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It's also incredibly biased towards Wil (no surprise, as he wrote it). In reality, Wil himself was the harasser and abuser, and the reports against him were co

It's also incredibly biased towards Wil (no surprise, as he wrote it). In reality, Wil himself was the harasser and abuser, and the reports against him were completely justified. He got bofa'd and in response started reporting other users for even the slightest provocation. And it wasn't just reporting other users; he was specifically reporting a bunch of trans women, which really puts him in a poor light considering the fiasco with his Twitter blocklist that he put a ton of LGBT people on and pretty much ruined the lives of a bunch of independent trans artists who suddenly lost their source of income. Now it's certainly possible that a group of people decided to mob him with reports, but personally I think it's pretty likely that those 60 reports overnight were all legitimate reactions to his campaign of abuse against other people.

skybrian 8y ago
Maybe, but why should we believe this version of the story rather than the other one? Do you have a source?
- merlish 8y ago
  You'd be better off believing neither, but taking the participants' stories as what they believe happened. Then drawing your own conclusions. (Sorry, not picking on you in particular; I'm just quite annoyed to see this thread treating the incident as a spam problem to be solved technically. There were also people who really did not like Wil Wheaton, and then suddenly found him in their online home.)
- lilyball 8y ago
  My source is a whole bunch of comments on Mastodon that I read as the whole thing was going down, plus a bunch of more comments on Twitter talking about what happened after it was all over. I don't have specific links as I didn't save any, but there were a lot of independent sources on this at the time. Edit: found a new tweet that summarizes this: https://twitter.com/eiwbm_cat/status/1035716245914624003?s=21 https://twitter.com/eiwbm_cat/status/1035716245914624003?s=2...
- ghusbands 8y ago
  Wil does admit to some of it: "And for what it’s worth, the part of me that wants to apologize to the people who ended up [the blocklist] by mistake is overwhelmed by the part of me who was attacked really viciously by a lot of those people and feels like maybe blocking them wasn’t such a bad idea, after all." That directly supports the narrative that he publicly blocklisted some innocent people, hasn't apologised and is being mobbed for it.
  - eridius 8y ago
    I love how he says "by mistake" as if he didn't personally add a bunch of people to his blocklist deliberately simply because he was mildly annoyed by them. Hey Wil, when you personally are responsible for taking away the livelihood of a bunch of marginalized people, you don't get to complain about being "attacked really viciously" by your victims.
martimarkov 8y ago
But none of the alleged others have written an explanation about their side of the story so there is nothing to compare.
- eridius 8y ago
  They have written them, as toots on Mastodon and tweets on Twitter.
bena 8y ago
> pretty much ruined the lives of a bunch of independent trans artists who suddenly lost their source of income. Could you elaborate on this? I keep pretty clear of the petty squabbles that go on in the social justice space* so I'm not aware of this. *Not to say that social justice isn't important, however there is a section that is more interested in generating noise than change. I've found most of the very minor celebrities involved are of the "noise" variety rather than "change".
- mst 8y ago
  Wil used and popularised Randi Harper's personal blocklist after ggautoblocker stopped being maintained and Randi Harper's list ended up with a bunch of trans attacktivists on it after they took exception to her saying something positive about Jesse Singal because he'd written something positive about Alice Dreher's book which analyzed the attacks on a couple of people by the extreme-SJ lot and didn't sufficiently condemn the targets as evil in the process (because that wasn't what she was analyzing but, yeah, well, the internet). The result was lots of people whose only crime was having yelled at Randi getting blocked by lots of people unrelated to Randi who were just trying to rid their timeline of nazis and etc. - and a bunch of those people were artists who now couldn't easily contact potential employers via twitter, which apparently (in the sense that I know nothing about this, not that I disbelieve this) put a serious crimp in their careers. So a bunch of people experienced wildly disproportionate consequences for a single moment of anger online, as collateral damage from Wil trying to do something he considered good, and he's apologised for it but some people still believe he's transphobic because they don't feel the apology was commensurate to the degree of damage caused even if the damage was accidental. I don't really have a take away here apart from "we have no idea how to do personal social media environment curation in a way that works yet". Mostly I just feel kinda sorry for everybody screwed over by the situation, including the subset I otherwise dislike.
  - bena 8y ago
    So, in other words, he personally didn't do anything to "ruin the lives" of anyone. He trusted someone that shouldn't have been trusted and in turn people trusted that his judgment was sound when it wasn't because Wil is more interested in playing the role correctly than to actually affect change or get in touch with those who can. I'm sorry, there are a lot of people doing good work for social justice. Harper has never been one of them. There are those who use the platform of social justice to further their own brand and aren't actually concerned about getting people rights. It's unfortunate that those people's careers were affected by getting on the wrong side of a vindictive bully, but I wouldn't call it Wil's fault. And I find it funny that Wil is getting the heat for it when it wasn't his list.

