How do we realistically stop harassment online?

[hermes]

You don't. You tell people to grow a pair and accept free speech for what it is.

Your freedom of expression ends the moment it violates someone else's freedoms (classic example being hate speech). Death and rape threats are actual crimes and are never acceptable. I thought this was obvious.

And, pray, how does speech violate someone else's freedoms? It is a person's right to hate people for whatever reason they want, and to express their hatred vocally. Thoughts should never, ever be crimes.

Freedom of expression doesn't end just because some oversensitive prick gets offended. I would have hoped this would be obvious to any civilised person.

It does start with people taking responsibility for their words, the same way they do for their actions. Being responsible for what you do and say is part of being a "civilized person".

In other words: If you act and speak like a dick, you don't get to call foul when people treat you like a dick.

OT: You can't. Sorry to break it up to you, but this is not something that can be solved with simple answers like "include real names", or "tighter moderation standards".

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Self defeating attitudes like this one are kind of the exact reason online harassment is so prevalent in our current climate. When you deflect responsibility and say that there's nothing to be done, you enable and encourage harassers to continue ruining the community for everyone else.

This is almost word-for-word what people say when someone criticizes the inherently illogical and irrational "men can stop rape" initiative I referenced in my post - and I'm exactly as confused by it. In fact, it's really almost worse in this situation because people are advocating for solutions that actually encourage, embolden, and strengthen the offenders.

Is it self-defeating to embrace the only viable path to victory/mitigation?

Is it a deflection of responsibility when people point out that your ideas will only make things worse?

Is a community ruined if a small handful of terrible people take advantage of free and open spaces to harass and abuse others?

Based on the ridiculous fights that break out in practically every comment section on the internet, which community isn't ruined?

Here's an interesting article on the subject: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/fighting-online-harassment/

"To truly shift social norms, the community, by definition, has to get involved in enforcing them. This could mean making comments of disapproval, upvoting and downvoting, or simply reporting bad behavior."

People already report bad behavior. People already upvote/downvote and make disapproving comments. These practices don't shame horribly offensive people *because horribly offensive people have no shame*. If they did, they wouldn't do what they do.

You can't defeat a person seeking your attention at literally any cost by giving them attention. Flavoring your reaction, shading it one way or the other, cannot alter this fundamental truth. You marginalize and defeat such a person by either taking away their platform or ignoring them. In some spaces, it is appropriate to snag the microphone. In other spaces, you have to live with the idiocy. No matter what happens, these people will *never vanish entirely*. There is no "final solution" or "banding together to take out the trash". They will find another platform, create another space. That's the beauty and tragedy of the internet. Full stop.

The best online forums are the ones that take seriously their role as communities, including the famously civil MetaFilter, whose moderation is guided by a ?don?t be an asshole? principle. On a much larger scale, Microsoft?s Xbox network implemented a community-powered reputation system for its new Xbox One console. Using feedback from players, as well as a variety of other metrics, the system determines whether a user gets rated green (?Good Player?), yellow (?Needs Improvement?), or red (?Avoid Me?).

Excellent examples of safe spaces - or at least spaces attempting to be more safe. There still exist unsafe, un-moderated, free-and-open spaces, however, and they will always exist. Nothing you or I can do, short of implementing a draconian police state, can sweep these offensive people away.

As a community we need to be more proactive about policing bad behavior, and until we are we won't be able to carry on any important discussions without being drowned out by vitriol.

Maybe important discussions don't belong on twitter or in comments sections. Maybe important discussions should be reserved for more controlled environments, and the uncontrolled spaces can remain a chaotic torrent of totally free expression - a torrent we occasionally call upon to overwhelm and wash away the sheltered places when ideas or people become too entrenched and cozy.

One thing you shouldn't do: conflate stray offensive strands of the wild internet abyss with your legitimate intellectual opponents.

Anyways, what's the actual plan here? Make everyone use their real name? Behold, Internet 2.0. Ban people from twitter? What's this?! A twitter substitute gaining steam almost immediately. Kick the twerps out of your forum, off your website, from your blog host? A new forum, a new website, a new blog host, all catering to a demand in the name of making a buck.

At this point I'm trying to figure out if people are a) being unintentionally obtuse about the way this stuff works or b) being willfully ignorant because they've got stock in the online media companies that rely on clickbaiting and infighting to turn profit.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

you dimwit

Warning for the other person but not this? Okay.

