Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women • Hacker News Board

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#41

Post by mkal_tsr » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

uvTwitch wrote: post #36

acdha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem: #gamergate started as part of a harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, closely following a round of attacks on Anita Sarkeesian[1] by many of the same people. The journalism bit was a valid issue latter adopted as a shield against criticism from the attacks at those women, several journalists and anyone else who spoke up against the abuse. Then they jumped in bed with the Breitbart crew, who were…

That's one way to tell the story. Here's another: Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. Caught with their pants do…

I will never forget when a Gawker employee (Gizmodo, brand under Gawker) used an on/off device for TVs in the middle of a tech demo at CES 2008 [1]. Gawker showed their true colors then.

They have not changed since, only gotten worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmodo#TV-B-Gone

Edit: I'm getting downvoted. Please explain where I am factually incorrect, either in what I have said or linked. Thanks :-)

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#42

Post by BryantD » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

uvTwitch wrote: post #36

acdha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem: #gamergate started as part of a harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, closely following a round of attacks on Anita Sarkeesian[1] by many of the same people. The journalism bit was a valid issue latter adopted as a shield against criticism from the attacks at those women, several journalists and anyone else who spoke up against the abuse. Then they jumped in bed with the Breitbart crew, who were…

That's one way to tell the story. Here's another: Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. Caught with their pants do…

"the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true."

No, this is not true. Here are the ways in which it isn't true:

- You're claiming that Zoe Quinn slept with people for the purpose of positive coverage (as opposed to, say, pleasure). There's no evidence of this.

- She didn't sleep with "editors of gaming publications." Of the three people named in the blog post, only one is a journalist and none are editors.

- Zoe's ex-partner didn't accuse her of sleeping with people for positive coverage; in fact, he explicitly says "if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and [journalist] regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no evidence to imply that it was sexual in nature."

- [Journalist] wrote one article that talked about Zoe Quinn at all; it was not a review. It does say nice things about her. He wasn't sleeping with her at the time.

I don't have much hope of this, but seriously: you should stop and think about why you've come to believe this skewed, angry version of the story. What are you getting out of thinking Zoe Quinn is this bad a person? Could you be wrong about the rest of your beliefs about Gamergate?

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#43

Post by uvTwitch » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:13 AM UTC

fenomas wrote: post #25

uvTwitch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This narrative you're pushing here is a very hard sell considering this is one of their most prominent banners: http://www.nichegamer.net/media/2014/09/gamergate.jpg Being the interenet, there are naturally aggressive and violent people who will throw harassment around. With regard to this issue, it is downright false to claim that they originate from, or are encouraged by, any one camp, as there are examples of hara…

Neither side of things is that simple. While people who openly support gamergate now focus on journalism and condemn misogynistic threats, a look at GG's origins (e.g. the #burgersandfries IRC logs, which as much as anything else started the whole thing[1]), reveals plenty to abhor - way more discussion of how to effectively character-assassinate Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian than of how to reform games journalism,…

I argue that, while sparked from the same incident, gamergate is not the same as the childish harassment you refer to. It's rallying cry has always been "game journalism ethics" , and never "women get out".

I would ask the rhetorical question of why journalists continue to focus on claims of gamergate members harassing women, and give no lip service to the gamergate claims of poor journalistic integrity, and a lack of ethics.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#44

Post by ioquake3 » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

uvTwitch wrote: post #36

acdha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem: #gamergate started as part of a harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, closely following a round of attacks on Anita Sarkeesian[1] by many of the same people. The journalism bit was a valid issue latter adopted as a shield against criticism from the attacks at those women, several journalists and anyone else who spoke up against the abuse. Then they jumped in bed with the Breitbart crew, who were…

That's one way to tell the story. Here's another: Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. Caught with their pants do…

This is absolutely false. There was no coverage that was slanted for her free game after she supposedly slept with anyone. This is not about ethics, if it were that would have been an issue when BIG publishers started paying youtubers to cover games without any negative language. Or any of the other actual scandals. Not when ONE indie game developer happened to have some dirty laundry aired by an asshole.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#45

Post by kaonashi » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

uvTwitch wrote: post #36

acdha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem: #gamergate started as part of a harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, closely following a round of attacks on Anita Sarkeesian[1] by many of the same people. The journalism bit was a valid issue latter adopted as a shield against criticism from the attacks at those women, several journalists and anyone else who spoke up against the abuse. Then they jumped in bed with the Breitbart crew, who were…

That's one way to tell the story. Here's another: Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. Caught with their pants do…

Sounds like a lot of female sexuality policing to me. I'd be ashamed to have my name anywhere near it.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#46

Post by BryantD » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

imanaccount247 wrote: post #40

BryantD wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be clear about why Adam Baldwin is doing this: he's interested in spreading his brand of conservative thought. "EveryJoe: I recently saw a tweet came down my stream: 'Ever since GamerGate started, I’ve been forced to completely reconsider what it means to be a left-leaning liberal.' So it’s causing second thoughts. "Adam: Yeah, second thoughts are best! There was a famous former Marxist who met with Ronald Reag…

So, it is a problem that Adam Baldwin is "conservative" shares his opinions? You must realize most of the people attacking #gamergate and gamers are doing so to spread their "brand of liberal thought" too. Yeah, people have different opinions and different politics. For example, I disagree that people having different opinions is a problem.

