Judge compares offensive Facebook posts to football in sentencing Sydney man; Guardian, 7/28/16

Elle Hunt, Guardian; Judge compares offensive Facebook posts to football in sentencing Sydney man:

"Research from Our Watch and Plan International Australia found 70% of young Australian women aged between 15 and 19 believed online harassment and bullying to be endemic.

Siobhan McCann, the policy manager for Plan International Australia, said the majority of girls and young women received some sort of online abuse every day, but only one in three said they would report it.

“We wonder if this is because young women don’t feel supported by the legal system.

“We hope today’s small victory sends a message that abusing women in the digital space is just as legitimate a crime as abuse on the street or at home. And we hope trolls will take note that they can be charged and tried for it.”"

Turns Out, Fighting Fat Shaming And Racist Trolls Is Also A Ghostbuster's Job; NPR, 7/22/16

Tanya Ballard Brown, NPR; Turns Out, Fighting Fat Shaming And Racist Trolls Is Also A Ghostbuster's Job:

"I don't know what makes trolls attack so viciously on social media. Is it that they don't like it that some women — in this case a 6-ft.-tall, larger than size zero dark-skinned black woman — are confident and comfortable with themselves?

Who knows, but now that Leslie has returned and is once again engaging on social media with her fans, maybe she can reach out to help some of the women who aren't comedians or actors in summer blockbuster movies navigate troll attacks."

Banning Leslie Jones’s trolls won’t change a thing — hate is still the norm online; Washington Post, 7/20/16

Mikki Kendall, Washington Post; Banning Leslie Jones’s trolls won’t change a thing — hate is still the norm online:

"This is not just a matter of speech, despite the persistent notion that online harassment is easy to escape because in theory you can close the tab or turn off the computer. Online harassment spilled offline years ago. Harassers may imitate a deceased parent, contact employers in an attempt get a target fired or track someone down and drive them from their home. The last is often accomplished via SWATting, a tactic where a harasser files phony reports alleging a hostage situation or something similar so that police will in theory send the SWAT team into their target’s home.

Can we really claim that the trolls are outside the norm when the norm dismisses their behavior or even supports it on flimsy free speech grounds? After all, the people behind those keyboards sending hateful messages and imagery can vote. They can work on political campaigns; they can run for election. Ignoring bigots in our midst and failing to take them seriously can have a negative impact on everyone.

People like Yiannopoulos and his supporters are the symptom, but the real disease is the way that bigotry is being normalized as something harmless. It’s not. Some of the world’s darkest moments have happened because hate of “the other” spread like wildfire and stripped people of empathy, reason or basic human decency."

From Julia Gillard to Hillary Clinton: online abuse of politicians around the world; Guardian, 6/26/16

Elle Hunt, Nick Evershed and Ri Liu, Guardian; From Julia Gillard to Hillary Clinton: online abuse of politicians around the world:

"Hillary Clinton received almost twice as much abuse as Bernie Sanders on Twitter this year, according to a wide-ranging analysis provided to the Guardian that compared the treatment of politicians in the US, UK and Australia.

The abuse of politicians online, particularly women, is perceived by some to come with the territory. But as high-profile cases flag the urgent need to clean up the web, the scope of the problem is now revealed in greater detail in work by a Brisbane-based social data company, Max Kelsen.

The analysis looked at leadership contests involving both male and female politicians, with the aim of examining if abuse differed between politicians at similar levels in their parties...

As recently as in the past six months, there has been a growing intolerance of online abuse of public figures, spurred on by high-profile cases across the world, reflected in the Guardian’s The web we want series."

The Outrage Machine; New York Times, June 2016

[Video] New York Times; The Outrage Machine

Mob Shaming: The Pillory at the Center of the Global Village; New York Times, 6/19/16

Clyde Haberman, New York Times; Mob Shaming: The Pillory at the Center of the Global Village:

"Once upon a time, miscreants subjected to public ridicule were pilloried for perhaps a few hours. In internet life, that can last forever. “You never escape it,” Danielle Keats Citron said. She is a law professor at the University of Maryland and author of “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace” (2014).

“When you post something really damaging, reputationally damaging, about someone online, it’s searchable and seeable,” she told Retro Report. “And you can’t erase it.”

