[Discussion] The Inconceivable Power of Trolls in Social Media

This is a follow-on to the nearly two year old topic "Trouble at the Kool-Aid Point." The intention is to provide a place to discuss the unreasonable power social media trolls have over women and minorities, with a primary focus on video games (though other examples are certainly welcome).

Prederick wrote:

So, in a hilarious development, a tweet I did for my job this evening ended up getting picked up by the QAnon crew. there's nothing to it, outside of the deranged fever dreams of the QAnoners, but suddenly, our account which on a good day MIGHT get a 10 RT tweet, now has a 400 RT tweet sitting there.

I'm hoping I don't have to explain this to my boss.

Is about FISA?

#TheStormIsInOurMentions

Nearly 3,000 RTs by Friday night, but bless my boss, he was cool about it.

Alec Holowka, co-creator of Night In The Woods (not our bombsfall) was recently named as a sexual predator/rapist by Zoe Quinn. He apparently committed suicide yesterday after his rightful shunning from the industry.

Of course, the usual suspects have deemed that Zoe drove him to suicide, and SJW cancel culture is to blame, not a monster taking what he thought was the easy way out after his actions caught up to him.

There was a long devlog for the Kickstarter backers before that, mostly about the rest of the team's response.

Right now a lot of people in the indie game scene have disabled their accounts or otherwise backed away from the internet. (Including Alec Holowka's sister, who originally announced that he had passed away.) Given the sheet amount of vitriol being thrown around, that's probably a reasonable course of action for those who can afford it. Some people need to be online for various reasons, of course.

It's a pretty rough spot all around--indie games is a small space in the end, and the dev community was already reeling from the victims coming forward. Alec Holowka was well known in parts of that space, both for involvement with the community and for part disputes. I'd never gotten any of the details--I'm not super involved in that specific part of indie games and most of the victims were at least two or three links away from me. Alec Holowka seemed to be getting to a better place, and it's sad that his story ended like this--some of his victims publicly stated that they didn't want him punished, particularly, they just wanted other people to be safe. (They've now had to deactivate their twitter accounts and hide from the mob because we can't have nice things.)

Hopefully this doesn't take attention away from the other abusers. Some people I quite liked have been accused, and I believe the victims who have come forward. No matter how they were towards me, if they were treating people like things behind my back they aren't someone I feel safe having around my friends.

On Thursday, Youtube decided to reinstate a bunch of white supremacist accounts because their dedication to "openness" is more important (not to mention lucrative!) than making the barest attempt to curb the demonstrable harm they're helping to inflict on society. While they acknowledged that the restored accounts are offensive and controversial, they apparently did not upload anything that Youtube thinks violates their community guidelines (artists representation of said guidelines below)
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/yqmp5KB.gif)

A really good read from Bombsfall on his relationship with Alec Holowka over the making of NITW.

https://medium.com/@bombsfall/alec-2...

karmajay wrote:

A really good read from Bombsfall on his relationship with Alec Holowka over the making of NITW.

https://medium.com/@bombsfall/alec-2...

You may never check this thread, Bombsfall, but...

Thanks for putting that out on paper. After reading all of that... I had no idea. I imagine I felt something was off in how you ghosted and how you also reappeared at times. I had no idea, though. I always missed you in the forums and figured you were off being busy and creative.

All I can say now is, you are so special, Bombsfall. Hang in there. You mean a lot to me and the work you have and will do is very important to me.

karmajay wrote:

A really good read from Bombsfall on his relationship with Alec Holowka over the making of NITW.

https://medium.com/@bombsfall/alec-2...

It can be a complex journey, especially as a man, to accept that you were a victim. To settle on the word 'abuse' and not feel shame. To believe you are not simply confused. To confront anxiety and depression head on. The physical manifestation of panic attacks almost saw me on my way. You've done so well, Bombsfall, to come through.

I wish I could offer more words. Thank you for sharing this. It's powerful and so very insightful. It may help many. Respect, brother.

SA xenophobic attacks: 'Fake' videos stoke tension

The lesson here, at least to me, is that Deepfakes really aren't as scary as we make them out to be. Humans are plenty willing to believe nonsense that confirms their suspicions without that much effort being put in already.

Fake news and propaganda are hardly new. But I think deepfakes are a different level. They can be used to convincingly target specific people rather than broad populations.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Fake news and propaganda are hardly new. But I think deepfakes are a different level. They can be used to convincingly target specific people rather than broad populations.

Deepfakes do raise the bar for declaring video evidence false. I recall back when bin Laden was putting out videos there were people who were convinced that the CIA was faking them with computer imagery. That was nonsense, because that tech didn't exist in 2003. It does now.

Though I think the actual use of deepfakes is going to be minimal compared to the number of times people dismiss clear video evidence because they heard about deepfakes once.

Right now though I'm more concerned about information gerrymandering.

“I’m clinging on for dear life. And I’ll never give up,” said Yiannopoulos

The words of a person already giving up.

“But holy f**king hell the base in America SUCKS. Frankly they deserve to lose their country and if by some miracle we manage to save it, it’ll be no thanks whatsoever to voters, readers, subscribers and ENTIRELY thanks to the few brave souls battling on the front lines, beyond all reason and hope."

That's a true patriot right there.