skybrian 8y ago

Maybe, but why should we believe this version of the story rather than the other one? Do you have a source?

merlish 8y ago
You'd be better off believing neither, but taking the participants' stories as what they believe happened. Then drawing your own conclusions. (Sorry, not picking on you in particular; I'm just quite annoyed to see this thread treating the incident as a spam problem to be solved technically. There were also people who really did not like Wil Wheaton, and then suddenly found him in their online home.)
lilyball 8y ago
My source is a whole bunch of comments on Mastodon that I read as the whole thing was going down, plus a bunch of more comments on Twitter talking about what happened after it was all over. I don't have specific links as I didn't save any, but there were a lot of independent sources on this at the time. Edit: found a new tweet that summarizes this: https://twitter.com/eiwbm_cat/status/1035716245914624003?s=21 https://twitter.com/eiwbm_cat/status/1035716245914624003?s=2...
ghusbands 8y ago
Wil does admit to some of it: "And for what it’s worth, the part of me that wants to apologize to the people who ended up [the blocklist] by mistake is overwhelmed by the part of me who was attacked really viciously by a lot of those people and feels like maybe blocking them wasn’t such a bad idea, after all." That directly supports the narrative that he publicly blocklisted some innocent people, hasn't apologised and is being mobbed for it.
- eridius 8y ago
  I love how he says "by mistake" as if he didn't personally add a bunch of people to his blocklist deliberately simply because he was mildly annoyed by them. Hey Wil, when you personally are responsible for taking away the livelihood of a bunch of marginalized people, you don't get to complain about being "attacked really viciously" by your victims.

martimarkov 8y ago

But none of the alleged others have written an explanation about their side of the story so there is nothing to compare.

eridius 8y ago
They have written them, as toots on Mastodon and tweets on Twitter.

bena 8y ago

> pretty much ruined the lives of a bunch of independent trans artists who suddenly lost their source of income. Could you elaborate on this? I keep pretty clear of the petty squabbles that go on in the social justice space* so I'm not aware of this. *Not to say that social justice isn't important, however there is a section that is more interested in generating noise than change. I've found most of the very minor celebrities involved are of the "noise" variety rather than "change".

mst 8y ago
Wil used and popularised Randi Harper's personal blocklist after ggautoblocker stopped being maintained and Randi Harper's list ended up with a bunch of trans attacktivists on it after they took exception to her saying something positive about Jesse Singal because he'd written something positive about Alice Dreher's book which analyzed the attacks on a couple of people by the extreme-SJ lot and didn't sufficiently condemn the targets as evil in the process (because that wasn't what she was analyzing but, yeah, well, the internet). The result was lots of people whose only crime was having yelled at Randi getting blocked by lots of people unrelated to Randi who were just trying to rid their timeline of nazis and etc. - and a bunch of those people were artists who now couldn't easily contact potential employers via twitter, which apparently (in the sense that I know nothing about this, not that I disbelieve this) put a serious crimp in their careers. So a bunch of people experienced wildly disproportionate consequences for a single moment of anger online, as collateral damage from Wil trying to do something he considered good, and he's apologised for it but some people still believe he's transphobic because they don't feel the apology was commensurate to the degree of damage caused even if the damage was accidental. I don't really have a take away here apart from "we have no idea how to do personal social media environment curation in a way that works yet". Mostly I just feel kinda sorry for everybody screwed over by the situation, including the subset I otherwise dislike.
- bena 8y ago
  So, in other words, he personally didn't do anything to "ruin the lives" of anyone. He trusted someone that shouldn't have been trusted and in turn people trusted that his judgment was sound when it wasn't because Wil is more interested in playing the role correctly than to actually affect change or get in touch with those who can. I'm sorry, there are a lot of people doing good work for social justice. Harper has never been one of them. There are those who use the platform of social justice to further their own brand and aren't actually concerned about getting people rights. It's unfortunate that those people's careers were affected by getting on the wrong side of a vindictive bully, but I wouldn't call it Wil's fault. And I find it funny that Wil is getting the heat for it when it wasn't his list.