Freedom includes the freedom to be an ass. When it crosses a line (credible death threats, rape threats, etc.), involve the proper authorities. Otherwise? There's a price to be paid for striving to change people's minds. Always has been, always will be.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Right, bit of background before I post - one of the things I did post-Garwulf's Corner was go back to school, and I ended up doing strategic communications research for the Canadian Department of National Defence (yes, I actually got a play a very, VERY minor role in combating the Jihad message - sadly, the austerity program put an end to that).

So, how do you fight the harassment campaigns? There's a couple of ways.

1. Peer pressure against them. I know this sounds like something from high school, but in a lot of ways it's the same mechanism that the harassment campaigns rely on. If, upon one of these campaigns starting, there is an even bigger backlash against the harassment across Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, it sends a strong message that the harassment isn't right, and makes it less palatable. Doing this is easy - when you see it happening, stand up where you can be heard and say "That's wrong - stop it." That's really all there is to it. For extra impact, add "You should be ashamed of yourself/yourselves." And then make sure you walk away - it's a dismissal, not an argument. What you're communicating is that the harassers are only speaking for themselves, and that you reject them.

(Funny thing - shaming REALLY works. There's a story I once heard about the London Underground putting up posters against littering with litterers and "I was so ashamed" - and the rate of littering dropped dramatically. It's a fundamental and basic human reaction.)

2. Make it a police matter. Death threats and hacking are both crimes. If they are treated as such, and people end up getting arrested and held responsible for their actions, that will have an impact. And while the internet may seen anonymous, there are no shortage of ways for somebody to be identified and tracked down.

3. Accept that it's a long-term project. You're talking about changing the way a sub-culture in the gaming community thinks and acts. That takes time, and I'm talking years. Right now, they see no problem with waging harassment and abuse campaigns against anybody they don't like. That's not a small thing to try to fix. But, with sufficient time, peer pressure, and police action, they can be marginalized and driven underground.

It is do-able. The harassment and abuse campaigns can be stopped, given enough time. But the entire community needs to act to make it happen.

 

[runequester]

When I worked at a big corporation, one of the things we were taught about employee theft and general mischief is that in any given group, 10% or so will always do what they perceive to be "the right thing". 10% are troublemakers who will always do "the wrong thing" out of spite.

The remaining will do whatever they perceive is the majority opinion and attitude.

If the majority of gamers who speak out on a topic seem to condone bullying, racist slurs, harassment and crazy over-reactions because the ending to their favourite science fiction RPG trilogy wasn't that great, then people are going to fall into that.

What can YOU do?

Don't make up excuses for people with rancid opinions or absurd outbursts. Be firm that "I agree the game sucked but I don't think death threats are acceptable". On sites with moderation, use the "report abuse" functions. Distance yourself from the people that intend to bring the gaming community down.

Here's the thing ultimately:

The vitriolic trolls? They have no investment in a given games community or in "gaming" as a whole. They'll move on to something else instead.
The people who are hurt by the cesspool are the enthusiasts who want to talk about video game endings or controls or game concepts without it devolving into insane shouting and racist slurs.


This is the time for the community to show that it can in fact police itself. Because if it doesn't, the corporations WILL do it. Big gaming corp "Alectronic Erts" wants to sell games to everyone. Kids and stay at home moms.
If every internet video, every site and every forum is a cesspool of vitriol and trolling, they're going to remove those avenues because it'll scare off the customers. Simple as that.

The push for an end to internet anonymity comes from big business. And if you live in America, you know what happens when business wants something

 

[senordesol]

How does it stop? When you, me, EVERYONE raises their kids to be better!

 

[Bedinsis]

One idea would be to have some sort of Internet ID, with which it would be possible to identify you. If someone experiences that the harassment is rampant, that someone would be able to add a filter requiring Internet ID for the other party to be able to participate in the discussion, otherwise the message would be automatically deleted. Or more likely, a message stating "You need an Internet ID to participate in this discussion" would appear.

 

[Mikeyfell]

one... obviously ignore it.
things people say on the internet can only hurt you if you let them.

two... grow as a person and become mature. That's just solid advice for life.
realize that the people who have nothing better to do with their time than insult you on the internet are sad worthless people who only crave validation, but don't have the skills to do anything worthy of praise.
So pitying them is the most politically correct thing you could do.

