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> The cherry on top was being specifically targeted for harassment that same week after the release by unhappy users of Firefox looking for someone to direct th

> The cherry on top was being specifically targeted for harassment that same week after the release by unhappy users of Firefox looking for someone to direct their frustrations at. Thats lovely.

coldpie 6y ago
I work on an open source project which is popular, but definitely a lot less used than Firefox. I often feel pretty lucky that I grew up with the early internet, back when you hid your real identity and trusted no one. While I don't do that anymore, it does still give me with a strong sense of maintaining a "firewall" with the public. I don't put myself out there as a public face more than necessary. I don't have work email or any of that on my phone. If it's not work hours, I'm not dealing with it. The Internet is an incredibly harsh and toxic place, always has been, and these days I find the less time I spend around technology, the happier I am.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  "The Internet is an incredibly harsh and toxic place, always has been" Refreshing to read this, compared to the "it was all so much better before"
  - loopz 6y ago
    Flaming was invented when the internet was born. Netiquette came later but didn't really catch on as well..
  - gggtt 6y ago
    But before anonymity was allowed, so all this toxicity & harassment didn't hurt too much because you could just create a new identity, start again, and it would go away. Today most people are on FB & social medias under their real name & with their real face and everything is stored & will hunt you for the rest of your life. With fingerprinting, facial recognition, surveillance, etc. there is now no way to speech freely without having your identity tied to it. Some people claim this is great because you say less crap when they're forced to put their name on it, I think this is a very poor argumentation when we look at what we're losing in exchange. There is a reason why in most democracies voting is anonymous.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      "there is now no way to speech freely without having your identity tied to it." Erm. Really? Aren't you a bit exagerating? You can still post anonymous in lots of places. Like right here, for example.
      - smsm42 6y ago
        You can say some things anonymously, but I'm not sure how far does it extend. Anonymity is tested not by posting under an alias, but when somebody tries to break it. If you get into the middle of real controversy - how far would HN willing to go before they wipe your account and possibly give the details they have (IPs, email, etc.) to the law enforcement, from where they'd immediately be leaked to the press? Was this ever tested in practice - i.e. somebody anonymous on HN was attacked and kept their anonymity?
        hutzlibu 6y ago
        Of course they would give your IP if there is a warrant. It is not their duty to ensure that you can say anything here. But there are plenty of places left, where you can literaly say anything. Just like in the beginning. Btw. some IRC clients or forums from the old days still run today.
        smsm42 6y ago
        I'm not talking about a court-mandated warrant. I'm talking about a friendly chat with a fellow law enforcement person who cordially asks for help - who needs warrants between friends? And you do want to be friends with the law enforcement, because it's a bad enemy to have, aren't they? > It is not their duty to ensure that you can say anything here. I'm not saying it's their duty. I am saying you can't at the same time claim anonymity is alive and well and say nobody actually will protect your anonymity once push comes to shove. If that's the case, then anonymity essentially does not exist where it counts. Nobody cares that you can anonymously praise the Dear Leader. Anonymity is only important when somebody has real reasons to want to break it. It's like with free speech - nobody worries about speech that everybody likes being free. You only need free speech protections when somebody actually wants to censor, otherwise it's just vacuous.
