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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.
Don't try to play the sex card, that guy is an asshole. Do you think the reactions 'round here would be different if it had been a woman harassing a guy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I really wish we could just drop the sexism part of this right now. Both genders get attacked by these people.
The second issue is if you want Anonymity than you will have this issue a lot.
Third is the simple fact that it is just a small number of folks causing the issue. The trouble is that it does not take a lot of folks to cause a good amount of harm.
The issue is that some people make heroes out of the idiots that do this when they do it to someone they do not agree with or like.
It really needs to be a time where all attacks are looked down on and discussion takes it place.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
More bullshit from the "people regularly threatening women in public is no big deal" crowd.
Nobody said women are "always victims" but you shits have absolutely nothing to attack unless you can craft fake arguments to dismantle. You're trapped in a room with straw walls closing in, and only you can dismantle, their evil insidious not wanting to tolerate misogynistic assholes in public spaces.
People are bigots to other groups too, and feminists, by and large are quite reasonable in their acknowledgement of that.
Who's not being oppressed? People who are being told that maybe they can't threaten the lives of women freely. Those people are meeting the boundaries known as "the law" and "common decency" and feeling just so oppressed by it.
The problem is not feminists or anti-feminists.
The problem is sociopaths, and sociopaths come in all genders and races.
Sociopaths are very good at mobilizing well-intentioned humans for their own purposes.
Humans tend to conform to the desires of sociopaths instead of confront them, because natural selection did not historically favor humans who opposed sociopaths.
The second amendment is not supposed to be the appeals court for the first...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For some reason, it's culturally acceptable for men to learn how to defend themselves from sociopaths (who, like all predators prefer soft targets to hard targets).
However if anyone ever tries to talk about teaching women any kind of self defense, the accusations of "victim blaming" start up immediately.
Which is exactly what you'd expect sociopaths to instigate. Of course they'd oppose any effort to turn soft targets into hard targets.
In any unmoderated discussion the loudest and most insistent voices win. This has been true since democracy started - "politic" meaning roughly in the original Greek "To shout down"
We see this in our current political system as well - wingnuts running the show in both parties because reasonable people won't speak up.
Time and again I've seen this on forums I've been on that have been unmoderated, such as the OkCupid forums. After awhile, only the rudest and the crudest remain there along with those willing to tolerate them.
Yes and no.
Sociopaths are a problem, but we're also facing people who think there shouldn't be consequences for how they attack others. That's not a symptom of anti-social personality disorders(they tend to know that what they do is condemned and lack the self control to stop themselves). That's strictly a matter of people who specifically think what they're doing is acceptable. Which suggests, as lots of people have said with various evidential justifications, that culture is part of the problem.
Anti-feminists, on the other hand, are only a problem in that they will cry "false flag" at literally every situation that implicates a culture hostile to prominent women, turning every discussion about solutions into long drawn-out dismantlings of their conspiracy theories.
In the fact that it specifically threatens them with bodily harm?
Oh.
And, apologies for replying to myself, this actually is WAY closer to "News for Nerds" than a lot that has been posted lately. It's about someone teaching a programming language getting trolled on the internet, how detailed the trolling was and how she dealt with it, as well as the legal repercussions of the trolling. How much more "News for Nerds" does it get?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think he's referring to the following:
"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 wouldn't be surprised if some of his "trolling" was gender based, but I don't know why she has to make some sort of connection between internet trolling and gender. Exactly as you said, had this been a guy it would have been exactly the same - up until the comment quoted above.
There is a convenience store near where I live where one of the cashiers is for lack of better words an asshole. A girl I know at work attributed that to racism. I think a lot of times if you consider yourself in some minority or group, and you meet an ass, you often jump to conclusions about bigotry etc.
It's about anonymous online sexual harassment, particularly when it's done by packs playing the part of street gangs.
Trolling is like ranting about systemd in response to every single /. article.
No, it's about online criminal harassment.
We have to face it, these things will get a lot more traction if we just treat the perps as what they are - criminals that need prosecuted, rather than people harassing someone soley because they are female. Once the dude started with her SS, fake CV, and death threats, welcome to skeeveland.
As for trolling - eliminating that will be like eliminating anyone who disagrees with you. Because that's how some people define trolling.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You take basic precautions and do your best to avoid being a target. As to who is more or less likely to be a target? Anyone being obnoxious tends to get some focus.
