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Brianna Wu, head of the independent gaming studio Giant Spacekat, was the target of a series of tweets containing death threats on Friday; one published her home address (since redacted). The poster's Twitter account has been disabled.
Wu responded on Friday night with the tweet:
Brianna Wu @Spacekatgal
The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe.
Remember, #gamergate isn't about attacking women.
GamerGate supporters denounced the threats and "doxxing" against Wu and disavowed the poster. However, several suspected that the tweets were a false flag created by anti-GamerGate forces:
Sun Knight @SunKnightO
@Sen_Armstrong @Spacekatgal @chatterwhiteman It's clearly either a troll or false flag shame that people actually think its legit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:00PM
...but we already know gamergate-related attacks have been carried out by sockpuppets trying to discredit the opposite side. I feel bad for this developer but she should really bear in mind that pseudonymous internet threats on public sites are not all that serious. And I say this as a person who has received death threats through his private, personal phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:02PM
> but we already know gamergate-related attacks have been carried out by sockpuppets trying to discredit the opposite side.
Evidence?
I just googled and all I could find was 4chan discussion of them setting up sockpuppets to attack women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:15PM
Anita Sarkeesian supposedly faked death threats. I've also seen Twitter conversations about setting up these sockpuppet attacks (but it was a while ago, would be hard to dig them up at this point).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:20PM
> Anita Sarkeesian supposedly faked death threats.
You supposedly faked death threats.
Or in other words, that's not evidence.
You want to make an extraordinary claim, the least you can do is provide ordinary evidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:23PM
Prove the threats were real, otherwise they were not.
Burden of proof is on you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:26PM
> Prove the threats were real, otherwise they were not.
Why should there be any doubt?
Do I also need to prove that they weren't written by the flying spaghetti monster?
The threats certainly exist and they are in line with so much of the talk out of the group.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:33PM
By their very nature, one must assume all death threats are real - if you incorrectly assume they are not, you die. There is no need to "prove" that somebody intends to carry out a death threat; they're illegal and must all be assumed as serious, joking or not.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday October 13 2014, @08:51AM
Oh, that's curious: Burden of proof meets precautionary principle. And even if the precautionary principle takes precedent, does it affect the burden of proof when it is referenced?
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 13 2014, @03:27PM
Legal vs. personal response. The threat doesn't have to hold up in a court of law for you, the threatened, to respond cautiously to it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @11:37PM
Actually, no, it's not. The positive claim had been made that "Anita Sarkeesian supposedly faked death threats". The AC you responded to did not make the claim that they were real, although he did express some inclination in that direction. AC simply asked for some evidence of your positive claim. So, the one making the positive claim that the threats are fake (or defending it) needs to produce evidence to back up that claim. This is basic logic 101. The logical fallacy you are committing is called "shifting the burden of proof". To read up on this and other fallacies (I think you have committed at least a few others in this discussion), consult this wiki page [wikipedia.org].
Why, oh why, do people become unhinged and jettison basic logic when discussing this issue?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @04:24AM
Because there's no substance to it, its just an excuse to justify abusive attacking. Once you realize that, it becomes obvious why there's no logic involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:39PM
Jeez, don't get so defensive.
>You want to make an extraordinary claim, the least you can do is provide ordinary evidence.
Google or DDG "Sarkeesian fakes death threats" and you will find whatever evidence there is. You will also find claims that the story didn't go quite the way it was portrayed. The bottom line being that proving internet events on a pseudonymous internet network with a high degree of fidelity is hard, nearly impossible given the ease of staging events without any sort of accountability for the parties involved.
Also, 'extraordinary claim'? There is nothing 'extraordinary' about a social network montage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:47PM
> Google or DDG "Sarkeesian fakes death threats" and you will find whatever evidence there is.
So, none.
As such, no further speculation would be appropriate at this time. [gamerheadlines.com]
> Also, 'extraordinary claim'? There is nothing 'extraordinary' about a social network montage.
