Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Professional Victims and Censorship of the Internet

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Oct. 23, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

14:30

Professional Victims and Censorship of the Internet

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	So I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about the business model of professional victims and why we should be aware of it, why people in general should be aware that this is something that is done.
	Now, this is a relatively new business model.
	It's only in the last really three, four years that this has become something that can be done, and it can only be done by a very narrow segment of the population in the right kind of conditions.
	Let's start with the Kickstarter of everyone's favourite internet feminist, Anita Sarkeesian, who as I'm aware practically invented this model.
	Initially, she was only asking for $6,000, which the feminist community funded within 24 hours.
	The rest of May is pretty uneventful.
	She doesn't get massive amounts of money.
	Things change at the beginning of June, towards the end of the project, where on June the 7th, she posts this harassment, misogyny, and silencing on YouTube update on her website.
	The very next day on June the 8th, oh my god, a thousand backers!
	Thanks!
	And oh, about all that harassment stuff!
	Publicising the harassment had financial results.
	The next update on June the 14th is a picture of Anita literally playing the victim, but bravely standing up to those horrible trolls who want her to stop her project, as if any such thing was going to happen.
	And then 15 articles of her playing the victim at various different media outlets.
	What do you think happened next?
	Well, you probably already know.
	Four days later, the campaign ends with 7,000 people supporting almost and nearly $160,000.
	Being a victim on the internet pays.
	So that is what Anita has continued to do.
	Why would she change anything?
	Look at the Feminist Frequency annual report for 2014.
	Feminist Frequency received $442,000 in donations.
	For the first three quarters, Feminist Frequency received less than $45,000.
	For the final quarter of the year, it received almost $400,000.
	So what happened in the final quarter of the year?
	Sarkeesian was due to speak at the University of Utah when someone called in what they described as a Montreal massacre style of attack against those in attendance.
	Because apparently Sarkeesian was everything that was wrong with the feminist woman.
	This was really unusual because the Montreal massacre isn't very well known outside of Canada.
	It's not really very well known at all, as it happened in 1989.
	The perpetrator Mark Lepine was specifically trying to fight feminism, and so any reference to this massacre seems to be an attempt to deliberately spook feminists.
	And it certainly worked on Anita as she cancelled the event that was happening, coincidentally, in the final quarter of 2014.
	The police categorically stated that there was no risk to students.
	There was not going to be a massacre.
	This was simply hot air sent on the internet.
	But that didn't matter to the feminists who backed Feminist Frequency, as she received massive amounts of donations after this event, with $230,000 worth being raised in December alone.
	And it's not just gamers who are asking Anita Sarkeesian to be more transparent either.
	Feminists are doing so as well, even die-hard fans.
	And these are fans who are so dedicated, they will show stills from before and after the Kickstarter and claim that there has been a significant increase in production quality.
	They literally say, show us how it was done, Anita.
	Not because I don't believe you did it, but so others can follow in your footsteps.
	If you had to spend that money on flights to give TED Talks, doing research or licensing fees for game footage, or even to pay for therapy as a result of the harassment you have endured, I want to know that too.
	But of course, a magician cannot reveal their secrets.
	There is no way in hell that Anit Sarkeesian is going to turn around and tell someone outright that the publicization of her harassment and the playing on people's goodwill are the secrets of her success.
	And yet, without this, she wouldn't have raised such a remarkable amount of money.
	Anit Sarkeesian is, of course, not the only person using this business model.
	We have another very strong example in Zoe Quinn.
	Back in July 2014, she was making just over $1,000 a month from donations on Patreon.
	After sparking off a scandal in the video game industry and parading her pouty face around the media, she's suddenly making almost quadruple what she was making beforehand.
	But remember, people's sympathy has a half-life.
	Eventually they grow tired or they forget and they end up reducing the amount of money they give you.
	Even if you end up with more patrons over time, you end up with less money.
	Because of the decay of the support you receive over time, it's necessary for them to increasingly inflate how bad the harassment against them is.
	In fact, it's necessary to blow it out of all proportion, which is probably one of the many reasons that both Quinn and Sarkeesian appeared before the United Nations in September 2015 to plea the case of censorship of the internet,
	along with the most cack-handed cyber violence report in an attempt to back this up that was swiftly removed and replaced with an executive summary which essentially said the same thing but without any of the terrible citations leading to people's hard drives.
	So listen to the overblown rhetoric that they use when talking about trolls on the internet.
	...who works in tech and somebody who runs Crash Override Network, it's, I think, the only direct victim's assistance and crisis center for people who are currently under online abuse, as well as a victim's advocate group.
	We've handled, I think, over 1,000 cases since we launched in January, and we're staffed entirely by people who have been through this.
	We deal a lot with triage so people come to us when things have already gotten to the worst.
	Triage.
	As if she is in a field hospital surrounded by war wounded and she needs to know who to bandage up first.
	Things like they need to be trained in things like the way domestic violence can manifest online because the viral nature of the internet can take all of the goodness about things like marketing, things like grassroots activism and apply it to domestic abuse just as easily as you saw in my case.
	Isn't that an amazing thing?
	To try and equate domestic violence battered women who are bloody, who have got split lips, black eyes, possibly broken cheeks, with people who have received messages on Twitter they don't like or they disagree with or maybe have even been insulted.
