A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds (fastcompany.com)

That shocking statistic comes from a study conducted by Amnesty International and AI software startup Element AI. From a report: In the study, called Troll Patrol, Amnesty International and Element AI looked at data from 288,000 tweets sent to 778 female politicians and journalists in the U.S. and U.K. in 2017. Using machine learning on the data, the group then extrapolated just how wide-ranging abuse toward women is on Twitter. The result: 1.1 million abusive or problematic tweets were sent to the women in the study during the year -- that's one abusive or problematic tweet every 30 seconds. And it's even worse for women of color -- and especially black women -- who were targeted more frequently than white women.

Comments

Machine learning

[AHuxley]

that criticism is trolling.

Re:Machine learning

[fustakrakich]

Well yeah, how else can you get people to want to outlaw it?

Re:Machine learning

[fustakrakich]

A response to my comment was deleted. Do the admins care to spell out why?? Or will it remain a sweet mystery of life?

What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many men are abused or sent problematic tweets on twitter.

Why limit research to one segment to create a self confirming headline?

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 in 4 homeless are women. Plz halp

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Tablizer]

Good point. Men are called "fags" all the time on the Webnets.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[easyTree]

Who cares, only women and children matter. Men are to be sent into battle.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[hey!]

Why limit research to one segment to create a self confirming headline?

To answer your question: because you can't study everything at the same time without making assumptions you can't justify yet. This happens all the time in social sciences. Before you can safely lump things together you have to study them separately.

On the face of it, attacks on women appear distinct in their character from attacks on men, although exactly how different is obviously possible to exaggerate. But before you object, yes, there have been studies that focus on male victims of social media bullying too, they just didn't get a mention here. Social media bullying is a hot research topic, but it's early days yet and because this is social sciences that means results are highly unreliable. This is largely because potential research populations tend to be mixed bags of apples and oranges.

So expect a lot of research looking at various target groups: men vs. women, straight vs. gay, or as in this case women in general vs. women of color. Really the best social science tends to take big homogeneous trends and tries to parse them into distinct pieces. For example the US economy *on average* resumed reasonable growth between 2010 and 2015, but a gulf emerged between large cities, where nearly all that growth took place, and rural/small town areas which continued to see job losses and falling labor participation rates.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[phantomfive]

They really needed a control group here.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the face of it, attacks on women appear distinct in their character from attacks on men, although exactly how different is obviously possible to exaggerate. But before you object, yes, there have been studies that focus on male victims of social media bullying too, they just didn't get a mention here.

Of course they wouldn't mention it. Because those studies show overall, men receive more online abuse. That wouldn't go so well for the desired outcome of this particular "study".

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

That study is completely useless tripe by a dimwitted liberal trying to make some point that 'women have it hard'. You know what, yeah they do. So do men. So do straights. So do whites. So does everyone. These liberal whiney losers think they are so smart because they 'have shown how hard it is for women'. Complete imbeciles. I can name a single guy who gets abused 30 TIMES PER SECOND on Twitter. So that's 900 times as frequently, by 1/778th of the population. Let's see, simple math would say that it looks like men must have it 700,200 times as hard as women!?!?

Oh, that doesn't compute? You're right, it doesn't, and making such an ascertation would be irresponsible. But so is this study. Even without saying that 'this is soooo aweful', it has clearly been written to imply it as somehow lopsided against women and how bad all us terrible misogynists are by NOT MAKING ANY ATTEMP TO NORMALIZE WHAT THAT MEANS OR HOW IT RELATES TO THE HARDSHIPS OF ANY OTHER GROUP. That omission is designed to elicit anger. So until those irresponsible f-wads fix their study and all the articles that devolved from it, I will stand with my fact based analytical response that it must be 700,200 times worse for men based on my sampling, and I didn't have to be some liberal whiney weeney spending 6 months to come up with that.

Jesus, and they keep blaming conservatives, but this BS that is designed to create strife while trying to feign innocence flows ever hour of every day from liberals. You know what? It's working, strife has been down and conservatives either have liberals because we can see right through this BS, or because we know a large percentage of your are so stupid you actually believe this BS is real and that women somehow have it so much more awful than men.

Any woman who is on Twitter has it a thousand times better in every respect than quote not on Twitter. Holy f, go see how women in third world countries are treated if you want to talk about how bad women have it. In virtually every first world country women have it way better. You see people tripping over themselves here to come and and a woman being assaulted or in distress while meet get hammered and other men then jump in to hammer the6n further.

This sort of crapola is why conservatives really are starting to *really* hate liberals.

Stop it.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[AHuxley]

When an actor accepts a bad script and makes a bad movie that's a movie review.
When an actress accepts a bad script and makes a bad movie, that's trolling.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[astrofurter]

They authors of this study are not "liberals". They hate liberty. Rather they are Corporate Progressives.

This article appears to have several purposes:

1) Divide the masses against themselves, making it easier for the corporate oligarchy to continue exploiting and oppressing the people.

2) Another shibboleth for Corporate Progressive acolytes, deepening their religious devotion by forcing them to believe in obvious falsehoods.

3) Pretext for increased censorship.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[karlandtanya]

Folks, this ain't science; if you measure it by that yardstick it will come up short.

To answer your question, it's because the popular narrative is that women are victims, passive, and must be protected while not-women are villains, aggressive, and must be punished. Of course, repeatedly recognizing that your sample set ' 778 women politicians and journalists with an active, non-protected Twitter account, with fewer than 1 million followers' is flawed doesn't make it any less so. The sample isn't chosen to test a hypothesis; the goal here is to tell a story.

Element AI has provided a sample of their work to Amnesty in exchange for some goodwill. Decorating their product in the style of a scientific study is similarly insincere.

As an ad for Element AI it's valid: We can generate buzz for your issue.
As a political statement from Amnesty International, it's also valid: We need more civil and more enforcable social norms in social media.

As social science it's crap, but that's neither Element AI's or Amnesty Internal's job.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

A simple search turns up these:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-27/research-claiming-women-are-half-of-online-abusers-flawed/7452568
https://phys.org/news/2014-10-online-abuse-affects-men-women.html
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/

There is a lot of misinformation from all sides.. Anything to reinforce their specific ideas or points..

Try to keep an open mind and listen to both sides and maybe you learn something new from time to time.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[sfcat]

Why limit research to one segment to create a self confirming headline?

To answer your question: because you can't study everything at the same time without making assumptions you can't justify yet. This happens all the time in social sciences. Before you can safely lump things together you have to study them separately.

I was going to mod you down for this but I will comment instead. This isn't science. If someone thinks it is, then they need to turn in their science card at the library. Anytime you setup an experiment, you have a control group. The amount of anything experienced by one group only has meaning when compared to the amount experienced by another group(s) which usually includes a control group. In this case, probably a group of men (or at least non-women). If it came out that the control group is attacked by someone on twitter every second what conclusion would you draw from those two data sets. If instead it was once every minute that a person in the control group was abused, would your conclusions be different? Add to that that possibly there is a gender imbalance in numbers of interactions per capita between the two groups and this one bit of research is meaningless. And it's stuff like this that causes "social scientists" to be considered junk science and for their entire field to be put into quotes by other scientists. Because an experiment without a control group isn't an experiment. Its somewhere between bad science and propaganda.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[JaredOfEuropa]

because you can't study everything at the same time without making assumptions you can't justify yet. This happens all the time in social sciences. Before you can safely lump things together you have to study them separately.

Sure. It makes sense that abuse towards women is different in nature than abuse towards men, and that abuse towards women of color is different still. And to understand the nature, the causes and effects on the victims, and the perpetrators, you would have to study them separately. But the summary at least has no issues mentioning women of color as a separate class, then lumping them in at the same time. But most importantly: if you run a clickbaity headline like "Women are abused on Twitter every 30 seconds", then at least provide a basis of comparison even if you "don't have the time or resources" to also do an in depth study of abuse of men online. Is 30/s a lot? Or is it average or even below average?

Re:What does problematic mean?

[umghhh]

I wonder what is this social science, you talk about? I mean science is a way to find explanations for things based on facts and reason. According to wikipedia and my dictionary the word comes from Latin word meaning 'knowledge'. How does social science with significant 'social justice' element (i.e. bias) fit into this? If even particle physics does exclude people based on their (male) gender then social science cannot really be better.

As for your claims of them social 'scientists' not having done full analysis just yet and hushing with their significant results. This is just plain wrong - in modern times a claim of females being oppressed has such political weight that no serious scientist should have claims based on partial data. Then there is this other thing: besides ex.boyfriends having the urge to call their former better parts names - how many of the bad words (assuming they are really bad and not something like: 'this was a mistake because...' or 'you looked better in another rock' etc) were written by females? This again causes serious problem in our culture sliding ever faster into matriarchat.

