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EFF Takes On Online Harassment

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

Gamoid writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has identified online harassment as a major challenge facing free speech on the Internet, and lays out its plan to fix it. They say, "Online harassment is a digital rights issue. At its worst, it causes real and lasting harms to its targets, a fact that must be central to any discussion of harassment. Unfortunately, it's not easy to craft laws or policies that will address those harms without inviting government or corporate censorship and invasions of privacy—including the privacy and free speech of targets of harassment. ... Just because the law sometimes allows a person to be a jerk (or worse) doesn’t mean that others in the community are required to be silent or to just stand by and let people be harassed. We can and should stand up against harassment. Doing so is not censorship—it’s being part of the fight for an inclusive and speech-supporting Internet."

2 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Love the Wording by Kunedog · · Score: -1, Troll
    Since last year we've seen the legitimate criticism from a customer revolt misrepresented (on an incredbile scale) as "harrassment."

    from TFA:

    When a magnet for harassment like Gamergate takes place on a social platform, will that platform's operators seek to uncover who the wrongdoers are—or will they simply prohibit all from speaking out and documenting their experience?

    Gamergate supporters did indeed "attract" a great deal of harassment (and censorship and libel), all for the crime of exposing journalistic corruption and collusion. And the best way for a platform to "tackle" that harassment is by not ignoring it (a difficult task for websites allied on the side of corruption, as we've repeatedly seen).

    1. Re:Love the Wording by Kunedog · · Score: -1, Troll

      I'd buy that if the anti-freedom anti-gamer crowd wasn't crowing about how they "got the EFF on their side."

      Yeah, they also crow about Gamergate being dead, but despite all the funerals there's no body. Never mind what the anti-gamers say; they've been known to lie. EFF doesn't take sides on Gamergate, they only mention it as a "magnet for harassment", which I think is undeniable -- people on both sides have been doxxed, swatted, and mailed undesirable stuff.

      I really wish you were right, but every single link about Gamergate in TFA is a one-sided propaganda hit piece that buys hook, line, and sinker in the "misogyny and harassment" narrative. I wonder if you could find a single reference to any of the pro-Gamergate people who've been harassed in any of it.