OnlineHarassment
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Prosecutors want Shkreli’s bail revoked due to online harassment
On Thursday, US prosecutors petitioned a court to revoke Martin Shkreli's $5 million bail due to a remark made on Facebook about Hillary Clinton. Prosecutors said it was evidence he posed a "danger to the community." On September 4th, Shkreli reportedly wrote on Facebook that he would give $5,000 to anyone who grabbed a strand of Clinton's hair while she was on her book tour.
Rob Kardashian’s revenge porn is social media’s latest headache
Members of the Kardashian-Jenner family, like Kanye West's wife, Kim, and model Kendall, didn't become famous by being afraid of the spotlight. Heck, their reality TV show, Keeping up with the Kardashians, centers around every move they make in their personal and business lives. But that celebrity status arguably requires some degree of responsibility. And that's something Rob Kardashian failed to exercise when he posted explicit photos and videos of his ex-girlfriend Blac Chyna on social media last week.
Online harassment keeps getting worse, study shows
Harassment is sadly an increasing inevitability on the internet with a new study showing that 41 percent of adults saying they've it experienced personally and 73 percent saying they've seen it happen to someone else. According to the Pew Research Center study, the most common form of online harassment is offensive name-calling, which has been personally experienced by 51 percent of men aged 18-24. Men in this age group were also more likely to have been purposefully embarrassed and physically threatened.
Zoe Quinn's book about fighting online hate arrives Sept. 6th
Zoë Quinn, perhaps one of the most qualified people to talk about online harassment, has written a book on her fight against online hate. It's called Crash Override, just like the volunteer group she founded to support harassment victims, and it's now ready for pre-order. As GamerGate's original target, the game developer had to endure having her accounts hacked, her sensitive photos stolen and her family and friends doxxed and harassed. She was also on the receiving end of numerous murder and rape threats. Quinn's book talks about her GamerGate experience in its first few chapters, but it sounds like it has much more to offer.
Typos are kryptonite to Alphabet's anti-trolling API
"Don't read the comments" is a cardinal rule of the internet. They're often hotbeds of toxicity and abuse, and rarely does a person come away from them feeling enlightened. Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is working to combat this problem through a project called Perspective, an API that uses machine learning to spot harassment online. But, researchers have discovered that it's easy to game the system.
Twitter is working on a keyword tool to combat harassment
Harassment is one of the biggest problems facing Twitter right now. Some of the company's most popular and influential users have been driven off the platform because of some truly horrific, hurtful tweets. The problem hasn't gone unnoticed. Twitter has promised to do more to combat trolls, making it simpler to flag abusive tweets and banning controversial figures such as the conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos. Now, according to Bloomberg, it's working on a keyword filtering system that would allow users to hide tweets containing specific terms and phrases. If you've muted keywords before on TweetDeck or Tweetbot, you'll get the idea.
Hackers target Leslie Jones, post nude photos to her site
Leslie Jones, the Ghostbusters and SNL star who has been the target of vicious online harassment this summer, has fallen victim to a hack that compromised her personal photos and info. According to Variety, Jones' website was hacked and nude photos from her iCloud account were published to its front page. Images of her passport and driver's license have also been shared. Jones has yet to offer an official comment on the situation (either on Twitter or anywhere else) but her personal website is currently down entirely.
SXSW's online harassment summit was a peaceful look at an ugly problem
Last fall, the organizers of SXSW thrust themselves into a storm of controversy. The event's organizers cancelled two panels -- one of which was dedicated to delving into the hot topic of online harassment -- because it had received threats of violence. The harassers had essentially shut down a panel to discuss harassment, and SXSW quickly faced intense judgement for it. Media companies threatened boycotts, panel participants were outraged, the whole situation was badly managed. SXSW quickly responded by reinstating the two panels and dedicating an entire day to the subject of online harassment. There were a few more bumps in the road. Notably, the organizers added one of the canceled panels to the online harassment summit, even though it was basically a pro-GamerGate panel that ostensibly had nothing to do directly with the day's subject. That panel was moved, and it felt like SXSW had finally addressed the myriad of issues it created. Today in Austin, the online harassment summit took place, and all told it was a pretty peaceful forum to discuss one of the more important and difficult issues facing the technology community as well as the women and minorities who are frequently harassed when using the internet.
'Tropes vs. Women in Video Games' is changing a bit
Culture critic Anita Sarkeesian has made some significant waves since launching her wildly successful Tropes vs. Women in Video Games Kickstarter over three years ago. But it wasn't without a heavy cost. In an update to the backers of her crowdfunding campaign, Sarkeesian reveals that she was dealing with a very serious case of burnout that was affecting both her physical and mental health last year after the scope of the project ballooned unexpectedly. Sarkeesian says she's been coping with depression her entire life, but the online harassment at her expense since launching Tropes, combined with the decline in her physical health, amplified it.
