Anonymity, Trump supporters, the right-wing media, and the gman account

Politics and religion
1

You guys might remember an account that was closed after his contribution turned into self-admitted trolling out of a clearly stated disdain for the site and its community. Or you might not, because he kept himself to one thread. I eventually closed the account to the mutual satisfaction of pretty much everyone involved. The site can hold up under a fair amount of chaos, but when someone just admits they’re here to cause a ruckus, there’s really no point allowing it. Pretty much the only criteria for being a member of this community is that you’re a reasonable person who is willing to chill out if you’re asked. That’s a low bar to clear and I can count on one hand the people who haven’t cleared it in the last, I dunno, five years.

A month ago, a new account shared an IP address with that poster. So I immediately closed it. We get sock puppet stuff like that from time to time, but after closing a couple of their new accounts, they tend to go away.

But in this instance, I got an email from a friend of mine asking why I’d just closed his account. This was a young guy who moved to my city last year and sort of timidly reached out to say he’s enjoyed stuff I’ve written over the years and could he maybe buy me lunch. I love meeting people like this! So we had lunch, he’s joined us for boardgames, and despite the fact that I know we have very different politics, we’ve been friends. Imagine my surprise to discover he was that weirdly polite but antagonistic guy from that other thread! This was my timid friend? This was the guy who’d been sort of shy about bringing up politics and joining us for boardgames?

When I explained that I knew who he was from the IP address, he denied it. He said that guy was actually his roommate. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt, apologized for making assumptions, and re-opened the account. Based on his posts since then – and my conversations with him today, which I’ll get to in a moment – I’m inclined to believe he’s not the guy from that other thread and that they are, in fact, roommates.

Anyone reading P&R knows what happened after that. It’s been frustrating for a lot of us to have such an unabashed Trump supporter in the political discussions. Some of you complained that he should be banned, but it’s my feeling that short of overt bigotry, no one’s account should be closed based on what he or she believes. Furthermore, he was very civil, and doing a remarkable job taking the high road considering the reactions he was getting. Anyone else – certainly me! – would have had a meltdown by now and resorted to some sort of “fuck all y’all!” nuclear option. He hadn’t done this. And since I knew him, I felt sure that if things did get out of hand, he would listen if asked to chill out.

So I didn’t see any reason to close the account. I did feel some of his political beliefs were offensive, some of his arguments were weak, and he wasn’t always making good faith efforts at having conversations. But none of those are bannable offenses. I think all of us in P&R have been guilty of those things at one time or another. I know I have. So as far as I was concerned, there was never any reason to ban the account.

I have since found out, however, that my friend didn’t tell me about one of his jobs working for a certain well-known media outlet. He claims he withheld the information because people treat him differently when they find out. He says he’s lost friends over this job. I can understand. I certainly felt betrayed that he hadn’t told me this, and it cast a new light on his posts in P&R. Whereas I had seen a young and articulate guy politely arguing out of a sort of youthful naivete – did I mention he’s basically a kid? – I was in fact reading the work of someone who is a professional part of the machinery doing irreparable damage this country.

Some of you said as much. I ignored your claims based partly on the fact that he was a friend, but also on the fact that you guys can fend for yourselves. The threads were instructive to me as a way of seeing how Trump supporters present their case. In fact, I hoped in the course of conversations with him, he would come around on some of the issues being discussed. I still kind of hope that, by the way.

But how can I, in good conscience, let the situation stand? How do I reconcile my position as an administrator on a site that guarantees anonymity with my feelings about the current political situation? For all the good the internet is doing, it’s been used lately as a calculated tool to undermine the institutions of democracy, to present lies as facts, and to further the agendas of Russians, the alt-right, junk science, xenophobia, and so forth. This was arguably an instance of that right here under my watch. Shouldn’t I do something? And how does all that square with the fact that this guy is a friend of mine?

So I did what any friend would do and I talked this over with him. It was his suggestion that I close the account with the following statement:

If he had asked, I would have maintained his anonymity completely. But he was willing to reveal his job so long as his name and employer weren’t identified.

However, I still don’t think he’s done anything to merit banning. Trump supporters are welcome to this forum. No one has the obligation to disclose his or her employer. He has said he won’t post in P&R anymore, which is kind of a shame since I think it’s valuable for us to learn how to interact with Trump supporters. I know it’s helpful for me, but I live in California where they’re as rare as unicorns. If he comes back to P&R, I feel a lot more comfortable that he’s willing to let it be known that he works for a right-wing media outlet. If he instead limits himself to other discussions, I hope you can all be civil enough to leave P&R in P&R and to treat him like you would anyone else on the forum.

So on one hand, I feel a lot better that this information is out there. On the other hand, it was probably a failure on my part not to take the complaints, warnings, and objections more seriously. I feel like I’ve been played and I owe you all an apology, as well as full transparency in terms of how I’ve handled the situation. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, and whether I should have done anything differently, and how you think this sort of thing should be handled in the future. Quarter to Three is not Facebook or Twitter, but I learned today, the hard way, that we will have to grapple with some of the same issues.

-Tom

2

Well hopefully this hasn’t totally ruined your friendship with the dude. It sucks to lose a friend.

3

Tom, thanks for this.

Full transparency for everyone else here, a key component that Tom didn’t mention is that there was a breakdown in communication between us mods as well. Some of us knew some info that Tom didn’t know and vice versa, but thanks to lady luck and some naivete from all of us about that poster, we got our lines crossed and assumed the info was shared. Tom is too much of a gentleman to say it, but part of that blame is mine. Lesson learned, ass-u-me, etc.

