A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds (fastcompany.com) 483
That shocking statistic comes from a study conducted by Amnesty International and AI software startup Element AI. From a report: In the study, called Troll Patrol, Amnesty International and Element AI looked at data from 288,000 tweets sent to 778 female politicians and journalists in the U.S. and U.K. in 2017. Using machine learning on the data, the group then extrapolated just how wide-ranging abuse toward women is on Twitter. The result: 1.1 million abusive or problematic tweets were sent to the women in the study during the year -- that's one abusive or problematic tweet every 30 seconds. And it's even worse for women of color -- and especially black women -- who were targeted more frequently than white women.
Machine learning (Score:2, Insightful)
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Well yeah, how else can you get people to want to outlaw it?
What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many men are abused or sent problematic tweets on twitter.
Why limit research to one segment to create a self confirming headline?
Re: What does problematic mean? (Score:3, Funny)
1 in 4 homeless are women. Plz halp
Re:What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares, only women and children matter. Men are to be sent into battle.
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Re:What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm French. I had to do a mandatory military service. The minimum was 10 months, but in my case, I did two years. The regular "pay" for a conscript was 531F a month (about $80 per month). This was given to conscripts so they could buy hygiene products (soap, toilet paper, razors, etc.), since those were not supplied by the army. Of course, only men were required to do a military service. Women could choose to do it if they wanted to, but they were not required to do anything. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. In all Western societies, men have it a lot worse than women.
Re:What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a veteran and 7 year single dad, I'll answer for you. Taking care of a toddler is cake compared to war. Got it?
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When an actress accepts a bad script and makes a bad movie, that's trolling.
Re: What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks, this ain't science; if you measure it by that yardstick it will come up short.
To answer your question, it's because the popular narrative is that women are victims, passive, and must be protected while not-women are villains, aggressive, and must be punished. Of course, repeatedly recognizing that your sample set ' 778 women politicians and journalists with an active, non-protected Twitter account, with fewer than 1 million followers' is flawed doesn't make it any less so. The sample isn't chosen to test a hypothesis; the goal here is to tell a story.
Element AI has provided a sample of their work to Amnesty in exchange for some goodwill. Decorating their product in the style of a scientific study is similarly insincere.
As an ad for Element AI it's valid: We can generate buzz for your issue.
As a political statement from Amnesty International, it's also valid: We need more civil and more enforcable social norms in social media.
As social science it's crap, but that's neither Element AI's or Amnesty Internal's job.
Re: What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Informative)
On the face of it, attacks on women appear distinct in their character from attacks on men, although exactly how different is obviously possible to exaggerate. But before you object, yes, there have been studies that focus on male victims of social media bullying too, they just didn't get a mention here.
Of course they wouldn't mention it. Because those studies show overall, men receive more online abuse. That wouldn't go so well for the desired outcome of this particular "study".
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A simple search turns up these:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-27/research-claiming-women-are-half-of-online-abusers-flawed/7452568
https://phys.org/news/2014-10-online-abuse-affects-men-women.html
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/
There is a lot of misinformation from all sides.. Anything to reinforce their specific ideas or points..
Try to keep an open mind and listen to both sides and maybe you learn something new from time to time.
Re:What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Informative)
You could google for yourself you know. This one aims at celebrities, but there's others that show the same trend for the general public. https://demos.co.uk/press-release/demos-male-celebrities-receive-more-abuse-on-twitter-than-women-2/
Also, fun fact, women abuse people on twitter at the same rate as men, https://qz.com/692902/on-twitter-a-study-says-half-of-all-sexist-abuse-comes-from-women/
Those damn women hating women!
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Re: What does problematic mean? (Score:2, Insightful)
That study is completely useless tripe by a dimwitted liberal trying to make some point that 'women have it hard'. You know what, yeah they do. So do men. So do straights. So do whites. So does everyone. These liberal whiney losers think they are so smart because they 'have shown how hard it is for women'. Complete imbeciles. I can name a single guy who gets abused 30 TIMES PER SECOND on Twitter. So that's 900 times as frequently, by 1/778th of the population. Let's see, simple math would say that it
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The maths:
p/r = 1/30 where p is the population online, r seconds per insult per person
30 * p = r
Also from (https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics
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Well that's pretty much the definition of ad homenim. You don't like what the authors are saying so you'd going for a character assassination instead.
