For a fuller context, and to get a better sense of why people are taking his actions seriously, take a look at the original post Schilling wrote where he explains how ugly it got:
Thank you for this link. I just found out about the Theta Xi Member who was doing this. I'm a member and I'll be seeking his full removal from the fraternity. It's not much but it is what I can do.
Good on you. What your member did was beyond vile. I have a young daughter, and I'm appalled there are people out there who would event think these things!
Just as an update, this guy has been permanently suspended from the fraternity, which is basically the equivalent to an expulsion from a school. I'm also happy to report that this action was already being taken before I voiced my concern.
For those debating whether or not these tweets constitute an actual threat there is a related case before the Supreme Court, Elonis v. United States [1]. It was argued back in December but because this will be major precedent I doubt we'll see an opinion until SCOTUS Season in June. The case seems to hinge on "subjective intent to harm" and will be the first major case (that I'm aware of) that will deal with speech like this on social media. Elonis is different (petitioner was convicted for making threats against his ex-wfe) from this thing with Schilling, but the context of the case is the same here - and the justices are quick to acknowledge that conviction standards are pretty strict in defining what constitutes a "true threat" and what a "reasonable person" would construe as a threat. Justice Breyer gets particularly snarky during oral argument.
From the ScotusBlog summary:
Issue: (1) Whether, consistent with the First Amendment and Virginia v. Black, conviction of threatening another person under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) requires proof of the defendant's subjective intent to threaten, as required by the Ninth Circuit and the supreme courts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont; or whether it is enough to show that a “reasonable person” would regard the statement as threatening, as held by other federal courts of appeals and state courts of last resort; and (2) whether, as a matter of statutory interpretation, conviction of threatening another person under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) requires proof of the defendant's subjective intent to threaten.
And here folks I guess we have a real case of harassment.
I think there is a line to be drawn somewhere between here and pycon (two men talking privately about something that could be understood as offensive).
That said I am surprised about two things:
* People trying to argue that this should not be punished because everyone would do if they were safe from repercussions. I strongly believe that a big chunk of the audience here would not steal, kill etc without reason even if they were sure not to get caught.
* People suggesting this should be in public registers etc. This story is most likely already a real problem for a few of those guys.
Side note: They are not alone. I've recently been reading several seemingly normal grown up people signed in with facebook accounts stating how they think a certain country should be nuked.
Edit: as tzakrajs points out these incidents are completely different and that was actually what I meant but I fully understand why it could be read as "a line connecting those incidents." My bad.
The incident at PyCon:
Conversation interloper becomes offended on behalf of non-present female children by the contents of a conversation that she was interloping. PyCon staff of course will be sycophantic with upset guests because they hate bad press.
The PyCon incident was a moment of incalculable oversensitivity and probably should just be forgotten when considering the spectrum for which you hope to draw a line on.
PyCon staff of course will be sycophantic with upset
guests because they hate bad press.
All the PyCon staff did was talk to the developer in question, mention that the comments had offended someone, and left it there. That's pretty much exactly what I would expect them to do. That was confirmed by the developer in question:
There were plenty of overreactions in that case; Adria Richards for choosing to publicly shame rather than either talk privately with the developers in question or simply bring it to the PyCon organizers' attention, Play Haven for choosing to fire him over such a minor incident rather than simply giving him a warning, SendGrid for choosing to fire Adria rather than try to work with her to try and bring her behavior more into line with acceptable public relations, and a large number of people on the internet for going way beyond the boundaries of civil behavior in harassing people on both sides of the debate.
But among all of those over-reactions, from all accounts, the PyCon organizers behaved eminently reasonably.
Sorry, my bad: the line was supposed to divide between those point, not to join them.
Thanks for the comment! I fully agree that these to events are totally different (and that was kind of my point, -to separate between victims of real harassment and professional victims.)
> "I strongly believe that a big chunk of the audience here would not steal, kill etc without reason even if they were sure not to get caught."
At one data entry job I had I got paid for piece work, instead of by the hour. One time they screwed up the math and overpaid me, by a lot (nearly a whole paycheck worth). It took a lot to convince the people in charge that they'd fucked up and needed to take the money back.
Adria Richards really was harassed, by people that were extremely angered by something that should have been easily dismissed as a mistake. She got all sorts of nasty shit on twitter, threats, the whole works.
I don't think her initial reaction was a good one, but it certainly didn't justify all the stuff that followed. Her apparent pattern of reacting loudly to small offenses ( https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/ ) also isn't something to become angry and outraged over. I'm not sure how to handle that, but I'm sure it won't involve death threats.
