Frankly, I have nothing to say about the latest example of Kos being an idiot that others haven’t already said better; others like Shakespeare’s Sister, Echidne, Feministing, Aimai, Majikthise, and I’m sure many others. (Updated to add: Such as Kip, and Chris, and Stephen.) (And Pandagon).
But I’ll say it anyway:
1) One can think that a “blogger code of ethics” is a stupid idea without thinking that death threats are no big deal.
2) There is no reason to accept that anyone should just have to put up with death threats as the cost of stating an opinion in public. Talk about lowered expectations! What next — should voters who are harassed at the voting site not complain, since they should have expected that sort of abuse?
3) It’s true that no blogger code of ethics will solve the problem of anonymous online idiots making threats.
But it’s also true that Kos’ view, if taken seriously, would actually make the problem worse. The only means most of us have of fighting back against these sort of attacks is to publicly call out the threat-makers. If people have to worry that fighting back will lead to one of the world’s most popular bloggers calling them an idiot in public, then that’ll be one more reason to just let it pass. And the standards of discourse on the internet, already disgustingly low, will be driven even lower.
As it happens, the threats against Kathy Sierra came in part on a online discussion board; in an environment like that, group social norms make a difference. If virtually everyone responded to posts that imply violence by saying “that’s disgusting! What’s wrong with you?,” threats like that won’t disappear entirely — but they will become less common. Contrariwise, if everyone responds to these sort of controversies the way Kos has here, by in effect calling people who object to such threats wimps and idiots, that will have the effect of encouraging threats.
4) Let’s not forget, it seems clear that female bloggers have to deal with more of this crap than male bloggers.
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I’m waiting – no, dying is more accurate – I’m dying for some irony-deficient asshat to give me some shit over the horribly violently-minded post I put up today.
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You should read that study. I don’t believe it shows what it is being claimed to show.
The study has many scientific flaws dealing with how the data was collected. But most importantly, it wasn’t a study to compare how men and women are treated online. It was a study to see if irc channels are risky places in terms of computer security.
In the study, the authors never defined what sexual harassment was, and never defined what threats were. They never described how either of these were measured. They never tested for interrater reliability. At least, none of this was ever discussed in their paper.
Jessica Valenti (and many other newspapers) report the figure is 25 times as bad for women as for men. And that women got 163 harassing communications per day. But those numbers were taken from different experiments within the study.
First, the study examined #irc chat rooms. Chat rooms with no moderation (IIRC) and with no authentication. Chat rooms named #teen and #allnightcafe.
The chatroom named #teen (look, I don’t think an unmoderated, unauthenticated chatroom called #teen has any business of even existing) was studied by using “silent bots” that is, bots that did nothing. Bots with female names were 25 times more likely than bots with male names to get harassing communications, but again, the terms sexual harassment and threats was never defined.
Moving from that study, the experimenters placed real humans in a chatroom called #allnightcafe. In that study, female names got 163 harrasing communiques while male names got 27. That is a ratio of 6 to 1, not 25 to 1. But again, the terms for sexual harassment and threats was never defined.
Sexual harassment was defined only as “sexually explicit”.
But I ask you. In an unmoderated, unauthenticated chatroom called #allnightcafe, what do you think the typical user is looking for?
(BTW, I have never visited #teen or #allnightcafe, I honestly don’t know what happens in those unmoderated, unauthenticated chatrooms. Also, I read the study about a week ago, I may have forgotten some of the details.)
In such an environment, is all sexually explicit communications sexual harassment?
I think what the study found was that in a bar, late at night, more men try to pickup women than women that try to pickup men.
I think that’s what it found.
Some of the data collection problems are that the data collections were not all done at the same time. They would collect data for a week at a time. But this does not take into account seasonal events or the like. So we don’t know if the responses were due to something in the news, or arrival at school, or vacation, or graduation, or anything.
So I don’t think the study shows what it is purported to show.
BTW, the conclusion of the study concluded nothing about abuse of men vs. women. It used the difference between male and female behavior to indicate the attackers were humans and not bots. Given how that conclusion stems from an assumption made beforehand that males and females would be treated differently, I don’t think the study has any ability to make any conclusions about how males and females would be treated. And they don’t.
The conclusion of the study was that #irc is actually a low risk environment for computer security problems.
Again, apples and oranges comparisons were made, and they studied #irc unathenticated, unmoderated chatrooms, and they studied nothing about the blogosphere.
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In an unmoderated, unauthenticated chatroom called #allnightcafe, what do you think the typical user is looking for?
Coffee? Chat?
If you don’t think women get sexually harrassed on (mainstream) IRC all the time, try using bash.org’s random function. You’ll find many instances of undisputable sexism (here’s one), racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia.
You won’t find equivalent anti-male comments (I clicked random, and got no anti-male comments, but about a dozen that fit into one of the above-listed categories).
A few years ago, I was an operator on a fairly well-behaved IRC network. There was one person who was persistently abusive to women. I did not do enough to stop him then, and I feel bad about it. We did eventually kick him off — ostensibly for other reasons, but in reality because he was jerk. But by then, he had already driven away at least one female member of the channel.
I guess there’s no reason to post this. If you really can’t see the sexism of mainstream IRC, the problem isn’t that you haven’t read the right study — it’s that you’ve never considered what women experience.
Is it just me? Seems like IRC chat is very different than blogs — I mean completely and totally different. The topic here (again just to me) is about a blogger being attacked and threatened.
But I ask you. In an unmoderated, unauthenticated chatroom called #allnightcafe, what do you think the typical user is looking for?
“What did you expect would happen to you, if you walked into a place like that? And what were you wearing, anyway? You were practically asking for it.”
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In addition to my “family” blog, I share a small political blog with two other great-grandmothers. I focus on feminist, gay, children’s and civil rights issues for the most part. My partners cover everything else.
I don’t know if female bloggers are more subject to attack; I do know that we’ve received comments from the right wingers saying they wish we’d all die.
Oh, and that the three of us are liars.
Not exactly death threats but not something to make my day.
I’m not sure if the link will work.
Ann (aka granny)
Is America Burning
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