Yet another thought I had - according to modern social science the gender thing is nothing more than a cultural construct. How does that work here - are these abused females sure about their identity and how many of the abusers can be culturally identified as males and females and how does that look like in a comparison between all combinations?

Besides all this, I do not think we can have facts and reason based arguments about such subjects so I apologize and commit for searching of reeducation camp in the vicinity, being white old male etc.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[houghi]

They are not studying everything at the same time. They study something very specific. They study "Abuse on twitter". This is not so different to "Xmas messages on twitter".

So you first see how many messages are send. That you compare to the total amount send. This both in total and per individual. You will see that some get none and some get a lot.
You can even analyze from how many people it is from. You will see some will send nothing and some will send a lot. Some will even send something to themselves.

Once you have that information, you can look at different factors. e.g. country of where the message comes from and is send to. You can also loom at age, gender, activity in general per account and a lot more things.

The focus could be a conclusion of a genral research. You should not START with a focus group, because that will skew the results.

As you stated,the best social studies tend to take big trends and parse then into pieces. If you start with only women, you start with peices already.

They should have gone with "Abuse on Twitter" instead they went with "Abuse on women that use twitter". This is just as horrible as looking for "Criminal behaviour among black males" or "Greed among the Jewish population" or "Patriachial behaviour among fat bold white males". Because you are clearly steering the investigation.

And let us look a bit closer. From the website: "778 women politicians and journalists". So not only are these women, these are women in jobs that are in aprofession that will get controversial reactions, no matter what.

e.g. if they have an opinions on e.g. birth control, no matter their side, somebody will be against their opinion. And that is what people will tweet. So that number of one every 30 seconds suddenly sounds very low. It is ONLY one every 30 second? That's it?

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could google for yourself you know. This one aims at celebrities, but there's others that show the same trend for the general public. https://demos.co.uk/press-release/demos-male-celebrities-receive-more-abuse-on-twitter-than-women-2/

Also, fun fact, women abuse people on twitter at the same rate as men, https://qz.com/692902/on-twitter-a-study-says-half-of-all-sexist-abuse-comes-from-women/

Those damn women hating women!

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't say it, no. But by omitting the rate at which men receive abuse, it attempts to paint that women have it harder than men. If it pointed out that a man receives abuse once every 15 seconds (that would be the assumed rate as other studies that don't try to whip people in to a frenzy has shown that men get abuse at a rate of roughly double than women), then it doesn't seem like much of a story.

When you omit pertinent facts, you are trying to weave a narritive that may in fact not be reflective of reality. This is often called lying by omission.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because its easier to make a sexist article than a good article.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[DaveV1.0]

Oh, I didn't realize that caring for a toddler was such a hardship that comparing it to running the risk of being killed or permanently maimed was a valid comparison. Are you a troll or just an asshole?

Re:What does problematic mean?

[DaveV1.0]

You mean a group of people with a specific characteristic are subject to attack based that same characteristic? Shocking! It is all just grievance studies, in this case, they have extrapolated high profile people to the whole of twitter to come up with a fake statistic. This is called sample selection bias.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[William Baric]

I'm French. I had to do a mandatory military service. The minimum was 10 months, but in my case, I did two years. The regular "pay" for a conscript was 531F a month (about $80 per month). This was given to conscripts so they could buy hygiene products (soap, toilet paper, razors, etc.), since those were not supplied by the army. Of course, only men were required to do a military service. Women could choose to do it if they wanted to, but they were not required to do anything. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. In all Western societies, men have it a lot worse than women.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Riceballsan]

is that even true though? ESPECIALLY on social media. Now if the topic were "men receive more abuse in online video games". Yes I'd fully expect men to be the majority, and trash talk goes out nonstop. Facebook and twitter? I'd be very shocked if men had a strong numbers advantage there, I'd expect it to be pretty close on a "has an account" rate, and I'd really expect women to have a fairly strong majority in "post count" etc...

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Shotgun]

Whatever? People see. a homeless man and his dog begging for a food on a corner in pouring, freezing rain.

What is their response?

"Poor dog."

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Ol Olsoc]

Good point. Men are called "fags" all the time on the Webnets.

Boom! You win the debate! (seriously)

I've been called names like that, encouraged to kill myself, and other forms of "abuse". Yet I just read those posts without a thought, until you brought that up.

And while I try not to act like that - with occasional slips - I don't think a thing of it.

So the question is Why? Why is something that means almost nothing to me and most other males, an unforgivable assault upon women?

It certainly isn't that women cannot be cruel. I've seen women go after other women and attempt to destroy them without any regret.

The idea that all spaces must be made safe for those who can brook no adversity or disagreement isn't going to work.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Mashiki]

Well that's pretty much the definition of ad homenim. You don't like what the authors are saying so you'd going for a character assassination instead.

When feminists run to the UN to complain that "it's the everyday-to-day run of the mill tweets" that are harassment, then the parent poster has easily proven their point that these people are progressive shills aiming for more censorship. You know, the same censorship that's been pushed heavily by the left for the last decade. To the point that they now claim that "disagreement is harassment." The authors are shit, just like the assholes who parrot the "1:4 women are homeless" or "11% of workplace deaths are female" or "1:3 women will be sexually assaulted" "7% of suicides are female" garbage, propaganda and bullshit. Then demand, that governments come up with programs(or throw money at these things) to specifically target these groups when men are lined up out the door, around the block and into the next couple of streets waiting for help.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[houghi]

With research there are no sides. Just look at flat eartheers, just because they claim to have a side does not mean their opinion is as valuable as tjose who know.

The data that was given was notresearch. It is an opinion. So screw them.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously spoken by someone who has never gone to war.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[dcw3]

As a veteran and 7 year single dad, I'll answer for you. Taking care of a toddler is cake compared to war. Got it?

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a card-carrying scientist and I call bullshit on this.

Gathering statistics ('a study', as it is called in the TFS), is not bad science of propaganda, it is gathering statistics. Comparing it with other groups (the 'control group') is interesting but not necessary for the numbers to be relevant.

If a study shows that 20% of drivers have fallen asleep while driving at least once in the last year [1], that is interesting information, even if we don't compare it with any 'control group'. What would that that control group be anyway in this case?.

Of course if you want to explain or influence such statistics ('do an experiment' as you call it) a control group may be useful or even indispensable, but that different from what is going on here.

[1] The number is purely for illustration, and is not real statistic.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[monsieurlepeanut]

I agree with all of this and it is all well reasoned. But, after naming the relevant fields of advertising, politics, and social science, how about mentioning that of journalism. "Fast Company" published this article which reviews the Amnesty International statement and correctly places it in the context of technological developments in the areas of artificial intelligence and social media. But what if they added a simple disclaimer at the end to the effect that this article makes no defensible claims in the realm of social science, so as to avoid confusion? Now that would be responsible journalism, don't you think?

Re:What does problematic mean?

[SharpFang]

"So expect a lot of research looking at various target groups: men vs. women, straight vs. gay "

I don't. As soon as a study starts showing "no specific bias" or "the group gets more abuse" the research is defunded, mothballed or otherwise buried. In current social sciences the only way to get published is to start with an alarmist hypothesis (misogyny, racism etc) and then trim the sample group until the data fits the hypothesis. In this case the entire male portion of the data was cut off to keep the study publishable.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[ewibble]

Also the words "shocking statistic" why is it shocking that a woman gets abused on facebook or twitter every 30 seconds? Half the worlds population of 7.7 billion people are online. At that rate the average person commits an insult once every 122 years. Yes that is shockingly low, but I don't think that is what they meant.

The maths:

p/r = 1/30 where p is the population online, r seconds per insult per person

30 * p = r

Also from (https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/) 3.1 million children die from hunger annually, that is 1 every 10 seconds, although you also need to take into account population, somebody actually died not had an insult directed at them online which they may or may not have read.

So a not so bad thing happens, not so often is now "shocking".

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Johny Drama]

and 3 out of 4 are men.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Ol Olsoc]

This. Women in the workplace must all think us guys all chum around together, plot to derail females careers, all like to work with each other, all get along with the boss swimmingly, never stab anyone in the fucking back, never call shit on crap work from the other guys, are never criticized, never emotional, always get the raise whether we deserve it or not. It just like a fucking vacation ever day at work. Right guys? And now if we ask you out, we're fucking sexual predators. The proverbial nest has pretty much been shit in, good luck with that moving forward.

Asking a woman out today in person is a version of Russian roulette. That's why dating sites like Tinder exist, So that the woman in her quest for complete control, can pick and choose who is worthy of her attention, and the male has some distance.

