SXSW Reinstates Panels On Harassment, Adds All-Day Harassment Summit (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: On Tuesday, the South by Southwest Festival announced that it had canceled a pair of panels about online harassment after receiving threats involving them. The cancellation generated a massive outcry, including threats from media organizations to withdraw their support for the festival. Now, SXSW has announced that they're reinstating the panels as part of an all-day summit dedicated to talking about online harassment. They said, "By canceling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry. The resulting feedback from the individuals involved and the community-at-large resonated loud and clear. While we made the decision in the interest of safety for all of our attendees, canceling sessions was not an appropriate response." They've scheduled more than two dozen speakers for the event, and they plan to stream it live online. "Online harassment is a serious matter and we stand firmly against hate speech and cyber-bullying. It is a menace that has often resulted in real world violence; the spread of discrimination; increased mental health issues and self-inflicted physical harm."

Comments

Let me follow the logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Plan to have panels about online harassment. Harassed into canceling those plans. Then reinstate the plans?

I don't know what the lesson is here!

Re:Let me follow the logic

[SofiKadaj]

Anti-feminists seem to have trouble grasping this. Criticism: A: I think your ideas are wrong and here's why. B: I disagree for the following reasons. Harassment: A: I think your ideas are wrong. Everybody, look, her ideas are wrong. You are useless and stupid because I think your ideas are wrong. I'm going to call your friends and tell them to stop being your friend and post on your facebook to let everyone know how wrong your ideas are. B: Please get out of my house. Threats: A: I'm going to kill you if you talk about your ideas. B: ???

Re:Let me follow the logic

[epyT-R]

Interesting.. I'd say the same thing about feminists shouting 'rape apologist,' 'patriarchy',' and other such idiotic things at people for disagreeing. The part that makes it unfunny is that their shenanigans are backed by the state and mainstream institutions, which make them dangerous to liberty.

It's interesting how these people bitch about labels and generalizations, yet are the ones spending more time than most applying them to people. I believe they call it 'intersectionality.'

Re:Let me follow the logic

[PopeRatzo]

Here's a question, why would gamergate want it's own panel shutdown?

I think I can answer that: because whenever GamerGate has participated in a public forum, it has only been embarrassed and seen public support drop. For example, the recent event with that Koretzky dude from the Society of Professional Journalists turned into a monkey-show of GG e-celebs and floor-crappers. Public exposure is not GamerGate's friend. Remember Aurini's big documentary? You think GG is gonna be helped by having Oliver Campbell explain how he's in deep cover for the FBI investigating the feminists? Or Ralph Retort talking about the ethics of doxxing bitches while cleaning out his ear with a toothpick? I repeat: public exposure is not GamerGate's friend. If the past year has taught us anything, it's that fact. Every event, every happening has just caused GamerGate's support to erode.

On the other hand, if you ask the question, "Why would the blue-haired SJWs want their own panel shutdown?" now you have something of a quandary. Every time they get their mugs in public, they have multinational companies throwing money at them (Intel) or they get invited to be on Colbert or to speak at the United Nations or they have their new non-profit anti-harassment organization funded. Their Patreons get more donors and they get to be social darlings. Public exposure is the SJW's friend. They suck that shit up, and having a panel at SXSW cancelled would be a disaster for them.

In summary, one party has nothing to gain and the other has nothing to lose.

Re:Let me follow the logic

[pseudofrog]

Jesus Christ. Let's tackle a few of these.

Goldberg created alts that spouted ridiculous arguments he would later cite on his main account, the one he attached his name to, as "crazy SJWs". Those other accounts were to create strawmen for his real account, again, the one using his real name, to attack.

Your LMGTFY link points to one college student nobody's heard of making a false rape threat and links to articles claiming Anita Sarkeesian never reported threats to authorities. Here's a citation. Short story: Asshole MRAs (and GamerGate supports) call the SFPD, and the person who answered claimed to not know of any reports made by Sarkeesian. Turns out the SFPD immediately passed that info along to the FBI from the beginning. Even Milo, Gamergate's ""intellectual leader"", admits that.

But the narrative that Sarkeesian made up the threats is too useful to admit is wrong, so the original articles stay without noting that further investigation proved them wholly incorrect. Then people like you reference them, hoping that readers won't dig deeper.

Any time someone makes threats against one of the people Gamergate hates, they blame third-party trolls. Conveniently, these trolls magically disappear when threats are made against Gamergate events. Gamergaters love to ignore the fact that an infamous 8chan troll took credit for the threats. 8channers love going after "SJWs", but they fuck with Gamergaters on occasion as well. Because of lulz or whatever.

It's sad that Slashdot is taking these conspiracy whinings so seriously, but I'd encourage people to do some research. To date, Gamergate has accomplished nothing aside from calling their enemies whales and trannies while claiming the mainstream media is out to get them. Perhaps it's not surprising that they're hailing Breitbart Tech, yes, that Breitbart, as a savior of tech journalism.

So they proved that bullying works!

[quietwalker]

First by cancelling the panels due to threats, then by reinstating them due to threats!

The lesson to learn here kids: threats works!

Re:So they proved that bullying works!

[AmiMoJo]

Fucked if you do, fucked if you don't.

They owned up to their mistake, and listened to what people were telling them. They deserve some credit.

Re:The metaphors around this are hilarious.

[Kierthos]

They cancelled the panels due to harassment and threats.

They reinstated the panels due to several organizations saying that if the panels weren't reinstated, the organizations wouldn't show up to the event.

There's a bit of a difference there.

Re:What happened to SXSW

[bluefoxlucid]

Harassment isn't a growing problem; it's getting media attention at this time.

Throughout all of history, even in the Victorian age, people have fucked other people's wives; why do you think mistresses are a long-time common theme of a man's life in old stories, or weddings end with something about reasons two people shouldn't be married? The priest isn't asking you if the bride is a lying bitch; he's asking if the bride's dad secretly fucked the groom's mom one drunken night and so the dude is marrying his sister. We have a huge narrative about how the moral fiber of society is degrading, how teenagers are starting to sexualize themselves, how you never had people fucking their teachers in the 1920s or 1950s, teen pregnancy is the new thing, etc; all of that's been a constant theme through history, and teachers kept on fucking 12-year-old schoolgirls right through the ages where we pushed marriage from 12 to 18.

The same narrative is happening with harassment. It's a problem, sure; it's not a new or growing problem, though. Harassment has been with us since man figured out how to call some other man an ignorant little shit in front of his friends in order to elevate his own social status. Now instead of being afraid to leave your house because the big kid from school is waiting around the corner to jump you and give you a wedgie, you're afraid to get on Facebook because the big kid from school is waiting to tell you your tits are too small. Same shit, different day.

The beatings will continue until morale improves

[evilRhino]

There were two panels that were cancelled. The one anti-harassment and one media corruption. It seems like the media boycott got the anti-harassment panel reinstated, but they don't have any serious problem with nobody caring about media corruption for some reason. It must be because the only ones that care about media corruption are all serious harassers like Anne Rice, The David Pakman Show, or KFC.