Three...Block them. Pretty much every social media outlet I can think of has a block or ignore function. If it's really bothering you just remove it. Out of sight out of mind you know.

Four... um... DANCE! It's hard to be cross that someone the internet doesn't like you while you're dancing.


Things not to do would be to
One, respond to them... That's what they want! They don't have anything important in their lives they will just keep coming up with hurtful things to say to you if you respond to them.

Two, report them. If they do get their accounts deleted or banned they know what they're doing is working and they'll find some means to keep doing it

Three, cry about it. Internet trolls have the magical powers that give them a smug sense of self satasfaction when ever they make someone legitimately upset on the internet.

Four, um... post the video of you dancing on the internet. They'll probably just leave hurtful comments on that too.

 

[runequester]

One idea would be to have some sort of Internet ID, with which it would be possible to identify you. If someone experiences that the harassment is rampant, that someone would be able to add a filter requiring Internet ID for the other party to be able to participate in the discussion, otherwise the message would be automatically deleted. Or more likely, a message stating "You need an Internet ID to participate in this discussion" would appear.

I believe in South Korea they are instituting something along these lines.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Is it self-defeating to embrace the only viable path to victory/mitigation?

No, it is self-defeating to assume that the only viable path is giving up.

You give up on a plant when you want it to die. If it works, were you defeated?

Is it a deflection of responsibility when people point out that your ideas will only make things worse?

There's no indication that it WILL make things worse.

This is fair. I should have said that it won't solve the problem. Feeding the trolls sustains them, so the problem doesn't necessarily grow any worse. I fail to see how it improves.

There seems to be evidence to the contrary, in fact. From the article I linked:

In another initiative by Riot?s player- behavior team, League of Legends launched a disciplinary system called the Tribunal, in which a jury of fellow players votes on reported instances of bad behavior. Empowered to issue everything from email warnings to longer-term bans, users have cast tens of millions of votes about the behavior of fellow players. When Riot asked its staff to audit the verdicts, it found that the staff unanimously agreed with users in nearly 80 percent of cases. And this system is not just punishing players; it?s rehabilitating them, elevating more than 280,000 censured gamers to good standing. Riot regularly receives apologies from players who have been through the Tribunal system, saying they hadn?t understood how offensive their behavior was until it was pointed out to them. Others have actually asked to be placed in a Restricted Chat Mode, which limits the number of messages they can send in games?forcing a choice to communicate with their teammates instead of harassing others.

Apples and oranges. People don't play League of Legends as an excuse to disseminate hatred through accompanying chat channels, so moderating those channels as a means to restrict access to the game is obviously quite effective in cleaning up the space and "rehabilitating" the players (or, you know, getting them to say whatever they need to say to keep playing the game). Moderating speech in a place that exists solely for speech is a very different animal.

Is a community ruined if a small handful of terrible people take advantage of free and open spaces to harass and abuse others?

Well, yes. That's why it's a problem.

Slight confusion of terms here. If you think a bound community, such as a forum, can be ruined by a small handful of unregulated people, you are correct. This is why most bound communities are regulated. If, however, you believe an unbound community, such as the community of "gamers", can be ruined by a small handful of necessarily unregulated (because there are no means to regulate them) people, then I have to strongly disagree. You can't generalize a larger group based on the actions of a relatively minor subgroup. It's beyond dangerous.

You say that like you think the majority of the people posting things were horrible. I don't think they are. I think they're misguided and I think they think they can get away with things, so they push the envelope as far as they can. I happen to believe that we should let them know that they CAN'T get away with things - by collectively admonishing them every time they emerge, and by utilizing every method we have available to stop them - and that if we do so regularly they will learn that to misbehave online has consequences.

Start with an examination of your abuser. They have demonstrated faulty reasoning through a pronounced ability to broadcast horrendous abuse. They clearly delight in generating harm and offense, and the strength of said delight appears directly proportional to the size of the response. Now you're telling me that the "consequence" you're advocating, the grand acknowledgment of hurt feelings and frustration, which is obviously the positive feedback these trolls are seeking in the first place... is a good idea?

I think too much of that burden is shuffled to moderators. I think more of it needs to be placed on the communities themselves. A forum system not unlike the one Riot uses in L.o.L. would probably do wonders for keeping forums tidy and free of harassment. Twitter certainly needs to look into better ways to police its userbase.

