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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, @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?"