I don't even know what a "social network montage" is. But I do know that claiming someone made fake death threats and that she herself then had the FBI investigate is a pretty extraordinary claim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @08:01PM
>I do know that claiming someone made fake death threats and that she herself then had the FBI investigate is a pretty extraordinary claim.
It is my understanding that she had (allegedly) never contacted the FBI. Regardless, proving this sort of stuff is hard for reasons already explained. I mean, proving that it happened or it didn't would both be hard. Most people don't generally consider this when looking at evidence for any given claim, though. More often than not, the threshold of proof for the position a given person supports is significantly lower than the one said person sets for the opposition.
In any case, I don't see how setting up a sockpuppet is such an extraordinary act. I could go and do it right now if I could be bothered. I mentioned I have seen Twitter talk planning such montages. I'm sorry I don't have the screenshots stored in my computer (though if I did, someone would probably point out I might have forged them, which is just another example of the decreasing trustworthiness of the internet).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @08:07PM
> In any case, I don't see how setting up a sockpuppet is such an extraordinary act.
The extraordinary claim is that she sent herself fake death threats. How she did it is entirely mundane.
Either you know that and are deliberately misdirecting, or you aren't very smart.
Either way you've lost all credibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @08:11PM
>Either way you've lost all credibility.
Ha, way to ignore the rest of what I wrote. But you are obviously too aligned to one side of this debate to listen to reason, so I agree we should terminate this exchange. Have a nice day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @08:21PM
> Ha, way to ignore the rest of what I wrote.
You mean the part where you repeated yourself about how hard it is to prove something absolutely and that people have different standards based on their biases?
I don't disagree, but it was not relevant to the point, except perhaps as an excuse for you to believe in the flimsiest of hearsay.
I asked for even ordinary proof and twice now all you did was misdirect to pretend that I was asking for proof about something irrelevant. Oh and you also told me to google it - the #1 sign that someone is full of BS, prove my arguments for me!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 13 2014, @03:30PM
Why is the idea that she sent herself death threats extraordinary?
False flags, sockpuppets...get more cynical, man.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 13 2014, @08:50PM
I would like to assume they're real and err on the side of caution.
That said, I was on twitter Friday night when the S**t hit the fan.
There's some question about Wu's twtter time line, she tweeted she received threats 1 minute before she actually received the threats. She received the threats, which didn't tag #GamerGate, SHE tagged #GamerGate and accused it of sending the threats. It could have easily been MRA extremest or any number of other people.
On top of that her tweet tagging #GamerGate was re-tweeted over 1,200 times in the first five minutes, there's a lot of speculation she was using bots to spread the message as quickly as possible. At which point a "friend" of Wu's started tweeting around, "My friend was just threatened here's a link to her game".
People in GamerGate had started reporting it and had the account down in 15 minutes. Not 5 minutes later the first article blaming #GamerGate came out by Ian, something other other. Give how quickly it went from "OMG, I'm being threatened" to "Here's a link to my friends game" to "ZOMG!! #GamerGate is chasing women out of their homes!", to me this seems very much like it was intended to happen.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 14 2014, @02:24PM
"So trap?"
"Trap."
"At least a little effort to hide it would be nice--"
*knocks tray off console*
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday October 13 2014, @09:30AM
I take a dim view of any arrangement of pixels whether it is a photograph or a screenshot which "proves" that something appeared on the Internet. The screenshot I saw may or may not be genuine but it looked legitimate to me and it correlated with an account which had been deleted by Twitter due to abuse. Unfortunately, I cursed myself after reading an analysis which noted several anomalies. First and foremost, 10 grammatically correct messages were sent in time that it would have taken me to send one or two. Secondly, the screenshot was taken about 20 minutes after the first message was sent. Thirdly, the screenshot was taken by a prominent Twitter user who was not logged into their account. Overall, the screenshot was consistent with someone who had just logged out of a sockpuppet account after trolling herself. I missed this possibility entirely and I now take an even dimmer view of such evidence.
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