Forums are already welcome to implement such systems. The ones that do will gain or lose members based on the preferences of those individual people. New forums and communities will rise up to cater to anyone "left out". That's how a free market works. There is nothing you can do to change that. Nothing short of policing the entire internet, which is frankly insane and unacceptable. Carve out safe spaces, enjoy them, and move on.

Oh, and twitter doesn't need to police its userbase. If someone says something stupid on twitter, they get blocked, unfollowed, and frequently fired. Any controls beyond that would only invalidate the product itself. If twitter were harshly censored tomorrow, even by a "morally superior majority", it would cease to be the predominant open platform for expression. Something else would replace it in short order.

It's not an easy thing. A lot of work will have to be done, both on the side of websites and on the side of the community. It will require vigilance - but ultimately I think the end result will be more than worth it.

Forgive me, but I'm not going to spend my valuable free time in a counterproductive effort to squash a few trolls because other people refuse to acknowledge the basic realities of the situation.

That's setting up a false dilemma. It's not a choice between complete bloodthirsty anarchy and regimented Orwellian dystopia. There is plenty of middle ground, and I think with enough collective effort we can create an environment where discussion is at once free, civil, and inclusive of everyone. I think that's something we all ought to work towards.

It's not a false dilemma because there is no dilemma. It's not a choice between complete bloodthirsty anarchy and regimented Orwellian dystopia because it's not a choice at all. Shitty people are always going to have a platform to express themselves, and there is nothing you can do to stop that. You can remove them from a certain space, a certain community, through concentrated effort - obviously. But they will erect another space, another community, and you cannot stop that ball from rolling. Ever. So long as free expression exists, people will use it for evil. Censor it here, they go there. End of story, man. I mean I feel like I'm delivering bad news to you here. It's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

Maybe important discussions don't belong on twitter or in comments sections. Maybe important discussions should be reserved for more controlled environments, and the uncontrolled spaces can remain a chaotic torrent of totally free expression - a torrent we occasionally call upon to overwhelm and wash away the sheltered places when ideas or people become too entrenched and cozy.

So, there should never be intelligent conversation on the internet?

Not at all what I said. You can't police the entire internet, but you can obviously police sections of it. What the hell do you think a forum is? I believe an intelligent conversation, a careful, nuanced, reasoned debate, should take place with controls. This means "not the comments section of youtube or twitter".

Also, this sounds suspiciously like you're advocating using harassment as a tool to remove those you disagree with.

Nah, not what I was getting at. I think holding "intelligent conversations" in controlled spaces is a good idea, but the chaotic outland of the unrestricted internet will always exist as a necessary force. Ideologies and the people served by them tend to become entrenched and comfortable and, almost inevitably, corrupt. When the majority are on the outside looking in, those controlled spaces are necessarily in line to be overrun and broken. Just the way it goes.

One thing you shouldn't do: conflate stray offensive strands of the wild internet abyss with your legitimate intellectual opponents.

If my opponents choose to entrench themselves amidst the offensive, then I have no choice but to address the two of them together. If they do not wish to be addressed in such a manner, they need to make the effort to remove themselves from those elements.

The same form of argument is used to justify the persecution of Muslims. I have no control over what a "fellow gamer" might say, and I will not be held accountable for their actions. Moreover, if my opponent is going to ignore what I have to say based on the actions of another unrelated person whom I cannot control, I am going to rightfully label my opponent a coward.

Edit: In the end, I'm not really sweating it. If people want to put out a fire with a can of gasoline, that's their right. I'm not here to control anyone.

 

[DEAD34345]

Harassment isn't a symptom of being online, it's a symptom of people being able to communicate with one another. The internet does nothing but connect people to other people, and often people are shitty to one another. It's sad, but true. I'd guess the root cause is societal, but then again every culture and society in the world has people who are shit to one another, so maybe it's biological, something inherent to people.

I don't oppose reasonable attempts to limit this kind of harassment, but the only way to truly end it altogether would be to limit free speech and communication in general, which is a trade-off I don't think is worthwhile.

A better alternative is to have different areas and sites with different rules and different standards on what is acceptable, which is basically what we have now. The Escapist has effective moderators enforcing fairly strict rules, so this site is relatively free from harassment and hate speech, making it an ideal place for some. Other sites (4chan as an example) take the opposite approach and attract people who want more limitless communication and can deal with harassment.

