob". It is under no circumstances the job of the people to bring other people to "justice". That's what the authorities are for, and yes, the authorities can work slowly or not at all, but that's the sacrifice we have to make as a society if we want actual equality for all, and we certainly need to work in that field.
If we just "take matters into our own hands"... Who decides who is fit for doxxing and the pillory? Let's say some dude sends death threats, gets doxxed and chased around and dies from a heart attack. Did he deserve that? Is that justice? Is that the message you want to send? "Harass us and we will lead you to an assisted suicide, so you better get in line!"
Where do you draw the line?

I think that's a fair concern. I'm certainly not comfortable with the arbitrary mobs that tend to spring up when someone says something racist on social media, and the practice of calling people's employers to get them fired is a really bad thing (especially in the case of low-paying jobs). Those mostly happen in the case of someone saying something publicly, under their own identity, though.

But when people use the shield of anonymity or private communication to inflict harm, taking away that shield is not something I have an issue with. That doesn't mean I think those people deserve to be harassed and threatened themselves -- not at all. It does mean that I think that if people send death threats, others should know they're doing that. It means that if someone is using anonymous identities to publish libel, exposing who is doing that is perfectly legitimate. It means that when someone is publishing (near-) child porn on the internet, they don't get to do so anonymously (ViolentAcrez' situation).

I agree that we don't want to harass the harassers, either. I agree that there's certainly a line somewhere. I don't know where the line is, exactly. I think we can judge that on a case-by-case basis. But I certainly know that it's not at "no doxxing ever". Not unless we have institutions which can handle these issues properly, and I'm not sure we ever will.

Well, then you tacitly condone harassment, because that is what will follow from such public outing, no matter how "noble" the cause.
Any line but "no doxxing ever" is arbitrary. Again, who decides? Do you want to convene a jury of morally superior individuals to judge who can be doxxed and who not?
I guess this is based around your believe in absolute morality, but I can't agree with that.

 

[Sander]

Well, then you tacitly condone harassment, because that is what will follow from such public outing, no matter how "noble" the cause.
Any line but "no doxxing ever" is arbitrary. Again, who decides? Do you want to convene a jury of morally superior individuals to judge who can be doxxed and who not?
I guess this is based around your believe in absolute morality, but I can't agree with that.

My thing is more balancing harm prevention on one side with harm prevention on the other side. People anonymously or privately spreading malicious lies or sending death threats or participating in harassment can inflict a ton of harm, and in many cases there's nothing a legal system can do to stop them for a variety of reasons (impotence, incompetence, jurisdictional issues etc). But social pressure is very effective in altering people's behavior, which is why those who inflict harm privately or anonymously don't want to do so publicly under their own names. If people know that their roommate or colleague spends his spare time sending death threats, well, they may pressure him to stop doing so. If people know that that one scholar they really like also happens to moonlight as that-guy-who-spreads-malicious-rumors, well, maybe he cuts it out.

Compare this to so-called whisper networks -- which is what apparently many women have at conventions, conferences, work and other situations where they may be vulnerable: they warn each other about professor so-and-so being handsy, and they tell each other not to find themselves alone with person X. The problem with those is that there are always women who, for some reason, are left out of the message -- and hence it's just shifting the blame, rather than preventing it. That's why Ursula V has argued for making these whisper networks more public. It's also why most conventions are starting to get a lot more aggressive about addressing sexual harassment.

We can prevent a lot of harm by doxxing people in these instances, while we can also inflict harm. That just means we have to be careful about when and where and how. And we also have to make it unacceptable in our own social circles (online or otherwise) to harass people, those doxxed or otherwise, to minimize the risk that that is going to happen.

I'm also not at all sure that harassment is what necessarily will follow. I mean, Violentacrez got a massive expose written on him and the result, as far as I can tell, was not harassment. There are circumstances where this is the case, though, and we should certainly weigh those risks against the harm prevented by tying people's identities to their private/anonymous harmful outings to their public identities. But that means actually weighing these things, not just deciding that we won't ever doxx people. Yes, this means people have to make judgment calls. It's something people do all day, every day. It's what we do in our legal system constantly, too. Yes, people should weigh the harm inflicted on those inflicting harm on others in their decisions -- but I won't outright condemn these things. Because if we condemn all doxxing forever, we are giving up a ridiculous amount of power to those who are inflicting a lot of harm -- and that's what we're tacitly condoning, too.

