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Internet abuse culture is a tech industry problem
After Jesse Frazelle blogged about the online abuse she receives, a common reaction in various forums[1] was "This isn't a tech industry problem - this is what being on the internet is like"[2]. And yes, they're right. Abuse of women on the internet isn't limited to people in the tech industry. But the severity of a problem is a product of two separate factors: its prevalence and what impact it has on people.
Much of the modern tech industry relies on our ability to work with people outside our company. It relies on us interacting with a broader community of contributors, people from a range of backgrounds, people who may be upstream on a project we use, people who may be employed by competitors, people who may be spending their spare time on this. It means listening to your users, hearing their concerns, responding to their feedback. And, distressingly, there's significant overlap between that wider community and the people engaging in the abuse. This abuse is often partly technical in nature. It demonstrates understanding of the subject matter. Sometimes it can be directly tied back to people actively involved in related fields. It's from people who might be at conferences you attend. It's from people who are participating in your mailing lists. It's from people who are reading your blog and using the advice you give in their daily jobs. The abuse is coming from inside the industry.
Cutting yourself off from that community impairs your ability to do work. It restricts meeting people who can help you fix problems that you might not be able to fix yourself. It results in you missing career opportunities. Much of the work being done to combat online abuse relies on protecting the victim, giving them the tools to cut themselves off from the flow of abuse. But that risks restricting their ability to engage in the way they need to to do their job. It means missing meaningful feedback. It means passing up speaking opportunities. It means losing out on the community building that goes on at in-person events, the career progression that arises as a result. People are forced to choose between putting up with abuse or compromising their career.
The abuse that women receive on the internet is unacceptable in every case, but we can't ignore the effects of it on our industry simply because it happens elsewhere. The development model we've created over the past couple of decades is just too vulnerable to this kind of disruption, and if we do nothing about it we'll allow a large number of valuable members to be driven away. We owe it to them to make things better.
[1] Including Hacker News, which then decided to flag the story off the front page because masculinity is fragile
[2] Another common reaction was "But men get abused as well", which I'm not even going to dignify with a response
Much of the modern tech industry relies on our ability to work with people outside our company. It relies on us interacting with a broader community of contributors, people from a range of backgrounds, people who may be upstream on a project we use, people who may be employed by competitors, people who may be spending their spare time on this. It means listening to your users, hearing their concerns, responding to their feedback. And, distressingly, there's significant overlap between that wider community and the people engaging in the abuse. This abuse is often partly technical in nature. It demonstrates understanding of the subject matter. Sometimes it can be directly tied back to people actively involved in related fields. It's from people who might be at conferences you attend. It's from people who are participating in your mailing lists. It's from people who are reading your blog and using the advice you give in their daily jobs. The abuse is coming from inside the industry.
Cutting yourself off from that community impairs your ability to do work. It restricts meeting people who can help you fix problems that you might not be able to fix yourself. It results in you missing career opportunities. Much of the work being done to combat online abuse relies on protecting the victim, giving them the tools to cut themselves off from the flow of abuse. But that risks restricting their ability to engage in the way they need to to do their job. It means missing meaningful feedback. It means passing up speaking opportunities. It means losing out on the community building that goes on at in-person events, the career progression that arises as a result. People are forced to choose between putting up with abuse or compromising their career.
The abuse that women receive on the internet is unacceptable in every case, but we can't ignore the effects of it on our industry simply because it happens elsewhere. The development model we've created over the past couple of decades is just too vulnerable to this kind of disruption, and if we do nothing about it we'll allow a large number of valuable members to be driven away. We owe it to them to make things better.
[1] Including Hacker News, which then decided to flag the story off the front page because masculinity is fragile
[2] Another common reaction was "But men get abused as well", which I'm not even going to dignify with a response
no subject
(Anonymous) 2015-07-06 09:35 pm (UTC)(link)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*?
no subject
If you're a guy who works in tech, for instance, you can impose social (or other) consequences for abusive behaviour which don't require going through the broken criminal justice system. Even if it's as simple as letting people know "That's not okay, don't do that."