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I think anyone remotely familiar with the internet won't be surprised by these outcomes. Of course the occasional reality check is always good. I wonder to wha

I think anyone remotely familiar with the internet won't be surprised by these outcomes. Of course the occasional reality check is always good. I wonder to what extent plucky startups expect abuse when they put pop-up chat dialogs in their products. I imagine it's inescapable that some percentage of your user base is going to see it as an invitation to respond poorly. Something door-to-door salespeople and telemarketers learned long ago. I suppose abuse filtering is still an unsolved problem waiting to make someone rich.

laci27 9y ago
I'm using the net (As a guy) for 20 years now, and I was surprised. This is taking place at an alarming scale. Some parents really missed the mark in teaching their kids basic human manners, and I'm not even talking about the golden rule...
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  I am really curious. You say you have used the net for 20 years now, so how can you be surprised about this? Have you not exposed yourself to other anonymous forums? They're all filled with vitriol and disrespect.
  - tim333 9y ago
    As another surprised guy I'm aware people post bad things on the internet but I wasn't aware of the degree of difference between having a male and female picture as I haven't tried that.
    - Jaruzel 9y ago
      Surprised here also (I'm a guy in my 40s; 25 years online) - I know there are people online with no manners, and I go out of my way not to interact with them, but the sheer level of abuse shown here (and sadly elsewhere too) constantly amazes and upsets me. The obvious thing to do is to remove anonymity from the Internet. However then what do we do about peoples rights[1] to free speech? --- [1] Not every country gives this right to it's populous.
      - slavik81 9y ago
        > The obvious thing to do is to remove anonymity from the Internet. That would force this woman to put her real name and photo up there. I could imagine she might not be comfortable with that.
      - gambiting 9y ago
        Facebook is a fantastic example that lack of anonymity does not solve anything. It takes 5 seconds to find groups where people openly say that all women are bad, immigrants should be shot, black people are responsible for all the crime etc etc......even though all of their friends and family can see those posts. It solves nothing.
        klez 9y ago
        See also YouTube comments when the real name policy was a thing.
        laci27 9y ago
        China is solving this problem. Every citizen will have it's own score (by 2019 or something) and you get points taken away if any of your online friends or family say bad things about the communist party. It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one:) here's the article: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-cre...
        Slansitartop 9y ago
        > China is solving this problem China is run by a authoritarian oligarchy that wants to suppress any challenge to it's power. The planned "social credit" system is part of that suppression. FYI, this oligarchy has a list of "perils" that include: > “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation [1] It's not trying to solve your problem with people's online lack of manners, and any imputation to the contrary is part of a smokescreen. > It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one It's the wrong solution, full stop. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lead...
  - laci27 9y ago
    Hi. Yes. I didn't go to any anonymous forums. I didn't have any reason to go there. For me, It's like visiting the ghetto for the trill of being mugged..
- BlackFly 9y ago
  > I'm using the net (As a guy) for 20 years now ... Early on people said "There are no girls on the internet," and the sentence was supposed to embody the anonymity of the internet and the renaissance notion that a person should be judged by the merits of their arguments and not the labels attached to them. Someone claims to be a girl? No, you are talking to a middle aged dude having a chuckle. Maybe I have rose tinted glasses here, maybe it was always jerks saying there are no girls on the internet. It morphed into "Tits of GTFO," because, given the anonymity of online dialogue, it seemed to some pernicious few that the only reason to mention being a woman was to seek attention. Online dialogue grew