Data versus Democracy by Kris Shaffer

Author:Kris Shaffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781484245408
Publisher: Apress

Unprepared: How Platforms, Police, and the Courts (Failed to) Respond

Despite the lies, the targeted harassment, and the physical threats of violence, it was difficult for the victims of GamerGate to receive help, both from platforms and from law enforcement. Law enforcement didn’t know what to do with Quinn’s police reports.36 Brianna Wu unsuccessfully called for the federal government to investigate and prosecute the owner of 8chan.37 Citing “free speech,” Twitter was exceedingly hesitant to shut down accounts. And a judge in a criminal harassment case (the accused was acquitted) suggested that if Quinn wanted to avoid harassment, perhaps she should stay off the internet. When she reminded him that her work as an independent game developer required not only an online presence, but a public social media presence, he responded, “You’re a smart kid. … Find a different career.”38

While the attacks have never completely stopped, Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu have braved the fight and emerged as strong voices for change both in the gaming industry and at the social media platforms. Quinn and Sarkeesian spoke to the United Nations about online abuse and harassment.39 Quinn founded a company called the Crash Override Network that helps individuals targeted by coordinated online abuse work with the platforms to shut down those who break the law and the Terms of Service in the course of their attacks.40 Wu even ran for U.S. Congress.41 And all three of them continue to work in gaming, despite GamerGate’s efforts to push them—and many other women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community—out.

But in addition to the public awareness that Quinn, Sarkeesian, Wu, and others have brought to the social problems at the root of GamerGate—and the ways that platforms like 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, and Twitter have enabled their campaigns—other key figures and movements emerged during GamerGate. GamerGaters themselves also discovered their power.

GamerGaters weren’t just jerks on the internet. They were a group of tech-fluent individuals, many of whom had spent significant portions of their lives online, particularly on image boards like 4chan. The affordances and limitations of those forums, and the community practices that emerged in light of those platform structures, facilitated certain tactical strengths within the GamerGate community that they used beyond GamerGate itself. For instance, 4chan is a platform where threads of content are deleted relatively quickly. Similarly, Reddit’s system of upvotes and downvotes, coupled with its highlighting of high-engagement content on the front page of the site, motivates and rewards the creation of viral content. 4chan veterans, in particular, often have a keen sense of what will go viral, or at the very least, evidence of what did and didn’t go viral on their platform. This awareness of patterns of virality, often combined with an obsession over detail—what some 4chan users reprehensibly call “weaponized autism”42—and skills in Twitter automation, gives them an advantage when it comes to creating and spreading memes and other potentially viral content.

GamerGate also allowed several key figures to emerge as leaders of the movement, whose leadership persisted beyond the bounds of GamerGate itself.

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