I don't accept the premise that she cost Hank his job.
Conveniently, my argument is that the incident itself didn't deserve all the negative attention it got (it should have mostly been ignored), and in the absence of all that negative attention, Hank probably would not have lost his job.
Also, my point was to respond to the comparison you made:
And here folks I guess we have a real case of harassment.
I think there is a line to be drawn somewhere between here and pycon (two men talking privately about something that could be understood as offensive).
There's very little denouncement of the dongle joke. There's wide agreement that it wasn't outrageous. It wasn't the remarkable thing about the incident, merely the first thing that happened. Yet you've characterized 'pycon' as being on the other side of some line that defines real harassment.
> I don't accept the premise that she cost Hank his job.
If someone start a fire in a building then they would be stupid to argue that the reason people got hurt was because firemen didn't react quickly enough.
There is no doubt she started it, she could have prevented all this from happening in the first place.
* She took offence over a private conversation between
two others.
* She publicly shamed them by including the picture etc.
She could have talked to them. She could have talked to the organizers. Instead she decided to abuse her position and go straight to public shaming.
That said, yes, a lot of interesting decisions here.
Hank's former employers are not combustible inanimate objects. They have responsibility for their own actions. I mean, imagine if someone they knew nothing about had told them he was a space alien and they fired him for that. Who would you blame then?
Anyway, again, my point was that there was internet hate machine harassment following the incident at Pycon, following from some minor thing that should not really even catch the interest of strangers, just like in this story.
The big message here to victims is that you are not powerless if you are threatened online. To perpetrators, you will be held accountable for your actions. "Violent threats" are not free speech, never have been.
Philosophically, I think there's a long overdue conversation to be had about non-physical harm. Our kids know how to treat cuts and bruises, or how to get help with a broken bone. But what about damage that gets caused inside? If you think about it, not only is the old "sticks and stones" mantra false, it's downright misleading. What's the worst pain you've ever experienced? Was it caused by physical pain, or words?
Too bad he doesn't go into how he managed to track the 9 people down who he called out. Was he able to do it because he is a famous baseball player and has the resources and connections to make it happen or is it something any normal person on the street can do to stand up for themselves?
Most of these people, I'm sure, had their real name on the account, or had their account linked to from some page with their real name, so Googling for their handle would easily find it.
At that point, as he mentioned, many of these people were college athletes, so their names would also show up on rosters and various campus newspaper accounts of games.
While it is possible to harass anonymously if you try, it's pretty likely that many of these people didn't even try; they just didn't think and said the first thing that came to mind that they knew would get a rise out of Curt Schilling.
What's kind of chilling and awful is the thinking apparently at work: "I want to get a rise out of this guy, so I'll make repeated menacing/disgusting sexual remarks about his teen daughter."
It's remarkable how little Internet trolls do to conceal their identities. I see amazingly bigoted stuff posted under real names on the local newspaper's comment section.
I heard him on Dan Patrick a day or two later. He said that he used nothing more than Google to find these people (correlating Twitter handle to real name).
This is someone anyone can do, or at least give it a shot. Have a look at this article on how to investigate identity online. It gives some thought to risk assessment and ethical behavior in responding to situations like this.
A lot of people feel these threats should be taken seriously, and the law should be involved. I don't know what to think of this situation, but I want to ask you a question. Without irony or snark:
How do you feel about the threats of violence made by Curt against those people?
I want to date your daughter, I want to take your
daughter to prom, I want to hit on your daughter etc.,
those? Those are guys being dopes and saying what guys
say. This stuff? This is so far off the radar it’s
pathetic.
It's pretty easy to read his "i have many friends that are in or former special forces....." in the same light; joking around, maybe pushing the boundaries a bit but nothing that's egregious. It's a pretty normal response from a father to someone who's being a bit too forward with his daughter.
Graphic descriptions of rape and violence against a minor are a completely different ballpark.
Should he not have made the "special forces" comment? Maybe. That's what showed people that they could get under his skin by making comments about his daughter, so some people took that and escalated quickly. But I don't think anyone would read that as any actual threat, and the people who escalated and graphically described raping his daughter are fully responsible for their own actions.
I was going to say the same thing, he is just a father protecting his family. I think any father would do the same or say the same thing in this type of situation.