When feminists run to the UN to complain that "it's the everyday-to-day run of the mill tweets" that are harassment, then the parent poster has easily proven their point that these people are progressive shills aiming for more censorship. You know, the same censorship that's been pushed heavily by the left for the last decade. To the point that they now claim that "disagreement is harassment." The authors are shit, just like the assholes who parrot the "1:4 women are homeless" or "11% of workplace deaths
Re:What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why limit research to one segment to create a self confirming headline?
To answer your question: because you can't study everything at the same time without making assumptions you can't justify yet. This happens all the time in social sciences. Before you can safely lump things together you have to study them separately.
I was going to mod you down for this but I will comment instead. This isn't science. If someone thinks it is, then they need to turn in their science card at the library. Anytime you setup an experiment, you have a control group. The amount of anything experienced by one group only has meaning when compared to the amount experienced by another group(s) which usually includes a control group. In this case, probably a group of men (or at least non-women). If it came out that the control group is attacked by someone on twitter every second what conclusion would you draw from those two data sets. If instead it was once every minute that a person in the control group was abused, would your conclusions be different? Add to that that possibly there is a gender imbalance in numbers of interactions per capita between the two groups and this one bit of research is meaningless. And it's stuff like this that causes "social scientists" to be considered junk science and for their entire field to be put into quotes by other scientists. Because an experiment without a control group isn't an experiment. Its somewhere between bad science and propaganda.
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After all, didn't they make comparisons based off the ethnic group of the women?
Didn't they also compare what effect (if any) political affiliation and profession had on the data in the "statistics gathering"?
the "study" includes a conclusion and a call to action. Is that part of simple statistics gathering as well?
Also, you can certainly create propaganda through nothing more than selective statistics gathering. Allow me to share with you
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because you can't study everything at the same time without making assumptions you can't justify yet. This happens all the time in social sciences. Before you can safely lump things together you have to study them separately.
Sure. It makes sense that abuse towards women is different in nature than abuse towards men, and that abuse towards women of color is different still. And to understand the nature, the causes and effects on the victims, and the perpetrators, you would have to study them separately. But the summary at least has no issues mentioning women of color as a separate class, then lumping them in at the same time. But most importantly: if you run a clickbaity headline like "Women are abused on Twitter every 30 se
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I wonder what is this social science, you talk about? I mean science is a way to find explanations for things based on facts and reason. According to wikipedia and my dictionary the word comes from Latin word meaning 'knowledge'. How does social science with significant 'social justice' element (i.e. bias) fit into this? If even particle physics does exclude people based on their (male) gender then social science cannot really be better.
As for your claims of them social 'scientists' not having done full an
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What does problematic mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: What does problematic mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good point. Men are called "fags" all the time on the Webnets.
Boom! You win the debate! (seriously)
I've been called names like that, encouraged to kill myself, and other forms of "abuse". Yet I just read those posts without a thought, until you brought that up.
And while I try not to act like that - with occasional slips - I don't think a thing of it.
So the question is Why? Why is something that means almost nothing to me and most other males, an unforgivable assault upon women?
It certainly isn't that women cannot be cruel. I've seen women go after other women and attempt to destroy them without any regret.
The idea that all spaces must be made safe for those who can brook no adversity or disagreement isn't going to work.
Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for Men (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Didn't measure/compare against abuse rate for M (Score:5, Insightful)
And what constitutes "abused"
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And what constitutes "abused"
Saying anything I don’t like.
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They explain their methodology and there is actually a textbox you can put your own test tweets into and it will give you an analysis and "problematic" score. It's right near the bottom of the page.
As for a the GP's question, they are not comparing to anything external. The study isn't making the claim that it's worse for women, merely that women get a now quantified amount of abuse and that it affects certain sub-groups more than others (women of colour, women with left leaning views/politics).
As a general
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Also studying how it affects women is helpful for men being abused too, as often the solutions are similar for both.
Except that they aren't, not even remotely.
E.g. there are no "men's shelters" where you can go live just by making a claim without evidence, get a free lawyer there, etc.
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So called "abuse" against black female politicians should not be singled out as a "problem" unless they are receiving significantly more "abuse" than other politicians. Otherwise, the actual "problem" is "politicians are receiving abuse".
However none of this is "abuse", it is negative comments about someone. Who remembers the old saying "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me"?
Also worth considering is that politicians are by their very nature controversial public figures that wil
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Emotional pain is self inflicted, for it to have any effect you have to actually care about whoever's saying stuff about you...