1. Peer pressure against them. I know this sounds like something from high school, but in a lot of ways it's the same mechanism that the harassment campaigns rely on. If, upon one of these campaigns starting, there is an even bigger backlash against the harassment across Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, it sends a strong message that the harassment isn't right, and makes it less palatable. Doing this is easy - when you see it happening, stand up where you can be heard and say "That's wrong - stop it." That's really all there is to it. For extra impact, add "You should be ashamed of yourself/yourselves." And then make sure you walk away - it's a dismissal, not an argument. What you're communicating is that the harassers are only speaking for themselves, and that you reject them.

(Funny thing - shaming REALLY works. There's a story I once heard about the London Underground putting up posters against littering with litterers and "I was so ashamed" - and the rate of littering dropped dramatically. It's a fundamental and basic human reaction.)

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I really doubt this kind of thing would help. In my experience dismissal just makes people angry (or angrier), and pushes them further into extremism and defensiveness. The people who harass others think of the people they target as bad guys or enemies who can't be reasoned with, and this justifies any actions they take in their minds. When they're dismissed outright they see it as being proven totally right about the other side ignoring them, they'll immediately lump you in with the rest of their "enemies" as someone who is trying to suppress their views and continue to resort to more and more extreme methods to be heard.

I've never seen an outright dismissal have any positive effect on an angry person, whereas responding reasonably and showing that you're willing to listen to their views (even if the other person is not doing the same) sometimes does. It is a pretty difficult thing to do sometimes, so it's understandable that people don't often do it, but it certainly seems to be the best way of making a positive difference.

 

[Sticky]

The only realistic way to stop online harassment is to go back to the days where it was expected of you to have awareness of your audience on the internet, and to have a thicker skin than the one you wore in real life. You cannot tell people to behave themselves on an anonymous medium. The fact that we've come to this crossroads where we are seriously discussing trying to change the internet itself for the benefit of a few is silly, and there is no way to enforce it.

Even if we turned to hyperbolic levels of fascism instilled in the general populace. Where every computer would burst into flames at the mere hint of harassing someone else online, people would still find a way to make others feel uncomfortable on the internet. It is a mere fact that people have to accept when they join an online community of any kind.

Also to those suggesting we 'drown out the trolls', that doesn't work. At all. It only takes one or two trolls to make someone feel uncomfortable and there's nothing an entire ocean of reasonable voices can do to drown it out. If anything, having an ocean of reasonable voices saying to not listen to the trolls only empowers the trolls when they realize their opposition is too meek to do anything about them and the people they're targeting are too thin-skinned to just ignore them. When you listen to trolls, of any kind, they've won. They've got exactly what they want with a minimal investment of time and effort. Think of it as a kind of insurgency in online communities in which the other inhabitants are powerless to stop.

The only solution to the problem we currently face is education. We need to let people know that anyone who feels 'threatened' by words on the internet need to go the police if they think their lives are in danger and that trolls are serious with their threats.
This is called 'Threat Assessment', every person who was on the internet circa the 90's was schooled in it the hard way the first time someone sent them an email with an attachment they didn't recognize.

What we also need to let people know, is that melting down on the internet, and/or letting the trolls know how much it gets to them is the exact opposite response they need to have when faced with meanness on the internet. When someone is mean on the internet, the first thing to do is to not look at them and then seriously consider if they have the means to actually cause harm. Which is again, a key component of threat assessment that every person on the internet needs some education on. It's to recognize that the correct solution is not to post on your twitter about how you were harassed and how scared you are for your life, because that only tells the troll how easy it's going to be to pick at you.

And when a troll wins, or is emboldened by the knowledge that his baseless scare tactics carry real and serious harm and threat, we lose. Every person on the internet who wants to have a serious conversation without hysteria coming into the mix loses. That troll now feels he has a very valuable, very serious weapon and any other trolls or just mean jerks in general are going to see that weapon and take notes about how effective it was. Which only makes them want to use it MORE and ruin even more lives.

The short version: What we need to solve the harassment problem is to teach the new denizens of the internet who weren't around during the wild west days about threat assessment. Teaching them that it isn't possible to stop assholes from using a keyboard, and to recognize when to respond and when to block someone and assume anything else they have to say isn't worth their time.

