This. Social problems are *hard*, both on an absolute scale and relative to writing code. "Code is law", sure, and you can solve (or create) *some* problems with code, but some things need fixing at the societal level.
Random example (not realistic, just a thought experiment): how would the situation change if, rather than our current world in which online harassment is ignored, what if it *could* be prosecuted as easily as it should be? What if it *was* treated as a crime with real-world "ruin your life" consequences? That would take massive work to actually put in place. Would it actually address an appreciable fraction of the problem? (I'd guess that there's a set of people who would go to greater lengths to hide, and there's a set of people who would say "you know what, no, I don't want to go to prison in the name of being a dick on the Internet".)
What steps *could* we take, socially, to actually eradicate these problems at the source? What would it take to stop awful people completely, not just blocking them or protecting others from them but making them *stop*?
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Date: 2015-07-06 09:35 pm (UTC)Random example (not realistic, just a thought experiment): how would the situation change if, rather than our current world in which online harassment is ignored, what if it *could* be prosecuted as easily as it should be? What if it *was* treated as a crime with real-world "ruin your life" consequences? That would take massive work to actually put in place. Would it actually address an appreciable fraction of the problem? (I'd guess that there's a set of people who would go to greater lengths to hide, and there's a set of people who would say "you know what, no, I don't want to go to prison in the name of being a dick on the Internet".)
What steps *could* we take, socially, to actually eradicate these problems at the source? What would it take to stop awful people completely, not just blocking them or protecting others from them but making them *stop*?