People online can say anything they like about me, i don't care and it's not going to cause me any pain. If close friends or family said something it might hurt. You certainly won't be able to hurt me with your words, but you're more than welcome to try.
If care that much what random anonymous commenters on the internet say about you then you should seek some help from a psychiatrist
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"Using a criterion you set?"
Well yes, ultimately we each set the criterion by which we define a problem. Did you think I'd let you set it for me?
In any case, we can hardly evaluate if their criteria are valid if they don't define them and therefore must assume they are not.
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Men? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a peep about how many abusive tweets were sent to men, using the same criteria.
Why would that be, exactly? Is it because women are the weaker sex, and hence need to be protected from this sort of thing, whereas men are stronger and hence don't need such protection?
Or is it that nobody gives a shit about men, whether they are stronger or not?
Or maybe men get WAY MORE abuse on twitter, but pointing that out won't substantiate the desired narrative?
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The report also lacks information on the identity of the poster or whether it was posted in jest (i.e. using normally derogative terms to jokingly describe themselves or their friends, like how some rap songs use the N-word).
Re: Men? (Score:2)
Ever heard of duels over honor?
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Why would that be, exactly?
Because the study is about women. Look, if you write a book about how to improve aircraft safety, no-one is going to attack you for not addressing automotive safety as well. You are not part of some giant airline conspiracy to make cars more dangerous by denying them research, you are just studying something else today.
Ah, a bad car analogy. /. never disappoints for those. This is more like announcing you are studying aircraft safety but only studying when the wings failed but ignoring the crashes where other parts of the aircraft failed. And any scientist worth their salt would know to have a control group.
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Emphasis mine. It seems, however, the linked article directly disagrees with you:
The study is exclusively about abuse towards a gender.
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No, the study was about bad tweets and they focused on those directed at women, culling those directed at men. Both men and women are people and both sets tweet. But intersectionality dictates you only focus on the group you wish to promote/protect/whatever and ignore the rest because it will reduce the impact of your conclusions. This is a conscious decision.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics. (Score:4, Insightful)
What are they even defining as abuse?
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"Any post made to a woman that we don't like, or that conflicts with our political agenda."
Duh.
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Except for that one fat slut, Stephanie.
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What are they even defining as abuse?
The most important question of all. The answer is... zeroes and ones.
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An extrapolation is definitely not a statistic.
You might want to figure out what is going on before you decide on a pattern of aggressive verbal complaint.
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if you believe the extrapolation they did with their AI. (Why AI instead of simple arithmetic?)
It seems like they trained it to distinguish abusive from non-abusive tweets, using a relatively small dataset. Then they sent the AI out to classify at a much larger set of tweets on the internet.
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I dare bet the AI wasn't much better than `if tweet contains any of these words, it's abusive`.
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Why does it have to be fixed? Are you going to just eliminate people who post abusive tweets? Because being "abusive" in this fashion has been a human trait since communication was invented.
I'm not sure you know what that word even means (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the female version of the app come with rockem sockem robots attached? You're on a public platform where people's thoughts are brought to you unfiltered. I am surprised that only 1 in every 125000 messages is mean to a woman.
How about you ignore that 1 message and read the other 124999. Or like me, read none.
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How about you ignore that 1 message and read the other 124999. Or like me, read none.
Because nothing generates clicks like rage and the algorithms are designed to generate clicks so they tend to show rage inducing tweets to rage-aholics aka people on the Internet.
How is someone "abused" by a tweet? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I know where you live, bitch, and you have to sleep some time. https://www.amazonsellerslawye... [amazonsellerslawyer.com]
You can fit plenty of intimidation into 280 characters.
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I know where you live, bitch, and you have to sleep some time. https://www.amazonsellerslawye... [amazonsellerslawyer.com]
You can fit plenty of intimidation into 280 characters.
And nobody has a problem calling something like that, clear cut, from someone IRL who is actually a threat, "abusive". (Not to mention illegal.)
The problem is that it won't stop there, and doesn't stop there, with clear cut cases like that, and you really do know that.
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You're simply making stuff up to discount the conclusion. You didn't even read the article yet you are so very very sure it's wrong. If it's as bad as you say them finding a flaw in it ought to be very easy. So, why make up stuff and claim it as fact?
