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

#91

Post by eropple » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:22 PM UTC

Malician wrote: post #63

fenomas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

TotalBiscuit supports GG, and he's the most trustworthy person reporting on games out there. (He's also received threats for his stance, though he did not receive a series of news articles reporting them.) https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/520247895996395520

The guy who doesn't disclose when he's being paid to pimp a game, while pimping that game, is "most trustworthy"? Interesting. Or is it just that he waves his hands at SJWs that you like him?

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

#92

Post by eropple » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

imanaccount247 wrote: post #89

valas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't do yourself much favor in this discussion when you post links to returnofkings.com or avoiceformen.com :-)

The source of a fact does not matter. Your post is the very definition of ad-hominem.

I don't think you know how things...like...work. Being an ad hominem argument and being accurate are not disjoint sets. You don't just get to blow the whistle and say "AD HOMINEM, ARGUMENT GOES TO THE RECEIVING TEAM!".

It's not even an ad hominem, though, because the credibility of your sources is at the core of your argument. returnofkings and avoiceformen have a storied and well-covered history of being astonishing shitheads towards women and doing everything in their (meager, thankfully) power to turn the clock back to 1950 or thereabouts. They have an inherent bias, and a real real disgusting one, that makes them immediately incredible. It's like citing Andrew Wakefield on autism--you aren't entitled to the respect of having an argument when you don't have an argument based on reality.

There isn't enough there to the spittle-flecked, cheeto-dusting link parade to argue about. It's prima facie nonsense being peddled by people with much, much more of an axe to grind than anyone on the "other side" that you (strangely) fear; there's no serious coverage of this sordid stain on a hobby of mine that's pro-#GG except from people whose entire worldview is predicated on being anti-women. And you know it, which is why you would rather blow the whistle and hope the ref stops the fight because--gasp!--somebody used a fallacy.

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

#93

Post by EvenThisAcronym » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 5:27 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #16

imanaccount247 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, why does "#gamergate" get the blame for this? This trend of vilifying any group one disagrees with based on the actions of individuals with no indication they are even connected to the group is pretty disturbing. Remember when Jack Thompson got death threats? Remember how it was not acceptable to pretend "gamers" were at fault for that, but rather the individual people committing those crimes were at…

Because #gamergate is a name that was created to attack one woman based on completely spurious claims. If you really care about corruption in games journalism (and I do) then it makes no sense to continue rallying behind this banner that was tainted from the start.

That doesn't make any sense. "Some people said before that Gamergate was about harassing women, I guess this woman must've been harassed by Gamergate as well, although there is no proof, and Gamergate supporters decried the threat and reported it, which is all they could do."

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

#94

Post by EvenThisAcronym » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 5:30 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #92

imanaccount247 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source of a fact does not matter. Your post is the very definition of ad-hominem.

I don't think you know how things...like...work. Being an ad hominem argument and being accurate are not disjoint sets. You don't just get to blow the whistle and say "AD HOMINEM, ARGUMENT GOES TO THE RECEIVING TEAM!". It's not even an ad hominem , though, because the credibility of your sources is at the core of your argument. returnofkings and avoiceformen have a storied and well-covered history of being astonishin…

>there isn't enough there to the spittle-flecked, cheeto-dusting link...

Why, exactly, did you use this particular choice of words?

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

#95

Post by eropple » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

EvenThisAcronym wrote: post #94

eropple wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you know how things...like...work. Being an ad hominem argument and being accurate are not disjoint sets. You don't just get to blow the whistle and say "AD HOMINEM, ARGUMENT GOES TO THE RECEIVING TEAM!". It's not even an ad hominem , though, because the credibility of your sources is at the core of your argument. returnofkings and avoiceformen have a storied and well-covered history of being astonishin…

>there isn't enough there to the spittle-flecked, cheeto-dusting link... Why, exactly, did you use this particular choice of words?

Because I felt like reaching deep and verbalizing the contempt I have for this brutally disingenuous crowd. (And before you step up about oh, no, it's not disingenuous at all, answer yourself this: why's everyone making a big stink about Nathan Grayson at Kotaku and not, oh, the lack of a wall between marketing/ad-sales and content generation at IGN?)

