1601

An internal Mozilla email to employees that have been responding to the back and forth on GamerGate:

Dear Mozillians,

As the computing environment and online life are changing, Mozilla is changing too. Sometimes this involves moving into new areas, and working with content and information as well as code and products like Firefox and Firefox OS.

It’s hard to do. We are making mistakes. Recent opinion pieces published in The Open Standard about #Gamergate are a mistake, compounded by our follow-up actions.

The editorial intent of The Open Standard is to explore the world of open collaboration. It is not intended to represent Mozilla’s opinion, but to be an independent platform where we invite people to have discussions around timely topics related to the impact of open systems. #Gamergate as a topic does not make sense for The Open Standard. As a new publication, we are applying our editorial guidelines for the first time. In addition, it’s clear that our branding and positioning have not clearly established The Open Standard and Mozilla as separate entities, and we need to do work on that too.

Mozilla needs to do new things, and to empower people to work in new areas. Our standard model is a large delegation of authority. However, we need to stop making mistakes. They are harmful to all the people involved. They suggest Mozilla has an opinion which we don’t. They damage our sense of what Mozilla is. They are unfair to all the people who work so hard to build a better vision of tomorrow. And offensive to those concerned about key issues of equality, inclusion and safety.

My take away from this is that our model of distributed authority needs attention. We need to do better here.

The entire leadership team, including me, will be turning our attention to this. We can’t stop doing new things. We have to do better.

1602

LOL I’ll take up the torch here. Notice here that KIA is unleashing a FURIOUS BOYCOTT EMAIL SWARM against Rock Paper Shotgun for merely LINKING to Leigh Alexander’s piece in their like daily roundup article. It’s about ethics in video game journalism.

1603

Opinion pieces are unethical!!

1604

That thread is classic GamerGate.

Uh, what exactly did RPS do wrong?

A simple search of this sub shows what they have done. There is even a link to an article in the title post for this thread.

THAT’S what it’s over?
(Also, the article never said gamers are dead)

Yes, RPS linked to ‘Gamers are dead’ opinion pieces.
But what it’s really about is RPS writing about feminist issues

I might disagree with those, but this is not ‘unethical’. They are just expressing their views, and while I won’t keep read them, it isn’t a very strong reason for nvidia to pull their ads.

It’s not about ethics in games journalism.
It’s about not liking their editorial position.

1605

I’m looking forward to a new round of meme images, “Actually, it’s about not liking their editorial position.”

1606

KingofPol, prominent GGer and friendly holocaust denier drops out, ironically due to being harassed and death-threated by fellow Gamergaters.

1607

Just saw this. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/good-souls-corruption-in-the-enthusiast-press/244743/

It’s a reaction to Huffington firing Arrington: http://fortune.com/2011/09/08/arrington-out-at-aol-for-real-this-time/

And quotes this: http://www.lessig.org/2009/03/and-again-the-point-define-goo/

Heavy cherry picking:

How can you tell if something’s the enthusiast press? Here’s a starting point: Regardless of the internals, the question of whether or not there is a clear separation of church and state between editorial and advertising is academic, because a good chunk of editorial consists of breathless previews of upcoming products, services, or events.

TechCrunch’s latest big scoop was announcing information about the new Amazon tablet when the marketing machine wanted them to.

There is a higher order of critique to be made. That critique is of a whole segment of journalism that alternates between being hype-man and watchdog for an industry. The structure of constant posting inhibits - if not outright prevents - the watchdog part from going beyond product reviews. Hype, on the other hand, is in plenty of supply and keeps the pageviews flowing. The way these outlets are set up, there isn’t much possibility of a big triumph of journalism.

I am not accusing anyone of any crime. I’m not even accusing anyone of anything unethical (we’ll leave that to the pros). My charge is that by (a) relying on exclusive previews, reviews or information which (b) come from relationships within the industry you cover that © often involve money (i.e. advertising, complimentary flights, industry parties), you invite the charge that you have been domesticated by the subjects of your work. WHETHER OR NOT these conflicts alter your coverage, you have committed this wrong. The wrong is the relationship, and the suggestion the relationship begs. It is not - and again, NOT - that the person accused is “being paid off” by anyone.

If all the tech press strives to be is infotainment, there’s no problem. But if it aspires to more, if it aims to afflict the powerful and comfort the powerless, then something much more substantial than one guy’s position on the masthead needs to change.

This circles back and excellently compliment’s the analogy made to car magazines early on by Wombat.

I particularly like the quote that paraphrases Lessig about it’s not the fact, it’s the appearance that is the problem. The alternative is to say “Everything on our website is a paid advertisment.”

1608

Pol was a bad actor hiding behind the ethics shield. Good riddance.

Accusations of Denton’s infiltrators “getting to Pol” in 3… 2…

1609

This was perfect. Mic dropped as the subject as far as I’m concerned, and it was 3 years ago.

1610

I think Denton’s infiltrators got to Pol.

1611

Oh. Mah. Gawd.

Ok, the whole “Youtubers aren’t journalists and are exempt” argument just became invalid. I found the holy grail.

RomnMYT.png761×364

FTC guidelines on disclosure of material connections between bloggers etc. and industry goods/money for their services.

Section 255.5

Key = “…disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious…”

1612

Yea, that’s… basically exactly what EU law says as well, although the UK example (in a dead tree book, don’t ask) uses a book review example.