 

[Hassknecht]

Well, Violentacrez lost his job and health insurance which took care of his wife and family, and of course he and his family received death threats, because that's how the Internet works.
Lynch justice is risky. It can hit the wrong people, and does collateral damage. Who takes responsibility for a lynch mob going after the wrong person?
I know you believe otherwise, but a false rape charge, for example, can seriously ruin a person's life. Despite all the rape culture, rape is actually quite vilified and sure to send the masses into a massive rage. One mistake and an innocent can be seriously harmed.
This is not a judgement call the population is supposed to make. We are NOT the legal system. A mob doesn't provide an attorney, it doesn't take responsibility for collecting evidence, there is no due process, basically no chance of rehabilitation.
I just don't believe that the end justifies the means.
And no, condemning all doxxing is not tacitly condoning harassment. It's accepting that we can't save everyone without harming innocents.

 

[Crni Vuk]

But it can be sooo funny!



Sadly people forget so often that many parts of the Internet are NOT some kind of open platform where you can do and say what ever you wan't. I hate it when people use free spech as shield for their shit.

 

[Akratus]

One possible interpretation sander?

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2nz204/important_ftc_update_4_ftc_confirms_that_yes/
“Although we were already planning on updating our Endorsement Guide FAQs to address various issues that have arisen with respect to endorsement-related practices, the fact that we recently received many complaints about undisclosed affiliate links has made it clear that the FAQs need to address that specific practice.”

Also ftc faq's are kind of important. Government guidelines and information from a government instance on their policies are closely tied.

 

[Sander]

One problem with your framing is that you're only concerned about the harm inflicted on one party, and you're not stopping to think about the harm inflicted on the other party. The second is a given in the way you discuss these issues -- it's something we can't stop, it's happened, but the only thing we should be thinking about is whether we're preventing harm to the other party.

That's kind of the way teachers approach playground bullying. If a bullied kid lashes out at his bully, the teacher will break up the fight and punish both kids with some words about how it doesn't matter who started it. The problem is that that reinforces the status quo -- the bully gets to go on bullying, and if the bullied kid tries to fight back they're both punished. The bullied kid is harmed much, much more by this approach than the bully is, and the problem isn't even solved.

Your approach to rape accusations is similar:

I know you believe otherwise, but a false rape charge, for example, can seriously ruin a person's life. Despite all the rape culture, rape is actually quite vilified and sure to send the masses into a massive rage. One mistake and an innocent can be seriously harmed.

This can happen, certainly. It's not nearly as common as people think, though. More importantly: why are you only looking at this from the point of view of the person accused of rape? Why are you only concerned about the damage potentially inflicted upon them, rather than the damage potentially inflicted by them? I think both are important concerns, and we should weigh these things. Right now, the societal problem of rape is much, much larger than the societal problem of false rape accusations -- both because of the frequency and because of the consequences. Rapists get away with their crimes a lot -- very few of them get convicted and face any kind of consequences, which is part of the reason why we have this problem. Trying to fix that issue is undoubtedly going to harm some innocent people, but it will also prevent harm to many, many more innocent people.

And that harm-to-innocents problem is something we constantly weigh in our legal system and in our private lives, too. If we only convicted murderers when we knew with 100% certainty that they were absolutely guilty, we'd never convict murderers. There's always some doubt, even in cases with confessions. And a standard of absolute proof leads to a completely useless legal system, and as a result we sometimes punish innocents -- that's horrible, but it's an inevitable consequence of having a functional judiciary. It's a problem, certainly, and we should always try to do our best to minimize those instances. But that doesn't mean we do nothing.

Similarly, the problem of harassment and death threats is far, far greater than the problem of harassers being lynch-mobbed (and even greater than the sub-problem of false identification of harassers). Indeed, the latter almost never happens while the former happens constantly. We can evaluate those things! We're not bound to hard-and-fast rules forever and ever. We can say "this is a much greater problem right now, thus these means are justified."