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The people behind this "study" aren't feminists. They hate women as much as they hate men. Their specific goal with this sort of propaganda is to reduce women to helpless victims, because helpless victims need protectors. And guess who is (according to them) the only people who can be trusted to protect helpless (all) women from mean (all) men?
If all women are helpless victims and all men are psychotic rapists, then they (and only they) get to control everyone.
It's not about feminism, it's about power. Spec
Among the thousands of tweets per second (Score:2)
Damn, I'm surprised how well mannered and respectful Twitter users are.
And have you measured the rate of verbal abuse to males by any chance? no?
Don't worry. I'm sure you will bring balanced and objective reporting. I can wait.
I think I found her husband (Score:2, Insightful)
Same as real life (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Must be nice being special (Score:2)
I'm called nasty names on Twitter all the time - I just had a random troll drop in to start sassing me not ten minutes ago - but apparently the abuse directed at me doesn't matter because I don't have a vagina. Really makes you think, doesn't it?
Context Is Missing (Score:5, Informative)
I detect some issues with their methodology. Definitions of what constitute "abusive" or "problematic" tweets are explained in Appendix E.
Their explanations of the categories do not seem very precise. They are vague enough to include lots of edge-cases. Their examples are clear enough, but a clear example does not exonerate a vague criterion. (Hypothetical example: "I am going to murder you tomorrow" is certainly an example of abusive and threatening speech... but what else is in included as threating and abusive speech? Counterexamples are also necessary, else "I hate that rabbit in the field behind your house" might also be considered abusive.)
But more to the point, a full 55% of the tweets they flag as "abusive content" fall under the category of "other"... and that's a huge red flag.
They describe "other" thus: There will be some tweets that fall under the âother categoryâ(TM) that are problematic and/or abusive. For example, statements that target a userâ(TM)s disability, be it physical or mental, or content that attacks a womanâ(TM)s nationality, health status, legal status, employment, etc.
Uh... yeah. "Some" is 55%. And not only is this one the majority, it is a particularly vague definition. For example, if someone replies to an irate tweet, "Calm down! I know the Irish are famous for temper, but cool down a little!" is that "targeting a woman's nationality"? According to their description, it could be.
But here is the biggest problem with this study:
Nowhere did they compare this to any other groups. They singled out famous women and women in politics, but they didn't compare against famous men and men in politics.
And since there is no such comparison, it's all pretty much meaningless.
What if famous men and men in politics are "abused" on Twitter every 31 seconds? Or every 28 seconds?
Without that knowledge, does the study really say anything other than "the subset of people we chose got 'abused' at this rate?"
So what? Nothing to compare it to makes it pretty much useless knowledge.
While what they say may be true,
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Trump is the most abused male on Twitter.
Hell, he's the most abused male OFF Twitter.
If those statements aren't true, it's not because I don't try.
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Thanks for the analysis. This is exactly what I wondered about. Sad that commentators on /. need to point these things out, such things should be part of the articles about the study.
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If you bother to read TFA you will find that there is a text box where you can try out different text to see if the algo thinks it is problematic. Let's try your "I hate that rabbit in the field behind your house" example.
"This tweet seems not problematic or abusive." Rated 10% "light".
How about "Calm down! I know the Irish are famous for temper, but cool down a little!" That is rated not problematic, 14% "light".
So it seems your fears are unfounded and if you had RTFA you could have discovered that for you
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If you bother to read TFA you will find that there is a text box where you can try out different text to see if the algo thinks it is problematic. Let's try your "I hate that rabbit in the field behind your house" example.
"This tweet seems not problematic or abusive." Rated 10% "light".
How about "Calm down! I know the Irish are famous for temper, but cool down a little!" That is rated not problematic, 14% "light".
So it seems your fears are unfounded and if you had RTFA you could have discovered that for yourself. It's almost as if they predicted your response and made sure to address it.
Also note that the study only includes the 1 every 30 seconds stat in the summary as a simple reference point for the volume of abusive tweets, it's not making any claims about that being particularly bad or worse than anything else. The study is more focused on the nature of the abuse, or the relative volumes directed at different sub-groups.
Oh yes, I'm sure.
Twitter says themselves that they aren't going to to do arbitrary and unfair things, so I guess that means they aren't! Whew, glad that's settled then.
Yes Ma'am... (Score:2)
'Bout the same ... (Score:2)
... as BBS back in the dial-up days.