1613

Wooo lawd. The Denton Mafia is working overtime tonight…

OHHdou4.png564×530


I’ll just link the rest cuz… way long. Check out this awesome meltdown. Full civil war just broke out I think.

The accused’s rebuttal and freakout:


For those wondering WTF “Alinsky Tactics” are…
http://www.bestofbeck.com/wp/activism/saul-alinskys-12-rules-for-radicals

  • RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)
  • RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
1614

Sure because otherwise he was a totally great guy who was totally not a holocaust denier and really was a great ambassador for GamerGate, right?

Honestly him leaving the GG hashtag sets GG in a better light. If Denton has “operatives” in GG (super unlikely anyway) the best thing they could have done is support KingofPol to the hilt and attacked his detractors instead.

1615

Denton or not, this riot is coming from inside not outside. Pol needed to go, because he’s fighting a different battle while holding their flag as a shield. Gamergate core apparently laid the smackdown on him. Primary reason = he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and was blabbing everything he knew for self-importance, which is very damaging when you’re trying to build a case.

However, the gamergate core are in the process of FOIAing a bunch of Gawker investigation stuff from the Feds. So if Denton really does have people embedded, they’re going to turn it up to 11 real soon. We’ll see. If someone jumps up and tries to be leader and about 50 people follow him it’ll be pretty obvious. We’ve already seen hired bots and stuff that was easily confirmed, so nothing surprises me. I’m just going to pop some popcorn and watch this show.

Let me make a prediction. Based on Alinsky’s rules that I quoted above, if they’re really using a rule 12 move to cripple the harassment reporting mechanism, I would expect that to be immediately followed by rule 10 - so if we see another wave of super nasty attacks on women in the next 48 hours I’ll consider that confirmation because it’s been quiet a long time.

Guy inside Gawker said Denton does indeed have a 30-man ICE team tasked with GG combat. ICE = Identify, Compartmentalize, Engage. Same source was dropping some other internal info as well. Well, as much as you can believe what you read in IRC and Tox.

1616

So let me get this straight; if there is more harassment of women, you will take that as proof that this is all a false flag operation?

Guy inside Gawker said Denton does indeed have a 30-man ICE team tasked with GG combat. ICE = Identify, Compartmentalize, Engage. Same source was dropping some other internal info as well. Well, as much as you can believe what you read in IRC and Tox.

Oh yeah I am totally sure that this Denton guy (who is apparently a big deal on the internets) runs a super tight internet commando squad. Sounds legit.

1617

I’m saying that if there’s suddenly a big wallop of it, immediately following this rift, that it’s probably purposefully taking advantage of the disruption in the anti-harassment defense. Initially I thought this was a simple attack from within…

However…

I do understand what’s going on a little here. The traditional thing was to publicly tweet “This account is doxxing” which would then direct everybody in the world to go look at that account and see the doxx info. That’s of course very unskillful. So there’s a rift about not doing the announcements publicly. The people who don’t listen and still send the announcements publicly are being attacked for doing it. So, this could be a legitimately correct thing being done in a ridiculous manner.

About Gawker:
You don’t think Gawker has people in the office that are tasked with monitoring gamergate, identifying individuals, and collecting information? Really? Why would they not?

1618

I think the GG anti-harassment thing is window dressing anyway. I don’t think they had any power or ability to actually stop or minimize harassment, even if they wanted to (which some I am sure do).

You don’t think Gawker has people in the office that are tasked with monitoring gamergate, identifying individuals, and collecting information? Really? Why would they not?

Maybe they do but it sounds like a waste of time to me.

More likely Denton just posted something he knew would freak out the ultra-paranoids who make up GG. 100% free psychological warfare, effective because the core of GG are already wearing tinfoil fedoras.

1619

Likely, because he know’s he’s being watched but nutbags like Pol, who immediately run onto Youtube and make idiots of themselves any time they think they saw some intel. That’s why Pol needed to get shut down, because he’d say anything and has no BS filter whatsoever.

I’m gonna PM you something interesting.

1620

Causes are sometimes worthy.

The people that follow these causes can be awful, assholes, idiots, or just the most vicious type: normal people.

I see fascism not in the causes (but a cause can be itself hate spew) but on how people operate.

Any cause can be fascism this way. Religion can be fascism, you can preach (some people do) that religion is about love, but some people choose to operate religion as a way to murder people, rape womens and profit from lord-of-war-ism.

Causes like feminism can be vehicles to that too.

Sometimes I see how people “defend” feminism and I see the naked dead skull of fascism. You can say feminism is about being equal, but these people would talk about things like “positive discrimination”. You can say feminism is about giving everyone a voice, but these people will talk about Mindcrimes or Talkcrimes.

Its not possible to disagree when these people around. Disagreeing is the upmost crime.

The thing is… that has nothing to do with feminism, or religion, or nationalism, or sport. Is about how people operate.

Social Justice Warriors are Bigots. The difference from a nazy bigot, or nationalist bigot, or a misogynist bigot, is that you may agree with the cause the bigot defend here.

The danger is… giving powers to bigots is a sliding slope, and theres not return, beyond some point the bigots are the ones controlling the public narrative, and everyone else (specially moderates) are push to the border and public assassinated for what they say or what they think.

Theres already things we can’t say in public that are only moderate opinions, and that IS WRONG… It seems the bigots are winning.