Does shame have a legitimate place in our lives? Mark Twain seemed to think so. “Man is the only animal that blushes,” Twain wrote in 1897.

“Or needs to,” he added.

Jennifer Jacquet, an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University, shares the sentiment. In her book “Is Shame Necessary?” (2015), the professor argues that shaming can be a strategy for beneficial change, notably if the targets are corporate polluters and others whose deeds harm the commonweal.

She is not opposed to chastising individuals publicly, as long as the tactics are not abusive, but her preference is to call out governments and large organizations that behave badly. “Shaming is better used for the collective well-being,” she said in an interview."

Blondie; Today's Strip, 6/18/16

Today's Strip; Blondie:

Texting and Online Self-Defense

Why I Quit Twitter — and Left Behind 35,000 Followers; New York Times, 6/10/16

Jonathan Weisman, New York Times; Why I Quit Twitter — and Left Behind 35,000 Followers:

"I have been encouraged to return to Twitter, and told that I should continue to fight, that my exit was cowardly, that I let the haters win. And I might. I miss the quick rush of a scan through my time line.

But the fact is, giving up one social media space wasn’t exactly martyrdom. It wasn’t much of a loss at all. I have found myself reading whole articles through The New York Times and Washington Post apps on my phone — imagine that. I can actually look at the profiles of people requesting to be my friend on Facebook to see if they are, in fact, trolls. If one slips through, I not only can “unfriend” him but can delete his posts. It feels liberating.

And I am awaiting some sign from Twitter that it cares whether its platform is becoming a cesspit of hate. Until then, sayonara."

Elizabeth Warren Calls Donald Trump A ‘Racist Bully’; Huffington Post, 6/9/16

Peter Andrew Hart, Huffington Post; Elizabeth Warren Calls Donald Trump A ‘Racist Bully’ :

"“You should be ashamed of yourself, ashamed,” Warren said. “Ashamed for using the megaphone of a presidential campaign to attack a judge’s character and integrity simply because you think you have some God-given right to steal people’s money and get away with it. You shame yourself and you shame this great country.”

She continued: “Like all federal judges, Judge Curiel is bound by the federal code of judicial ethics not to respond to these attacks. Trump is picking on someone who is ethically bound not to defend himself — exactly what you would expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully.”

“You, Donald Trump, are a total disgrace,” she added."

Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation; New York Times, 5/30/16

Andrew Higgins, New York Time; Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation:

"This “information war,” said Rastislav Kacer, a veteran diplomat who served as Slovakia’s ambassador to Washington and at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, “is just part of a bigger struggle.” While not involving bloodshed, he added, it “is equally as dangerous as more conventional hostile action.”

For Ms. Aro, the abuse increased sharply last year when, following up on reports in the opposition Russian news media, she visited St. Petersburg to investigate the workings of a Russian “troll factory.” The big office churns out fake news and comment, particularly on Ukraine, and floods websites and social media with denunciations of Russia’s critics.

In response to her reporting, pro-Russian activists in Helsinki organized a protest outside the headquarters of Yle, accusing it of being a troll factory itself. Only a handful of people showed up.

At the same time, Ms. Aro has been peppered with abusive emails, vilified as a drug dealer on social media sites and mocked as a delusional bimbo in a music video posted on YouTube."

Was a Va. firefighter humiliated by co-workers online before she killed herself?; Washington Post, 4/25/16

Petula Dvorak, Washington Post; Was a Va. firefighter humiliated by co-workers online before she killed herself? :

"The trolls were horrid to her while she was alive. And they continued to be awful after her death.

Fairfax County firefighter Nicole Mittendorff, 31, killed herself in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, the state medical examiner concluded. But even after the search for her was over, her body was identified and memorial candles began to burn, the cyberbullies — who claimed they were her fellow firefighters — kept scorching away at Mittendorff online.

If these trolls are actually members of her firehouse family, then Mittendorff becomes another example of a new form of workplace harassment. Instead of happening in the office, it happens publicly online.

There is an investigation at Mittendorff’s firehouse to find out who posted the vicious online attacks and whether they played a role in her suicide."