Of course, this is not a practical answer as we'd have everyone driving around everyday trying to locate assholes, but I can't help but feel good about the troll being exposed as a coward. Like in those fight videos where the bully gets it. I hate watching fights, hate watching real-life violence, but the bully getting what he deserves is an exception.
An interesting side effect of the vicious retaliation against words on the internet (resulting in losing jobs and similar) is that it effectively creates a caste system. On the one hand, you have people like me who can discard their identity and any links to it and say absolutely anything without fear of repercussion. On the other, you have people who are still linked to real-life identities being forced to censor everything they say out of fear.
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from repercussions"? Perhaps not, but anonymity sure does, and people who want to say ugly or cruel things will avail themselves of anonymity. In fact, those people would be the most likely to use anonymity, since it's cost is easily outweighed by the risk of those disproportionate retaliations.
So, I ask you, does retaliating against stuff like this tell people it isn't OK, or does it tell them that they need to be anonymous? What about when parts of the world conflict on whether a globally-distributed statement is OK?
Famous people leach fame into others by interacting with them. The easiest way to force someone to interact with you is to hit them somewhere vulnerable. Mr Schilling either wasn't aware of his vulnerability or hoped that it wouldn't be exploited. When it did get exploited, he didn't try to hide it, leaving a gaping wound for even more famewhores to leech fame from him. It worked, because I saw their tweets and I'm not even a baseball fan.
Compare that with someone sufficiently invulnerable, Obama for instance. Or even Chuck Norris.
The other fact is that with a large audience, it'd be silly not to expect that some percentage would be murderers/rapists/other unsavoury types. Getting a dozen offensive tweets out of a million-strong audience is still only 0.000012%, orders of magnitude less than the actual threat of rape.
This is coming perilously close to victim blaming.
When these horrible tweets are made, there's always a contingent who says that the target should ignore them. You probably should if they are completely anonymous. But if they aren't - have at 'em!
Can you help me to understand victim blaming? Is it victim blaming to say someone was exercising poor risk management?
I think of taking precautions online as being like defensive driving (or any kind of risk management really). If Alice gets sideswiped on the highway because Bob was on his cell phone and didn't check his blind spot, Bob maybe gets charged with failure to maintain the lane or something like that. Doesn't Alice share some responsibility by recognizing that Bob, being on his cell phone, posed an elevated risk and managing accordingly (say by changing to a more distant lane)?
> Is it victim blaming to say someone was exercising poor risk management?
This is a delicate issue. The answer to your question has to be: No, not per se...
However there are some other things to keep in mind:
() If one suggests that the victim's poor risk management absolves the perpetrator of responsibility in the slightest degree, then one is definitely blaming the victim.
() Sometimes that subtext -- that the perpetrator is not fully responsible -- is present but not stated explicitly. So I think people are often right to be aware of the possibility that that's underneath what is being said.
() On the other hand, sometimes that subtext is absolutely not intended, but is heard anyway. A lot of people have trouble with the notion that two parties to an interaction are both 100% responsible for their own choices. And someone recently victimized may not be emotionally ready to look at how they allowed it to happen. So one must be careful here; but sometimes, if one wants to get the point across, it's necessary to emphasize that the perpetrator is still totally responsible for their own actions.
So in your example, if you were to suggest that Bob's fine should be reduced because Alice could have prevented the accident, that would be victim blaming. But if you're only saying that Alice could learn from this (to be more alert, to try to stay out of other people's blind spots, and to watch out for nearby drivers using cell phones) then that isn't victim blaming.
> Can you help me to understand victim blaming? Is it victim blaming to say someone was exercising poor risk management?
Er, yeah, it is. The victim always knows they exercised "poor risk management", to some degree. You don't need to reinforce that point. It's not what the takeaway lesson should ever be. It detracts attention (and implicitly averts blame) from the perpetrator.
We don't aspire to live in a world where "risk management" becomes the takeaway lesson from events perpetrated by conscious actors (i.e. you should always exercise risk management when it comes to things like hurricanes).
Because then you start saying things like:
"She shouldn't have been walking alone at night."
"She shouldn't have been wearing that dress."
"If he didn't want to get raped he shouldn't have gone to prison."
That's a terrible analogy. Firstly, that analogy is ridiculous: Alice doesn't necessarily see that Bob is on his cell phone, she's concentrating on the road and cars around her - not looking intently into the car next to her! In fact, being in a blind spot means that it's literally impossible for Alice to see that Bob is on his phone. So the answer is no, she doesn't bear any responsibility at all.