Fear not, becasue Tindr has the douchebag initiative, so that women can shame anyone. You not only don't get a date, they don't have to merely swipe left, but they can abuse you if you aren't worthy.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Ol Olsoc]

The idea that all spaces must be made safe for those who can brook no adversity or disagreement isn't going to work.

But that's irrelevant to the people who believe that it will.

It should be, because they will fail.

People who are permanently offended eventually have to be ignored. Because they will always find something to be offended about. Tyranny of the weakest means that if the state doesn't collapse on it's own, outside others who aren't racing to the bottom will just take over.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Pseudonym]

As I pointed out, you have to weigh it by the number who go to war. This is one of those rare situations where the experience of those who never went to war and those who never had children is relevant.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Pseudonym]

It was a "ha ha only serious" moment. But it's undeniably true that in countries where Twitter is big, a very small proportion of men go to war these days.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[Pseudonym]

Just to be clear, I was not trying to make a serious point. But that is precisely the point I was trying to make, yes.

For most men in most countries where Twitter is big, war is a rare experience, and even compulsory military service is rare for any country which isn't at risk of invasion.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[mapkinase]

You know why your question is rhetorical? Beause it's the only sane choice between blood boiling and rhetorical.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[chiefcrash]

This wasn't exactly simply "gathering statistics", was it?

After all, didn't they make comparisons based off the ethnic group of the women?

Didn't they also compare what effect (if any) political affiliation and profession had on the data in the "statistics gathering"?

the "study" includes a conclusion and a call to action. Is that part of simple statistics gathering as well?

Also, you can certainly create propaganda through nothing more than selective statistics gathering. Allow me to share with you some troubling statistics regarding Dihydrogen Monoxide...

Re:What does problematic mean?

[jedidiah]

Even merely training for military service is dangerous and can get you killed or maimed. It's NOTHING like caring for a toddler.

Many of us have actually done both.

Some things are just stupid and indefensible.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Ol Olsoc]

So the question is Why? Why is something that means almost nothing to me and most other males, an unforgivable assault upon women?

Societal expectations. Women are protected and men are sacrificed for society. Men are treated badly and told its their own fault. Women behave badly and are told its someone else's fault. Among many differences.

Essentially every time a news article like this comes out and people act on it to protect women, those very women in our society are treated as being less and less effective at managing their own lives.

The whole social justice process is self defeating. Safe spaces brings back segregation. Protecting women makes them weaker and less able.

Yes. The strange thing is that this promotion of women who must be protected and who are so delicate that asking them out can damage them emotionally, simply is not liberation, but the exact opposite, It is telling women that they are too weak to cope with life and that they definitely cannot cope with men. So since the woman is too weak - society must protect them. Victorian women would think that today's women are wimps that cannot handle life.

I've married to a woman who has had a very successful career, one who knows how to take care of herself. No one's fool. She would normally be considered a feminist. The problem is - she actually likes men. My thoughts on modern women's willful return to a state of weakness come from her. She thinks that modern feminists are an embarassment to all women. Screaming and yelling does not equate strength.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[hcs_$reboot]

Actually

People: 7.7 bn
Women (half): 3.850 bn
Women online (half): 1.925 bn
One woman abused every 30 seconds: one particular woman is to be abused, on average, every 30 x 1.925 bn seconds
Or every 1830 years.

That's not so bad, after all.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Penmanpro]

https://www.theguardian.com/me...

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Penmanpro]

https://www.theguardian.com/me... higher-proportion-of-men-than-women-report-online-abuse-in-survey

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Ol Olsoc]

https://www.theguardian.com/me... higher-proportion-of-men-than-women-report-online-abuse-in-survey

This isn't terribly surprising. And it will be quite difficult to turn the online experience into one that caters to the most sensitive. In general, men just let it go, yet apparently it damages women terribly.

I don't buy Georgie Harman's ideat that it damages men as well, but that men don't seek treatment. Sorry, other than a direct threat of violence, the insults and abuse are just background noise.

What is more, the attempts on some sites to reign this "bad behavior" in are inconsistent, leading to draconian suppression in some cases, but not others. I haven't seen enough to figure a trend yet. I do know some posts I've commented on have been deleted after a male disagreed with a female. You start out trying to avoid abuse, and you end up squelching civil discourse.

And then there is tumblr. This one is pretty funny, as Tumblr's "porn detection algorithms" flag some pretty innocuous things as pornography https://arstechnica.com/gaming...

Some of the more amusing things that Tumblr is protecting the sensitive from are some cute little candles a woman knitted. Some dinosaur drawings, two fully clothed males with their arms around each other. Spiderman's head, Alex Ovechkin taking a nap with the Stanley cup, a dog sitting in a shopping cart. Not in the article, but another case was a guy who collected gemstones and posted beautiful pictures online. Yup - Tumblr reported it as porn. The unfortunate irony is that Tumblr was a source of imagery for the LGBT community as well as women, who might feel a little awkward going to places like Pornhub or porn.com. They re pissing off the more sensitive among us.

And I don't have the hard data, but I suspect that the heavy hand of suppression is weighted toward keeping the men in line. Not certain about that, but a number of the things I've found suppressed were right after a male disagreed with a woman's post. None were abusive or profane, just simple disagreement.

So back to the abuse - how do we eliminate abuse when some people consider not agreeing with them as abuse? I've seen people do exactly that over the years. And the Jessica Price twitter assault on a guy who had a respectful criticism shows it continues.

The only way to avoid going down that perpetually offended rabbit hole is to ignore their demands.

Re:What does problematic mean?

[hey!]

You aren't supposed to use mod points for disagreement. You're supposed to use comments for disagreement, as you just did.

As for your comment, while controlled double blind experiments are the gold standard for evidence for experimental science, in many kinds of even natural sciences it does not apply (e.g. geophysics or astronomy). Not every scientific paper describes an experiment.

Re: What does problematic mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but you see they don't count. Men are all worthless misogynists, didn't you get the memo? All women are perfect angels and can do no wrong, and must never be criticized in the slightest.

Of course it's all bullshit. Anyone, male or female, if they are honest, knows this. But the powers that be feel it's beneficial to THEM to perpetuate a false "battle of the sexes" and continue to demonise everything masculine.

Never mind that 9 out of 10 workplace deaths are men; never mind that 75% of all homeless are men; never mind that by the same criteria used to generate the "shocking" statistic that "1/2 of all women are victims of violence at some point in their lives", that 2/3rds of men are also victims of violence. Never mind that the majority of child abuse (when all forms thereof are considered) is actually committed by women. Never mind that it is men at a ratio of well over 90% that are sent to die in wars. Never mind that the Australian Federal Government's "Workplace Gender Equality Agency" is staffed by a 90% female staff (Source: https://i.imgur.com/7TwJmGV.jpg). Never mind that men are always discriminated against in divorce and custody proceedings.

No, disregard anything that doesn't push the approved narrative, or that might look at the underlying causes of our societal problems that affect both men and women, regardless of whether it disproportionally affects one or the other more.

Oh, and don't even question the official narrative. Remember, you must "listen and believe". Evidence is only asked for by evil misogynists, because the whole of STEM and the very idea of any such thing as "empirical evidence" is an evil construct of the racist, misogynist patriarchy.

And whatever you do, never talk to an intelligent woman that genuinely appreciates the men in her life. You might end up finding out that there are women out there that are as thoroughly disgusted by this disingenuous rubbish as most men are.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

No comparison for the same happening to male politicians?

Re:Hmm

[quenda]

No, the whole story is an obvious troll. Let's just move on.

Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for Men

[Anonymous Coward]

Without a meaningful baseline to compare against, what does the stat mean? (from what I've read, they didn't bother measuring the abuse frequency against male tweeters - sort of the same as when it's mentioned the appalling statistic that 10,000 women committed suicide in 2016 whilst deliberately neglecting to mention that 35,000 men committed suicide the same year)

Men?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a peep about how many abusive tweets were sent to men, using the same criteria.

Why would that be, exactly? Is it because women are the weaker sex, and hence need to be protected from this sort of thing, whereas men are stronger and hence don't need such protection?

Or is it that nobody gives a shit about men, whether they are stronger or not?

Or maybe men get WAY MORE abuse on twitter, but pointing that out won't substantiate the desired narrative?

Re:Men?

[jimtheowl]

I don't want to ruin the drama, but what if both sexes got off Twitter?

Re:Men?

[mwvdlee]

The report also lacks information on the identity of the poster or whether it was posted in jest (i.e. using normally derogative terms to jokingly describe themselves or their friends, like how some rap songs use the N-word).

Re: Men?

[lucasnate1]

Ever heard of duels over honor?

Re:Men?

[sfcat]

Why would that be, exactly?

