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55,000 Sign Twitter Abuse Petition After Jane Austen Campaigner Threats
AlistairCharlton writes "A petition campaigning for Twitter to improve its measures against online abuse has received more than 55,000 signatures in two days. The petition was set up in support of feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who faced a torrent of abusive tweets, including threats to rape and kill her, after successfully campaigning for a woman's picture to appear on a banknote; Jane Austen will appear on £10 notes from 2017."
In even more fairness, 90% of everything is crap.
As long as it apples to everyone.
http://twitchy.com/2013/07/13/twitter-lynch-mob-threatens-to-kill-george-zimmerman/
There's still cavemen in 2013?
I think the current Slashdot quote is appropriate:
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. -- Albert Einstein
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Why would you abuse someone for trying to get a woman on a banknote? I can't comment for the UK, but in Australia we've had the Queen on a note since forever, and Edith Cowan on the $50 since the 90s. Some people need to realise that it isn't 1678 any more.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
in support of feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who faced a torrent of abusive tweets, including threats to rape and kill her, after successfully campaigning for a woman's picture to appear on a banknote;
Holy shit, man! What the fuck is this? Welcome to Iran, now available in places other than Iran.
...Jane Austen is just awful.
Then, frankly you have no idea what you're talking about. Well maybe you do. But I've yet to meet anyone who says what you did and does.
If you're reading e.g. Pride and Prejudice as a romance novel then you're basically missing out on most of what's there. There's a lot more there. If you look under the surface even slightly you will see a rather bleaker and very insightful social commentary. There's more to it than that as well. There's interesting observations and reflections on family interaction too. At the most basic level, it seems that parents will never cease to be an embarrassment to teenage children and vice versa.
And he's pretty much the 20th Century equivalent.
Fuck no.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Marie Curie wasn't English, so there's that. I would have chosen Ada Lovelace instead, who I feel is a sadly underappreciated figure.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Rape and death threats over pushing for a woman's face on a banknote? Even if you're not fond of feminism, that's overreacting quite a lot.
If someone makes a threat, arrest them and file charges (which has been done in this case). Only when actions have real life consequences will the trolls Learn.
The Queen is a given on the currency, the people chosen to appear on the other side are supposed to be there in recognition of their contribution. From a previous post of mine:
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
It does not matter what messages it contains, the writing is awful.
It could be the best social commentary ever written, but the writing is still awful.
I am not sure why the writing styles of so many writers that English Lit majors adore are so terrible to read. I think it is some sort of hipsterish bullshit.
I understand the need for history and seeing how the novel as a work evolved, but some of these writers seemed to be trying for Vogon poetry.
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Please leave Ada Lovelace's figure out of this.
Death theats have never been considered protected speech.
The inherent problem with things like this are always with making sure that you don't infringe upon free speech -- hyperbole, sarcasm, irony, humor, and rudeness -- and only get involved in situations where realistic threats are legitimately intended and made. I understand this is in the UK, but do people really want a "zero-tolerance"/TSA style "everything ever uttered is suspicious and must be investigated and vetted" approach? Further, there are already relevant laws in most places to deal with things like this, so . . . how about we leave it at that instead of a business and a mob of users superseding it?
I often feel people simply aren't prepared to handle the internet. As if most of us haven't been on the receiving end of "abuse" online? Haven't been "attacked" or even threatened? Or told that they should be killed? Ever read youtube comments? How about the comment section on any news article that Matt Drudge links to? How about if someone "feels threatened" (or simply offended) by something? We see a lot of that in the real world, as it is. People being punished for something, not because of what they said or the intentions behind it, but how some busy-body "received it"? Does it apply across the board? Is it, as the article's commentary seems to imply, only an issue for "women"?
Hell, have I crossed the line, simply for having the wrong genitalia and not simply jumping on the bandwagon of support for this? (Because, yes, my concerns about people's freedom of speech and people not taking everything seriously and as a threat or offense totally means that I'm in favor of people being threatened and stalked and physically abused... right?).
This all goes back to that whole thing with the MySpace girl that was tricked/harassed (verbally) by neighbors (including adults) until she committed suicide. Or that Youtube girl who committed suicide after her escapades with a grown man brought judgement and insults from people at school both before and after she committed suicide. Yeah, it was harassment and bullying, but we also acknowledge that words don't directly force you to harm yourself. We all hate that bitch and her family for what she did to that poor girl and the consensus seems to be that most of the world wished harm on her. . . but that is distinct from using the law to determine when and why to make exceptions. That being a meany-head is suddenly a crime. That free speech isn't so free, any more. That my thin-skin or lack of a support-group around me is your fault. And those events caused a lot of frustration on Slashdot, too -- because people found themselves so angry at what happened and the idea of someone "getting way with it" . . . . yet opposed to infringing on people's rights to express thoughts. Even shitty ones.
In other words, here too, people need to back the fuck up from "wow, that's shitty -- of course we should do something about it!" and take the time to consider the greater impact of some institutionalized response.