I disagree. If a small group of trolls are being trolls, and you "do your best to avoid being a target", they've won. A small group of trolls have had a chilling effect. We need to do more to uncover and punish that kind of behaviour. And, was Kathy being obnoxious when she was targetted? I don't see any evidence of that, and even if she was, I don't care. That's no excuse for death and rape threats.
The thing that astonished me most about trolling is, there was a case over here (UK) where someone was targetted with rape threats for organizing a campaign to get a woman onto our banknotes, and one of the trolls sent to jail for it was a woman. Which tells me it's nothing to do with sexism, and all about personal power. Sexual threats are just a tool in the box.
I truly don't understand this. When I was a young awkward geek with very specific interests, I would have absolutely LOVED there to be women around with those same interests. Us guys totally loved the few geeky girls that were around and always wished there were more.
Yet today we see guys trying to scare the women away. What the hell changed?
This isn't about women, or trolling, or "culture". Andrew Auernheimer is a fucking sociopath loser who has no concept of what it means to live in a society of decent human beings. that he thinks he is "fighting the rich" or "part of the struggle" is fucking meaningless. It's just the stuff he tells himself to try to give some meaning to his pathetic, pissant little life where no one gives a fuck about him or who he is.
I think that the reasonable people do speak up. The trouble is that the press doesn't cover their input to the discussions. We end up only hearing from the extremist crazies because that's what the press thinks will attack more ears and eyeballs and sell more advertising.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Trolls of this nature are unusual and they don't just target women. They target everyone.
In a pinch, yes a troll will go after your default WASP male. I once saw a troll reduced to attacking someone for being Canadian. (!)
However, what they target is a perceived weakness. If they find out you've posted in nudist or drug forums, they'll go after that. But if you are a woman or a minority, they don't even have to do research to find your weak points. They can paint you as driven by your sexual urges and/or overly sensitive and emotional, and a large amount of the audience will be receptive to that message because that is the preexisting prejudice for those groups. So if you are female or a minority (or God help you, both) you will always be their first target of choice.
Because to be beaten by a woman would utterly destroy them.
If they can scare the women away, they can preserve their illusion of superiority (in a mythical competition in a mythical world).
"What is the threat with squiggles on a piece of paper?"
"What is the threat of vibrations in the air?"
"What is the threat of someone pointing a metal tube in your direction?"
I hate to be rude, but that line of logic sounds quite sociopathic, and a good line of reasoning for offending someone and justifying the actions.
Precisely. Women tend to call for help or say comments hurt their feelings or otherwise give the EXACT reaction the trolls want.
They do the same thing to most men and... no reaction.
This is what is causing the focus on women. Not that the trolls are against women though I'm sure some are... but that the women often do not know how to deal with bullies.
Men are taught how to deal with bullies from a very young age. You toughen up or you're a weakling. The boys will literally call you "a girl" if you complain.
To not be "a girl" boys must hide their feelings and laugh off abuse. And then at some later date... taking some revenge is generally considered par for the course.
Women need to understand that they can't rely on men or society to come to their aid on the internet. They're going to have to take care of themselves and toughen up a bit. Crying foul just causes a troll feeding frenzy.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
For some reason, it's culturally acceptable for men to learn how to defend themselves from sociopaths (who, like all predators prefer soft targets to hard targets).
This has nothing to do with self-defence. Believe me, no respectable troll will ever attack you in any manner that you can fairly fight back. I got the full package once. Personal details published, implied threats to my family (nothing over the line to prosecutable of course), calling up my company and my company's customers in an attempt to get me fired, etc. Until you've had one come after you, you really have no idea.
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.
It's a shame that his punishment was overturned.
From a karmic point of view perhaps, but the conviction was based on an insane reading of the law. The law was bad and fundementally anti freedom, and it's worth having a hundred trolls like him than a law like that.
However, he should be convicted for harassment.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
Let me stop and mention here that last week weev caused a storm when he wrote a racist screed for a white supremacist website. As usual I found out about it when my twitter timeline lit up with exhortations to do something about my client, the unpopular defendant. To me his bigoted viewpoint is just noise; 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 asshole. But being an asshole is not a crime, and neither is obtaining unsecured information from publicly facing servers.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Derpy do. You didn't threaten me. Everyone knows what "fuck you" means. The article on the other hand, mentions people photoshopping a woman's face with bruises and abrasions with the caption "Women are like grass, they need to be beaten and cut sometimes" after she voiced an objection to some torture porn.
That's a fairly targeted and overt threat.
Words on a screen with her address, social security number, and a made up story designed to manipulate the public into wanting to do something to her? I can imagine a campaign like that being rather frightening.