Because the study is about women. Look, if you write a book about how to improve aircraft safety, no-one is going to attack you for not addressing automotive safety as well. You are not part of some giant airline conspiracy to make cars more dangerous by denying them research, you are just studying something else today.

Ah, a bad car analogy. /. never disappoints for those. This is more like announcing you are studying aircraft safety but only studying when the wings failed but ignoring the crashes where other parts of the aircraft failed. And any scientist worth their salt would know to have a control group.

Re:Men?

[Rockoon]

then there would still be an infinite numbered of sexes on twitter

Re:Men?

[Oligonicella]

Wow. Horrible, circular logic. The study was only about women because the study was only about women.

No, the study was about bad tweets and they focused on those directed at women, culling those directed at men. Both men and women are people and both sets tweet. But intersectionality dictates you only focus on the group you wish to promote/protect/whatever and ignore the rest because it will reduce the impact of your conclusions. This is a conscious decision.

Re:Men?

[Oligonicella]

It certainly couldn't be men used as the control group, because the study is not about abuse by gender so that makes no sense.

Emphasis mine. It seems, however, the linked article directly disagrees with you:

a joint effort by human rights researchers, technical experts and thousands of online volunteers to build the world’s largest crowd-sourced dataset of online abuse against women

The study is exclusively about abuse towards a gender.

The study is not making any claims that would be validated by using a control group of male subjects.

True, which was exactly why men were excluded by conscious decision. You're dancing around the fact that it provides claims in a partial vacuum by selection bias (small group and hand picked as pols/journalists) and no base to compare against (other than a women's skin tone competition, ie: intersectionality).

Re:Men?

[squiggleslash]

I think the point is that question was "Are women getting a lot of abuse on Twitter", rather than "Do women get more abuse than men". I can perfectly understand AmiMojo being somewhat confused as to why you insist there is any useful information that could be gained by also measuring the amount of abuse men get when trying to answer the question.

It's not about gender in the sense that the question isn't about gender as a metric (you're not plotting a graph here with gender as an axis.)

You can, as a separate thing, also ask "Are women getting more abuse than men?", but that's a different question, just as "Are women getting more abuse on Twitter than Faceplace?" would be an interesting question, but an entirely different one. My guess is the only reason Slashdot is up in arms about it not asking "vs men" rather than "vs Mybook+" is because people here are less interested in tech than they are in being suspicious of anything that might be squinted at and seen as possibly slightly related to social justice.

And that's depressing. RIP Slashdot, news for nerds.

Re:Men?

[squiggleslash]

It was also about Twitter because it was only about Twitter. At some point you have to define the bounds of a study. Is a study bad because it's not asking a question you want answered?

Re:Men?

[Mashiki]

This "you only care about X and must therefore hate Y" is wrong on both counts.

So why is that a primary focus of intersectional feminism? You can try and weasel out of it with whatever bullshit you want, but when you can pull up a leftwing or progressive publication, or a lecture, or syllabus out of a university and it promotes that exact agenda. It's not a conspiracy, not anymore then it was of "political lesbianism" in the 1970's and feminists attacking straight women who wouldn't fall in line.

Re:Men?

[AmiMoJo]

So why is that a primary focus of intersectional feminism?

Because you don't know what intersectional feminism is. In fact it's literally the opposite of what you seem to think it is.

Re:Men?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what quantifies as a lot if you have no other baseline or group to compare it to?

Re:Men?

[thegarbz]

Why would that be, exactly? Is it because women are the weaker sex, and hence need to be protected from this sort of thing, whereas men are stronger and hence don't need such protection?

Because the study was about the variance in women and in a study about women studying men serves no purpose.

Poor babies!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some meany hurt their feelings!

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[microbox]

Typical "intersectional" reporting. What is the base rate of abuse? Always be suspicious of people who quote absolute statistics. If you look at the research on this, you find that men are abused more than women, and that when a woman receives abuse, it is more likely to be from another woman. But the facts don't suit the narrative of the poor innocent woman being persecuted by the evil mens. PATHETIC.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[Shaitan]

What are they even defining as abuse?

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[taustin]

"Any post made to a woman that we don't like, or that conflicts with our political agenda."

Duh.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[h33t l4x0r]

It doesn't matter. It's never ok to be offensive or insensitive to a woman, online or offline, no matter what you think about them personally or about their politics.

Except for that one fat slut, Stephanie.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[Dog-Cow]

Why does it have to be fixed? Are you going to just eliminate people who post abusive tweets? Because being "abusive" in this fashion has been a human trait since communication was invented.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[Aighearach]

An extrapolation is definitely not a statistic.

You might want to figure out what is going on before you decide on a pattern of aggressive verbal complaint.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[houghi]

They gave an example. "What a dumb bitch." is abuse. Should have gone for "Stupid cunt." and explain that it is the Australian meaning, where it is gender neutral.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[Type44Q]

What are they even defining as abuse?

The most important question of all. The answer is... zeroes and ones.

Re: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[taustin]

I'd be far more impressed if you weren't a craven coward, afraid to put your name to your insults. But you are, so who cares? Loser. Go ask Mummy for a cookie and some milk, it's bedtime for little boys.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[thegarbz]

Typical "intersectional" reporting. What is the base rate of abuse?

That IS the base rate of abuse. The study looked at variances in women, like women of colour, left vs right leaning posts by women, etc.

Stop being such a self important male.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[thegarbz]

Why pose that question when you're obviously not interested in the answer. I mean it's not like TFA has a big information bubble that you can click on with the heading "What is an Abusive Tweet?" Oh wait, yes it has.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[gweihir]

You know, I think this victim narrative is a huge disservice to all women, event though some seem to temporarily profit from it. It does reinforce the picture of women as poor, helpless, incompetent creatures and that is not good.

I'm not sure you know what that word even means

[guruevi]

Does the female version of the app come with rockem sockem robots attached? You're on a public platform where people's thoughts are brought to you unfiltered. I am surprised that only 1 in every 125000 messages is mean to a woman.

How about you ignore that 1 message and read the other 124999. Or like me, read none.

Re:I'm not sure you know what that word even means

[sfcat]

How about you ignore that 1 message and read the other 124999. Or like me, read none.

Because nothing generates clicks like rage and the algorithms are designed to generate clicks so they tend to show rage inducing tweets to rage-aholics aka people on the Internet.

How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[Jarwulf]

Do the 280 characters or less reach out and pull their hair and choke them?

Re:How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[taustin]

The people behind this "study" aren't feminists. They hate women as much as they hate men. Their specific goal with this sort of propaganda is to reduce women to helpless victims, because helpless victims need protectors. And guess who is (according to them) the only people who can be trusted to protect helpless (all) women from mean (all) men?

If all women are helpless victims and all men are psychotic rapists, then they (and only they) get to control everyone.

It's not about feminism, it's about power. Specifically, power over other people. Convince the world this is BS, and these same people will try to find or create another helpless victim group that needs their (and only their) protection. Children are always good for a few million bucks.

Re:How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[Mal-2]

I know where you live, bitch, and you have to sleep some time. https://www.amazonsellerslawye...

You can fit plenty of intimidation into 280 characters.

Re:How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[GhostBond]

You're totally right in everything you described...but how is that not feminism? Feminism is the vehicle used to push that.

Re:How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[serviscope_minor]

You're simply making stuff up to discount the conclusion. You didn't even read the article yet you are so very very sure it's wrong. If it's as bad as you say them finding a flaw in it ought to be very easy. So, why make up stuff and claim it as fact?

Re:How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[cascadingstylesheet]

I know where you live, bitch, and you have to sleep some time. https://www.amazonsellerslawye...

You can fit plenty of intimidation into 280 characters.

And nobody has a problem calling something like that, clear cut, from someone IRL who is actually a threat, "abusive". (Not to mention illegal.)

The problem is that it won't stop there, and doesn't stop there, with clear cut cases like that, and you really do know that.

Re: How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[taustin]

Your tin foil hat is slipping, son. But if you took your meds, the voices would go away.

Re: How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[taustin]

That's what you're supposed to believe, spoon fed to you by the same people pretending to be at the opposite end of the political spectrum. You're ever bit as much a tool as the so-called feminists.

Blind hate is easier to manage than thinking, especially if you're naïve and gullible.

Re:How is someone "abused" by a tweet?

[thegarbz]

Fuck you you worthless cunt.

^^^ Clearly not abusive language since I'm not pulling your hair or choking you.

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[Shaitan]

And what constitutes "abused"

Among the thousands of tweets per second

[bettodavis]

In the twitterverse, only 1 abuse every 30 seconds?

Damn, I'm surprised how well mannered and respectful Twitter users are.

