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from the harrassed-turtles-all-the-way-down dept.
As the March kickoff for the weeks-long 2016 South By Southwest (SXSW) festival approaches, its disparate sections—music, film, and interactive—have begun announcing confirmed panels, speakers, and showcases. SXSW Interactive appeared prepared to host a panel about the hot-button topic of online harassment and abuse, but that plan changed on Monday when a festival director officially announced that the panel, along with another tangentially related panel, had been canceled due to allegations of "numerous threats of on-site violence."
SXSW Interactive director Hugh Forrest posted the news at the festival's official blog, though Forrest didn't confirm whether the threats were linked to both panels that he confirmed received the axe: "SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community" and "Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games." After describing SXSW as a home for "diverse ideas," Forrest also described a desire to maintain "civil and respectful" dialogue.
"If people can not agree, disagree, and embrace new ways of thinking in a safe and secure place that is free of online and offline harassment, then this marketplace of ideas is inevitably compromised," Forrest wrote. "Maintaining civil and respectful dialogue within the big tent is more important than any particular session."
And then, just a few days later, we have this report that the panels were restored:
South by Southwest's organizers reversed course Friday and scheduled a summit about gaming-related Internet harassment, after criticism for canceling similar sessions at next year's event due to threats of violence at the festival.
"Earlier this week we made a mistake," Hugh Forrest, director of the SXSW Interactive Festival, said in a statement on its website. "By canceling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry."
[...] "While we made the decision in the interest of safety for all of our attendees, canceling sessions was not an appropriate response," SXSW's Forrest said, adding the organizers had worked with authorities and security experts. "Online harassment is a serious matter and we stand firmly against hate speech and cyberbullying."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Vanderhoth on Monday November 02 2015, @03:24PM
This is completely bull, and frankly I'm just too tired after over a year to argue.
The dev in question was covered at least three times by the journalist who was at the very least friends with her, without disclosure.
https://archive.today/0KhZv [archive.today]
https://archive.today/5IBg1 [archive.today]
http://archive.is/WtK25 [archive.is]
We know he was at least friends with her because he was thanked in the credits of game he highlighted for her. So he also didn't disclose he worked on the game he was highlighting. The whole "Sex for reviews" thing was thrown in to obfuscate the issue. He covered her positively and gave her undue weight.
Enough with the BS, everyone knows what's going on. Harassment, which everyone gets on the internet anyway, is just a convenient deflection from the collusion and corruption going on in the industry.
The media as a whole, not just the gaming media.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @04:48PM
> This is completely bull, and frankly I'm just too tired after over a year to argue.
I feel ya. Constantly proclaiming your rigid adherence to one of the thinest conspiracy theories ever has got to be tiresome as hell.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Monday November 02 2015, @05:29PM
What's more conspiratorial.
Tens of thousands of people got together to harass women out of the gaming industry in a coordinated year long effort, or lazy journalists won't admit they were wrong not to disclose friendships and now use the controversy to generate clickbait that draws angry people to their sites, which is how they get paid?
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday November 02 2015, @05:05PM
That somebody gets favorable reviews for bad games is nothing new. And there's a very obvious reason for that: The primary source of revenue for game reviews is advertising from the game production companies, and if those companies stop getting favorable reviews they will pull their ads, which means the review magazine / website will lose money, which means they instruct their reviewers to keep the reviews positive.
And sure, game reviewers can get just as chummy with their sources as, say, political reporters, and in both cases that chumminess causes the reporting to be slanted.
So far so good. The problem is that based on their behavior and their rhetoric, that problem isn't what GamerGate is protesting. As in, they haven't said a word about that kind of collusion. Instead, they've been targeting feminists, "SJW"s, and so forth.
How many times has somebody posted your home address along with threats to kill you and your immediate family (along with their home addresses)? How many times has somebody threatened to bomb your workplace if you showed up? When you give a presentation, are you regularly told that somebody will show up and start spraying the place with bullets? How often has SWAT showed up to your home thinking that there was a kidnapping in progress (something that could easily get somebody killed)?
If that's not happening to you (and it's certainly not happening to me), then no, "everyone" doesn't get that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday November 02 2015, @05:26PM
This is blatantly wrong http://deepfreeze.it/. [deepfreeze.it]
What you think for a year all we've done is sat around and fumed over some dev no one cared about in the first place? No, that would be people looking to put down any chance consumers had finally had enough of how corrupt the industry was and finally decided to call out the journalists that were enabling it.
Dude, I've had people threaten to burn down my house and rape me and my wife over the dumbest internet crap. There are crazy people out there, but on the internet all they have is threats. You give them power by letting them have power over you. The media also loves to play this up because it's not stop clickbait headlines for them so of course they have little interest in talking about the ethical issues, but all the incentives to keep pushing "cyber violence".
Trolls love this stuff because now they get to stir shit up and watch as these "SJW" go around screaming sexism and calling for censorship while fingers get pointed at everyone except them.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday November 02 2015, @08:47PM
GamerGate was quite against other forms of dishonest reviews and business practices than Social Justice ones. Does nobody remember Doritosgate? (fuck this gate-shit, but this is what it was called) And paid-reviews has been suspected if not proven for years.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @08:58PM
How many times has somebody posted your home address along with threats to kill you and your immediate family (along with their home addresses)?
This has happened to numerous GamerGate supporters. In fact, Chelsea van Valkenburg (aka "Zoe Quinn"), is guilty of it. [crimeandfederalism.com]
There is harassment and threats related to GamerGate, and it is almost all directed toward GamerGate supporters. Claims otherwise have been debunked, like when Brianna Wu (a transsexual gamedev born John Flynt. I mention this because her past behavior is telling and worth reading about) claimed to have been forced out of her home, only to deliver a television interview from the same location shortly afterward.
Almost all Internet "harassment" is bullshit, but it can be quite profitable--socially and monetarily--to pretend to take it seriously. This behavior is distinct to one side of the conflict, and it is not found among those who support GamerGate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:43AM
That somebody gets favorable reviews for bad games is nothing new. And there's a very obvious reason for that: The primary source of revenue for game reviews is advertising from the game production companies, and if those companies stop getting favorable reviews they will pull their ads, which means the review magazine / website will lose money, which means they instruct their reviewers to keep the reviews positive.
No, that's not the reason in this context because we are talking about under-performing indie games that didn't even register on the sales charts.
As in, they haven't said a word about that kind of collusion.
Wrong [deepfreeze.it]. They have said a great many things [startpage.com] about collusion.
How many times has somebody posted your home address along with threats to kill you and your immediate family (along with their home addresses)? How many times has somebody threatened to bomb your workplace if you showed up? When you give a presentation, are you regularly told that somebody will show up and start spraying the place with bullets? How often has SWAT showed up to your home thinking that there was a kidnapping in progress (something that could easily get somebody killed)?
What you are describing are genuine criminal acts. If these poor threatened women really face such terrible harassment then how come nobody has been arrested for it?