Secondly, you should be able to congratulate your daughter on Twitter regardless of your status as a public person.
I can't be held responsible for your actions. Making an innocent tweet about your daughter is not something you should have to be worried about. That's chilling freedom of expression! So you can't be a proud dad because some arsehole might threaten to rape your daughter? Give me a break.
Now I'm really confused. You're saying that if Alice is in Bob's blind spot, it is impossible for Alice to see Bob on his phone? Are we talking about the same blind spot?
I probably overstate that point, but it is less likely you can see they are on the phone. My point still stands - it's not the responsibility of the driver to peer into the car next to them to see their behaviour. In fact, that's downright dangerous.
I completely disagree, it's downright dangerous to not evaluate the behavior of other drivers around you. If I see someone aggressively changing lanes or tailgating, talking on their cell phone, or doing anything that looks risky to me, I mentally note it and keep as far away from them as possible. I'm frankly amazed anyone wouldn't do the same.
I agree that Alice in my example doesn't have any legal fault for the accident. Maybe this is a cultural difference, but as I see it she does share some responsibility for being in the accident if she didn't make a best-effort attempt using known-good practices to avoid it. All drivers share that responsibility.
I'm assuming you see it happening as you drive past. But do you look into each car intently to see what the driver is doing? I see drivers on phones, but I'm sure I don't see all of them. I'm normally aching the traffic and the way they are braking/swerving to determine if the driver is someone to keep clear of.
There is no cultural difference on this one that I'm aware of. In Australia you must be aware of what is going on around you on the road. But you asked about victim blaming - I think someone above expressed it better than me, and you thanked them for their post. That's the one I'm going with :-)
In your analogy the fault entirely lies with Bob. Ann is expected to pay attention to the road - a pedestrian may step out suddenly; there might be debris in the road; and she's expected to pay attention to other drivers - someone might overtake and cut back in lane suddenly. Ann is not expected to monitor the actual drivers of other vehicles to see if they're eating or dancing or talking on their cellphone. Those other drivers are expected to not be so fucking stupid.
Victim blaming is a legitimate complaint when discussion of the victim's choices distracts from the way they have been victimized. E.g., "Well, what the hell was she doing in a dark alley at 3 a.m., anyway?" You have to judge whether something amounts to victim blaming by its impact on the discourse.
Pretty much. Sadly people will do the dumbest things for attention. Just look at the number of down right degrading "entertainment" shows that are out there, and that they seem to never run out of participants.
I don't know if it's okay, but it is a fact that celebrities and common folk are held to different public standards. This has been true since the days of village gossiping to the present where countless publications exist for the sole purpose of serving as trash rags and yellow tabloids on the private lives of high-profile public figures, going day by day without significant legal troubles.
People can down vote if they want, but it's still not acceptable. It's been interesting watching my comment's score going up and down like a yoyo though.
Why is it so hard for twitter to implement some optional filter for this stuff?
You have a complete history of a users tweets and a record of how long the person has been active, number of followers, textual analysis of the tweets, block/mute status with respect to other people, whether you follow ect. It seems like it should be really easy for twitter to put messages into a spam/harassment folder, never to be seen by the target.
Edit: Not only would this alter a core and fundamental aspect of how Twitter currently operates but it would certainly be non-trivial to implement in an unobtrusive manner.
Who wants what blocked? Is there a generic 'spam/abuse' filter? Is it on by default? Are those tweets put into a spam/abuse section or entirely unviewable. What happens when someone sends a tweet that is blocked by the filter, are they notified?
Try to clearly define what metrics/identifiers you would use to determine a tweet is offensive and should be blocked and then call this implementation trivial.
Federated twitter blocking where people can choose to outsource the blocking to people they trust would be pretty cool. Kind of like AdBlockPlus lists.
People who get caught doing this need to be prosecuted, and if convicted, labeled as sexual criminals and placed on a register. Employers should be able to see the kinds of people they are employing or about to employ.
As a father myself, this kind of behaviour makes me sick and I cannot understand people who feel they need to defend these kinds of sick comments.
Behavior is obviously not right, but is it really harming someone else's rights? I'm having a hard time jumping from sexual innuendos to sexual predators... I think it would be a massive mistake to try to make into a crime.
Although many of these tweets clearly cross the line of tastelessness, how many sexual jokes/innuendos are less obvious and more controversial about whether they are tasteless? We don't need to criminalize this. Nobody's rights are being violated, in my opinion. We shouldn't be using the criminal system unless there is a clear threat of violence, not just some internet trolls trying to get a reaction out of a celebrity....
