[beloch]

The problem is, just one person like this is "enough" to really mess people up. You can have hundreds of normal, positive interactions in a week and it just takes one a$$hat to make you forget all that. Thanks to the internet, one guy can ruin hundreds of other people's days. He (or she) can do it anonymously and safely from a great distance. For the overwhelming majority of us, there simply are no barriers to prevent this. We routinely filter out nuisance emails from Nigerian princes but very few people try to filter out the crazies.

Most of us, if given the chance to have our messages filtered, would choose not to do so. Most people are eager to please and want to know when somebody is unhappy so they can fix it. Only people in the most visible positions are faced with such a deluge of crap that they're forced to do something about it. For the average person, the aberrant attention that comes from a small amount of exposure, such as a conference talk, is just big enough to throw us for a loop but not so big that we'd think about taking steps to never see that stuff. This isn't only a problem for women. Men face it too.

Perhaps the time has come to approach harassment the way we approach spam. Namely, make it easy to report personal attacks so that we can start using the same techniques that block spam to block harassment.

[zaccus]

IDK, she's talking about hundreds of vile personal messages. Sounds like more than one a$$hat to me.

And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats. I think when this kind of thing happens it should be called out. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.

[Nadya]

>And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats.

Men rarely send men rape threats. A woman threatening a man with rape usually isn't seen as threatening due to power dynamics between the sexes (good luck overpowering the man to rape him?) So that doesn't come as a large surprise to anyone.

But a large number of men do receive death threats and threats to their family. "I'll kill your kids" and "I'll kill your wife" are still threats against that person. They are meant to intimidate and control that individual, fearing for the people he cares about. He'll receive a picture of his girlfriend with another man's semen plastered on it.

You learn to ignore it - because there isn't another way to deal with it. Blaming a specific community for it is a joke. What do you want the community to do about it? Say it's not okay?

Well it's not okay. We say that, but it falls on deaf ears. You want us to do something about it. But there isn't anything to do about it. Simply saying it's not okay isn't enough. It won't stop what happens. If you think it will, I'd love to hear your reasoning for how you came to that conclusion and what alternative universe you've wished yourself into.

Telling people that theft is not okay doesn't prevent all theft. Telling people that killing people is not okay doesn't prevent all murders. Telling people that [this] is not okay does not prevent all [this]. That's simply a fact of life.

What people are saying is: "No, this isn't okay. It's still going to happen. What do you want us to do about it, we can't do shit. You're going to have to deal with it."

Somehow that gets interpreted as "This is okay, we endorse it. We aren't going to do anything about it."

[magicalist]

Actually I've done a good number of talks at tech conferences, and while I've gotten a few choice Youtube comments, I've never gotten any of the kind of shit thrown at me that female colleagues in a similar position have. The same kind of stuff described in this post.

And it's not exactly clear from your post why we should throw up our hands at a threat to someone's children, either.

> Somehow that gets interpreted as "This is okay, we endorse it. We aren't going to do anything about it."

Yes, telling someone that they shouldn't talk about the bad thing happening to them, that they should just get over it, is condoning it. Oh, no need for them to get into the particulars! I can just assume I've already experienced exactly whatever they're going to say and just tell them, "well, that's the internet for you".

[Nadya]

Ever heard of the expression "Don't feed the trolls"? Most of the threats people get are non-serious. Two decades of internet experience tells me that very, very, very, very, very few individually targeted threats ever actually get enacted. So yes, you pretend they don't happen and don't give them the attention they desire.

In fact - the police will tell you not to talk about the threat after you report it to them. Discussing the threat gives them an audience, which is what many legitimate psychopaths desire. Someone to "watch their work" after it's been done. It's better to stay silent and let police investigate (and if they don't investigate, chances are they don't think it's a serious threat or there isn't anything they can do besides put you under police protection).

Also what do you expect individuals to do against an anonymous threat? Console you? Flame a throwaway account? When you talk about it and everyone tells you "Yeah, it happens to me too. Just ignore it." What's their to talk about? That it happens? Yes. We know it happens. There's nothing you can actually do about it.

To steal an example someone else used: spam email.

There's little you can do to prevent spam emails (only try and intelligently filter them). Spam email is going to happen whether you like it or not, whether you talk about it or not, and everyone gets spam email and everyone hates spam email. We aren't supporting spam by not wanting to talk about spam. We just don't talk about it because there is nothing to talk about. You ignore it. It's a part of the world we live in and openly talking about "I get spam email all the time this sucks!" isn't helping to stop the spam problem. After a point, people would prefer you would just shut up about spam emails. Us not caring to discuss something we have no control over doesn't mean we agree with it. It means it's pointless to discuss. Perhaps pick an issue that people have some control over that could be solved.

[magicalist]

The problem is you're assuming that only carried-through threats are the problem here (that sheer volume of fucked up comments don't make eventually make it unpleasant to work in an industry), and that everyone reacts to threats the same way you do ("very few rape threats come to pass, therefore I feel fine walking to my car alone right now").

> In fact - the police will tell you not to talk about the threat after you report it to them.

No, they don't. They may tell you to not say anything if there's an ongoing investigation, but that's about it.

> Discussing the threat gives them an audience, which is what many legitimate psychopaths desire.

Not usually, but most people making these comments are not psychopaths anyways, and are part of the same industry as the rest of us (why else are they watching tech talks?), and do not stand well with their comments in the light of day.

> and if they don't investigate, chances are they don't think it's a serious threat or there isn't anything they can do besides put you under police protection

Go to a major city and get mugged, at gunpoint even, then report your missing wallet and/or phone to the police. Then let me know as soon as they catch the crook and you get your stuff back. I won't wait up.

It's beyond me why people see this sort of thing all the time from police, then presuppose that same force, with little technical training, will get right on those online death threats and catch the person behind them. Unless you attract major attention (and retain it), little is going to be done for you.

[Nadya]

>and are part of the same industry as the rest of us (why else are they watching tech talks?

You act like this only happens in the tech industry. That's your problem. You seem to live in this little bubble of the world where you're blissfully unaware that this happens to anyone famous. Even marginally so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4G2EsQbaDg

>Go to a major city and get mugged, at gunpoint even, then report your missing wallet and/or phone to the police. Then let me know as soon as they catch the crook and you get your stuff back. I won't wait up.

What do you expect them to do in such a scenario? You seem to live in a novel where every crime can be solved by the most trace amount of evidence. This is the real world. A lot of crimes go uncaught and unpunished. Most home burglars don't get caught. Notice how my comment didn't stop at "don't think it's a serious threat" but includes "there isn't anything they can do".

How many threats do you think Justin Beiber (Bieber?) gets a day? He's still alive. He's still singing. Nothing has happened.

>It's beyond me why people see this sort of thing all the time from police, then presuppose that same force, with little technical training, will get right on those online death threats and catch the person behind them.

It's beyond me why people think that lesser trained, lesser resourceful people online who suffer the same treatment in many scenarios would be able to do anything about it either. But I guess getting attention and pointing people to your Patreon solves a lot of life's problems.