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Why the Trolls Will Always Win
It turned out that a man named Andrew Auernheimer was responsible for having harassed Sierra. Known as 'Weev', he admitted it in a 2008 New York Times story on Internet Trolls. There, he spoke to the lengths which he and his cohorts went to discredit and destroy the woman. "Over a candlelit dinner of tuna sashimi, Weev asked if I would attribute his comments to Memphis Two, the handle he used to troll Kathy Sierra, a blogger. Inspired by her touchy response to online commenters, Weev said he "dropped docs" on Sierra, posting a fabricated narrative of her career alongside her real Social Security number and address. This was part of a larger trolling campaign against Sierra, one that culminated in death threats."
Now, seven years later, Kathy Sierra has returned to explain why she left and what recent spates of online harassment against women portend for the future if decent people don't organize. The situation has grown much more serious since she went into hiding all those years ago. It's more than just the threat of Doxxing to incite physical violence by random crazies with a screw loose. Read on for the rest of maynard's thoughts. These days, malicious trolls have taken to SWATting, where harassers call police and make false accusations to induce a SWAT raid. One prominent example is that of game developer Chris Kootra, who experienced a SWAT raid on camera while playing an online video game recently. There is also the troubling trend of developing malicious software intended to harm victims directly. For example, posting images on epilepsy forums which flicker at rates known to induce epileptic seizure. Given that Sierra is epileptic herself, this kind of harmful trolling hits home personally. She writes:
[While not photo-sensitive], I have a deep understanding of the horror of seizures, and the dramatically increased chance of death and brain damage many of us with epilepsy live with, in my case, since the age of 4. FYI, deaths related to epilepsy in the US are roughly equal with deaths from breast cancer. There isn't a shred of doubt in my mind that if the troll hackers could find a way to increase your risk of breast cancer? They'd do it. Because what's better than lulz? Lulz with BOOBS. Yeah, they'd do it.
And yet Auernheimer, the man who put her through all this horror, has for entirely different reasons become a kind of 'Net cause célèbre for Internet freedom. After having committed a hack against AT&T where he obtained the email addresses of thousands of iPad users, he attracted the attention of federal authorities. In due course he was convicted and sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for identity fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. Many thought his conviction and sentence egregious. Weev attracted support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and prominent Georgia University Law Professor Tor Ekeland, and they worked together to craft an appeal and overturn the conviction. In April 2014, they succeeded. Auernheimer is now free.
Ekeland wasn't the only one bothered by the government's case. Even Kathy Sierra disagreed. Yet she's appalled that somehow she'd been dragged into supporting the very man who'd abused her.
But you all know what happened next. Something something something horrifically unfair government case against him and just like that, he becomes tech's "hacktivist hero." He now had A Platform not just in the hacker/troll world but in the broader tech community I was part of. ... But hard as I tried to find a ray of hope that the case against him was, somehow, justified and that he deserved, somehow, to be in prison for this, oh god I could not find it. I could not escape my own realization that the cast against him was wrong. So wrong. And not just wrong, but wrong in a way that puts us all at risk.
The lawyer Ekeland, in recent commentary at Wired, continues to defend Auernheimer as having been wronged by an overzealous prosecution, the precedent of which could have significant ramifications for 'Net freedom. "...the crucial issue here is not weev or his ideas but the future of criminal computer law in the U.S. You may think weev is an #@$hole. But being an #@$hole is not a crime, and neither is obtaining unsecured information from publicly facing servers."
Which leaves Sierra lamenting that Auernheimer still hasn't been charged and convicted for what she considers the real crime of harassment he'd committed, harming her and countless others. Where's the justice? Inciting violence and dissemination of "fighting words" are not free speech. Yet, as she admits, unless you're a celebrity, you're "...more likely to win the lottery than get any law enforcement agency to take action." So there is none. "We are on our own," she laments. "And if we don't take care of one another, nobody else will."
Thus, Sierra returned to push back — to push back against prominent journalists and members in the tech community who'd conflate prosecutorial violations of due process with the right to disseminate harassment and cruelty.
I came back because I believe this sent a terrible, devastating message about what was acceptable. ... To push back on the twist and spin. I believed the fine-grained distinctions mattered. I pushed back because I believed I was pushing back on the implicit message that women would be punished for speaking out. I pushed back because almost nobody else was, and it seemed like so many people in tech were basically OK with that.