I agree. As the article shows, there are already repercussions for being a jackass on Twitter. If it goes beyond simply being a jackass (stalking, physical endangerment) we already have laws against those.
If these things were said in person, I think you would feel differently. It's easy to pass off actions that take place on the internet as being without consequence, but they can still do real damage. I think this same sense of detachment from consequences is what allows people to do things they would never do if they could see the recipient. I don't know what punishments are just, but it seems to me that returning a feeling of consequence to actions is how you also bring back civility.
Any of these said in person, I would not feel differently. Almost all of them make some reference to a baseball comment and then try to make a joke about Kurt's daughter based on that. They are simply assholes making poor jokes. Unless Kurt didn't post the most extreme ones (e.g. someone said "I'm going to rape your daughter when she gets here"), I feel like none of them even border the line of a creditable threat. Are we going to start arresting new comedians that make shitty jokes because they went too far trying to make fun of a celebrity? Where's the line of poor joke and creditable threat? I personally think its a lot farther away than any of the tweets Kurt posted.
You may have somewhat of a point. As I said, I'm unsure whether the commenters should be criminally punished or just as they have been already.
However, even if you would not feel differently, I don't think all of the people who said what they did would even have the nerve to say those things in person. The internet creates this imbalance where the effect of actions is felt much more by the recipient than the actor. This, at least, is not a good thing, and a slightly different context than a comedian making a tasteless joke.
You aren't most people then. If most fathers were told to their face that their daughter's hymen was about to be shredded, I can assure you that person would be in danger of serious injury!
People making these sorts of statements at work would potentially get into trouble because in some countries we have law against harassment at work and creating a hostile work environment.
This situation is more like a bunch of dudes going outside someone's house on the public sidewalk and screaming obscenities. Whether or not it's a direct threat of imminent harm or not, it seems unlikely to end well for the screamers.
Except standing outside their house and screaming the contents of the tweets would surely fall closer fulfilling "true threat" doctrine than tweeting from hundreds if not thousands of miles away.
How is the teenaged girl, at whom many of these menacing tweets are directed, supposed to know where these men making menacing/threatening/disgusting remarks are?
How is she to know or understand that they're not next door, or down the street?
Oh give me a break... the most offensive/threatening one that was posted by Kurt on his blog was:
"Teach me your knuckleball technique so I can fist your daughter"
You really think this is a creditable threat of violence and not someone trying to make a very, very, very poor taste joke? There are very few tweets I would even consider threats, most were just scumbags trying to get some twitter fame by making terrible baseball sexual innuendos.
There are other ones like "Kurt bleeds more from his sock than gaby does when shes on her period" that in no way could even be construed as a threat, but I feel they are getting lumped into the same category, simply because they are distasteful.
Here's the problem: the woman receiving these threats has no way to know whether this is some teenager on the other side of the country or the creepy guy down the block. She has to spend time thinking about each one and wondering whether to be worried or not, or whether the harasser is going to escalate from being an ass on Twitter to contacting her friends, relatives, coworkers, etc. on email/Facebook/etc.
The one thing which I would bet on is that if something bad did happen – and given that her dad is a celebrity hated in some circles, that's less hypothetical than it might seem in your first reaction – there would be people coming out of the woodwork to ask why she didn't report it.
Unfortunately, the goal of prosecuting threats is to prevent violence, not prevent people from being scared. If the chance of violence is relatively nil, (I already argued that I believe these guys are just terrible, wanna-be comedians) I don't think there is any case to be made that these guys are anything near sexual predators, just assholes and scumbags.
The goal of prosecuting threats is because threats are violence, or at least are damaging in and of themselves.
Threats are also illegal under 18 U.S. Code § 875(c). Even if there was no intent to carry out the threat, if the threat can be interpreted by a reasonable person as being intended to cause fear, it counts as a true threat. [1]
It's not at all that dubious. Threatening to "shred her hymen" is, well, a threat. Curt didn't know this guy, and he's a father who just had someone tell them they want to rape his daughter. I'd consider that a threat too.
Completely irrelevant. If you told me that my daughter was "slutting around", then I'd assume she was being forced. I'd be even more likely to consider you a rapist.
Not wrong, because the case you linked does not conclude that what constitutes a threat (even in this legal sense) is what the recipient of the message believes.
