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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Will Trolls Break the Internet? Part 2

Lindy West, unabashed SJW, in a post on the Daily Dot today, challenges the notion of Internet "neutrality," and predicts that if social media site owners like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter refuse to protect their users from harassment and intimidation, others will take their place.

And she means to win this "culture war," too:

There’s only one thing, really. I want a site with a fucking backbone. I want a site that has an ideology, that is explicitly feminist and anti-racist, that is proactively progressive and cares more about users than their abusers.  

4 comments:

  1. Great post. She's right, too.

    Hopefully her wish will come true before the law intrudes on the net. A new law in the UK has been enacted that will see trolls get jail terms. Which is actually pretty terrible, because most trolls are sad people who like the validation of their horrible tweets getting attention. One woman who was caught out and publicly shamed killed herself. It would be better for all of us AND the trolls if things didn't get to this state.

    Now that powerful people are coming after the trolls, Facebook and Google and the rest will eventually impose some sort of crackdown - because they can. They're private companies, after all, who get to dictate how they will provide their service. And when they decide the law suits coming out of Europe are a pain, we might not like what happens next very much.

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    Replies
    1. I can understand jail terms for damages, not jail terms for dissent/disagreement. That's Orwellian.
      Those who desire echo chambers are free to create them.

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  2. oops, sorry. I swear I hit "preview."

    Anyway, no thanks. I've been involved in feminist and antiracist spaces online and my experience is not that good. They start out with good intentions but tend to get coopted by the LOUDEST, most absolute voices that are online 21 hours a day, to the detriment of more thoughtful, nuanced ones who demonstrate evidence of actual meaningful contact with the Real World. lol

    Acceptable discourse throttles to a trickle; "discussion" consists of rehashing the same boring pablum over and over... so people lose interest and migrate to places where there's actual life going on. Exactly what we see with the manosphere. They've successfully driven everyone off but the True Believers and have they said anything new since like... 2011?

    I WOULD like to see people prosecuted for damages-- I'm shocked that some of the GGers haven't been sued for publishing rape and murder threats under their real freaking names. That's ridiculous

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Thanks for commenting!