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That's not harassment...
Aug. 16th, 2013 08:13 amI read with interest a post on John Scalzi's blog yesterday and then read, with growing horror, the comments.
So near as I can tell, a particularly nasty piece of work from the Skeptic world who calls himself @ElevatorGate on Twitter (or did anyway) after the events in the elevator at a Skeptic Convention, has found a new game of stalking women (and some men) who hold opinions he (I'm assuming here) objects to and uses a Social Tool called Storify to store what they've said and then notify them.
Now, firstly, I actually think Storify is a cool tool, used as intended it's pretty interesting what it can be used for. Used as this twerp is it's downright creepy.
Things came to a head when various women asked the CEO of Storify to do something about the aforementioned Twerp and he basically said there was nothing he could do, they said the things in public and therefore they couldn't object to having them stored. Well, yes and no to that one, more in a moment, but then the blithering idiot told them that in a Twitter post where rather than just mentioning user ElevatorGate, where he may or may not notice even with a Twitter search, he used the construction @elevatorgate making damn sure he got a notification. Even worse, this CEO of a social networking company claimed that he didn't really do that.
Reading the comments on Scalzi's blog there's a bunch of nitwits who've come along to try out variations on the 'it's free speech' argument and as the women (and some men) said these things in public they were getting what they deserved and if they didn't like it they could get off the internet. Additionally, a bunch of them, turning into barrack room lawyers explained that what was being done wasn't stalking, wasn't harassment and shouldn't be judged in those terms.
So, here are my thoughts:
1. It's creepy, stalkery and harassment. Any real world analogue of what this creep is doing would fall into the broad spectrum of things I'd have words with somebody about doing to me or mine. Here I extend my privilege of being what is euphemistically known as a 'big bloke'.
2. Is it legal? Dunno, don't care, see point (1)
3. Is it infringing free speech to block his activities on Storify. Nope. It's up to them. If I were CEO of a Startup like this I'd have yanked his account citing the relevant part of their Terms and Conditions relating to stalking, harassment and douche behaviour.
4. Saying that you see no evidence that ElevatorGate is using his social footprint to point out people to harass would mean more if a bunch of people hadn't turned up on Scalzi's blog to defend them...
tl:dr version: If somebody is doing something online that would be odd or unpleasant in the real world then they shouldn't do it online, and the answer is not telling the victims to get offline if they don't like it.
So near as I can tell, a particularly nasty piece of work from the Skeptic world who calls himself @ElevatorGate on Twitter (or did anyway) after the events in the elevator at a Skeptic Convention, has found a new game of stalking women (and some men) who hold opinions he (I'm assuming here) objects to and uses a Social Tool called Storify to store what they've said and then notify them.
Now, firstly, I actually think Storify is a cool tool, used as intended it's pretty interesting what it can be used for. Used as this twerp is it's downright creepy.
Things came to a head when various women asked the CEO of Storify to do something about the aforementioned Twerp and he basically said there was nothing he could do, they said the things in public and therefore they couldn't object to having them stored. Well, yes and no to that one, more in a moment, but then the blithering idiot told them that in a Twitter post where rather than just mentioning user ElevatorGate, where he may or may not notice even with a Twitter search, he used the construction @elevatorgate making damn sure he got a notification. Even worse, this CEO of a social networking company claimed that he didn't really do that.
Reading the comments on Scalzi's blog there's a bunch of nitwits who've come along to try out variations on the 'it's free speech' argument and as the women (and some men) said these things in public they were getting what they deserved and if they didn't like it they could get off the internet. Additionally, a bunch of them, turning into barrack room lawyers explained that what was being done wasn't stalking, wasn't harassment and shouldn't be judged in those terms.
So, here are my thoughts:
1. It's creepy, stalkery and harassment. Any real world analogue of what this creep is doing would fall into the broad spectrum of things I'd have words with somebody about doing to me or mine. Here I extend my privilege of being what is euphemistically known as a 'big bloke'.
2. Is it legal? Dunno, don't care, see point (1)
3. Is it infringing free speech to block his activities on Storify. Nope. It's up to them. If I were CEO of a Startup like this I'd have yanked his account citing the relevant part of their Terms and Conditions relating to stalking, harassment and douche behaviour.
4. Saying that you see no evidence that ElevatorGate is using his social footprint to point out people to harass would mean more if a bunch of people hadn't turned up on Scalzi's blog to defend them...
tl:dr version: If somebody is doing something online that would be odd or unpleasant in the real world then they shouldn't do it online, and the answer is not telling the victims to get offline if they don't like it.