It did conclude that it was a threat, and amongst the finer points of the case was that Elonis argued that the test should have been whether he intended the threats or not. The jury decided that a reasonable person would have perceived the accused comments were threatening.
Even a reading of a cursory summary of this case would have told you this. Did you actually read the outcome?
This is the same kind of deluded apologism that the gamer gate crowd uses and it is dangerous. How can anyone judge the credibility of a threat made by a stranger on the internet? A threat is a threat.
I disagree completely, especially in the eyes of the law. If a comedian says he's going to kill someone, nobody is going to prosecute him. Threats have to be creditable. The tweets posted by Kurt all make some reference to his baseball career and then try to use that to make sexual jokes about his daughter. They are just terrible jokes and should be socially ostracized, but we should not be using the legal system to punish these kinds of tweets. The line is too unclear. None of the posted tweets contain any serious threat that doesn't contain some baseball innuendo, at least the ones Kurt published. There is a difference if someone said e.g. "I'm going to rape your daughter when she gets here" and that tweeter lives in the town of the school. One might be able to consider that creditable. We don't prosecute people who make others scared, we prosecute people that we believe have a creditable chance of harming another human being.
The question is, do these type of comments on Twitter cause harm? If you've read anything by people being subjected to online bullying and harassment then you know that it does cause psychological harm by itself. Especially when a number of people all start in on one person, but even one person can cause a lot of fear and harm from cyber stalking someone. Does someone doing this deserve to have their life ruined, probably not, but they should not be free from all repercussions.
KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics.
… and, yes, it's rather relevant: GamerGate started with a bunch of people on 4chan attacking a stranger on social media at the behest of her ex-boyfriend but it escalated quickly to coordinated harassment on a bunch of different forms of electronic media and attempts to bring it close to home with real-world stalking at work & conferences, SWATing, etc.
That's the problem here: the people who started it might have had no intention of anything beyond enjoying making someone else unhappy but they repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further.
Quite the opposite, Zoe Quinn herself has been discovered to have played a role in SWATing her critics [1]. Incidentally, KotakuInAction has been featured elsewhere today [2]. I agree with your last sentence.
“Quite the opposite” ignores that people involved with GamerGate have actually SWATed people (see e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/13/gamergate-...) and has engaged in all of the other activities I listed. Even if true, a single incident doesn't magically cancel out half a year of real harassment no matter how many times GamerGaters have tried use that logic to avoid addressing bad behaviour by their fellows.
That said, you're linking to a post written by Mike Cernovitch, one of the more vociferous people in GamerGate, where he's making the popular argument that he's the real victim here.
Again, let's review the evidence: if you read more than the headline it's immediately obvious that there was no actual SWATing or even threat to do so and, more importantly, none of it was done by Zoe Quinn. The person who actually posted his address used the information which he'd listed on a business directory before removing it and apologizing:
The key thing, of course, is that he wouldn't have been able to use a stranger’s actions to justify the anti-Zoe hate campaign. If you read it closely, notice how each claim in the article starts with something true but then adds unsupported insinuations that Zoe was masterminding it in an effort to shift the ire to her rather than the person who actually wrote the post.
I agree that there was no actual SWATing in Cernovich's case. He has been reported to the LAPD (probably several times) for harassment. However he has been doxxed, and I don't know how you're saying none of it was done by Quinn. Quinn has 52K followers on twitter. I think I can conclude that her tweets are widely read. And she has repeatedly publicized dox articles. Does that make her any less guilty than actually writing those articles herself? And Quinn herself admits that doxxing and SWATing are a package deal. SWATings are usually initiated as an anonymous tip, "stranger's actions", as you put it in a different context. I don't know how the law works in the US, but if it were up to me, I'd hold the doxxer responsible for it.
The Guardian article is probably right in naming baphomet (on 8chan), but then follows it up with some very shady language to link it with KiA. I have visited baphomet a few times, and they seem to be doing their own thing, whatever that may be.
As far as I know, Reddit has very strict policies in place to discourage doxxing (except on r/doxme). KotakuInAction, the one you called gamergate's organizing site, cannot be involved in doxxing. Though I'm not a regular reader, I visit it every few weeks to see what they're up to. Not only have I not seen any doxxing there, I have seen threads discouraging such behavior. Also see their Rule #2: "This is the quickest way to a ban, not just from us, but the Reddit admins. Seriously, don’t do it. Take every effort to ensure that your posts do not include any personal information, especially in screenshots."
No, I didn't mention that link, which btw isn't from reddit but from someones blog. (I haven't made up my mind on that one but it seems he makes a leap yes.)