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

#96

Post by Malician » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #91

Malician wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TotalBiscuit supports GG, and he's the most trustworthy person reporting on games out there. (He's also received threats for his stance, though he did not receive a series of news articles reporting them.) https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/520247895996395520

The guy who doesn't disclose when he's being paid to pimp a game, while pimping that game, is "most trustworthy"? Interesting. Or is it just that he waves his hands at SJWs that you like him?

No. TB has been plenty trustworthy in my experience and I started watching him when he started making Starcraft content. Care to back up that allegation?

Frankly, the last line is irrelevant. Anti-GG involves plenty of classism (cheeto basement dwelling loser) and more than enough icky gender policing (not a real man!)

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

#97

Post by orionblastar » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 8:07 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #95

EvenThisAcronym wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there isn't enough there to the spittle-flecked, cheeto-dusting link... Why, exactly, did you use this particular choice of words?

Because I felt like reaching deep and verbalizing the contempt I have for this brutally disingenuous crowd. (And before you step up about oh, no, it's not disingenuous at all, answer yourself this: why's everyone making a big stink about Nathan Grayson at Kotaku and not, oh, the lack of a wall between marketing/ad-sales and content generation at IGN?)

The whole thing is the gaming industry is corrupt. People can pay for good reviews or have sexual relations with the reviewer in exchange for a good review.

It doesn't matter if one is male or female that does those sorts of things. But when one gets caught he or she can fake threats with Twitter accounts to cover it up.

For some reason most of the people doing this are feminists, I don't know why, nor do I know why the mainstream media and news media won't cover it. Why is it a non-story if a feminist does bad things for a good review and when caught does a Twitter hoax, and then rewarded for it?

Sure those sites might be crappy towards women, but they uncovered some facts about the hoaxes. Something the news media refuses to do, which is why those websites report on it. I wish the news media would investigate it and find out if it is a hoax or not.

But taking a picture of a Tweet 12 minutes after it happened is very suspicious, esp when that Tweet is deleted in less than half an hour and the account gets deleted as well. So nobody else can see it or what IP it got posted from.

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

#98

Post by orionblastar » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

thezilch wrote: post #71

acdha wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reusi…

Twitter is not an investigation authority. Nor should they be. Report it to the proper authorities. None of your suggestions are going to do anything but aggravate the offender further, which is the entire point of the post you've replied to. It's like suggesting Snapchat monitor and deny underaged teens from from taking suggestive photos.

Or like asking Twitter or Instagram to delete accounts used by ISIS, a terrorist group that coordinates things via social networks.

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

#99

Post by vacri » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 8:50 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #85

vacri wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the genres of journalism to get so passionate about ethics about, you choose this?

Of all posts on the internet you choose to comment this one?

Check my profile - I comment on tons of posts. Doesn't mean I'm that passionately invested in them.

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

#100

Post by acdha » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 10:25 PM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #74

acdha wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reusi…

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. The "We only review…" message is bad UX, after someone has already gone through multiple steps, but it doesn't necessarily mean the report has been auto-discarded. The fact that their form lets you submit them at all suggests it might be used a…

> Note, though, that it still disadvantages good-faith new-users, as well: the person who was moved to register to message someone would now have a frustrating, "you're-not-good-enough-to-message-them" experience

That's actually one of my biggest concerns about something like this – I said "limit" because it seems like you'd want something more like a rate-limit than an absolute block so you could allow someone to get started with the service but start doing a “whoa, slow down” delay if they send to some number of users or if any of those users subsequently block / mute / report them.

> But it's actually quite hard for Twitter to rapidly innovate in this regard, because users are very ornery about slight changes in such options

Agreed. Initially, I think a safe tactic would be to focus on making it easier to do things which users can technically already do – e.g. you and I could already share a list of who to block, so it doesn't change the fundamental model if we automate the process.

> The abuser is instead focusing on few targets, more like a spear-phisher, and hand-crafting all the abuse

This is a very good point. I think there are two separate groups here – the dedicated attacker is probably impossible to stop through automated means and we're almost certainly fooling ourselves if we pretend otherwise. There seems to be more room to take the fun out of the casual harassers – e.g. the casual GG troops who camp on a hashtag when they get bored and auto-reply to anyone who mentions them – which would also make it harder for the more abusive types to hide behind them.