Social Media, Where Sports Fans Congregate and Misogyny Runs Amok; New York Times, 4/28/16

Juliet Macur, New York Times; Social Media, Where Sports Fans Congregate and Misogyny Runs Amok:

"DiCaro said she recorded the video of the mean tweets with the hope that it would change some people’s minds about harassing others on social media. She has two teenage sons, and she wants them and the younger generation to know what’s acceptable — and what’s not.

How does this abuse end? DiCaro said there needed to be more diversity in sports media. She lamented that sports was still a man’s world, and would be at least for the near future, leaving the few women in it as targets for some men who don’t want them in their boys’ club.

“It’s sort of like separating a weak antelope from the pack,’’ she said. “I think guys recognize that.”"

Revenge porn: the industry profiting from online abuse; Guardian, 4/26/16

Dan Tynan, Guardian; Revenge porn: the industry profiting from online abuse:

"Perversely, while the internet has given a voice to vast numbers of people who might not otherwise be heard, unfettered free speech can have a chilling effect, whether it’s Gamergaters ganging up on female writers or Donald Trump using Twitter to attack his enemies, notes Stephen Balkam, CEO and founder of the Family Online Safety Institute.

“I think the people who profit most from online harassment are those who use it to suppress other people’s thoughts, suggestions, comments, and criticisms,” he says. “We are often so focused on making sure governments don’t chill speech, and here are anonymous stalkers and harassers doing just that.”"

Cassandra Clare Created a Fantasy Realm and Aims to Maintain Her Rule; New York Times, 4/23/16

Penelope Green, New York Times; Cassandra Clare Created a Fantasy Realm and Aims to Maintain Her Rule:

"The place Ms. Clare occupies in publishing — and the work she does to keep herself there — is emblematic of the burdens and boons fan culture bestows on so many fantasy authors. Deeply possessive of the characters Ms. Clare has created, the fans can turn on her for plot directions they don’t approve of, or for the ways in which the television show diverges from the books. (Ms. Clare has no role in the TV series.)

Fantitlement, as this phenomenon is known, has raised her fortunes while at times it has bedeviled her, as it has so many of her peers. Laura Miller, a books and culture columnist at Slate who has written about fan culture, likened Ms. Clare’s experiences to that of George R. R. Martin, the “Game of Thrones” author whose fans grew so angry at his publishing pace that some created a blog, “Finish the Book, George.”"

Monica Lewinsky: ‘The shame sticks to you like tar’; Guardian, 4/22/16

Jon Ronson, Guardian; Monica Lewinsky: ‘The shame sticks to you like tar’ :

"The reason why she finally agreed to meet me, despite her anxieties, is that the Guardian is highlighting the issue of online harassment through its series The web we want – an endeavour she approves of. “Destigmatising the shame around online harassment is the first step,” she says. “Well, the first step is recognising there’s a problem.”

Lewinsky was once among the 20th century’s most humiliated people, ridiculed across the world. Now she’s a respected and perceptive anti-bullying advocate. She gives talks at Facebook, and at business conferences, on how to make the internet more compassionate. She helps out at anti-bullying organisations like Bystander Revolution, a site that offers video advice on what to do if you’re afraid to go to school, or if you’re a victim of cyberbullying...

Later, she emails to explain why she didn’t walk away in the school playground – and why we read the negative comments. “I guess I was in shock,” she writes. “Psychologists speak about freezing as a response to a traumatic event. I was probably more afraid of the imagined pain of being completely outcast than the pain I was experiencing in that moment. Maybe there’s a twisted need to read the comments as a form of self-preservation, to be prepared for what may come down the pike.”"

Have Comment Sections on News Media Websites Failed?; New York Times, 4/18/16

[1000th post since blog started in 2010]

Room for Debate, New York Times; Have Comment Sections on News Media Websites Failed? :

"Many newspapers and online media companies have begun disabling comment sections because of widespread abuse and obscenity. Of course, that vitriol is not meted out equally: The Guardian analyzed its comments and found the 10 most abused writers of the past decade were female and/or black. (The Times moderates comments in an effort to keep them on-topic and not abusive.)

Have comment sections — once thought to be a democratizing force in the media — failed?"

We will look back at cyber-harassment as a disgrace – if we act now; Guardian, 4/15/16

Danielle Citron, Guardian; We will look back at cyber-harassment as a disgrace – if we act now:

"Attitudes towards online abuse have undergone a sea change over the last decade. In the past, cyber-harassment – often a perfect storm of threats, impersonations, defamation, and privacy invasions directed at an individual – was routinely dismissed as “no big deal”.