I'm trying to point out that you are acting as if you have already made up you mind: whatever the facts, gg-ers are wrong.
In this case it seems you are, among other things, denying that KiA is Subreddit-of-the-day. Which is very easy to prove.
I suggest you read through this very carefully and find out exactly what you commented on instead of jumping to conclusions[1]. Because, you know, -this isn't reddit.
[1]: Protip: This often a good idea elsewhere as well.
I misread the original post. I apologise, you are correct about the second link. I stand by my comments on the first link, but I've been very silly in commenting about the second one. Sorry about that.
What? He's providing the link to reddit to prove that Zoe Quinn called in a Swot team. The source is reliable for matters on Reddit, but that's not what we are discussing.
> KotakuInAction is one of the major GamerGate organizing sites – that's like telling someone to go to the Scientologist Temple for opinions on Dianetics.
The ideaisn't too bad in this particular case when the question is "what do gamergaters write?" : )
> repeated things widely and loudly enough that other people fell for the cover story and escalated it further.
Sexual criminals? really? for words on twitter? There is no question that this kind of behavior is repugnant, but should it really be illegal? The tweets I read are abhorrent, but hardly credible threats.
To me, the best kind of sanction for this is exactly what's happening: social shaming and exclusion. But it falls quite a bit short of something that requires legal involvement.
I totally agree, the right course of action here is just good ol' fashioned public shaming. There's really no reason to bring the judicial system into this as it would be very taxing on that system to prosecute this type of behavior.
A good deterrent to making these kind of public comments is the social pressure of others around you knowing that you in fact act/think this horrible way.
Too many people seem to misunderstand that 'freedom of speech' does not mean 'freedom from repercussions'. Pretty glad to read jobs had been lost as a result of this.
Also, I believe a person's freedom of speech ends when speech creates a real threat to another person's safety. These kinds of tweets definitely create a threat to the recipient's safety.
In that case the boundaries of freedom are not defined by the constitution any more, but by private parties. Therefore any constitutional stipulation of 'freedom of speech' is practically worthless. Freedom can not only be measured by the existence of a constitutional construct.
When it's between two private parties, you're damn right that the boundaries of freedom are defined by those two parties. Freedom of Speech only applies to the government and to government use of force.
I'm sure the guys who penned the constitution would agree that it wasn't about giving you the freedom to act like a jackass without repercussions.
There's a difference between "freedom from legal repercussions", and "if you tweet this people all over will think you're a scumbag and maybe even a creep, and in the real world this has repercussions that don't have to involve the justice system".
Not at all. Should you not be free to hire and fire your employees depending on who you want to represent your company? Or are you advocating some sort of affirmative action for asshats?
I'm surprised people are defending these guys. Maybe we're just so used to internet trolls, but the medium doesn't change the fact that we have laws against hate speech and threats. This kind of behavior is just not acceptable, it's a stain on the human race. It's these kinds of trolls that make life really difficult for women online. I'm glad they're learning there's consequences.
I'm afraid the result will be the same as file sharing. There was Napster which was killed by labels, then Kazza which was 10x harder to kill, then torrents which are 100x harder to kill. If they manage to kill it something new will be there.
The solution is quite simple: if you're not willing to ignore trolls, don't use this kind of social network.
You should NOT drag your family into the business, not even if PR person will tell you that it increases your brand equity.
Agreed. I think a reasonable compromise would be to create a unique distinction such as "online harassment" and "online sexual harassment" at misdemeanor and felony levels depending on the severity of the offense.
I can't edit my comment above anymore so I'll add my addendum here.
I am saddened by the responses I have seen below from HNers.
The story relates to sexual threats of violence and rape of a minor. I stated that the offenders should be prosecuted and IF CONVICTED dealt with strictly under the applicable laws.
Our society is slipping into a nasty place where people feel that it is quite appropriate and acceptable to threaten and harass others online.
I think that it is a practice that needs to be stamped out, regardless of whether the threats are by men against women or vice versa; racial, homophobic or religious.
It shouldn't be tolerated by the mainstream, which when you look on twitter, often appears to be the case.
That's not what happened. If you read the original blog post, you'll see a sustained, violent screed directed at him and his daughter. It wasn't one tweet, it was a series of tweets over a period of many days. Did this ruin anyone's life? Doubtful. Losing your job is not the end of the world. And you know what? These are young kids. My hope is that this is a serious wake-up call for them to take adult responsibility for themselves.