Thanks for the schadenfreude, OG. Made my day.

This chapter is called “Beyond All Reason.”

Hey, Milo:

IMAGE(https://www.dangerous.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IMG_6310-624x710.jpg)

It's funny. For all the right/alt-right argues that "SJWs" are an incredibly small minority, the supposed right-wing majority just has trouble keeping websites alive.

A lot of the right-wing agitators are kept afloat through being bankrolled by Republican billionaires or selling weird pills. Milo got cut off by the Mercers and then his replacement cryptocurrency billionaire patron, Matthew Mellon, died on the way to treat his opioid addiction with psychedelic rehab. Milo posted photos on Instagram of the two of them partying the day before Mellon's death.

Alex Jones, likewise, gets a lot of funding by hawking pills and other dubious products. He got kicked off YouTube again last week, after he tried to get around the ban they put on him for harassing the parents of the children that died in the Sandy Hook shooting. (For which he just lost his latest appeal in the ongoing lawsuits.)

There's a lot of people who grift by bilking bigots while riling them up with hate and conspiracy theories, but I'm encouraged by the apparent hard limit on their support when they they aren't literally being funded by billionaires. There are apparently fewer bigots out there than I thought.

mudbunny wrote:

It's funny. For all the right/alt-right argues that "SJWs" are an incredibly small minority, the supposed right-wing majority just has trouble keeping websites alive.

Weird how the "learn to code" brigade can't write their own video and payment processing platforms.

Gremlin wrote:

A lot of the right-wing agitators are kept afloat through being bankrolled by Republican billionaires or selling weird pills.

Sebastian Gorka went from being a Deputy Assistant to the President in 2017 to shilling overpriced fish oil pills that make outlandish medical claims in 2019. He even calls himself "Dr." which is only very technically true because he got a PhD in political science from the Corvinus University of Budapest, a doctorate that was awarded under questionable circumstances.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

Alec Holowka, co-creator of Night In The Woods (not our bombsfall) was recently named as a sexual predator/rapist by Zoe Quinn. He apparently committed suicide yesterday after his rightful shunning from the industry.

Of course, the usual suspects have deemed that Zoe drove him to suicide, and SJW cancel culture is to blame, not a monster taking what he thought was the easy way out after his actions caught up to him.

Do we need a thread for the #metoo movement that's sort of taking place in gaming.

The latest: https://twitter.com/prettydarke/stat...

who's Randy Mack?

pyxistyx wrote:

who's Randy Mack?

An indie film producer who was heavily involved in the Kingdom of Loathing fan community. The document linked from that thread spells it out, but the general context is of people close to the development of Kingdom of Loathing.

Since her Twitter account is now private, here's the link to the Google doc spelling out everything.

Exclusive: Amazon will let anyone answer your Alexa questions now

So who wants to guess how this is going to go?

The next time you ask a question to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, the answer might come from another Alexa user.

Starting today, Amazon is publicly launching a program called Alexa Answers, which lets anyone field questions asked by users for which Alexa doesn’t already have a response—ones such as:

What states surround Illinois?
What’s the proper amount of sleep?
How many instruments does Stevie Wonder play?
How much is in a handle of alcohol?
From then on, when people ask a question, Alexa will speak an answer generated through Alexa Answers, noting that the information is “according to an Amazon customer.”

The program launched in a private, invite-only beta for thousands of customers last year after a period of internal testing. Even with that limited group, Amazon says it’s already logged hundreds of thousands of responses, which Alexa has served millions of times. Those numbers will likely shoot upwards now that anyone in the United States can participate.

Prederick wrote:

Exclusive: Amazon will let anyone answer your Alexa questions now

So who wants to guess how this is going to go?

The next time you ask a question to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, the answer might come from another Alexa user.

Starting today, Amazon is publicly launching a program called Alexa Answers, which lets anyone field questions asked by users for which Alexa doesn’t already have a response—ones such as:

What states surround Illinois?
What’s the proper amount of sleep?
How many instruments does Stevie Wonder play?
How much is in a handle of alcohol?
From then on, when people ask a question, Alexa will speak an answer generated through Alexa Answers, noting that the information is “according to an Amazon customer.”

The program launched in a private, invite-only beta for thousands of customers last year after a period of internal testing. Even with that limited group, Amazon says it’s already logged hundreds of thousands of responses, which Alexa has served millions of times. Those numbers will likely shoot upwards now that anyone in the United States can participate.

If you've always wanted to work for Amazon, now's your chance!

I can't wait to hear Alexa's answer to "Alexa, what is the Jewish Question?"

Have these people even seen the internet? How are they going to prevent hate speech or propaganda when bad actors inevitably flood it? I'm skeptical bordering on nope the f' out.

Amoebic wrote:

Have these people even seen the internet? How are they going to prevent hate speech or propaganda when bad actors inevitably flood it? I'm skeptical bordering on nope the f' out.

Yeah, it reeks of an idea from a young developer who has led a sheltered life, doesn't it?

How can you trust anything Alexa says if she can't even answer what states surround Illinois?

I just asked Siri and she knew immediately. What kind of sh*tty computer is running Alexa?

Yeah, exactly what we need: more idiots telling other idiots about things they have no idea about. We've already seen how that works and it leads to anti-vaccination, Donald Trump, etc. Lol.