In the context of the Internet, the word "troll" used to mean, (according to Wikipedia):
"...a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."
The campaign that Kathy Sierra was a victim of goes far, far beyond this. How does it make sense that one word is used to describe such a wide range of behaviour? It's like calling a violent rapist a 'cad'. Trolls, (in the original sense of the word), are assholes. Auernheimer and his associates exhibited obsessive, psychopathic, downright evil behaviour and attitudes. We should never equate mere assholes and psychopaths - doing so trivializes destructive psychopathic behaviour while making assholery seem much worse than it really is. And the latter is perhaps more dangerous; it gives authorities one more excuse for implementing draconian laws in response to minor social infractions.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The same technique is used by Marc Morano to silence climate scientists:
Whether one agrees with that message or not, there’s no denying that its tone is drastically different from much of the email Hayhoe has been receiving after Limbaugh’s denunciation, Gingrich’s decision to kill her book chapter, and the repeated publication of her email address by an influential conservative blogger who ceaselessly campaigns against climate science and climate action, Mark Morano. - http://texasclimatenews.org/wp...
Morano has sicked his minions on her for the crime of publicly discussing her scientific findings. Here is an example of the vitriol she is now receiving: Nazi Bitch Whore Climatebecile [] You stupid bitch, You are a mass murderer and will be convicted at the Reality TV Grand Jury in Nuremberg, Pennsylvania. AGW has never been anything but a Rockefeller depopulationary eugenical scam. [] After the Grand Jury indicts you, I would like to see you convicted and beheaded by guillotine in the public square, to show women that if they are going to take a man’s job, they have to take the heat for mass murder, just like the men do when they get caught. If you have a child, then women in the future will be even more leery of lying to get ahead, when they see your baby crying next to the basket next to the guillotine.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of his "trolling" was gender based, but I don't know why she has to make some sort of connection between internet trolling and gender. Exactly as you said, had this been a guy it would have been exactly the same - up until the comment quoted above.
There would have been one major difference, though: it wouldn't have happened. Trolls love to bully women. Women do visibly get the shitty end of the stick on the internet.
(FYI: I'm a guy.)
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
It's a mix of two things.
Firstly you have frustration and anger that women don't seem interested in these guys. Like that Rodger guy they really can't see what is wrong with them and vent that anger by attacking women, who must all be stupid evil manipulative whores because they only sleep with guys they can get something out of and never the poor troll.
Secondly the trolls are in serious need of some men's liberation. I bet you know exactly what a "real man" is. Masculine, strong, breadwinner, protects his woman, has loads of cool stuff. Now ask yourself what a "real woman" is. Not so easy to define.
It wasn't always that way. Back in the 1960s the ideal woman was the model 1950s housewife. A mother, good at cooking and cleaning, beautiful but homely, always trying to satisfy her man. Women's lib changed that. Women became free to break away from that model, be what they wanted to be, not get neurotic about their weight or finding a husband by age 25. Now they get to decide what matters to them, not what society expects of them. Men need that too. These trolls only feel threatened because they are so insecure, and see women participating in any traditionally male dominated area as a threat to the ideal they are trying to live up to.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is not a problem exclusive to women. As a man you can also get your life disrupted by death threats, unordered pizzas/taxis/products and doxxing.
It's probably easier to get singled out for it as a women, but if you are subject to it as a man you'll get much less support to cope with it. This is reflected in the offline world too as a MUCH higher suicide rate for men compared to women. Trying to construct this as some purely misgyonistic issue is just reinforcing the gender bias of men as some disposable soldier caste and is likely to aggrevate misgyonistic tendencies overall in society.
And who do you think is out there telling men to keep their feelings bottled up until they explode? Women? Misogyny hurts men, too.
We just had an article a few days ago where the male architect of systemd got similar hate. We all condemned that too, the difference is there was no one in that thread arguing there was some double standard.
People who don't think that is threatening, should post their own SS#, Address, Children's names on a picture on the internet and see what happens. I mean, if there is no threat, what are they afraid of?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Except you douchebags have been wrong every fucking time.
Like when you pretended there was no police report for the threats that made Sarkeesian move out of her house, without even a hint of investigating it.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this is an obvious manifestation of misogynistic stereotypes of women being manipulative liars, not any sort of rational consideration.
It's so beyond pointless.
Worse (for him) is the fact that his identity is known now.
At some point he'll target the wrong victim, and he will end up dead - all "for lulz".
"Lame" - Galaxar
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).
