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She wrote a script that found every Twitter account that followed 2 or more people from her list of supposed Gamergate figures (which included at least one majo
by makomk 10y ago
She wrote a script that found every Twitter account that followed 2 or more people from her list of supposed Gamergate figures (which included at least one major celebrity) and encouraged people to mass block all the accounts it found as an anti-harassment/anti-Gamergate measure. The result, in social terms, was that everyone was forced to choose between listening to one side or the other, including journalists who wanted to report on Gamergate, and their entire view of the other side was filtered through what that side said about it. It was, hands down, the single most clever and effective use of a technical tool to increase polarization and hostility online I have ever seen. (Especially since it had little impact on either determined axe-grinders who wanted to cause trouble by digging up inflammatory remarks and quoting them out of context or actual harassers.)
- brennen 10y agoIt was, hands down, the single most clever and effective use of a technical tool to increase polarization and hostility online I have ever seen. This seems like a nonsensical assessment at best. Use of the script was voluntary, and GG was an organized mass-harassment campaign premised on polarizing and hateful nonsense. The whole social phenomenon consisted of a distributed wave of hostility. I wound up adapting the script myself at one point to mass-block followers of a YouTube/Instagram celebrity who shares my first name and triggers a neverending stream of namespace collisions. It's a reasonable brute-force hack in an environment that lacks real features for dealing with a large population of griefers.