  - smsm42 6y ago
    Before twitter, it was. I mean, there still were flame wars, toxicity and negativity, but they weren't amplified and influential as they are now. I don't remember a case where a toxic mob on Usenet ruined somebody's life. Maybe there were such cases, but I can't think of one. But I can readily name cases almost daily where the same happens with toxic mobs on Twitter. Toxicity existed before, but now there are amplification and focus mechanisms that turn it especially vile and hurtful, and twitter is one of them. And no amount of censorship will ever change any of it.
- iggldiggl 6y ago
  > I often feel pretty lucky that I grew up with the early internet, back when you hid your real identity and trusted no one. That's funny, because going through old usenet posts from the 90s I got precisely the opposite impression – noticeably more people posting under their full names than you'd find a decade or two later in comparable forums. I've also made the same observation for the online community of a long running simulation game I frequent: A lot of the old-time members dating back to twenty years ago or so are posting under their full names, whereas with newer members abbreviated (last) names or outright pseudonyms are clearly predominating.
codys 6y ago
I was curious about this, and went searching, and it's fairly difficult to figure out exactly what is being referenced. There is a reddit thread that links to deleted tweets that appears like it might be related: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Thanks for the link, always good to get more sides of a story.
  - anuragsoni 6y ago
    I don't think there are "more sides" to this story. Harassing someone because one doesn't like an update to a piece of software is not okay.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      There are always more sides to a story, and hearing another side doesn’t mean you think whatever they have done is “okay.” > Harassing someone because one doesn't like an update to a piece of software Harassment is probably never okay butneither is directing obscene gestures at people.
      - ekager 6y ago
        Hi! Emily here! Added some more context in a footnote in the blog post about this "obscene gesture" and the harassment after the fact. TLDR: The amount of disgusting harassment I received was unbelievable and could never be justified as a reasonable reaction to an "obscene gesture"
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
dessant 6y ago
I remember seeing her tweet as I was struggling to migrate away from Firefox for Android since I also got surprised by the half-baked release, and closing the Twitter tab in disappointment. https://web.archive.org/web/20200801082154/https://twitter.com/EmilyKager/status/1289308930972278789 https://web.archive.org/web/20200801082154/https://twitter.c... Despite maintaining two of the handful of extensions currently available for Firefox for Android and developing for the beta versions of Fenix leading up the release, I had a very hard time finding my footing as a user in the new browser, and I ended up switching to Samsung Internet. I'm not familiar with the harassment she has suffered, and it's saddening if people have singled her out, though I can see how people might have overreacted to her nonchalant attitude about the workflows of millions of users being thrown belly up.
- __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  That tweet left a bad taste in my mouth as well. The team was understaffed so the OP took up the slack by working massive overtime to push out a half baked release. Users complained about the half baked release, the OP gives the users the finger, and neither party seemed happy with the outcome. I'm glad to see that the OP has identified that work-life balance is important; it isn't worth burning yourself out for a job.