It may seem like a heartless way to respond to the problem, but it's a far more realistic solution than "let's change everyone else and hopefully the people who have made it their past-time to hurt the feelings of other people will somehow change themselves too".

EDIT: And the people suggesting "peer pressure" as a means to stop trolls. Please ask yourself this question: If their goal on the internet is to get attention from people by posting things they know is not true, then how is giving them more attention going to stop them? If anything, by acknowledging their very existence, you've just told that troll that he has gotten under your skin enough for you to post a reply to something they said. The entire reason trolling even works is because it takes almost zero time or effort to make a troll post while it takes serious time and attention to shoot one down. It is the closest analog to asymmetrical warfare on the internet.

And the sooner people realize that, realize that it's all a real-life analysis problem about the value of time and effort spent arguing or pressuring people vs the probability of those people ever being convinced when it's questionable if they ever believed their own postings at all; then the better off every online community everywhere will be.

 

[AgedGrunt]

The only way I can think of to reduce online harassment is to to get rid of anonymity.

No. If anything, anonymity is the one thing guaranteeing free speech and freedom from harassment.

Anonymous tips.
Whistle-blowers.
Confidential sources.
Controversial opinions.
Political and cultural intolerance.

If you haven't followed the "GamerGate" conspiracy, you'll find in the records a few "journos" ducking into anonymous message boards to get their voices heard, out of a very real threat of losing their jobs.

All over the world we are fortunate enough to have a medium to express ourselves without fear of someone (family, employer, friends, school) finding out and making us a target in some way. How would you like to lose any of those contacts because of things you say online, even if they aren't harassing?

It disgusted me to listen to some radio hosts talk about this topic, saying the same thing. They felt their names were out there on the radio, and they want these online scumbags to live by the same rules (and that means everyone else has to). Well, they forgot to mention how they do not have freedom of speech: they are *extremely* bound by FCC regs, production and program advertisers -- one slip of the tongue could cost them their careers and their station a lot of revenue.

This is not the way the public should live, and it's sickening how anyone could want a web where everyone is feared into filtering what they say. Fuck that. Ask the very staff on these boards if they wish they could say what they want on here like many of us do every day.

No one has to tolerate bullying, and there will be miscarriages of justice when we have protections of free speech, but that doesn't mean you fuck up the whole system because you get upset when it happens.

Edit: @unambiguouslygabe - Points are still valid, since this is a popular opinion, even if you don't endorse it yourself.

 

[unambiguouslygabe]

snip

Read the rest of my post please.

 

[JimB]

Aside from that, we need strict penalties for death threats...I actually am not a real fan of that idea, because it's a little too High School "Zero Tolerance" policy, but I can't think of another way. Make a threat, go to jail.

In most if not all of America, a death threat is a crime. It's considered a form of assault.

 

[generals3]

Well i've read about a study in which they noticed that when people are forced to re-read what they write on the net 90% of the messages end up not being sent. A lot of the online hatred/rage/etc. is often posted in a moment of anger/frustration. While I don't know how one would be able to implement such a system this could already greatly help.

But overall i think online harassment is an unfortunate price we have to pay for internet anonymity/freedom.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Lunncal: "Maybe I'm just cynical, but I really doubt this kind of thing would help. In my experience dismissal just makes people angry (or angrier), and pushes them further into extremism and defensiveness. The people who harass others think of the people they target as bad guys or enemies who can't be reasoned with, and this justifies any actions they take in their minds. When they're dismissed outright they see it as being proven totally right about the other side ignoring them, they'll immediately lump you in with the rest of their "enemies" as someone who is trying to suppress their views and continue to resort to more and more extreme methods to be heard."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but short of actual physical acts of terrorism, how far further is there left to go? We're at the point of abuse and harassment campaigns and death threats - and they're acting like they speak for the entire gaming community. Phil Fish got driven out of the industry because he dared to support Zoe Quinn. You're talking about them as though they just want a seat at the table, when they're actively trying to ensure that they are the only people allowed to come close to the table.

We're already at the point of online lynch mobs. Appeasement will only embolden them. Anybody wanting to make this stop has to take a stand against it.

 

[kommando367]

You don't

You either become numb to the endless flow of hate, you become it's source, or you leave forever, those are your options.

It's like going to a desert and trying to figure out how to get rid of all the snakes and scorpions. You can kill a few, a few thousand if you're resourceful, but you will never kill them all.