vitriolic, "Its only the internet," trolls would throw at anyone trying to inject civility and good manners into flame wars. "I f'ed your mom," became a bit of a goto for a general passing derailment since it got to most people. If OP mentioned any detail about themself, (racial, gender, age, relationship status, mental issues) this was used to make more specific insults. Moderators struggled to keep up. The networks got faster, streaming voice became possible on games. Voice isn't anonymous. The online dialogue started giving away details (age, sex, socioeconomic background), when team mates in pick up groups got frustrated with one another they started to reach for the sexist, the racist, the particular insults. Women learned not to speak up in chat to avoid the onslaught. A lot of us became inured to that "12 year old claiming to have banged our mom last night", but those ridiculous insults take on a nastier edge when that "12 year old" knows details about your life. If you regularly game with women, you will see it. The mere fact that people believe there are so few women gamers is due to their fear of speaking up, there are more than there appear to be on the surface. I do think the insults become more frequent when the jerks know you are a woman. They also know you are inured to the generic insults. Few women are inured to rape threats I think. I'm a bit surprised Eric didn't get racist comments in the OP's unscientific study. I'm happy you haven't experienced the internet as I have, it has always been a nasty place and a lot of us sat by and pretended like it was different than real life as if there weren't real live humans behind the keyboards. I've been guilty of that. I still don't know what to do when I encounter such nastiness, much to my dismay.
  - mi100hael 9y ago
    > Early on people said "There are no girls on the internet," and the sentence was supposed to embody the anonymity of the internet and the renaissance notion that a person should be judged by the merits of their arguments and not the labels attached to them. No, it was supposed to embody the fact that there were literally very few women on the majority of online message boards and chat rooms for a long time...
tomlock 9y ago
But also, the percentage of the userbase responding poorly also responded almost an order of magnitude more when the person on the other end was a woman.
- javadocmd 9y ago
  And I think we would all agree that the ideal amount of abuse heaped on your team is zero.
  - tomlock 9y ago
    That's obviously true, but it doesn't detract from the point that women, in this case and many others, are unfairly targeted for abuse, particularly online.
    - javadocmd 9y ago
      Ms. Enthoven covered that point rather nicely, I thought.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      I hear this all the time, but I'd love some stats on this. It's not like the internet is a great place for those who don't reveal their gender.
      - jjeaff 9y ago
        This article had stats. Several thousand interactions with a statistically significant difference. Exactly how many stats do you need?
        TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        I don't have a precise number, but I need more than one anecdote from one website. Preferably something with data that was rigorously obtained.
- 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
icc97 9y ago
There was almost zero abuse on the male cofounder image. So by what this story presents as long as you pretend to be guys plucky startups don't have to worry.
- petre 9y ago
  Not really. The cat got the least amount of trolling. What these people are doing is really asking for their time getting wasted by a bot before being transfered to a human customer support operator.
wruza 9y ago
Apart from logical reasoning of this phenomena, and being polite in general, I actually hate it when someone pops up and is like “hey, you have a problem”, on any site. Especially when popup covers content and/or site controls. Multiply that by someone’s low culture and voila. I’ll not be wondered if this $10M problem solves with help me button at right top of the screen, instead of popups.
- lagadu 9y ago
  Strongly agree. Humans tend to respond negatively to what they perceive as an intrusion. That said, what surprised me the most about the whole article was learning that sometimes there are in fact real people behind those random annoying chat boxes. I've always assumed I'd only get a self-help bot to reply so I would've never used them.