Amnesty International-- really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The disturbing part isn't that somebody published this absolutely idiotic study. (I won't go into why it is idiotic, since literally every other post has pointed out one or more serious flaws in the study-- rarely have I ever seen anything ripped to shreds quite this thoroughly). No, the disturbing part is that Amnesty International was involved. THIS is what Amnesty International is doing these days?
I mean I'm not an expert, but I always thought Amnesty International was one of the most respected of all human-rights organizations-- the sort of organization I would donate money to. Not any more.
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AI is still doing many good things. However, they're ran by self-proclaimed victims these days while what they really need are people that understand statistics, which would fit in pretty well since they appear to be a minority:p
A woman on Twitter is abused every 30 seconds (Score:5, Funny)
I guess women either shouldn't use Twitter or limit their sessions to 29 seconds to avoid being abused.
And a Trump voter ever 30 milliseconds. (Score:4, Informative)
A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds
And a Trump voter ever 30 milliseconds. So what else is new?
People are abusing statistics every 2 seconds (Score:2)
I got this figure by extrapolating from this particular study.
How often are men abused on Twitter? (Score:2)
It seems odd that a reputable study would not measure that as a baseline. Women are probably abused more because trolls think they are more likely to get a reaction. But I run a small political website and spend a lot of time deleting comments critiquing my anatomy or suggesting I engage in unnatural relations with POTUS. A healthy mixture of right wing and left wing trolls as far as I can tell. So there is a lot of trash on Internet regardless of who you are.
What the hell is this shit? (Score:2, Insightful)
A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds (Score:5, Funny)
...I can't believe she hasn't closed her account yet...
How to fix this (Score:2)
Make all men move to the dark web?
strange state (Score:2)
How is it possible? (Score:2)
How much abuse was from other women? (Score:2)
That's what you get ... (Score:2)
... for using your real name on a generally anonymous internet.
Besides: I know of no one who know the basics about computers and the internet that uses Twitter for anything other than the occasional tip on some programmer meeting or a technical subject or problem they are currently working on. Which is just about exactly what Twitter was built for. Use it for anything else and the average IQ in the Twitter pseudo conversation drops sharply. See POTUS Trump for a good example.
Are insults "abuse" now? (Score:4, Informative)
Where exactly did this idea, that being offended by insulting language is abuse, come from? It's nonsense and we need to get away from it.
Um, what? (Score:2)
It's Twitter. It's like email, but 10000 times dumber.
That's like sitting there reading only your Spam folder and complaining about all the scams and porn.
So? (Score:3)
Ever play Call of Duty on public servers with voice chat enabled?
I get called a "motherfucking faggot" around once per second by random 12 year olds there, does that count as 'abuse'?
Trump is the true victim here (Score:2)
Steam, too. (Score:2)
Re: Is this Slashdot or SJWdot? (Score:2)
It's News for Nerds because they used "AI" in the process of lying with statistics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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which means ensuring that women using the platform are able to express themselves freely and without fear.
What about those who are using the platform to express their disagreement of or dislike for those women? Should they not be able to express themselves freely and without fear too?
Politics would become pretty pointless if you're no longer allowed to disagree with female politicians.
And what exactly is "fear" ? Why would anyone be afraid of an idiot posting shit? I've been called all sorts of things on slashdot over the years and yet still posting here.
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No, the whole story is an obvious troll. Let's just move on.
Re:A Nerd on Slashdot is (Score:5, Interesting)
More importantly, how many of those abusive posts were written by women?
(and how many abusive posts did men receive?)
Matthew 11:8 (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Without any baseline to compare against the statistic quoted is meaningless.
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This. Without any baseline to compare against the statistic quoted is meaningless.
Probably is. Reading TFA, it appears that this is yet another attempt to label the female of the species as a protected class. This would extend to women permanent status of children, as a sort of permanent prey that is easily damaged.
Whereas once upon a time, women were encouraged to be strong and independent, now for some reason there are people trying to make them permanent children.
And we have to face it, a person who is incapable of fending off assholes on the internet is hardly the archetype of a
Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is (Score:4, Informative)
Re: A Nerd on Slashdot is (Score:5, Insightful)
It also very much depends on how you define attack. I would rather like to see the precise definition before rushing to any judgement.
I think you'll find that opinions run the gamut from actual abuse, to disagreement.
These claims often trend to the silly. My wife is asked out all the time on line. In today's world, that is sexual harassment. She just giggles and tells the guy he's not man enough, but many women need intensive counselling for the grave damage done.