Auernheimer, for his part, remains unapologetic. Responding to Sierra on Livejournal, he writes:
Yesterday Kathy Sierra (a.k.a. seriouspony), a mentally ill woman, continued to accuse me on her blog of leading some sort of harassment campaign against her by dropping her dox (information related to identify and location) on the Internet. ... Kathy Sierra has for years acted like a toddler, throwing tantrums and making demands whenever things didn't go her way. She rejects any presentation of polite criticism or presentation of evidence as some sort of assault on her. She was the blueprint for women like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, who also feign victimhood for financial and social gain. Kathy Sierra is the epitome of what is wrong with my community. She had something coming to her and by the standards set by her own peers in the social justice community, there was nothing wrong with what she got.
Some people never change.
Kathy Sierra did no such thing. Making shit up just makes you exactly the like the OP I was chastizing for needing a straw-argument to dismantle, all the while feeling SOOOO oppressed.
As for the 1 in 5 women thing... well
The CDC just recently verified that number that MRA types have been insisting is biased. Every study comes up with markedly similar results about that.
Kathy Sierra has written several books that were very helpful when taking java exams. She has the ability to clearly explain things that not many people have mastered. She also created the javaranch.com site which is a great place to look when you have questions about java. I appreciate her contributions to the community and wish there were more people like her.
What I Learned from My Time in Prison
Andrew Auernheimer
I have some new tattoos that mark the wisdom I gained from my time in prison, which happens to be the same as the wisdom of my ancestors. [...] My first tattoo is a 4.5 inch swastika on my chest featuring Odinn, Baldr, Freyr, and Ãzor. My second is a Jormungandr-wrapped Ãzorshamar flanked by Huginn and Muninn on my forearm.
There's also some comprehensive antisemitism in that article.
http://www.dailystormer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/weev.jpg
This is not the hero you are looking for.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
does that number include 'i was not really feeling it but had sex anyway', 'it was a drunken sex therefore the consent was invalid', 'construction workers catcalled me the other day' and 'the guy confused about my feelings toward him attempted to kiss me'? [checks the article... yep]
The definition of sexual assault is so broad it can mean pretty much anything depending on who you ask, which only waters down the words 'assault' and 'rape'. I can only assume it's done to manufacture the perception of a dire crisis despite the crime statistics steadily going down.
Once again I have the "obsessed with false accusations of rape" reality denier. Because you are a person who believes in an a world where women are serial liars, and you're inured to observational evidence about it by some mental block I don't get.
But here. Here's how wrong you are about false rape accusations.
False accusations do exist but those 2-5% of cases are for our justice system to handle, and not a widespread systemic issue(and there's all sorts of clues as to when an accusation is made up).
Why the Trolls Will Always Win
They don't.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2...
And sometimes they really don't.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
As to what you do in your home, my father and mother didn't say such things to me either. If you think you can control this you're deluded.
Your children will be subjected to this by their peers whether you like it or not. And if they cry, call for their mother, or otherwise show signs of weakness then they'll be seen as weak. This is instinctual. It is in the blood. You can pretend all you like otherwise... but pretend is pretend.
As to how your raise your family... that is your own business. But you are raising human beings. Homo Sapiens. You can pass on your values but just as your child can't help it if he's a homosexual... there are other instincts that we also can't help having.
We can suppress them. But the suppression of instincts requires conscious will. The kids in the school yard are going to be the kids in the school yard. They're consistent and predictable. You should know that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It isn't hard. I'll use small words so that you can understand. You assume people are good and have good intentions unless they demonstrate (sorry word too big, "show") that are not. The lady in this case did nothing to show she is a bad person. She just made a comment about comment moderation (long word, I know). The other guy made threats and thinks whites are better than every other color. He has a history of doing things that show he is a bad person.
Easy enough to understand? Slashdot really should have cut off registration once they reached the six digit IDs
Don't forget libel and slander.
Libel and slander are civil offenses. The government does not prosecute them.
Or technically, it was not cool the way the government went after him for the wrong crime. If they had pursued his ass for the stalking and harassment, that'd be just fine.
THIS!
Stalking, harassment, including "doxxing" which is a product of both, is not just uncool, courts have ruled it criminal. And in most places there are specific statutes against it.