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Trouble at the Koolaid Point

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Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#171

Post by golemotron »

jmduke wrote: post #3

This is an excellent, brave thing to write and I originally had a long comment highlighting a bunch of particularly poignant paragraphs that I deleted because really you should just read the entire thing. Neither I nor the vast majority of the people I know have ever been subject to online harassment and it makes me thankful that there are incredible people like Kathy out there. Lord knows I wouldn't have the courage…

> I know this is not a popular opinion, but is growing increasingly painful to visit a site that willingly allows to exist subreddits devoted towards domestic abuse and snuff.

How do you feel about visiting a country that allows freedom of speech and association? I don't like many of the worst of the subreddits either, but allowing them is probably much better than forbidding them for the same reason that we allow such things within the US.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#172

Post by AnimalMuppet »

unchocked wrote: post #144
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great attitude. But I wonder if 'refuting trolls' is the same as feeding them. What else is there to try?

Regardless of attitude, she is most definitely feeding the trolls.

Did you actually read the article? That's not feeding the trolls. That's, after six years of ignoring the trolls, deciding that it's gotten toxic enough that she needs to make a public refutation of weev's reality distortion field.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#173

Post by jvanenk »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #146
steve-benjamins wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any bullying, there are three players: the bully, the bullied and the witnesses. People who are bullied will often internalize that they are worthless (and that's why they are bullied). That can be one of the hardest parts of being bullied. This happens especially if people who witness the bullying stay silent. Than the bullied will feel even more alone (and will feel awful about how bad they feel). But if witness…

Or maybe ignore the troll, but reinforce the 'bullied' with "ignore that guy, they're being jerks". Less feeding, more refuting.

You should really really REALLY read the article.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#174

Post by Argorak »

dllthomas wrote: post #153
Argorak wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty hard to learn moderation. There are almost no good resources and you have to learn through failure and reflection. (I've been moderating bulletin boards for 15 years)

Have you ever looked at resources for in-person mediation? I wonder to what degree those translate (or what interesting ways they fail to).

Yes, I also worked in fields where this was a hot topic. The discussion techniques are very similiar. I can recommend reading up in those fields.

The problem is that online moderation has lots of particularities, especially the lack of face to face interaction. Not a lot of them are covered in published works.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#175

Post by peterwwillis »

phkahler wrote: post #169
peterwwillis wrote: post #139

Couple of comments: 1. I know of weev from hacker circles. He really is this douchetastic. But what's really insane to me is that there's a bunch of women in the hacker scene who adore him . I couldn't quite understand it, until I saw them also adore Adrian Lamo, and so my theory is very close to Kathy's here: hero worship distorts reality. In order to stop people from enabling abusive trolls like this, someone has t…

>> mechanism. And here's my opinion that will probably get me downvoted into hell: there is no way to stop this, other than leaving the internet. What about ending anonymity? Much as I like the idea of remaining annoymous online (not that I am here), there are legal means to deal with the extreme end of the trolling spectrum so long as you can identify them. The next issue that pops up of course is privacy. We need t…

There is no such thing as total security, and so there is no such thing as total privacy, nor anonymity. And at the same time, there's no way to completely track everything done online (or in person), as there's always a way to cover your tracks. But none of that address the human behavior aspect.

If you have a room full of people and someone is saying something bigoted, a couple things happen. One, if others agree with the person, they will clump together and gain strength. Two, if they are shunned, they simply go to a corner of the room where nobody minds them and they're allowed to continue. The bigger the room, the more people there are, thus both of these factors simply amplify the behavior. And the internet is the biggest room in the world.

It's quite easy for this stuff to propagate, anonymous or not. Even if public shaming worked they'd just go underground. Most people who have shitty opinions actually believe in them and will defend them if challenged. So whether you 'expose' someone or not won't typically change their thoughts, and thus not their behavior either.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#176

Post by zyx321 »

ijk wrote: post #147
Mithaldu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're not aware of is that the dailystormer itself is very likely a trolling site in itself, aimed at creating ridiculous and believable content to draw in support by real white supremacists and enrage the unsuspecting public. It would make perfect sense for weev to go on there with a photo of him with fake tattoos to help them in their quest. That is how deep the rabbit hole goes. Also, since you mention gamer…

Oh look, an example of the exact thing the original article is talking about, down to the unsourced accusations of DMCA takedowns for censorship.

It's not really "unsourced." MundaneMatt did post a screenshot of the takedown notice he received. (EDIT: It's linked in the article, of course. Just in case anyone didn't find it because they didn't actually read the article.)

Of course the request itself looks incredibly fake (not even bothering to capitalize her name), so who the hell knows where it came from?

In any case, the controversy isn't really about Zoe any more. We don't know how much truth there is to the accusations, and even if they are true, she's really not that important to the big picture.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#177

Post by mononcqc »

golemotron wrote: post #171
jmduke wrote: post #3

This is an excellent, brave thing to write and I originally had a long comment highlighting a bunch of particularly poignant paragraphs that I deleted because really you should just read the entire thing. Neither I nor the vast majority of the people I know have ever been subject to online harassment and it makes me thankful that there are incredible people like Kathy out there. Lord knows I wouldn't have the courage…

> I know this is not a popular opinion, but is growing increasingly painful to visit a site that willingly allows to exist subreddits devoted towards domestic abuse and snuff. How do you feel about visiting a country that allows freedom of speech and association? I don't like many of the worst of the subreddits either, but allowing them is probably much better than forbidding them for the same reason that we allow su…

That something is legal does not force it to be acceptable by any business whatsoever.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#178

Post by [deleted] »

peterwwillis wrote: post #139

Couple of comments: 1. I know of weev from hacker circles. He really is this douchetastic. But what's really insane to me is that there's a bunch of women in the hacker scene who adore him . I couldn't quite understand it, until I saw them also adore Adrian Lamo, and so my theory is very close to Kathy's here: hero worship distorts reality. In order to stop people from enabling abusive trolls like this, someone has t…

[deleted]

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#179

Post by zzzeek »

rturben wrote: post #170

This was a very well-written article. Though I haven't followed any of this person's journey that she's recounting and can't simply trust her retelling of what happened (based on the fact that I really don't know anything about weev or Kathy or their online presences), she hits on something important. It's shocking how numb a lot of internet culture is toward "trolling" or otherwise hateful statements. Nobody goes ar…

> Though I haven't followed any of this person's journey that she's recounting and can't simply trust her retelling of what happened (based on the fact that I really don't know anything about weev or Kathy or their online presences),

saying this is so unnecessary. The harassment Kathy has received is widely documented, for years. Do a little googling up front instead of unnecessarily dishing out assorted seeds of doubt.

Re: Trouble at the Koolaid Point

#180

Post by ChiperSoft »

rturben wrote: post #170

This was a very well-written article. Though I haven't followed any of this person's journey that she's recounting and can't simply trust her retelling of what happened (based on the fact that I really don't know anything about weev or Kathy or their online presences), she hits on something important. It's shocking how numb a lot of internet culture is toward "trolling" or otherwise hateful statements. Nobody goes ar…

> This might seem naive, but honestly, why is this tolerable by so many people if the words are said on the internet rather than on the streets?

It isn't tolerated, but there is no recourse for response. Words said on the streets can be met with physical response, meaning directly removing the offending individual by force, or even physically harming them for their behavior.

Words said online can only be met by moderator response, which is always delayed, easily shrugged off and rarely an actual punishment.

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