Pride and Prejudice was written in 1813. The majority of its style is simply what was commonplace at the time amongst the literate elite; indeed, most English-language writing held echoes of the same manner of elocution until the later half of the twentieth century when it had become strictly a formal mode of communication and literature was reinvented to be more casual. The style reflects the content of the subject matter.
I would highly recommend working your way up to understanding a thing or two about literature before trying to pass such sweeping judgements on it. Literary studies, and indeed most of the Humanities, are concerned with history; to try and pull them apart or to focus only on the present is to completely fail to understand and ignore most of the greatest books ever written. It really does not look good to make such brazen statements.
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A couple of years ago, a user by the name of @goferet was sending regular rape and death threats to women. I saved links to 8 of the rape threats and 2 of the death threats, and contacted Twitter support.
They responded that his actions did not violate their terms of service. I pointed them directly to the terms of service page, and the specific mention of threats.
They didn't see a problem with what he was saying. Specifically things like he was planning to climb in their windows at night and rape them, some of them past rape victims who were campaigning for better investigations and fairer treatment of victims.
I thought maybe it was just the one idiot in support I was getting, but even the @support account didn't think anything of it.
What eventually did stop him making the threats was that I contacted people that he was associated with on Twitter and suggested they read his feed directly, so they could see what he was doing in his mentions, outside of the regular feed they saw. There was some disgust, and one person who knew him got him to finally shut his mouth.
Obviously there was an element that could have been "Leave it to the police", especially when some of the people he was attacking lived in the same city. But since Twitter was ignoring their *own* policies to let him threaten other users it was pretty vile on their parts.
I'm really surprised at what people can get worked up on.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Even back in 1813 people were churning out books to make money. I'm not saying that's what Jane Austin was doing, but others were. The books they wrote are the equivalent to today's best sellers. They were intended to tell a story that would entertain people for a time. Some books get over analyzed, and I believe Pride and Prejudice is one of them. I think Austin wrote it to tell a story, primarily, and to mock current social norms secondarily. Lord help us when 200 years from now Harry Potter is being studied to figure out what Rowling was really trying to say about society.
It does seem weird to have an author on currency, but whatever.
Well, it would be more fitting to put great financiers that benefited society on their currency.
They just haven't been able to come up with any suitable candidates yet.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Good dominates by far. If not we would be consumed with killing each other all the time. We are not 'broken', we are growing up to be gods, its not always pretty. We'll get there. ITs discussions like this that expose our still child-like nature.
Good-bye
From that article: "Twitter is just another arena. The normal rules don’t apply. You can say things you would NEVER say in real life. That’s social media. And if you don’t like the rules, well, get off Twitter."
I'd beg to differ. I've been using Twitter for 5 years now and I'll admit that I say many things on Twitter that I wouldn't say face-to-face, but that's primarily because I feel more comfortable socializing via computer. That being said, I have a very simple rule for what I say on Twitter:
Imagine you are in a room standing on a stage in front of your boss, co-workers, parents, assorted family, friends, spouse, and kids*. Would you STILL say what you are about to say? If the answer is no for ANY reason (e.g. "My boss would fire me" or "My parents would freak"), then don't say it.
What you say on Social Media isn't private. What you send via e-mail isn't private. Text messages aren't private. (As Anthony Weiner found out.) They are, at best, "public" messages that just haven't been shared with someone else yet.
Saying "I'm going to rape you for your beliefs" is not allowed because "the normal rules don't apply." The rules of being a human being apply, it's just easier to be a jerk to a screen name and small avatar photo belonging to someone who-knows-where than it is to be a jerk to someone standing right next to you. And threatening a person with bodily harm is going beyond being a jerk and veering down the criminal harassment path. Anyone who thinks they can harass people online and get away with it because "it's on the Internet" is sorely mistaken.
* Depending on the age of your kids and the topic, you might be able to leave the kids out of the theoretical room.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Sure, for escalating degrees of elitism, that is absolutely true.
Totally! Just because it is social commentary and not a romance doesn't mean it isn't awful, you should totally trust the anonymous coward and the many well-read, intelligent people he is making up!!
And yes, he did not provide any counter-arguments other than his inexpert opinion (which is so much better than your English literature major opinion on English literature), but still this is something that he just knows because of his faith and if you believe in something with enough faith we all know it automatically makes it truth.
Of course some people will argue that even if she was a terrible writer that does not give people the right to harass a woman that campaigned for something she wanted but those idiots are missing the point, and I don't have to tell you what the point is because several well-read, intelligent people I am making up know what the point is.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
... this is about silencing dissent, nothing else... You can guarantee that all the rape 'threats' were made up by JEW rabble rousers, so that we can 'think of the children' and report anything that anybody says, if the JEWS don't like it...
You know, little problems like the homicidal gas chambers being a myth... little lies like that...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Kl6RHKIQk
Watch the video and THEN tell me I'm wrong.
You're wrong.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Well said.
What people fail to realize is that the rules to Twitter should actually be MORE strict, not less.
You're not just speaking in a crowded room with your parents and children watching, the whole freaking world including your future partners and employers are watching and will be able to look up EVERYTHING you ever said.
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