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Solidarity against online harassment

blog.torproject.org

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Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#31

Post by gnu8 »

srslack wrote: post #19
gnu8 wrote: post #2

Don'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 trol…

You've failed to understand my point, which is that this is likely state sponsored harassment. I only mentioned gamergate as an example of pointless trolling, which this incident might not be.

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#33

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

exstudent wrote: post #27
MeadowTheory wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean some people are uncomfortable in having their place in the social pecking order challenged? News at 11.

No. First of all you're being pretty rude. Secondly, I don't want ANY pecking order in Tor. They should just focus on making privacy tools and leave the unrelated political messaging aside.

"Making privacy tools" IS political.

Why is it a surprise that the people making these privacy tools were motivated by a desire for communication free of the chilling effects of violence?

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#34

Post by meowface »

rmc wrote: post #32
bobcostas55 wrote: post #3

Just gonna leave this here: https://twitter.com/fucktyler/status/285670822264307712 I can't wait until this outrage culture fad is over and we can collectively move on to more interesting things.

You can't walk away from threats to be shot.

Who was threatening to shoot who?

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#35

Post by angersock »

JackC wrote: post #18
angersock wrote: post #4

We 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…

The Tor devs are saying "Hey, somebody has been harassing one of our members, and we're going to do something about it, concretely, and we write tools, but that's not enough." So, a casual reading suggests that they are intending to do something beyond mere blogging to help their friend. Such an action, unless it's just counter-harassment, could well be censorship. That's how I read their post. And no, it's not a good thing that their friend is being harassed.

Basically, as I read it, their post was either feel-good me-too blog support, or it was a declaration of intent to do something, the nature of the problem in turn suggesting censorship or mechanisms for censorship.

The whole "If you need people to have thick skins, well, that's a problem" attitude just isn't supported by the tech we're working with.

Fact: It is possible to send a direct message from one person to another without any significant intermediary (via email, twitter, etc.). This is freakin' awesome.

Fact: Some percentage of communications sent will be negative or offensive.

Fact: We can either stop offensive communications in transit, or we can ignore them at receipt. We can't stop them being transmitted without creating a mechanism for immediate de facto censorship (hell, consider shadowbans in HN for an example of this).

Fact: If we choose to stop offensive communications in transit, we are enabling the stopping of any communications in transit. The same software that lets us drop messages that say "kill all women"--or some other ghastly comment--is the same software that lets us drop messages that say "save all women". To pretend otherwise is willfully ignorant.

So, it follows (to me, at any rate) that the only way to prevent the installation of such apparatus is to handle discarding messages at the point of reception--and that means being able to ignore or filter out things we disagree with without calling for some central authority to protect us.

I even suggested a nice area of exploration for decentralized handling of that kind of spamming, but nobody cares about that--they just disagree with something else and flag to the bottom of the page. There's your system in action, by the way.

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#36

Post by angersock »

exstudent wrote: post #27
MeadowTheory wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean some people are uncomfortable in having their place in the social pecking order challenged? News at 11.

No. First of all you're being pretty rude. Secondly, I don't want ANY pecking order in Tor. They should just focus on making privacy tools and leave the unrelated political messaging aside.

You are posting an unpopular position, and are going to get flamed for it by people who won't articulate why they think you're wrong.

For what it's worth, I think you're right about the common-carrier argument. If that's not the argument you're making, disregard my support.

A lot of these folks, in their reasonable zeal to prevent somebody on the internet having their feelings hurt or being made to feel scared, are ignoring the global costs to their chosen fuck-you-got-mine strategies of selective communications. A minority would be even happy to let, say, a misogynist with a cure for cancer be panned or banned irrespective of their other positive qualities. They can be hard to reason with.

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#37

Post by onnoonno »

JackC wrote: post #29
foragerone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, just more food for thought: this ideology (that it's bad to look at your tech through a feminist lens, or any other random social lens) tends to be a conservative force, not a progressive one. Tech has to be built for someone . You build for people you (probably) assume have eyes and ears and hands and written language and a financial system and a predictable reward mechanism and a notion of privacy and on and on…

This might be interesting/relevant to you wrt. feminism and the status quo - and who exactly is status quo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#38

Post by iza »

JackC wrote: post #29
foragerone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, just more food for thought: this ideology (that it's bad to look at your tech through a feminist lens, or any other random social lens) tends to be a conservative force, not a progressive one. Tech has to be built for someone . You build for people you (probably) assume have eyes and ears and hands and written language and a financial system and a predictable reward mechanism and a notion of privacy and on and on…

I agree with what you're saying, but I'm skeptical about how "significant" the "number of men who are hateful toward women" really is. It's hard to tell a troll from a misogynist. I've seen a lot of assumptions that because the victim is female, and the harassment contains sexist language, that the harasser is therefore a misogynist. Or that the harassment is because the victim is female (as opposed to something she said). But when the troll's intent is to offend, obviously he will use language to that effect.

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#39

Post by exstudent »

angersock wrote: post #36
exstudent wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. First of all you're being pretty rude. Secondly, I don't want ANY pecking order in Tor. They should just focus on making privacy tools and leave the unrelated political messaging aside.

You are posting an unpopular position, and are going to get flamed for it by people who won't articulate why they think you're wrong. For what it's worth, I think you're right about the common-carrier argument. If that's not the argument you're making, disregard my support. A lot of these folks, in their reasonable zeal to prevent somebody on the internet having their feelings hurt or being made to feel scared, are i…

It's difficult, and it's why I think a project like Tor should stay out of polarizing political movements. The reason I can't support feminism (outside the scope of this article but relevant to the discussion) is not the end goal of equality for men and women (of course any reasonable person would want that!) but the tactics of baseless accusations, and silencing the opposition. All disagreement becomes "harassment", all divergent opinions are labeled regressive. Look no further than this thread, people that don't agree with Tor's move are down voted to oblivion or subject to personal attacks. This style of aggressive, speech quelching rhetoric is extra dangerous when applied to a tool like Tor IMO.

Re: Solidarity against online harassment

#40

Post by JackC »

iza wrote: post #38
JackC wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just more food for thought: this ideology (that it's bad to look at your tech through a feminist lens, or any other random social lens) tends to be a conservative force, not a progressive one. Tech has to be built for someone . You build for people you (probably) assume have eyes and ears and hands and written language and a financial system and a predictable reward mechanism and a notion of privacy and on and on…

I agree with what you're saying, but I'm skeptical about how "significant" the "number of men who are hateful toward women" really is. It's hard to tell a troll from a misogynist. I've seen a lot of assumptions that because the victim is female, and the harassment contains sexist language, that the harasser is therefore a misogynist. Or that the harassment is because the victim is female (as opposed to something she…

I see your point, but I guess I don't see why it matters. Like, let's say Person A says horrible stuff because he hates women, and Person B says the same horrible stuff because he likes hurting people and the person he wants to hurt is a woman. And let's say I have a crystal ball that tells me which is which. What do I do with that information?
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