Intel and Lady Gaga team up to 'Hack Harassment'
Hack Harassment is exactly what it sounds like -- a tech-driven initiative to curb online harassment and find solutions to issues with hate speech and threats on the web. The program, which Intel teased during its CES conference this week, is spearheaded by Intel, Vox Media, Re/code and Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation. Hack Harassment's first move will be a series of hackathons, held both online and in-person, with the goal of advancing anti-harassment technology.
Intel is taking its fight against GamerGate even further
The most important news from last year's CES was Intel's $300 million response to GamerGate, the caustic online movement that targeted women with vicious harassment. But talk is cheap, even with that high of a price-tag on it. How has the tech titan fared since that announcement? Some 43 percent of its new hires were women and underrepresented minorities since, CEO Brian Krzanich said near the end of the company's media briefing.
SXSW removes Gamergate panel from online harassment day
The organizers of South by Southwest have been dealing with significant backlash after cancelling a panel dedicated to overcoming the rampant harassment culture that has cropping up around video games in the last few years. Today, SXSW has confirmed that the previously-cancelled "Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games" session will be part of its March 12th Online Harassment summit. That summit was created following swift negative feedback over SXSW's decision to cancel the Level Up panel after it received threats of on-site violence. It also announced that it's moving a pro-Gamergate panel off of the online harassment day, as the panel doesn't directly deal with harassment.
BuzzFeed returns to SXSW lineup following online harassment fiasco
BuzzFeed said it would only come back to the South by Southwest festival panel roster if organizers put online harassment back on the agenda, and it's making good on its word. The web firm tells Recode that it's returning to SXSW 2016's lineup now that the event has instituted a day-long Online Harassment Summit. The SXSW team has "moved in the right direction," BuzzFeed says. There's no word yet on whether or not fellow abstainer Vox Media is returning, although it won't be surprising if the online publisher follows suit.
SXSW apologizes, launches day-long Online Harassment Summit
South by Southwest organizers earned the ire of the internet this week after canceling two panels aimed at addressing online harassment and "GamerGate" culture in the video game industry. SXSW canceled the discussions because it received "numerous threats of violence" -- a reason that, to many, gave power to those threats and in fact encouraged continued harassment. Both Buzzfeed and Vox Media swiftly announced plans to skip SXSW entirely unless the panels were reinstated. Today, SXSW Interactive Director Hugh Forrest offered an apology and announced the Online Harassment Summit for March 12th. It's a full-day event that SXSW says will feature people from both of the canceled panels, plus a lineup of additional speakers. SXSW will live-stream the summit all day, for free. However, one panel organizer says she's not on-board with this new solution.
SXSW cancels online harassment panel, because of harassment
Online harassment is a real world problem, and you don't need to look any further than a cancelled South by Southwest Interactive panel for more reasons why. Citing "numerous threats of violence" the SXSW planning team has annulled "Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games" at next March's event according to an email sent to panelists that was obtained by Jezebel. What's more, the festival has cancelled a pro-GamerGate panel, dubbed "SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community," as well. An official statement from the organizers says that since announcing the two panels they've been inundated with threats of on-site violence and in the interest of keeping the marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas (their words) safe, the best way to do that was simply not act as a venue for the discussions. "Maintaining civil and respectful dialogue within the big tent is more important than any particular session," the statement reads.
Reddit defines 'harassment' in an effort to curb it
Reddit has had it up to here with the trolls in its forums and is finally doing something about it. In fact, Reddit's doing a lot of somethings. In a post to the company's official blog this morning, Reddit admins explained that while a vast majority of the site's 9,000 or so boards are generally civil. However, too many users are being dissuaded from participating on account of the abuse and harassment they receive from the site's trolls. In fact, a recent survey of 15,000 Reddit users shows that "the number one reason Redditors do not recommend the site—even though they use it themselves—is because they want to avoid exposing friends to hate and offensive content." That's a major indictment and a big problem for Reddit as a company (not to mention its bottom line).
GamerGate target working with 'major social media' to end online abuse
Along with game developer Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian is likely one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to online harassment. Both have been targets of intense cyber-abuse campaigns stemming from the GamerGate movement, and like Quinn, Sarkeesian is tackling the problem head on. She's going to continue giving speeches and making videos examining media (what she calls public efforts), but the digital abuse she's receiving has changed her long-term goal: "There is also work being done behind the scenes in private meetings and consultations with major social media and gaming platforms, and by partnering with other organizations to form a task force with the goal of ending online harassment."
