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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.
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.
Please leave Ada Lovelace's figure out of this.
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.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
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.
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