Let me define what real trolling is for you: Trolling is the attempt to get an emotional reaction out of a target by using social engineering. The primary goal of trolling is usually, but not limited to, getting targets to become less emotionally invested in online discussions.
You can use trolling to harass a person.
You could end up harassing a person while trolling.
But they are 2 completely separate activities.
Likewise, trolling is not chauvinistic or race related, but because those topics tend to elicit strong emotional reactions in people, they are obviously good subjects to use while trolling.
Technically, libel and slander are grounds for a civil suit, not criminal. Death threats and impersonation/identity theft are criminal but can be pursued civilly as well. Victims need to start lawyering up and getting rulings that bankrupt the trolls, and put them under restraining orders for their internet activity. If they persist put them under court orders barring them from accessing the internet, and throw them in jail for criminal contempt if they violate the court orders.
The standard of proof for civil suits is significantly lower than beyond a reasonable doubt, so the main barrier is getting internet sites and ISPs to release information that can identify the anonymous offenders.
And once again, this is not a feminist issue. Doxxing an SWATting are rampant against males as well. From Wikipedia:
* In the past, there have been swatting incidents at the homes of Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, Chris Brown, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Clint Eastwood.
Brian Krebs has suffered various harassments for several years now, as documented here: https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...
Basically once you reach a certain level of fame or notoriety on the internet, you are likely to piss off someone who thinks it's fun to engage in these kinds of activities.
We are the 198 proof..
Oh, so it's entirely genetic, and that's why 20 years ago, the field's gender mix was almost 60-40 and now 85-15. Because genetics change dramatically over short timespans.[1] [2]
Bio-determinism bites. And it's an easy, lazy, insufficient answer. I, and others, are prepared to accept that there exist biological gender differences. But, given human history, you can't say that gender differences are strictly biological without evidence. And you can examine socioeconomic factors that influence gender-based occupation decisions. In the previous link, girls(and boys) with higher self-esteem are more likely to avoid gender-typical job roles. Rather substantially, if you can actually read the article, and not just the abstract. Primitivistic psychoanalysis suggests that people who fill gender-typical jobs are likely following social pressure, than innate instincts.
Sexism in IT is real, I mean, hell, ask a transgender person whose seen both sides. But even if that were 0% of the problem, it wouldn't imply genetic determinism.
And they do that to men as well.
Ever been Swatted? A friend of mine was swatted twice.
The troll called the police, said there was a murder in progress, and men with machine guns showed up at my friend's house... kicked the door down, slammed him to the ground, handcuffed him, searched his home, and then questioned him in a hostile manner for about an hour before leaving.
So I know how bad this can get. But saying they go after women is just false. They do not. They go after everyone. You make it easy for them or you do things that annoy them or you show that they're getting to you... and they'll just keep doing it.
People need to learn how to deal with bullies and trolls. The answer is not some PSA talking about feelings and awareness. That is useless clueless bullshit. If you want to have a positive influence on this situation, then you need to get people that are reacting badly to trolls to react in a more effective manner.
Know what the troll wants and what the troll needs... and deny that troll both.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I agree with you. This is not trolling. Trolling is a art.
I used to troll slashdot under another account. It was great fun. I'd see a good target story and write a well-structure comment. The first paragraph would be something on topic and sensible. The second would introduce minor logical flaws, which in the third paragraph would explode into completely ridiculous conclusions that would incense slashdotters, like that the only way to ensure privacy is for the government to monitor all communications at all times or something. Then you sit back and watch moderators only read the first paragraph and mod you +5 insightful, and then people come along and actually read the post and get enraged and write 12 paragraphs about how wrong I am. Then it gets moderated down to +1 troll, then people realize it's funny and it winds up at +5 funny. It was good fun.
But sociopaths threatening and harassing people not just on the internet but spilling over into real life (phone calls, calling their boss, their customers, etc) is not trolling. It's...criminal. Online trolling can be ignored, but I think the only way to stop that kind of behavior is legal action.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If your purpose was to demonstrate how this cancer infects even Slashdot, then congratulations. +4 Insightful my ass.
Also, you're wrong. When weev dies, another will simply take his place. A hierarchy is basically institutionalized bullying, and we are still indoctrinated into hierarchies. Weev is operating from the axioms thought to him by the Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert, only the Internet has stripped away the facade of civility and revealed the dynamic as it really is: "Put up with my bullshit or get the choice between starving to death or going to pound-me-in-the-ass prison."
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The UK has laws that make it very easy to punish people for making defamatory, abusive, and/or libelous statements, without any need to prove how much actual damage they caused, if any.
The US has free speech.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.