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posted by martyb on Friday August 31 2018, @03:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the Garbage-in-garbage-in-garbage-in-and-more-garbage-in dept.

At the The Verge:

Today, The Verge is publishing an interim edition of Sarah Jeong's The Internet of Garbage, a book she first published in 2015 that has since gone out of print. It is a thorough and important look at the intractable problem of online harassment.

After a year on The Verge's staff as a senior writer, Sarah recently joined The New York Times Editorial Board to write about technology issues. The move kicked off a wave of outrage and controversy as a group of trolls selectively took Sarah's old tweets out of context to inaccurately claim that she is a racist. This prompted a further wave of unrelenting racist harassment directed at Sarah, a wave of coverage examining her tweets, and a final wave of coverage about the state of outrage generally. This is all deeply ironic because Sarah laid out exactly how these bad-faith tactics work in The Internet of Garbage.

[...] The Internet of Garbage provides an immediate and accessible look at how online harassment works, how it might be categorized and distinguished, and why the structure of the internet and the policies surrounding it are overwhelmed in fighting it. Sarah has long planned to publish an updated and expanded second edition, but in this particular moment, I am pleased that she's allowed us to publish this interim edition with a new preface.

In that new preface, Sarah stresses that her original text was written from a place of optimism. But the years since have not been kind to internet culture. She writes that the tactics of Gamergate, so clearly on display during the harassment campaign waged against her over the last few weeks, have "overtaken our national political and cultural conversations." That new culture is driven by the shape of the internet and the interactions it fosters. "We are all victims of fraud in the marketplace of ideas," she writes.

I hope everyone with a true and sincere interest in improving our online communities reads The Internet of Garbage and contends with the scope of the problem Sarah lays out in its pages. We are making the entire text of The Internet of Garbage 1.5 available for free as a PDF, ePub, and .mobi ebook file, and for the minimum allowed price of $.99 in the Amazon Kindle store. Below, we have excerpted Chapter 3, "Lessons from Copyright Law."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @04:57PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @04:57PM (#728822)

    bullshit white grievances explicitly started by Nazis.

    That's your defense, that Sarah Jeong isn't racist because she's satirizing people satirizing Nazis?

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by ikanreed on Friday August 31 2018, @05:09PM (8 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 31 2018, @05:09PM (#728832) Journal

    No. That's dumb and you're dumb for reading that in my post.

    My defense is:
    She was satrizing racists who made explicit claims of black inferiority with a "[same thing but with white people]" joke.

    and also, separately,

    Nazis started a astroturf campaign to get her fired(and the evidence is there, it's actual nazis who started it) and you're a dumbfuck who bought into it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @05:21PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @05:21PM (#728841)

      No. That's dumb and you're dumb for reading that in my post.

      > everyone who disagrees with me is dumb

      and the evidence is there, it's actual nazis who started it

      > everyone who disagrees with me is a nazi

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday August 31 2018, @05:26PM (5 children)

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 31 2018, @05:26PM (#728844) Journal

        1. You're dumb. You don't need to overextrapolate.

        2. The evidence exists. The controversy was started by nazis [vox.com]. If it starts looking like everyone you agree with are nazis, maybe the problem isn't with people pointing it out to you.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:00PM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:00PM (#728897)

          The controversy was started by nazis [vox.com].

          fringe alt-right sites like the Daily Caller and Gateway Pundit.

          The Daily Caller was co-founded by Tucker Carlson, on what planet is he a National Socialist or part of the alt-right? Jim Hoft and Gateway Pundit I know nothing about but I doubt they tick these boxes either. Weev... had nothing to do with this otherwise nonsensical, libelous article.

          If it starts looking like everyone you agree with are nazis, maybe the problem isn't with people pointing it out to you.

          I do not agree with the ideas espoused by National Socialists or members of the alt-right. Maybe the problem is that you don't know what a Nazi is?

          • (Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:46PM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @07:46PM (#728927)

            A quick look at the Daily Caller and Gateway Pundit and it is clear that they are GOP propaganda platforms with a mix of race baiting and some token "hey look a story with black protagonists!" as a drop-in for "I have a good friend who is black!"

            Billionaire connects with Blue Collar workers.

            Black pastor does boob grab, "This is sick"

            Obama gutted due process

            Drunk driver turns out to be illegal alien

            Trump's poll numbers are actually great!!!

            Yaaaaa, that is one shitty "news" site aimed to keep conservatives pissed off and pushing pro GOP bullshit to try and keep their support base from listening to reality. They even have an article for that, "Washington Post reporter suggests trump supporters aren't rooted in a reality based community". That statement is quite provably true and is solidified by your chosen Traitor in Chief who lies to your faces so blatantly and repeatedly shows himself as morally bankrupt.

            I can forgive a good bit of Trump support for believing in his bullshit promises, but at this point you have to be willfully ignorant to continue supporting him. If a boob grab is "sick" then how the fuck did "grab em' by the pussy" get elected? Mr. Adultery the wife rapist who says he could murder someone in full public view and still have support?

            Want to talk reality? Explain that level of hypocrisy.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @10:00PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @10:00PM (#728997)

              A quick look at The Verge and Vox and it is clear that they are progressive propaganda platforms with a mix of race baiting and some token "hey look a story with 'alt-right' protagonists!".

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @10:46PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @10:46PM (#729014)

                A stupid asshat just doing a search/replace on a comment has no brain.

                The Verge: just checked, mostly looks like corporate advertising. The worst two articles I found were "A conservative Facebook would probably fail — but Facebook should worry about it anyway" and "The Ford Focus is dead in the US because of Trump’s trade war" which are hardly register on the level of propaganda pushed by the conservative sites. No race related crap anywhere on the homepage that I can see. Everything on there is legit news or corporate ads.

                Vox is more political with "Trump just lost his best chance to kill DACA this year" and "Robert Mueller got another cooperator", also "Al Sharpton: Aretha Franklin worked for civil rights, not Donald Trump" and "Why obvious lies make great propaganda". So you have a valid point about Vox but I still don't see the same level of rhetoric and obvious manipulation as on the conservative propaganda sites.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01 2018, @01:21AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01 2018, @01:21AM (#729054)

                  The Verge is owned by Vox.

                  obvious manipulation as on the conservative propaganda sites.

                  Political bias exists but isn't equal. So Red State [redstate.com] is on my current reading list, doubt you'll read a mea culpa about that particular story on the progressive sites. The center left are siding with the center right because the far-left is insane and they're infiltrating mainstream politics.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @05:31PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31 2018, @05:31PM (#728848)

        Thanks for making that clear. I know you were going for sarcasm, but all you did is nail the point that you are dumb. Whether you're a nazi is another matter, but it seems likely you have sympathies in that direction at least.