So it was for one Yale law student. Starting in 2007, on an online discussion board, a cyber-mob falsely accused her of having herpes and sleeping with her dean. Anonymous posters described how they would rape her; they chronicled her daily whereabouts and prior jobs. Yet law enforcement told the student to ignore the attacks because “boys will be boys”. Officers advised her to “clean up” her cyber-reputation, as if she could control what appeared about her. Trivialising online abuse and blaming victims was the norm.

Today, the public has a deeper appreciation of victims’ suffering. As advocacy groups like the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative have shown, and as society has come to recognise, the costs of cyber-harassment are steep. Because searches of victims’ names prominently display the abuse, victims have lost their jobs. They have had difficulty finding employment. Employers do not interview victims because hiring people with damaged online reputations is risky. Victims struggle with anxiety and depression. They withdraw from online engagement to avoid further abuse. Women, especially younger women, are more often targeted than men, but in either case, the abuse often has a sexually demeaning and sexually threatening cast.

Legal developments reflect a growing understanding of cyber-harassment’s harms. In the US, 27 states have criminalised revenge porn – also known as non-consensual pornography."

The dark side of Guardian comments; Guardian, 4/12/16

Becky Gardiner, Mahana Mansfield, Ian Anderson, Josh Holder, Daan Louter and Monica Ulmanu, Guardian; The dark side of Guardian comments:

"Comments allow readers to respond to an article instantly, asking questions, pointing out errors, giving new leads. At their best, comment threads are thoughtful, enlightening, funny: online communities where readers interact with journalists and others in ways that enrich the Guardian’s journalism.

But at their worst, they are something else entirely.

The Guardian was not the only news site to turn comments on, nor has it been the only one to find that some of what is written “below the line” is crude, bigoted or just vile. On all news sites where comments appear, too often things are said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable face to face – the Guardian is no exception.

New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.

Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men...

At the Guardian, we felt it was high time to examine the problem rather than turn away.

We decided to treat the 70m comments that have been left on the Guardian – and in particular the comments that have been blocked by our moderators – as a huge data set to be explored rather than a problem to be brushed under the carpet.

This is what we discovered."

Reddit Steps Up Anti-Harassment Measures With New Blocking Tool; New York Times, 4/6/16

Mike Isaac, New York Times; Reddit Steps Up Anti-Harassment Measures With New Blocking Tool:

"Reddit has in recent months started to address online abuse, and on Wednesday it took one of its bigger steps toward helping individuals gain some control over tormentors: The company said it would give people a blocking feature to shield themselves against harassment on the site, moving to prohibit abusive users from sending messages to others.

The blocking feature will build on the concept that the less exposed to negative speech users are on Reddit, the more they will want to engage with the community. That is important for the company, based in San Francisco, which aims to spread far beyond the 243 million unique monthly visitors it currently serves and break into the mainstream consciousness, much like a Facebook or a Twitter — with a similar ability to command online advertising.

The blocking tool could also serve to curtail the spread of online abuse beyond Reddit’s walls. Vitriol on the site can sometimes erupt into larger memes, spilling over into social media and other avenues and creating further repercussions. That behavior is also stoked by other digital haunts that are the favorite of trolls, including sites like 4chan and 8chan."

When You Become The Person You Hate On The Internet; NPR, All Tech Considered, 3/29/16

[Podcast, 6 min. 27 sec.] Sarah Hepola, NPR, All Tech Considered; When You Become The Person You Hate On The Internet:

"For years, I've complained about the random hatred of the Internet. It was the worst part of writing online: Show up with your heart in your hand, and a bunch of strangers line up to throw rocks in your face. I was so freaked out by comments on my own stories that I had once considered not writing at all anymore. I badly wanted a thicker skin, but I also knew I had become a writer because I was thin-skinned. I took on other people's discomfort, and I flinched at the tiniest finger flick of rejection. I was a sensitive person — but I had just done a very insensitive thing.

I would never have said this to his face. But technology is such a bait and switch, giving you the feel of anonymity at the very moment your words have the farthest reach. And my comment was exactly the kind of random stone-throwing that had wounded me over the years".