And have you measured the rate of verbal abuse to males by any chance? no?

Don't worry. I'm sure you will bring balanced and objective reporting. I can wait.

I think I found her husband

[rsilvergun]

right here.

Same as real life

[Tablizer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Is this Slashdot or SJWdot?

[oogoliegoogolie]

I thought this was news for nerds,news that matters.

Re: Is this Slashdot or SJWdot?

[astrofurter]

It's News for Nerds because they used "AI" in the process of lying with statistics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re:Is this Slashdot or SJWdot?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Don't worry, this study will be used to tighten down the Rust Code of Conduct...

Re:Is this Slashdot or SJWdot?

[hcs_$reboot]

Slashdot justice warrior

Must be nice being special

[whodunit]

I'm called nasty names on Twitter all the time - I just had a random troll drop in to start sassing me not ten minutes ago - but apparently the abuse directed at me doesn't matter because I don't have a vagina. Really makes you think, doesn't it?

Re:Must be nice being special

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm called nasty names on Twitter all the time.

Wow, me too! What a coincidence!

Signed, nastynames

Context Is Missing

[Jane Q. Public]

I just looked at the published methodology.

I detect some issues with their methodology. Definitions of what constitute "abusive" or "problematic" tweets are explained in Appendix E.

Their explanations of the categories do not seem very precise. They are vague enough to include lots of edge-cases. Their examples are clear enough, but a clear example does not exonerate a vague criterion. (Hypothetical example: "I am going to murder you tomorrow" is certainly an example of abusive and threatening speech... but what else is in included as threating and abusive speech? Counterexamples are also necessary, else "I hate that rabbit in the field behind your house" might also be considered abusive.)

But more to the point, a full 55% of the tweets they flag as "abusive content" fall under the category of "other"... and that's a huge red flag.

They describe "other" thus: There will be some tweets that fall under the âother categoryâ(TM) that are problematic and/or abusive. For example, statements that target a userâ(TM)s disability, be it physical or mental, or content that attacks a womanâ(TM)s nationality, health status, legal status, employment, etc.

Uh... yeah. "Some" is 55%. And not only is this one the majority, it is a particularly vague definition. For example, if someone replies to an irate tweet, "Calm down! I know the Irish are famous for temper, but cool down a little!" is that "targeting a woman's nationality"? According to their description, it could be.

But here is the biggest problem with this study:

Nowhere did they compare this to any other groups. They singled out famous women and women in politics, but they didn't compare against famous men and men in politics.

And since there is no such comparison, it's all pretty much meaningless.

What if famous men and men in politics are "abused" on Twitter every 31 seconds? Or every 28 seconds?

Without that knowledge, does the study really say anything other than "the subset of people we chose got 'abused' at this rate?"

So what? Nothing to compare it to makes it pretty much useless knowledge.

While what they say may be true,

Re:Context Is Missing

[Jane Q. Public]

Pardon the bad characters in the text... that's what I get for copying and pasting from the original material and forgetting about Slashdot's refusal to update to a modern character set.

Re:Context Is Missing

[CaptainDork]

Trump is the most abused male on Twitter.

Hell, he's the most abused male OFF Twitter.

If those statements aren't true, it's not because I don't try.

Re:Context Is Missing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine these researchers could have combined all the abusive and problematic tweets they found and the sum would still be less than what Trump faces.

Does that mean the abuse sent at Trump is somehow worse than misogyny, or even wrong?

Some people earn their consequences.

Re:Context Is Missing

[Tom]

Thanks for the analysis. This is exactly what I wondered about. Sad that commentators on /. need to point these things out, such things should be part of the articles about the study.

Re:Context Is Missing

[AmiMoJo]

If you bother to read TFA you will find that there is a text box where you can try out different text to see if the algo thinks it is problematic. Let's try your "I hate that rabbit in the field behind your house" example.

"This tweet seems not problematic or abusive." Rated 10% "light".

How about "Calm down! I know the Irish are famous for temper, but cool down a little!" That is rated not problematic, 14% "light".

So it seems your fears are unfounded and if you had RTFA you could have discovered that for yourself. It's almost as if they predicted your response and made sure to address it.

Also note that the study only includes the 1 every 30 seconds stat in the summary as a simple reference point for the volume of abusive tweets, it's not making any claims about that being particularly bad or worse than anything else. The study is more focused on the nature of the abuse, or the relative volumes directed at different sub-groups.

Re:Context Is Missing

[ZombieCatInABox]

Well, that's only fair, since he's also to most abusive male on Twitter.

Re:Context Is Missing

[cascadingstylesheet]

If you bother to read TFA you will find that there is a text box where you can try out different text to see if the algo thinks it is problematic. Let's try your "I hate that rabbit in the field behind your house" example.

"This tweet seems not problematic or abusive." Rated 10% "light".

How about "Calm down! I know the Irish are famous for temper, but cool down a little!" That is rated not problematic, 14% "light".

So it seems your fears are unfounded and if you had RTFA you could have discovered that for yourself. It's almost as if they predicted your response and made sure to address it.

Also note that the study only includes the 1 every 30 seconds stat in the summary as a simple reference point for the volume of abusive tweets, it's not making any claims about that being particularly bad or worse than anything else. The study is more focused on the nature of the abuse, or the relative volumes directed at different sub-groups.

Oh yes, I'm sure.

Twitter says themselves that they aren't going to to do arbitrary and unfair things, so I guess that means they aren't! Whew, glad that's settled then.

Re:Context Is Missing

[CaptainDork]

Some people earn their consequences.

Not specified in the study, and indeed negligently absent is a blind study to determine the predictability of a person being a troll magnet.

That would have worked well to adjust for bias.

In my class, "The Sociology of Gender," (way back), we each went to a Yahoo! chat room for adults, one session as Bob and one session as Alice.

I was the only male in the class of 15. We all gathered behind whomever was driving the computer for the next few days and observed as we each pretended to be Bob. It was boring as hell. Men did not talk to men. Women rarely talked to men. Because the "classroom" Bob was not Alpha, we were ignored by all.

When we switched to Alice, BOOM! "Information overload!"

Men AND women wanted to talk to us. The men wanted cybersex (consisted of wanking off to text chat) and women wanted to talk about kids, divorce, jobs, money, weight-loss, and how Mr. ________ was such a total ass.

When I got on the terminal, we had such fun, mostly at my expense.

I tried to role-play as female and I think my record for deviousness was 3 minutes. Women had their GENDAR up and the class was laughing so hard when one of the women asked, "Alice, what bra size are you?"

I was befuddled, and (count with me) "3 ... 2... 1 ... " "Too late asshole!"

I appealed to the women in class, "Dammit. If I'm 5'5" and weigh 130 lbs, what size bra, panties, shoes ..."

They wrote me a cheat sheet.

That's how I milked being Alice for 3 minutes with one woman.

The men? It was all, "Alice, what size tits do you have?" "Do you shave your pussy?" "Wanna have phone sex?" Man. I was beet-red.

My professor was right about her class when, on day one, she told me, "Welcome to 'Men are Shit 101.'"

Re:Context Is Missing

[dinfinity]

Well, to be fair, the addition of 'women' does imply that gender is somehow significant in that. Titles such as 'Every 30 seconds a Jew is abused on Twitter' would definitely lead to thoughts and questions about antisemitism.

Looking at some of their examples, the gender part is really quite insignificant:
- "hope you need the emergency services and they fucking refuse to help you. Sour faced twat."
- "B list politician. Grade A cunt."
- "Another thin skinned whiny little bitch."
( 3/8 of the examples they give in the slider viewer here: https://decoders.amnesty.org/p... )
Especially in Britain these are very generic and genderless insults.

I'd like to add that as far as internet comments go, these are also pretty mild. I'd wager that there isn't a Slashdotter around that would actually be offended by these and wouldn't just brush them off.

Re:Context Is Missing

[dinfinity]

because it stifles debate

I agree there, but I'd like to add that it does so in the same way and at the same level as pretty much all other ad hominems and a slew of other fallacies.
The internet is in great need of a commenting/microposting-system that effectively cultivates well-reasoned debate. To this day, Slashdot is still the best I've encountered.

toxic because it feeds the mob mentality that leads to doxing and threats of violence that cannot simply be ignored.

I'm not sure I can get behind (acting on) this. Has there ever been a case of a Slashdotter being doxed? There certainly are plenty of harsh (to say the least) ad hominems going around here.

I think the problem with doxing and threats of violence is that the targets serve as the personification of the arch enemy of whichever tribe the perpetrators have joined. I'm sure that seeing others pile hatred on the target du jour has an unwanted impact on them, but the general level of opposition against 'the other team' seems much more influential to me. As an example, I'd say that "The Clintons are running a child sex ring in restaurant Comet Ping Pong" is much more toxic (in the sense you described) than "Hillary is a fat cunt". Obviously "Hillary is evil and must die!" would be much more toxic than both of the above.