laci27 9y ago

I'm using the net (As a guy) for 20 years now, and I was surprised. This is taking place at an alarming scale. Some parents really missed the mark in teaching their kids basic human manners, and I'm not even talking about the golden rule...

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
I am really curious. You say you have used the net for 20 years now, so how can you be surprised about this? Have you not exposed yourself to other anonymous forums? They're all filled with vitriol and disrespect.
- tim333 9y ago
  As another surprised guy I'm aware people post bad things on the internet but I wasn't aware of the degree of difference between having a male and female picture as I haven't tried that.
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    Surprised here also (I'm a guy in my 40s; 25 years online) - I know there are people online with no manners, and I go out of my way not to interact with them, but the sheer level of abuse shown here (and sadly elsewhere too) constantly amazes and upsets me. The obvious thing to do is to remove anonymity from the Internet. However then what do we do about peoples rights[1] to free speech? --- [1] Not every country gives this right to it's populous.
    - slavik81 9y ago
      > The obvious thing to do is to remove anonymity from the Internet. That would force this woman to put her real name and photo up there. I could imagine she might not be comfortable with that.
    - gambiting 9y ago
      Facebook is a fantastic example that lack of anonymity does not solve anything. It takes 5 seconds to find groups where people openly say that all women are bad, immigrants should be shot, black people are responsible for all the crime etc etc......even though all of their friends and family can see those posts. It solves nothing.
      - klez 9y ago
        See also YouTube comments when the real name policy was a thing.
      - laci27 9y ago
        China is solving this problem. Every citizen will have it's own score (by 2019 or something) and you get points taken away if any of your online friends or family say bad things about the communist party. It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one:) here's the article: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-cre...
        Slansitartop 9y ago
        > China is solving this problem China is run by a authoritarian oligarchy that wants to suppress any challenge to it's power. The planned "social credit" system is part of that suppression. FYI, this oligarchy has a list of "perils" that include: > “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation [1] It's not trying to solve your problem with people's online lack of manners, and any imputation to the contrary is part of a smokescreen. > It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one It's the wrong solution, full stop. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lead...
- laci27 9y ago
  Hi. Yes. I didn't go to any anonymous forums. I didn't have any reason to go there. For me, It's like visiting the ghetto for the trill of being mugged..
BlackFly 9y ago
> I'm using the net (As a guy) for 20 years now ... Early on people said "There are no girls on the internet," and the sentence was supposed to embody the anonymity of the internet and the renaissance notion that a person should be judged by the merits of their arguments and not the labels attached to them. Someone claims to be a girl? No, you are talking to a middle aged dude having a chuckle. Maybe I have rose tinted glasses here, maybe it was always jerks saying there are no girls on the internet. It morphed into "Tits of GTFO," because, given the anonymity of online dialogue, it seemed to some pernicious few that the only reason to mention being a woman was to seek attention. Online dialogue grew vitriolic, "Its only the internet," trolls would throw at anyone trying to inject civility and good manners into flame wars. "I f'ed your mom," became a bit of a goto for a general passing derailment since it got to most people. If OP mentioned any detail about themself, (racial, gender, age, relationship status, mental issues) this was used to make more specific insults. Moderators struggled to keep up. The networks got faster, streaming voice became possible on games. Voice isn't anonymous. The online dialogue started giving away details (age, sex, socioeconomic background), when team mates in pick up groups got frustrated with one another they started to reach for the sexist, the racist, the particular insults. Women learned not to speak up in chat to avoid the onslaught. A lot of us became inured to that "12 year old claiming to have banged our mom last night", but those ridiculous insults take on a nastier edge when that "12 year old" knows details about your life. If you regularly game with women, you will see it. The mere fact that people believe there are so few women gamers is due to their fear of speaking up, there are more than there appear to be on the surface. I do think the insults become more frequent when the jerks know you are a woman. They also know you are inured to the generic insults. Few women are inured to rape threats I think. I'm a bit surprised Eric didn't get racist comments in the OP's unscientific study. I'm happy you haven't experienced the internet as I have, it has always been a nasty place and a lot of us sat by and pretended like it was different than real life as if there weren't real live humans behind the keyboards. I've been guilty of that. I still don't know what to do when I encounter such nastiness, much to my dismay.
- mi100hael 9y ago
  > Early on people said "There are no girls on the internet," and the sentence was supposed to embody the anonymity of the internet and the renaissance notion that a person should be judged by the merits of their arguments and not the labels attached to them. No, it was supposed to embody the fact that there were literally very few women on the majority of online message boards and chat rooms for a long time...

tomlock 9y ago

But also, the percentage of the userbase responding poorly also responded almost an order of magnitude more when the person on the other end was a woman.

javadocmd 9y ago
And I think we would all agree that the ideal amount of abuse heaped on your team is zero.
- tomlock 9y ago
  That's obviously true, but it doesn't detract from the point that women, in this case and many others, are unfairly targeted for abuse, particularly online.
  - javadocmd 9y ago
    Ms. Enthoven covered that point rather nicely, I thought.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    I hear this all the time, but I'd love some stats on this. It's not like the internet is a great place for those who don't reveal their gender.
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      This article had stats. Several thousand interactions with a statistically significant difference. Exactly how many stats do you need?
      - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        I don't have a precise number, but I need more than one anecdote from one website. Preferably something with data that was rigorously obtained.
9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

icc97 9y ago

There was almost zero abuse on the male cofounder image. So by what this story presents as long as you pretend to be guys plucky startups don't have to worry.

petre 9y ago
Not really. The cat got the least amount of trolling. What these people are doing is really asking for their time getting wasted by a bot before being transfered to a human customer support operator.

wruza 9y ago

Apart from logical reasoning of this phenomena, and being polite in general, I actually hate it when someone pops up and is like “hey, you have a problem”, on any site. Especially when popup covers content and/or site controls. Multiply that by someone’s low culture and voila. I’ll not be wondered if this $10M problem solves with help me button at right top of the screen, instead of popups.

lagadu 9y ago
Strongly agree. Humans tend to respond negatively to what they perceive as an intrusion. That said, what surprised me the most about the whole article was learning that sometimes there are in fact real people behind those random annoying chat boxes. I've always assumed I'd only get a self-help bot to reply so I would've never used them.