Why is this tagged with "feminism"? I'm really uncomfortable with that. I don't want ideology (of any kind) in my technology.
Solidarity against online harassment
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Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#12Why is this tagged with "feminism"? I'm really uncomfortable with that. I don't want ideology (of any kind) in my technology.
>I don't want ideology (of any kind) in my technology.
That too is an ideology, and it's not a trivial one.
Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#13Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#14Why is this tagged with "feminism"? I'm really uncomfortable with that. I don't want ideology (of any kind) in my technology.
>I don't want ideology (of any kind) in my technology. That too is an ideology, and it's not a trivial one.
Thinking about it, I'll concede that it is an ideology. One I'm proud to hold and I think is very tech friendly and progressive. I'll restate it: I think tech should be tech. I don't want privacy tools to contain censorship mechanisms because I believe in free speech.
Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#15I really hope this blog is only talking about Tor the community and not Tor the technology. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to ban people who are harassing others without storing some identity information, which completely defeats the purpose of Tor.
I don't think this is anything other than a public condemnation of the people who use anonymity to harass people.
>This declaration is not the last word, but a beginning: We will not tolerate harassment of our people. We are working within our community to devise ways to concretely support people who suffer from online harassment; this statement is part of that discussion. We hope it will contribute to the larger public conversation about online harassment and we encourage other organizations to sign on to it or write one of their own.
Key word is "declaration". I don't think this will effect the tor technology in any way.
Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#16I see three different top-level comments suggesting that this post is an oblique announcement of some kind of censorship or banning system being developed for the Tor software. It is clearly nothing of the sort, and Tor developers value the system far too much to try to shoehorn a backdoor into it. Respond to it for what it is - a statement of social principles.
Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#17I really hope this blog is only talking about Tor the community and not Tor the technology. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to ban people who are harassing others without storing some identity information, which completely defeats the purpose of Tor.
This isn't a technological change - they're just publicly stating that members of the community are being harassed (especially women), and that's not OK.
So it's not de-anonymisation, it's calling out bad behaviour that is often ignored (because it's nicer to pretend it's not an issue).
Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#18We have decided that it is not enough for us to work to protect the world from snoops and censors; we must also stand up to protect one another from harassment. And with that, they've moved from being a dumb pipe to being a force for censorship. Way to go folks. :( The big problem we see with the internet, and basically any sort of truly open point-to-point communication system that is truly unbiased, is that means t…
And with that, they've moved from being a dumb pipe to being a force for censorship.
This has nothing to do with censorship. It doesn't attempt to make harassment impossible or illegal. It's a social strategy: you can choose to harass people online, or you can choose to be friends with the Tor developers, but you can't do both.
For that matter, harassment is also a social strategy to discourage unwanted activity: you can choose to be a high-profile woman online, or you can choose not to have tons of strangers hate you, but you can't do both. So if this Tor statement somehow was censorship, harassment would be censorship as well.
And so would lots of other things people do every day. We're social animals; we do things to encourage or discourage social participation that we like or don't like. If you have stinky shoes, we stand farther away. If you say shitty things to women, you can't be friends with the Tor developers. It's not censorship, it's freedom of choice.
people need to come to terms with the fact that others may say terrible and hurtful things to them, and they need to have the fortitude to deal with it or ignore it
If you need people to do that, you have a problem, because it is not going to happen. No snark here: if your plan for encouraging freedom depends on people not walking away from harassment, it is an unworkable plan.
If you walk into a bar and everyone shouts terrible things at you, you are not going to "deal with it or ignore it"; you are going to leave. Right now big parts of the internet are like that for (e.g.) women: a bar they walk into, get terrible things shouted at them, and leave.
The Tor devs here are saying, metaphorically, "hey, cut it out, man. You're making this bar suck for everyone." To me, that's a responsible way to encourage freedom in today's world, and more people should do the same.
Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#19Don't be too quick to dismiss this harassment as part of the gamergate-style nonsense that has been going on as of late. This type of thing is typical of the frat boy intelligence community. It's considered the height of their tradecraft to anonymously harass opponents with facile mockery and threats. Recall the FBI's campaign against Dr. Martin Luther King: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-d…
It has nothing to do with that, and there's no evidence to back up the claim that gamergate is a harassment campaign, which seems to be what you are implying. Here's an actual, statistical network analysis:
http://chrisvoncsefalvay.com/2014/12/07/Gamergate.html
The only issue I have with the Tor statement is, who actually thinks harassment is a good thing, except sadistic individuals?
It's a false dichotomy. The troll they're referring to was pretty pathetic.
Re: Solidarity against online harassment
#20Don't be too quick to dismiss this harassment as part of the gamergate-style nonsense that has been going on as of late. This type of thing is typical of the frat boy intelligence community. It's considered the height of their tradecraft to anonymously harass opponents with facile mockery and threats. Recall the FBI's campaign against Dr. Martin Luther King: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-d…
I'm pretty sure it's just more of this slapfight: http://pando.com/2014/11/14/tor-smear/
Having just read that article, and also having just learned about Tor's funding - is there any independent/third party summary of this news?