What I'm getting at is that comments should be judged on their insidiousness and dishonesty, not on the number of 'offensive words' in them.

Re:Context Is Missing

[AmiMoJo]

I was thinking about Twitter rather than Slashdot, but people have been doxed here. It tends not to be in the comment text, but rather via links.

Also, check the research, they didn't simply judge comments on the number of offensive words in them. Their system is actually a lot more complex than that.

Re:Context Is Missing

[dcw3]

"Calm down! I know the Irish are...."

I believe this is (in snowflake speak) a "microaggression". So, since it fits the agenda, they'll certainly include it. It's no longer allowed to be considered a joke since intentions no longer matter, only how it makes the recipient feel. Kinda like when an ugly guy approaches a gal, says something nice, and she says he's creepy, but a handsome man says the same thing and it's okay.

Re:Context Is Missing

[dcw3]

"How stupid can you be?" 63% - Moderate
"Don't be such a bitch" 85% - Very High

and yet...

"Fuck you" gets 10%

Re:Context Is Missing

[dcw3]

Oh, and my favorite so far...

"go back to the kitchen" - 90%

Re:Context Is Missing

[dcw3]

...and just to point out a bit more idiocy here

Fucking cunt gets 70% while Stupid cunt gets 95%

Re:One individual man probably gets more bad tweet

[phantomfive]

if you believe the extrapolation they did with their AI. (Why AI instead of simple arithmetic?)

It seems like they trained it to distinguish abusive from non-abusive tweets, using a relatively small dataset. Then they sent the AI out to classify at a much larger set of tweets on the internet.

Yes Ma'am...

[wolfheart111]

Ur allotted as much respect as anyone. Thats a nice gig though... Id milk it for all its worth. :)

Simple solution

[hvidstue]

Look away from the screen every 30 seconds

Re:Simple solution

[The-Ixian]

indeed

'Bout the same ...

[CaptainDork]

... as BBS back in the dial-up days.

Real Intent is Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

The study conducted by Amnesty International and Element AI should be ignored because the authors of the study designate any negative comment as an "abusive comment".

For example, all comments in a polite essay that successfully refutes claims of gender barriers in information technology would be designated by Amnesty International and Element AI as "abusive comments against women".

What is the real intent of Amnesty International and Element AI in producing this so-called study? Both organizations want to censor information.

Unsurprisingly, both organizations used Twitter as the vehicle for facilitating censorship. Twitter itself censors information.

In a previous century, Christian clergymen declared that factual statements from some scientists (e.g., Galileo Galilei) are offensive. The clergymen shouted, "Blasphemy! Heresy!" They used religious emotion to suppress the truth.

In the current century, Hispanics (and Africans) and their political accomplices declare that factual statements from some conservative populists (e.g., Ann Coulter) are offensive. Hispanics shout, "Bigotry! Racism! White Supremacy!" They use religious emotion to suppress the truth. (Consider one example of the truth.)

Upon hearing accusations of racism, Twitter promptly bans the writer (of the truth) and deletes his comments.

Suppressing the truth in the past or the present is unethical.

Deliberately censoring information is equivalent to deliberately spreading disinformation. Both techniques create a false impression of reality. Twitter is no better than the propaganda offices in Beijing and Moscow.

Amnesty International has now discredited itself as a human-rights organization.

Amnesty International-- really?

[Harvey Manfrenjenson]

The disturbing part isn't that somebody published this absolutely idiotic study. (I won't go into why it is idiotic, since literally every other post has pointed out one or more serious flaws in the study-- rarely have I ever seen anything ripped to shreds quite this thoroughly). No, the disturbing part is that Amnesty International was involved. THIS is what Amnesty International is doing these days?

I mean I'm not an expert, but I always thought Amnesty International was one of the most respected of all human-rights organizations-- the sort of organization I would donate money to. Not any more.

Re:Amnesty International-- really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I used to think Amnesty International was one of the few respectable charities remaining. I was really impressed when one of their street canvassers told me it's their policy to refuse donations from people who are on disability or welfare. Every other street canvasser for every other charity I've encountered, be it CNIB or Plan Canada or Greenpeace tries the "oh, well, a few bucks isn't going to hurt..." bullshit whenever I mention I'm on a limited income.

So yeah, I had some respect for Amnesty International, but after seeing this shit, fuck 'em. They've become yet another charity that has shifted their mission and operational strategy to become an organization that sustains the problems they purport to oppose, in order to remain relevant in an increasingly peaceful world. I'll bet if I invented a food replicator and showed them the plans, they'd burn the plans and shoot me in the head, just so they can keep "fighting hunger".

Are there no more charities that are focused on an endgame and would love nothing more than to be shuttered due to victory and lack of future relevance? This "perpetual charity machine" problem is what we get when the CEOs, chairs and board members of "non-profits" get paid six figure salaries. Charities should not be allowed to provide income to their members. Why should the CEO of a major charity get half a million dollars when their front-line volunteers who work longer and harder in harsher conditions get nothing to show for it? Why is that half a million not going towards the needy?

I've heard the argument that it's to attract people with the operational skills to run these charities. Bullshit. Anyone with that much talent is already pulling in six figures at a corporation they work at two days a week. They can take some time off from golfing if they really have the heart and the passion to run a charity, too. People like that are rare but they do exist, and it wouldn't be hard to find them these days with social networking, either. Corporate leaders are good at making money for themselves and their organizations. They are good at what they do, but their goals are incompatible with charity work, which is why they ruin so many charities -- not because they even mean to, but just because they're being themselves.

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[Anonymous Coward]

And what constitutes "abused"

Saying anything I don’t like.

Human Rights Watch

[Anonymous Coward]

Amnesty International (AI) has morphed from an organization promoting human rights to an organzation promoting the policies of the alt-left.

AI now demands that all Western nations maintain "open borders", which is tantamount to national suicide. (There is more information about this issue.)

By contrast, Human Rights Watch (HRW) remains apolitical. HRW promotes only human rights.

Re:Human Rights Watch

[JaredOfEuropa]

AI still does a hell of a lot of good. But you're right, the organisation is being taken over by people with a "different agenda". Same as happened to Greenpeace.

Re:Human Rights Watch

[zmooc]

AI is still doing many good things. However, they're ran by self-proclaimed victims these days while what they really need are people that understand statistics, which would fit in pretty well since they appear to be a minority:p

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[Red_Forman]

The solution is simple: women should not be allowed on the Internet!

Problem solved, once and for all!

A woman on Twitter is abused every 30 seconds

[DontBeAMoran]

I guess women either shouldn't use Twitter or limit their sessions to 29 seconds to avoid being abused.

Re:A woman on Twitter is abused every 30 seconds

[DontBeAMoran]

To be honest, everyone should get off Twitter.

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[jgoemat]

It's machine learning. So the researches trained the AI with what they think is "abusive" or "problematic". What would be really useful is to see one of the twitter feeds with the tweets they deem as problematic or abusive flagged as such. Or just click a button and take us to a random one of the million abusive or problematic tweets so we could see what they're talking about. What I saw looking through those pages were just two sample images with a lot of content blocked out. Show us the data, machine learning doesn't mean squat unless you know exactly how they were trained.

And a Trump voter ever 30 milliseconds.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds

And a Trump voter ever 30 milliseconds. So what else is new?

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[Bert64]

So called "abuse" against black female politicians should not be singled out as a "problem" unless they are receiving significantly more "abuse" than other politicians. Otherwise, the actual "problem" is "politicians are receiving abuse".

However none of this is "abuse", it is negative comments about someone. Who remembers the old saying "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me"?

Also worth considering is that politicians are by their very nature controversial public figures that will attract negative comments. There are negative comments made about donald trump every day, he's neither black nor female. Negative comments are made about hillary clinton too and she's not black. Infact donald trump probably receives far more hostile comments and empty threats than any other politician today and yet he's not crying about it like a baby.

If you want to be a public figure, and especially go into politics you can expect that people will disagree with you and even hate you. If you don't like that, choose a different career.

Re:Yet another bad study...

[Bert64]

which means ensuring that women using the platform are able to express themselves freely and without fear.

What about those who are using the platform to express their disagreement of or dislike for those women? Should they not be able to express themselves freely and without fear too?
Politics would become pretty pointless if you're no longer allowed to disagree with female politicians.

And what exactly is "fear" ? Why would anyone be afraid of an idiot posting shit? I've been called all sorts of things on slashdot over the years and yet still posting here.

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[Shaitan]

"Using a criterion you set?"

