Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This Industry is Fucked

blog.jessfraz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 311 posts

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#161

Post by tzs »

tzs wrote: post #157

Several thoughts, some reasonable and some probably stupid, split into separate comments so the reasonable parts can be discussed and the stupid parts torn apart separately:

Part 4.

We need to start including some internet human interaction training in high school or elementary school. This should cover two things.

First, it should cover how the person on the other end of an internet interaction is another person, with feelings, and so we should keep that in mind. It should cover how it is easy to forget that, and so say things online we'd never say to someone's face.

Second, since that isn't going to stop the problem, people need to be warned about the jerks who like to harm people for the sake of harming them (see part 1), told that they are likely to encounter such people at some point, and get shit directed at them. They need to be told to not take it personally, the senders are not mentally well, and just filter their messages out.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#162

Post by tzs »

tzs wrote: post #157

Several thoughts, some reasonable and some probably stupid, split into separate comments so the reasonable parts can be discussed and the stupid parts torn apart separately:

Part 3.

Since the power that the attackers have in these messages is the reaction of the recipient, it might be possible to turn this around. In part 2, I suggested filtering and trashing (or sharing for research into de-anonymizing the senders). How about going beyond ignoring the empty idiots and embracing their idiocy?

Make a game of this. Have a scoring systems where you get points based on the number of threats you receive a month, with bonus points for photoshops and such. The person with the most cumulative points for the year could get an award and a nice prize for being best at annoying internet idiots.

This is reminiscent of one way that the KKK was fought. The "Superman" radio show in the late '40s ran a 16-episode story in which Superman took on the KKK. They presented the KKK as an organization of ridiculous people with silly and stupid rituals, and it greatly hurt the KKK.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#163

Post by tzs »

tzs wrote: post #157

Several thoughts, some reasonable and some probably stupid, split into separate comments so the reasonable parts can be discussed and the stupid parts torn apart separately:

Part 2.

These kind of email threats are overwhelmingly empty, in the sense that the person sending them is almost certainly not actually going to come over and do the things threatened [1]. Their power lies entirely in the threat itself.

Consider training your spam filter to recognize these threats and automatically trash them. I would hope your normal correspondence with friends and coworkers, and the correspondence you solicit, is sufficiently free of rape threats and the like that it should be easy for modern filters to separate out the latter.

Actually, don't trash them. Separate them out and make them available to anyone who wishes to study them. If many victims pool their threat data, someone may be able to infer enough to bust the anonymity of some of the senders.

[1] Exception: if you are doing things that will anger the kind of people who are willing to physically harm you even if it means they will likely be jailed or killed, then you need to treat these as real physical threats. For instance, if what makes you prominent on the internet is your work in successfully keeping abortion clinics open in deeply religious states, take threats as being serious physical threats.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#164

Post by tzs »

tzs wrote: post #157

Several thoughts, some reasonable and some probably stupid, split into separate comments so the reasonable parts can be discussed and the stupid parts torn apart separately:

Part 1.

It's not really a tech industry thing. It's a more general aspect of humanity. There are a lot of people, who enjoy harming other beings [1] if they can do it without bringing trouble upon themselves. The internet greatly helps these people do that, because it provides a way for them to communicate anonymously.

Since so much of tech industry interaction involves the internet, becoming known publicly in the tech industry will attract this kind of asshat behavior. It's probably not much consolation, but you'll get similar harassment on the internet outside the tech industry, too. Heck, even online chess gets surprisingly nasty when anonymous players are involved.

[1] I said "beings" instead of "humans" or "people" because I think there is probably a connection between the kind of lack of empathy that allows one to try to harm a stranger over the internet and the kind of lack of empathy that allows far too many people to torture animals for the sake of torturing them.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#165

Post by jazzyk »

Frondo wrote: post #114
jazzyk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not bring the Adria story again - she made a fuss because of an adolescent joke she overheard two rows behind her in a private conversation, which was NOT DIRECTED AT HER, and was not about females or sexual or any other interaction with females. All the same while making crass jokes herself in her social media accounts. As opposed to this case, where some sickos clearly send very troubling messages DIRECTL…

Aaaaand, our two divergent reactions to the Adria Richards story is probably why these friends of mine (the female programmers) probably felt like they could trust me with the stories of their experiences; e.g. I'm not going to tell them they're wrong, I'm not going to try and reinterpret their stories...I'm just going to listen.

I was not re-interpreting the A.R. story - the facts were what they were. EVERY STORY about harassment (or threats or otherwise troubling behavior) should be reported/heard, but putting the two stories we are talking about in the same basket is not fair - Jessie's case is in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CATEGORY - it is personal and threatening - unlike the other one.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#168

Post by purp »

vonklaus wrote: post #156
shykes wrote: post #149

I am a colleague of Jess, and have witnessed her dealing with this ordeal. She is a badass and doesn't need anyone to speak on her behalf. But some aspects of her experience are relevant to all of us and we have to talk about it. 1. If this is happening to you and you haven't spoken to anyone about it - please do. There is a specialized support group at https://www.crashoverridenetwork.net . Even if you feel you can…

> You are not voicing a valid opinion I'm not sure how an opinion could be invalid? Maybe to another, but obviously not to the person who has that opinion. > asserting that gender has nothing to do with it Of course it does in her case. I feel bad for her, and it totally sucks. However, this is what trolls do. They troll people for various illogical reasons. > So let's fix it. I am not trying to be rude, but this is…

> You can't do anything to stop trolls online [...]

So painfully wrong. There are many things you can do, including not giving up and walking off. You just have to decide you've had enough and are willing to do hard work.

Speak out, even when it's not in your own best interest.

Support people who are targeted.

And, last but not least, don't pick pedantic points to argue while losing sight of the main issue: it absolutely stinks to be a woman in tech.

So let's fix it.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#169

Post by jacques_chester »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #38
vonklaus wrote: post #15

This is less about the tech industry and more about the culture of the internet. A loud minority enforce the culture of anonymity on the internet and having a public presence will open one up to getting caught in the crosshairs. Being a "public figure" has always opened one up to these sorts of things, the internet has made the barrier of entry very low for spamming and threatening someone. I don't see any solution t…

here is my solution : https://github.com/neyer/respect

Webs of trust are very hard to bootstrap. Probably the most serious attempt in our industry was Advogato:

http://www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#170

Post by __z »

obstacle1 wrote: post #131
rodgerd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are no real-world, physical, dangerous consequences Tell that to Val Adams or other women who have been sexually assaulted at tech conferences. > and it happens to men too My mistake. I thought you were serious, not that redpill was leaking.

>Val Adams I don't know who you're talking about and curiously neither does Google. This comment appears to be the only mention of 'Val Adams' to ever appear on HN. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're above making up names in hopes that nobody will check your references. Could you provide a link detailing whatever incident you're talking about involving Val Adams?

Probably referring to Valerie Aurora (formerly Henson) http://valerieaurora.org/ and this post - https://adainitiative.org/2012/08/defcon-why-conference-hara... and this one - https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/
Post reply on HN