> The cherry on top was being specifically targeted for harassment that same week after the release by unhappy users of Firefox looking for someone to direct their frustrations at. Thats lovely.

coldpie 6y ago

I work on an open source project which is popular, but definitely a lot less used than Firefox. I often feel pretty lucky that I grew up with the early internet, back when you hid your real identity and trusted no one. While I don't do that anymore, it does still give me with a strong sense of maintaining a "firewall" with the public. I don't put myself out there as a public face more than necessary. I don't have work email or any of that on my phone. If it's not work hours, I'm not dealing with it. The Internet is an incredibly harsh and toxic place, always has been, and these days I find the less time I spend around technology, the happier I am.

hutzlibu 6y ago
"The Internet is an incredibly harsh and toxic place, always has been" Refreshing to read this, compared to the "it was all so much better before"
- loopz 6y ago
  Flaming was invented when the internet was born. Netiquette came later but didn't really catch on as well..
- gggtt 6y ago
  But before anonymity was allowed, so all this toxicity & harassment didn't hurt too much because you could just create a new identity, start again, and it would go away. Today most people are on FB & social medias under their real name & with their real face and everything is stored & will hunt you for the rest of your life. With fingerprinting, facial recognition, surveillance, etc. there is now no way to speech freely without having your identity tied to it. Some people claim this is great because you say less crap when they're forced to put their name on it, I think this is a very poor argumentation when we look at what we're losing in exchange. There is a reason why in most democracies voting is anonymous.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    "there is now no way to speech freely without having your identity tied to it." Erm. Really? Aren't you a bit exagerating? You can still post anonymous in lots of places. Like right here, for example.
    - smsm42 6y ago
      You can say some things anonymously, but I'm not sure how far does it extend. Anonymity is tested not by posting under an alias, but when somebody tries to break it. If you get into the middle of real controversy - how far would HN willing to go before they wipe your account and possibly give the details they have (IPs, email, etc.) to the law enforcement, from where they'd immediately be leaked to the press? Was this ever tested in practice - i.e. somebody anonymous on HN was attacked and kept their anonymity?
      - hutzlibu 6y ago
        Of course they would give your IP if there is a warrant. It is not their duty to ensure that you can say anything here. But there are plenty of places left, where you can literaly say anything. Just like in the beginning. Btw. some IRC clients or forums from the old days still run today.
        smsm42 6y ago
        I'm not talking about a court-mandated warrant. I'm talking about a friendly chat with a fellow law enforcement person who cordially asks for help - who needs warrants between friends? And you do want to be friends with the law enforcement, because it's a bad enemy to have, aren't they? > It is not their duty to ensure that you can say anything here. I'm not saying it's their duty. I am saying you can't at the same time claim anonymity is alive and well and say nobody actually will protect your anonymity once push comes to shove. If that's the case, then anonymity essentially does not exist where it counts. Nobody cares that you can anonymously praise the Dear Leader. Anonymity is only important when somebody has real reasons to want to break it. It's like with free speech - nobody worries about speech that everybody likes being free. You only need free speech protections when somebody actually wants to censor, otherwise it's just vacuous.
- smsm42 6y ago
  Before twitter, it was. I mean, there still were flame wars, toxicity and negativity, but they weren't amplified and influential as they are now. I don't remember a case where a toxic mob on Usenet ruined somebody's life. Maybe there were such cases, but I can't think of one. But I can readily name cases almost daily where the same happens with toxic mobs on Twitter. Toxicity existed before, but now there are amplification and focus mechanisms that turn it especially vile and hurtful, and twitter is one of them. And no amount of censorship will ever change any of it.
iggldiggl 6y ago
> I often feel pretty lucky that I grew up with the early internet, back when you hid your real identity and trusted no one. That's funny, because going through old usenet posts from the 90s I got precisely the opposite impression – noticeably more people posting under their full names than you'd find a decade or two later in comparable forums. I've also made the same observation for the online community of a long running simulation game I frequent: A lot of the old-time members dating back to twenty years ago or so are posting under their full names, whereas with newer members abbreviated (last) names or outright pseudonyms are clearly predominating.

codys 6y ago

I was curious about this, and went searching, and it's fairly difficult to figure out exactly what is being referenced. There is a reddit thread that links to deleted tweets that appears like it might be related: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Thanks for the link, always good to get more sides of a story.
- anuragsoni 6y ago
  I don't think there are "more sides" to this story. Harassing someone because one doesn't like an update to a piece of software is not okay.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    There are always more sides to a story, and hearing another side doesn’t mean you think whatever they have done is “okay.” > Harassing someone because one doesn't like an update to a piece of software Harassment is probably never okay butneither is directing obscene gestures at people.
    - ekager 6y ago
      Hi! Emily here! Added some more context in a footnote in the blog post about this "obscene gesture" and the harassment after the fact. TLDR: The amount of disgusting harassment I received was unbelievable and could never be justified as a reasonable reaction to an "obscene gesture"
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago

dessant 6y ago

I remember seeing her tweet as I was struggling to migrate away from Firefox for Android since I also got surprised by the half-baked release, and closing the Twitter tab in disappointment. https://web.archive.org/web/20200801082154/https://twitter.com/EmilyKager/status/1289308930972278789 https://web.archive.org/web/20200801082154/https://twitter.c... Despite maintaining two of the handful of extensions currently available for Firefox for Android and developing for the beta versions of Fenix leading up the release, I had a very hard time finding my footing as a user in the new browser, and I ended up switching to Samsung Internet. I'm not familiar with the harassment she has suffered, and it's saddening if people have singled her out, though I can see how people might have overreacted to her nonchalant attitude about the workflows of millions of users being thrown belly up.

__turbobrew__ 6y ago
That tweet left a bad taste in my mouth as well. The team was understaffed so the OP took up the slack by working massive overtime to push out a half baked release. Users complained about the half baked release, the OP gives the users the finger, and neither party seemed happy with the outcome. I'm glad to see that the OP has identified that work-life balance is important; it isn't worth burning yourself out for a job.