Well yes, ultimately we each set the criterion by which we define a problem. Did you think I'd let you set it for me?

In any case, we can hardly evaluate if their criteria are valid if they don't define them and therefore must assume they are not.

Re:One individual man probably gets more bad tweet

[mwvdlee]

I dare bet the AI wasn't much better than `if tweet contains any of these words, it's abusive`.

People are abusing statistics every 2 seconds

[ET3D]

I got this figure by extrapolating from this particular study.

How often are men abused on Twitter?

[iamacat]

It seems odd that a reputable study would not measure that as a baseline. Women are probably abused more because trolls think they are more likely to get a reaction. But I run a small political website and spend a lot of time deleting comments critiquing my anatomy or suggesting I engage in unnatural relations with POTUS. A healthy mixture of right wing and left wing trolls as far as I can tell. So there is a lot of trash on Internet regardless of who you are.

What the hell is this shit?

[NoSleepDemon]

What the absolute fuck has this site come to? If someone went back in time and told cmdrtaco what was to become of his beloved tech news aggregator after his departure, I wonder if he would have believed them? This place might as well not exist anymore; it is nothing more than a cash cow to grab ad revenue by posting the most obviously inflammatory bollocks its moderators can think of. Whoever posted this must have cum in their pants at just the mere thought of all those ad impressions. Fuck me, what a travesty. I'd say the new owners ought to be ashamed of themselves but they either don't know what shame is, or it's something they enjoy feeling. I've half a feeling that they even own those dopey nazi ascii posting bots as well; anything to make a dollar, the dirty cunts.

A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds

[ChatHuant]

...I can't believe she hasn't closed her account yet...

How to fix this

[AHuxley]

Make a version of invite only social media just for woman?
Make all men move to the dark web?

strange state

[gravewax]

That stat sounds incredibly low. The amount of shit and abuse on all social platforms for all users is insane. What that suggests to me is maybe Woman are not as abused as men on twitter?

How is it possible?

[bblb]

How is it even possible to be "abused on twitter"??? What the fuck happened to sticks and stones and all that? I swear, this is the most delicate generation in history that written on words on social media now constitute "abuse"... and an honest disservice to all the victims of actual abuse in the real world that their suffering is being coopted by snowflakes on social media who get hurt by words.

How much abuse was from other women?

[Qango]

How much abuse was from other women?

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[AmiMoJo]

They explain their methodology and there is actually a textbox you can put your own test tweets into and it will give you an analysis and "problematic" score. It's right near the bottom of the page.

As for a the GP's question, they are not comparing to anything external. The study isn't making the claim that it's worse for women, merely that women get a now quantified amount of abuse and that it affects certain sub-groups more than others (women of colour, women with left leaning views/politics).

As a general point if men were getting as much or even more abuse, it wouldn't make any difference. Also studying how it affects women is helpful for men being abused too, as often the solutions are similar for both.

Re:A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Joce640k]

More importantly, how many of those abusive posts were written by women?

(and how many abusive posts did men receive?)

That's what you get ...

[Qbertino]

... for using your real name on a generally anonymous internet.

Besides: I know of no one who know the basics about computers and the internet that uses Twitter for anything other than the occasional tip on some programmer meeting or a technical subject or problem they are currently working on. Which is just about exactly what Twitter was built for. Use it for anything else and the average IQ in the Twitter pseudo conversation drops sharply. See POTUS Trump for a good example.

Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Dunbal]

It also very much depends on how you define attack. I would rather like to see the precise definition before rushing to any judgement.

Are insults "abuse" now?

[sabbede]

Let's get real here. Insulting someone is not the same as abusing them.

Where exactly did this idea, that being offended by insulting language is abuse, come from? It's nonsense and we need to get away from it.

Um, what?

[cascadingstylesheet]

It's Twitter. It's like email, but 10000 times dumber.

That's like sitting there reading only your Spam folder and complaining about all the scams and porn.

So?

[argStyopa]

Ever play Call of Duty on public servers with voice chat enabled?

I get called a "motherfucking faggot" around once per second by random 12 year olds there, does that count as 'abuse'?

Matthew 11:8

[Hognoxious]

This. Without any baseline to compare against the statistic quoted is meaningless.

Re:Matthew 11:8

[Ol Olsoc]

This. Without any baseline to compare against the statistic quoted is meaningless.

Probably is. Reading TFA, it appears that this is yet another attempt to label the female of the species as a protected class. This would extend to women permanent status of children, as a sort of permanent prey that is easily damaged.

Whereas once upon a time, women were encouraged to be strong and independent, now for some reason there are people trying to make them permanent children.

And we have to face it, a person who is incapable of fending off assholes on the internet is hardly the archetype of a strong independent person.

Re: Matthew 11:8

[dwater]

It's meaningless anyway, since I'm sure there are many 30 second intervals that go by without any such occurrences...just plain wrong.

Re:Matthew 11:8

[Hognoxious]

Have you tried reading it, you fucking spastic?

Trump is the true victim here

[jbssm]

According to the methodology used in this social "sciences" study, Trump is abused several times per second. Should we all start treating him like a poor helpless victim, just like the social "sciences" want us to treat all the other "under-privileged" groups?

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[DaveV1.0]

Oh, they compared it to the happy joy joy world where no one is ever insulted at all. That is their control group.

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[DaveV1.0]

Who knows? This is the same kind of research that declared a quarter of all female college students are raped and came up with that by defining a random drunken hookup as rape.

Steam, too.

[BrendaEM]

I am sorry, but it's not so rosy on Steam for women, either.

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[cascadingstylesheet]

Also studying how it affects women is helpful for men being abused too, as often the solutions are similar for both.

Except that they aren't, not even remotely.

E.g. there are no "men's shelters" where you can go live just by making a claim without evidence, get a free lawyer there, etc.

Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Ol Olsoc]

It also very much depends on how you define attack. I would rather like to see the precise definition before rushing to any judgement.

I think you'll find that opinions run the gamut from actual abuse, to disagreement.

These claims often trend to the silly. My wife is asked out all the time on line. In today's world, that is sexual harassment. She just giggles and tells the guy he's not man enough, but many women need intensive counselling for the grave damage done.

Re:A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Ol Olsoc]

More importantly, how many of those abusive posts were written by women?

(and how many abusive posts did men receive?)

I've received lots of requests to kill myself, and other postings that qualify as abusive.

This study is not about men. It is about women, who must be protected from things.

Please...

[taylorius]

Just 2 pounds a month, can help us stop this. Please...

Simple solution

[p51d007]

STOP using twitter.

Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is

[cdsparrow]

Yeah overall studies like this perpetuate inequality. They say women can't possibly protect themselves so must be helped at all costs.

So now we are teaching victim mentality and inequality. Seems like this is counter to the stated goals of femenism but maybe not counter to the actual goals?

What ever happened to the ol sticks and stones can hurt but words never can? Anyone who cares enough about what some random jackass says on the internet deserves all the consternation they can think up.

Re: Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for

[Shotgun]

"Did they compare to abuse to men?" Why does that matter? If men are abused online every 30 seconds that doesn't make this normal.

Actually, that would quite literally be the definition of "normal". And that is why that matters.

If I scream "GRAVEYARDS ARE FULL OF THE BODIES OF DEAD PEOPLE!!", you're not likely to get very ruffled, now are you. Of course not, that is normal. And it isn't exactly newsworthy. In fact, it might be newsworthy if someone of note tried to make hay over the fact.

Well, this "study" is trying to make out like women being "abused" online is abnormal, but what the gp is pointing out is that "people are being abused online". So women (being actual people) being abused online is normal and not newsworthy. The fact that a "study" is being published to point out the obvious is what is newsworthy.

Re:Yet another bad study...

[LynnwoodRooster]

which means ensuring that women using the platform are able to express themselves freely and without fear.

What about those who are using the platform to express their disagreement of or dislike for those women? Should they not be able to express themselves freely and without fear too?

It totally depends upon the political position of the women being disagreed with/disliked. If the recipient is liberal, then it's hate speech and abuse; it they are conservative then it is justified completely and those "women" need to shut the fuck up because they are spewing hate speech and should have their accounts closed down immediately and forever.

Re:But, but, but...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Two things:

1. Which society - the US or Saudi Arabia?

2. Examples of bias against women (measurable - not what you feel, but what actually the result is)?

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[pr0fessor]

There are so many misleading statistics out there and this is just another one. Their data set is very small 288,000 tweets to 778 accounts which is around 370 per account. They chose the accounts they where going to analyze by choosing ones more likely to be high profile and controversial, politics and journalism.

 

Re: Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for

[Cederic]

You appear to have missed the multitude of accusations aimed at Donald Trump that included the term 'cock holster', let alone the constant barrage of abuse regarding how he's running the country.