Now, I'm not suggesting we should go lynch-mob these people. Nor am I saying we should imprison them, or otherwise harm them. Not at all. I agree with you that that's what the judicial system is for. And as I've noted above, I also think it's important to make harassment and death threats socially unacceptable in our own spaces so that we take every step we can to prevent those things from happening, even to those who use them as weapons themselves. What I am advocating instead is social accountability, where we can do that. Not death threats. Not harassment. Just telling people who this person is, so they know what kind of person they are. The result should be social pressure, and not harassment or threats.

Take the example of Skepchick, linked above. Someone was spreading particularly vicious lies about her and PZ Myers. And they revealed that person's real name, in an effort to prevent further harm. And that worked -- as far as I know, she stopped spreading those lies, and people know not to take her seriously if she does. A particularly horrible person was stopped from inflicting harm. And while I'm sure she was harmed in the process too, that is of much lesser concern to me.

To reinforce this point, here's the last sentence in your previous post:

And no, condemning all doxxing is not tacitly condoning harassment. It's accepting that we can't save everyone without harming innocents.

Do you see how this attitude reinforces the status quo of harmful behavior, effectively allowing it to continue? How this enables harassment and death threats and all the other horseshit by refusing to hold people accountable? By condemning the victim for doing what they can to stop themselves being harmed?


_________

Also ftc faq's are kind of important. Government guidelines and information from a government instance on their policies are closely tied.

They're also not the same thing, dumbass. You taking responsibility for all the horrible shit done by GamerGate yet now that you've decided you can take responsibility for the minor 'good' things they did?

 

[Hassknecht]

But it can be sooo funny!



Sadly people forget so often that many parts of the Internet are NOT some kind of open platform where you can do and say what ever you wan't. I hate it when people use free spech as shield for their shit.

Well, free speech only goes so far. The problem is that the Internet is relatively new, and that our governments are made of old and decrepit people who don't get the impact it has on our society. So now the people in charge are too old to understand, and so law enforcement does not have the proper knowledge and powers to uphold the law on the Internet.
Funny, the german Piratenpartei (Pirate party) looked really good, and it really seemed like they could bring in some fresh air with a focus on politics concerning the Internet.
But now all they care about is infighting and gender politics. Sadly, the Green party already takes care of that, so they're pretty much dead by now.

/edit:
Sander, I'm not sure if you really understand what I write, and I don't know if I can formulate it in any way that's more clear than that. So I'll just save everyone's time and drop it, because the little merit there is of resolving this any time soon is not worth it to me, frankly.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Well, free speech only goes so far. The problem is that the Internet is relatively new, and that our governments are made of old and decrepit people who don't get the impact it has on our society. So now the people in charge are too old to understand, and so law enforcement does not have the proper knowledge and powers to uphold the law on the Internet.

well, yes and no I would say. Depends about the approach.

Places like Facebook or even this forum for example are NOT free platforms, to say this, there are board rules, forum rules and on top of it all the "usual" laws - like posting child porn or naked pictures of random people etc. Don't follow them and you suffer the consequences. many people tend to forget that, not that I am talking about someone in particular here. But I am getting tired of people ignoring forum rules, getting kicked and than saying, YUAH DAMN SON OF A ***** VIOLETE MY FREE SPECH! But enough of my ranting.

The internet is relatively new as a media and platform for communication, true that. The situation though isn't, as cases like The Hustler Magazin vs Farwell have clearly shown. That's something where many people are in my opinion not correct. Many say because the internet is new, it would require new laws or new ways of thinking. But the internet is not some extralegal place. We have already pretty good laws for many situations. The enforcment, is a whole different nature. Hence why I am always very cautious with stronger or changed laws as far as the internet goes. They don't have to be always more effective than the ones we already have. As a fellow German AND internetuser I am pretty sure that you know about Zensursula and her fucked up ideas about the internet and how to make it more save for everyone.

The real difference is this high degree of anonymity and troll-culture. I mean the inhibitions. It definitely takes some certain level of stupdity to walk up to a group of 5 black people and calling them niggers, but with the safety of the internet? Its just typing some words on Facebook, isnt it? Though in my opinion the same laws touching spech and personality cold do the same work on the internet just as how they do in real life. We just have to find better or more effective ways to hit the right people with this baton. And I believe better ways are already on their way (without becoming a strange form of cencorship), with more transparency and better awarness, social preasure and the general education so that people learn that they have to be more responsible. Just as how they are in real life.