Going forward I’ve committed to including him on mod communications.

4

Works for a news outlet, yet seemed to know almost nothing about the subjects he was posting about? Okaaaaayyy…

I did have the impression he was pretty young actually.

5

Gman works for Breitbart? Lol

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You are a good guy Tom, and nobody should be embarrassed at defending him. Likewise nobody should feel bad about calling him out from day 1. We all tried to do the right thing.

But fair play to you and may I say the qt3 community in general. We all disagreed on how to handle this in our own way and I am not sure there is any perfect solution. I feel queasy about banning, shaming, blocking and engaging. I saw no solution I was comfortable with.

So tl:dr, I am glad you made a call one way or another and not me :)

p.s.

He has said he won’t post in P&R anymore, which is kind of a shame

Definitely NOT a shame bruv. in fact voluntarily removing himself is absolutely the right thing to do.

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Didn’t you do the right thing? You stayed true to the ideals that you had set down and sometimes that is going to make you unpopular with folks. You held off on snap bans and it was only until there was something that you felt crossed a line where you decided that action needed to be taken.

I can say this of course as someone who knows he doesn’t have the maturity to venture into P&R and not hold it against folks if they should hold an opinion that I vehemently disagree with. So take my words with a giant grain of salt.

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@tomchick I for one appreciate your opening up on this.

I know you’ve long been of the opinion that moderation decisions are best done in private, and I’ve disagreed with you in the past on that point. This isn’t to say, “I told you so!” but to say that for me, personally, my comfort level at and enjoyment of Qt3 are both noticeably improved by your post. Thank you.

(Full disclosure: Still sorry about the time you had to temp ban me for shitposting. I really did deserve that one, and I’m very glad you accepted my apology and reopened my account.)

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P&R would be more interesting if we had more conservative posters. But only if they’re thoughtful people. I have no interest in reading bullshit by people paid to spread bullshit. Trolls and propagandists should remain unwelcome.

I regard Fox News, Breitbart and the like as the moral and functional equivalent to Hitler’s Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. That’s not hyperbole. They’re that dangerous.

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Absolutely.

I appreciate the way you’ve handled the matter and I especially appreciate the transparency in posting this. I think there’s very important contextual information you’ve provided, instead of just having the account quietly banned with no one knowing why.

As you said, many people in the forum complained and objected to his posts. Yes, people were offended by the politics, but as described in all the various threads it wasn’t about that. It was the fact that while he wasn’t “trolling” in the old sense (saying offensive things to anger people), he was trolling in the neo sense. The trolling that Russia, Cambridge Analtyica, and their ilk have been honing. Yes, he was very polite. Yes, he didn’t devolve into personal attacks. That’s the camouflage. If he had been, it would be an easy ban. This is more subtle, and far more subversive. People who were shouting out what he was doing were being called rude and bullies. It’s not wrong, but it missed the point of what people were trying to call out. This wasn’t a guy just voicing an unpopular opinion.

I made the comparison to how @wumpus reacted to the guy he viewed as a spammer in the Tempest thread. The thing that had my blood boiling was all this awful manipulation and disinformation I’ve seen since 2016, I was watching happen again right here, in the place I consider to be my digital home or pub. And there weren’t blatant violations of explicit forum rules to flag posts. But something clearly needed to be done, and I’m just absolutely relieved steps have been taken.

I’m on mobile and I’m rambling, but to answer your question as to how things like this need to be handled, I think we need to be cognizant of the fact that this is 2018 and information warfare is a thing, whether it’s a foreign government (or our government, for that matter), a media outlet, or political movement. We’re a small corner of the internet, but as we’ve seen we’re not immune to it. I think we need to be vigilant and we need to have moderators willing to moderate not just in cases where explicit forum rules have been broken, but in situations like this don’t pass the smell test. Thank you for doing so, I know it’s not a comfortable position, especially when it’s someone you know.

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Really well said, @Oghier and @KevinC.

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Ill have a more thorough comment later, but for now I say: thank you @tomchick, both for your openness, and your restraint:

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It sucks to have my sneaking suspicions and paranoia confirmed that the relentless but polite troll was not
a well-intentioned human being but someone working for Breitbart or Alex Jones acting disengenuously in riling up us libtards.

14

Best news I’ve heard in a while.

15

I’m going to be sorry to see him leave P&R. Not surprised he was young, somewhat surprised he worked for a right wing media.

But I appreciate how you handled it Tom. In fact, I have some issue with Patron, so I haven’t been supporting QT3 for a while, but that changed today.

16

I hope you and him can still share meals together and play board games.

17

I suggest Monopoly, since it’s about wealthy land owners bankrupting others. It seems like something thats right up his alley.

Also, it’s a horrible game.

18

Wow. I guess I was wrong to assume that he was nuts. He actually had a good reason to spend hours each day practicing how to piss off “liberals”. That’s assuming that he’s telling the truth now about who he works for.

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I appreciate that this experiment has run its course and is now over.

Just a hunch, but guessing that the (publicly unanswered) line of questioning from wumpus came after our recently departed logged in from an IP tied to his employer.

20

Which is basically his job… and you could tell it was too.

I appreciate the openness Tom. I don’t go around asking to have people banned, didn’t flag or ask for this one either.

I know I lost my temper with him repeatedly, which was by his design. I wish I hadn’t, but I am not perfect. I shouldn’t have to be either. It’s mostly just… conversation here and some argument, and he worked hard to reverse that.