>People who get caught doing this need to be prosecuted, and if convicted, labeled as sexual criminals and placed on a register.
Ridiculous. Maybe we should prosecute people who talk about overthrowing the government on twitter with treason - they're threats! And safety is important!
These threats on the internet aren't acceptable, but neither is your reaction to them. There is a vast difference between threatening someone and actually doing something, and the way our criminal justice system treats sexual crimes borders on cruel and unusual.
You're saying that someone should have the rest of their life ruined because they made a lewd threat on the internet? We've all heard the story of the kid who went streaking on a dare but happened to be near a playground so now he's labeled a sexual predator for the rest of his life. Do you really think that is a good response to this kind of thing?
>As a father myself, this kind of behaviour makes me sick and I cannot understand people who feel they need to defend these kinds of sick comments.
Punishing someone won't ease the anxiety you feel about the safety of your kids; there will always be something else waiting to ruin their innocence. You probably confuse people saying your reaction to these comments is extreme with people defending the comments. Regardless, you want to label someone a sexual predator so that you can feel better about the fact that you're scared for your kids. That is disgusting and scarier to me than anonymous threats to my family on the internet.
I think you're engaging in the common fallacy of dismissing things that happen on the internet as "not real." It's long past time we, as a society, grew out of such childish thinking.
As parent pointed out, these things occur in "real life" and are no less extreme. Streaking, being underage and sexting, having consensual relationships with someone slightly younger but under the age of consent, etc.
You read his statement different then I did. He's not saying that people who makes these statements be labelled as sex offenders. He's saying that people who make these statements be brought to task. If a law has been violated, then charged, and if the court determines there is reason to label them as a sex offender, then so be it.
> ...labeled as sexual criminals and placed on a register.
I understand you're pointing out the fact that grandparent said "if convicted," but parent's point is that _even if convicted_, being put on a registry for the rest of your life is extreme.
Streaking near a playground without knowing of it and threatening to rape someone's daughter are completely different things. Telling anyone that they want their daughter to bleed into their underwear because you raped them is sickening, intimidating and frankly sexual violence.
Hold your horses. There are many crimes that don't put people on a life-ruining sexual predator list. Murder for example. That doesn't make them 'acceptable'.
I don't think this crime should go on that special list. I think a reasonable maximum for this crime is a few months in prison, similar to misdemeanor battery.
I don't think the register is justifiable at all, to be honest. We don't have it where I live (Australia) and we don't have higher levels of sexual assault than the U.S. (our rates are still too high).
If that was the point you were making, I apologise as I misunderstood you.
The examples include threats of rape against his underage daughter. How on earth do people here find that acceptable? Would it be acceptable if she was 16, 15, 12..?
Some of us believe that you should nip this kind of highly obnoxious behaviour in the bud. Curt himself gives some good reasons for doing so in the article.
Drawing parallels between the physical world and the Internet is bound to be murky.
To begin with, the physical world doesn't have a single standard of ethical or moral behavior, as it varies subtly or greatly by jurisdiction.
The Internet doesn't really have the same territorial boundaries that are presently vital to the functioning of humans in the physical world, either. Of course there has been some legislation on the matter and many have tried to assert jurisdictional power (famously in file sharing cases), but those are all highly volatile concepts.
Indeed, each site chooses its own specific rules and guidelines. They're globally accessible, ad-hoc jurisdictions in of themselves, in many ways.
Finally, the web application platforms themselves are not entirely blameless. They've created highly gamified, bizarro worlds where people are signaled and conditioned to engage in forced and obnoxious "social" behavior that many would consider totally histrionic and narcissistic if done in the physical world. The need to post every picture, to post every vapid thought in a global public bazaar... most humans simply aren't used to such a thing, and evidently cannot cope with the repercussions of it, either.
Governing behavior on the Internet is doomed to end in an ambiguous mess without enacting ID laws that would subvert its purpose.
We live our lives online today, these are our methods of communication. These are the ways we keep up on the news, do our work, keep in touch with our friends and family, indulge our interests and passions, relax, etc. This whole "sticks and stones..." mentality is poisonous. There is no wall, no chasm, no separation between "the real world" and "the online world" the internet is just a medium of communication for communicating within the real world. These people are real people. The way you treat people online matters just as much as the way you treat people in person or on the phone matters, there is no communication medium which magically filters out the consequences of one's actions nor one which filters out the potential to be hurt.
https://38pitches.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/the-world-we-live...