Seems to me to be pretty much the same thing.

I do get the difference: When he complains about it people bitch about him complaining instead of giving him support.

Re: Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for

[Bert64]

Emotional pain is self inflicted, for it to have any effect you have to actually care about whoever's saying stuff about you...
People online can say anything they like about me, i don't care and it's not going to cause me any pain. If close friends or family said something it might hurt. You certainly won't be able to hurt me with your words, but you're more than welcome to try.

If care that much what random anonymous commenters on the internet say about you then you should seek some help from a psychiatrist.

Re: Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for

[Bert64]

No, white men get *different* insults flung at them because many insults only make sense when targeted at a certain audience.

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[AmiMoJo]

E.g. there are no "men's shelters" where you can go live just by making a claim without evidence, get a free lawyer there, etc.

If you bothered to simply google "men's shelter" you would find hundreds of results contradicting that claim.

this masks real abuse

[Micah NC]

Disagreement is not abuse. Failing to validate someone is not abuse.

I really believe articles like this are going to set women back because people are going to think abuse against women is just a lot of exaggeration and whining.

You can't address the real problem until you can be confident you are dealing with real instances.

I say this as a man with a wife, two daughters, a mom, and two living grandmas.

"Problematic"

[QuadEddie]

'Problematic' is code for speech that the left would like to silence. This could be fucking anything, so including it to make your shocking headline means that the real problem is severely overstated.

Sad to see the comment count on this article

[rbrander]

versus the comment-count on more articles nearby that arguably fit the "news for nerds" description much better. It used to be rare to see a /. post so failed that the comment-count was two digits. Now it's common. 47 comments on "most powerful GPS", 26 on "200 million smartphones". I don't think the current /. crowd cares much about those kind of stories any more.

But here we are with 300+ on a sociological/political topic. The vast majority of them negative. More of a pile-on than a discussion worth reading, I got bored quickly. (Though the story of the guy who had to pretend to be "Alice" was great. I notice none of the pile-on gang replied to *that* post with some claim it was a flawed study that proved nothing. Switching claimed gender and getting an utterly different experience immediately, strikes me as a very clear scientific study, particularly as it is repeated with every class by the professor, semester after semester, and the outcome is, classic science here, reliably replicable)

The stated numbers suggest 4 ugly notes per day, per person - enough to make me drop my landline if they were phoned to me. Speaking of women just walking away from a medium, as I read through this topic, I couldn't find a post that was clearly from a woman. Maybe there were lots of posts by women slashdotters who happened not to mention it, but I frankly doubt it. I think there are barely any women at all reading this or commenting on it, and any that are, are reticent to mention their gender. How much time am I going to want to spend on a forum like that? It has more limited participation than friendlier ones, fewer points of view.

For anybody who wants another point of view, my big Xmas present this year was running into the excellent and funny prose of journalist Laurie Penny, who wrote a "long read" on her decade of experience with social media and being a huge magnet for online abuse:
https://longreads.com/2018/03/...

Slashdot is just becoming a poor place to read any discussions of technology news, and a great place to read a pile-on about politics, but not about real politics like tax rates or industrial regulation or public programs; just the endless, tedious "my group is hard done by" bickering of politics-as-two-sports-teams. Got bored with that on USENET in the 1990s.

I now spend fewer minutes per week on slashdot than I used to spend per day. It's a shame.

Re: Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for

[dcw3]

People like you are the reason we have so many snowflakes. If someone can't call you a name w/o you shrugging it off, then you have a problem. It's not the worlds issue to make your little corner of the planet a safe space. If you didn't get called names as a kid, you lived a sheltered life. When people cross the line to physical abuse, I'm there for you. But having been a victim of both as a kid, the verbal never even came close to the physical.

'A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds'?

[TurgidFinger]

Well then, I'd say THAT woman needs to close her account. Ba-Boom! Thank you! I'll be here all week, avoid the veal!

You mean NIGGER

[Anonymous Coward]

If NlGGERS can profit by using NlGGER then its only fair that anyone else can profit from using NlGGER.

Unless NlGGERS oppose equality and support NlGGER segregation.

Re:Why doesn't she change her Twitter handle?!

[IHTFISP]

Yes, congratulations on spotting my tongue-in-cheek sarcastic malapropism. Well done, Professor. ;-)

Re: Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for

[ewibble]

No of course not nothing about the size of his hands, relate to the size of his penis. The reason it was picked up, is because it seemed to bother him so the media (not some random jerk on the internet) went with it.

The people write these type of studies are the ones trying to use the fact that women are weak. Boo hoo women are getting insulted how shocking. Women are not weak, in my experience much more emotionally strong (and nasty) than men, but acting the victim gets them what they want. Women don't buy the sob stories from women as much as men. It has been men's role in society to be the protectors, if you truly want equality protect your own self, and stop whining about it.

Glutton

[MattBear]

She must be a glutton for punishment, time to delete her account maybe?

Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Ol Olsoc]

Do that to a muslim and they may throw acid in your face

Frightened aren't you? Danger around every corner - the Universe wants to hurt you, and you are plum terrified. Now get back to your HEPA filtered safe room, the very air is poisonous - I saw that in an onlinee forum.

Twitter - a toxic place for women

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter - a toxic place. FTFY

Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Ol Olsoc]

So your wife is an abusive cunt. Good to know. The proper response is no,or possibly I'm seeing somebody.

Oh, so precious, so tender, so fragile we are. So easy to hurt and give big booboos to.

Asking a woman that they know is married is hardly the actions of an honorable man. Pulling that stunt, they should be happy that they were only told they weren't man enough.

Don't cry now.

And how many...

[Jerry Rivers]

...of the abusers are women? Whether abusing other women, or abusing men? Or, does this study consider all women to be delicate flowers who would never hurt a fly without provocation?

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[gweihir]

Naaa, men cannot be abused and cannot be victims. That is a privilege of women.

And yet it must be worth it...

[edris90]

Twitter there's not necessary two living in a reasonably decent life. If you don't like the way people treat you don't hang out where those people are. It's not like anybody actually needs Twitter but it sometimes people find it worth putting up with. If you don't like it don't use it.

Not convinced

[Bruce66423]

It's a game that has the newspapers reporting on the 'offence' taken, encouraging the attention seeking to shout their outrage, and with journalists harassing the original commentator whose remarks caused the twitter storm. Everyone is happy - except those attempting to have a sensible conversation. Given that I doubt it will stop soon...

Amnesty should do better

[Bruce66423]

When it indulges in this sort of bad science, it brings their reputation for reliable reporting in their main area of activity into question. Sad; they used to do a good job.

And....

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

And how often are men abused on Twitter?

I'd guess at least as often, if not more. It's a different kind of harassment (generally non-sexual) but if you think men get a happy-happy-joy-joy experience on Twitter then you're either woefully misinformed or the proud owner of a serious head injury.

So what?

[sproketboy]

Wahhhhmen.....

Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Ol Olsoc]

Considering that women are generally the ones that initiate divorce and that you don't really know if people are married online, she's a cunt that's rationalizing her own bad before based on her projection of what they're thinking.

Also the confusion between what people do and what they're is incredibly immature. Guys are going to ask random women out because there isn't really any alternative other than celibacy or going gay.

Your wife is acting like a bitch responding like that. Simply saying no is hardly a huge imposition.

They know she is married - it's right in her bio.

And seriously, you are utilizing the actions of a cunt by telling me all about what she "is", without knowing the situation. Don't be a cunt.

Poor lady

[dromgodis]

A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds

Poor her! I know that it is not the victim who should make a change, but perhaps she should consider hanging out on another social media platform instead?

That'S a very low rate.

[stooo]

>> A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds
That'S a very low rate, considering hte number of tweets published every second (6000)

Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M

[dcw3]

Keep your internet out of the kitchen!

I wonder

[newsyBee]

Would this study still be so thoroughly criticized here if the subject wasn't women?

Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is

[Ol Olsoc]

My wife is asked out all the time on line. In today's world, that is sexual harassment. She just giggles and tells the guy he's not man enough

What a cunt. She could have just said she's married, rather than cutting a guy's balls off every time one shows interest. She better not say this to peoples' faces, she could come home with a black eye and a bloody nose for that kind of talk.

Oh, little snowflake, it is apparently easy to give you booboo feelings. Perhaps you are not man enough to take any negativity? I told my wife, and she said she was so sorry that she gave you hurts.

A few words completely emasculate you. Sad. Now give mommy and daddy's laptop back to them, and come back when you are out of middle school, and off of Ritalin.

Bring up your trolling game, because you are getting boring by just repeating yourself.

Peace out.