Internet abuse culture is a tech industry problem

[mjg59]

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

Comments

[vlion]

the basic problem I have here is this: this should be a police matter. if these messages were sent via postal mail, the police would be involved, and there would be a solution in play which would - in the best case - wind up in a courtroom as a criminal case.

how does this get played out in the online realm? I'm not really very knowledgable about 'policing online'.

[mjg59]

Some of the abuse clearly rises to criminal levels, but not all of it does. Merely punting the issue over to law enforcement potentially improves the situation[1], but it doesn't solve it - there's plenty of non-criminal abuse that still reaches a level that discourages people from putting up with this shit.

[1] But not necessarily - involving police isn't an automatic mechanism for making things better, and there are plenty of cases where a victim going to the police has ended up making things worse in the long run

[vlion]

Sure, there are... issues... with the cops. But those issues are largely orthogonal to the fact that "person needs to be criminally charged". There's a very clear limit when the cold arm of the law is around, and I'm not persuaded that the arm of the law really reaches meaningful levels on online-only threats ... and I think it should. Non-blustering[1] death threats should draw down the law upon the threatener's head.


But let's take that as a boundary and note the range of expression between 'harsh criticism' and 'unprotected speech': it's not a pleasant thing to be on the end of. Hateful jackassery is actually free speech.

My suspicion - having been on the internet for almost twenty years now - is that there's not a great deal that can be *done*. The WSJ comment section used to demand "real name" and, I think, photo. I don't recall anymore. You would not believe the things that were said by professionals about political subjects. /b/ was hardly worse. Pseudonymity does not make the matter worse.

I can behave a perfect gentleman at work and under my work alias, but at home, I can switch my alias to JackAssH4ter and spew for hours. How do you solve that problem without some *significant* levels of intrusion & social coercion? I imagine if I went to any other social situation and did the same, I'd be removed and asked not to come back. Although there have always been creepy stalkers offline as well...

Thoughts?

[1] i.e., words with intent

[mjg59]

Hateful jackassery may well be free speech, but tolerating it within a community is a choice made by that community. When there are no consequences to this kind of behaviour, when there are few community leaders willing to set a precedent by speaking out about it, it'll continue unchecked simply because the apparent state of affairs is that it is acceptable. There's plenty of non-anonymous abuse that we're doing nothing about.

[(Anonymous)]

It would be nice to fix law enforcement so that it dealt with more of these issues. However, it's not acceptable to just say that it should be a law enforcement issue and do nothing more about it; it isn't handled by law enforcement, and to the extent you have the power to do something about it yourself you should.