	There are individuals on services like YouTube that have made a living off of abusing people like Anita and I who monetize this, who see the mobs, who aren't anonymous, who raise their funds this way to continue attacking, stalking and harassing us because it's a cottage industry at this point.
	The question then is, if these people are not anonymous and they are abusing you and harassing and stalking you, why don't you take legal action against them?
	The answer of course is that none of this is true.
	It just sounds as if it might be true.
	The worst that Sarkeesian and Quinn are getting from YouTube users, such as myself, is criticism.
	As someone had mentioned, it's not just what is legal and illegal, right?
	Harassment is threats of violence, but it's also the day-to-day grind of you're a liar, you suck, you, you know.
	Okay, this one isn't so much overblown as it is massively underwhelming.
	People saying that you suck on the internet.
	The internet is providing new ways to commit the same types of violence.
	Which is, of course, what this whole commission was about.
	Violence on the internet, which may sound like an oxymoron because it is.
	Creating a cultural shift, I think, takes a great number of approaches.
	And we've been hearing a lot about systemic change, and that makes me really happy because I think that that's really how we have to do this.
	And so one of those approaches is I think that the online social media sites and the places in which we are engaging on these large platforms really need to step up and change the way that their systems operate.
	Changing all of social media is the solution proposed by Anita here.
	What a wacky thing to do.
	I mean, it's like they've gone down their own rabbit holes and decided that, yes, this is sensible.
	This is not a crazy suggestion to make, especially in light of how Anita dealt with these things before she started her Kickstarter.
	This is from a speech that Anita gave in March of 2012, before she did her Kickstarter, and I'm going to assume before she realized how much money being a victim on the internet could make.
	How do I deal with trolls?
	It's an ongoing process.
	And the more popular I get, the more I get.
	Like 4chan has found me, and they're atrocious.
	And they purposely come, like, they subscribe to my videos so that they know when one comes out, so that they can attack me.
	And I get like the most horrendous comments you can imagine.
	Everything from like, you know, you're hot, you're ugly.
	I want to do these explicit things to your body to like actual threats of sexual violence and threats of death even.
	So one of the ways that I deal with this, one, I'm going to do a research study about harassment that women face on YouTube as a way to funnel my anger and frustration at this.
	But on a day-to-day basis, I moderate all of my comments.
	So when you comment on any of my worlds online, I have to read it before it gets approved.
	So I don't approve any of those.
	So that the people coming to my page don't have to deal with it.
	I have people that support me and that I can like vent to.
	Or sometimes I'll get together with a friend and read them together because it can get really overwhelming at times.
	I'm kind of used to it at this point, which is sad.
	And it does in no way means that it's acceptable, but I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Sometimes there are moments that are worse than other moments.
	And another way, I block, oh, blocking.
	I probably have the biggest block list on YouTube of anyone.
	I block people left and right.
	This is, of course, a far more sensible reaction to people on the internet telling you things you don't want to hear.
	Control your spaces.
	Let the negative comments wash off of your back.
	Vent to a friend if you have to.
	Block people.
	But the thing is, this doesn't give her any leverage.
	It makes people think, well, she's a big girl.
	She's got it under control.
	She's capable.
	She's strong, confident.
	She knows what she's doing online.
	It doesn't give her any way to persuade people to do what she wants to do, to change things, because it seems that she has it under control.
	And playing the victim online is taking them places.
	That's the thing.
	Not only is it making them lots of money, it's getting them heard by major players like Google, where they're actively being solicited to fight online abuse.
	In fact, these neo-progressive activists are actively and publicly brainstorming ways to try and petition Silicon Valley to solve online harassment.
	Bizarrely, Anita Sarkeesian thinks that we can do this by broadening the definition of online harassment and abuse.
	Something which will self-evidently create more of this than there was before.
	But not only that, it will water down what actually is and isn't abuse.
	People are going to care less about it.
	And she seems to be doing this entirely for her own personal gain.
	She says, for example, someone will post a YouTube video that defames me.
	Welcome to the club.
	Then thousands of people will reply to that video and tweet at me, you liar, or you dumb bitch.
	That's not a threat, but it's still thousands of people coming after me, right?
	Well, wrong.
	that's not thousands of people coming after you.
	There are no threats involved there, and as you already stated.
	But I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Both Anita and I have YouTube channels of a very comparable size, and I receive many comments from feminists that are very angry and irate about the work that I do.
	I actually take Anita's advice regarding it though.
	But I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	I don't help encourage the United Nations to create a radical, dangerous vision for the future of the internet.
	Currently, most of the internet operates under US law, so Twitter and Facebook generally can't be held responsible for what people do on them.
	However, the United Nations proposes that social networks proactively police every profile and post, and that government agencies only license those who agree to do so.
	The United Nations believes that online platforms should A be generally responsible for the actions of their users, and B be specifically responsible for making sure those people aren't harassers.
	This is of course absolutely crazy.
	The platforms can't be held responsible for the actions of people they don't control, and we've already seen people like Anita Sarkeesian call for an expansion of the definition of a harasser, specifically to include things that are not harassment.
	And this is all being done in the name of protecting women.
	Thankfully, what these people are proposing is too radical to ever really be implemented.
	But we have to be aware that they are never going to stop trying.

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