Nope, it's not a problem at all. However, if you say "#gamergate was started by Adam Baldwin, specifically to address corruption in games journalism and the collusion of media outlets in trying to silence discussion of it." I feel OK about pointing out that you're omitting some of Baldwin's motivations.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#47

Post by acdha » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:17 AM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #33

uptown wrote: post #9

The way Twitter handles these types of incidents needs to change as well: https://twitter.com/StuHorvath/status/520750049702473729

Are you certain? What exactly do you propose Twitter do? Twitter is not a real-space police force and in many cases does not have true-identity information. It's possible that a faster move against threat-originators, through action like a ban on their Twitter account, would do one or both of (1) escalating their misguided anger; or (2) limiting evidence-gathering by real authorities. Also, note that new Twitter sign…

A few simple things which would help and are easy to implement:

1. Stop auto-discarding abuse reports which aren't from the target of an attack. Right now, Twitter won't investigate a credible death threat unless you say you're the target. 2. Limit new accounts ability to send messages to people who don't follow them 3. Apply blocks to email addresses, requiring griefers to churn validated addresses rather than reusing them 4. Give you better filters for notifications: i.e. currently there's no way to have it default to only notifications from people you follow so you can't avoid seeing crap unless you use a bookmark. Similarly, filtering out messages from new accounts you don't follow or which don't have n followers in common, etc. etc. would reduce the dog-pile effect. 5. Allow friends to help: auto-block/mute accounts which people you follow have blocked (specific people, threshold, etc.); hide tweets which people you follow have flagged as annoying / abusive; etc. There's a ton of interesting opportunity to use the social network for good here.

None of this is perfect but increasing the frictional costs matters a lot for this kind of thing when they're only in it for fun. A lot of prior art from the email spam prevention world applies here as well – the main thing is simply that Twitter's management clearly don't care to make any significant investment in this area.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#48

Post by mkal_tsr » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:22 AM UTC

ioquake3 wrote: post #44

uvTwitch wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one way to tell the story. Here's another: Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. Caught with their pants do…

This is absolutely false. There was no coverage that was slanted for her free game after she supposedly slept with anyone. This is not about ethics, if it were that would have been an issue when BIG publishers started paying youtubers to cover games without any negative language. Or any of the other actual scandals. Not when ONE indie game developer happened to have some dirty laundry aired by an asshole.

You mean like when TotalBiscuit called out Shadows of Mordor and then Boogie reported that publishers are changing their contracts?

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#49

Post by uvTwitch » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:26 AM UTC

ioquake3 wrote: post #44

uvTwitch wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one way to tell the story. Here's another: Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. Caught with their pants do…

This is absolutely false. There was no coverage that was slanted for her free game after she supposedly slept with anyone. This is not about ethics, if it were that would have been an issue when BIG publishers started paying youtubers to cover games without any negative language. Or any of the other actual scandals. Not when ONE indie game developer happened to have some dirty laundry aired by an asshole.

The admission she herself made, as well as the video-captured facebook conversation logs her ex posted with her where she admitted as much, was evidence enough for me.

The scandal wasn't about her though, try as the media might to make her the focus - it was about the journalists who had accepted sex, and reciprocated with positive coverage. It was also about the many other journalists who were found to have been doing similar things - patricia hernandez, writing a multitude of articles about the games of her housemate; danielle rindau, giving Gone Home a 10/10, when she had a pre-existing friendship with the developers, to name two.

It's the behavior of the journalists which is what's being criticized.

Gamergaters generally wants people to stop focusing on women's sex lives.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#50

Post by imanaccount247 » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:27 AM UTC

BryantD wrote: post #46

imanaccount247 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it is a problem that Adam Baldwin is "conservative" shares his opinions? You must realize most of the people attacking #gamergate and gamers are doing so to spread their "brand of liberal thought" too. Yeah, people have different opinions and different politics. For example, I disagree that people having different opinions is a problem.

Nope, it's not a problem at all. However, if you say "#gamergate was started by Adam Baldwin, specifically to address corruption in games journalism and the collusion of media outlets in trying to silence discussion of it." I feel OK about pointing out that you're omitting some of Baldwin's motivations.

His motivations were not the issue. The purpose of the hashtag and movement were. Nonetheless, your desire to point out that he is not liberal enough to meet your standards is still hypocritical. Why aren't you pointing that out all the "journalists" attacking gamergate have liberal politics and want to discuss them?