When Anil met Pax

You remember how that went, right? Anil Dash tweeted

Wow, didn’t realize @businessinsider had hired such an asshole in @paxdickinson. Getting memcache to build made him an expert on misogyny!

Pax responded with the inevitable “you gonna say that to my face?” so Anil said sure, so they met. Anil tells us about it.

People who know me know that my offer was sincere, because while I was not trying to get Pax fired (though I certainly am not sorry that he was, and everyone including Pax agrees it was the right decision), I was definitely trying to find some way to understand if a constructive form of accountability could be attached to this incredibly shitty circumstance. I would still like to see Business Insider’s management explain how they’re structurally addressing their failures that allow a toxic culture to thrive for years with no accountability. [Read more…]

The purpose of trolls

Amanda Marcotte comments on the BBC Newsnight – Paul Mason – Twitter harassment campaign story to point out that misogynist harassers have an agenda.

But as awful as trolls are, they do serve a major purpose, if people are willing to accept that these are actual people expressing actual opinions, instead of imagining them, as too many people do, as almost a force of nature that the internet willed into existence and not people at all. That purpose is revealing that misogyny exists and it is widespread. [Read more…]

Frankly incandescent

The Telegraph has more.

The social networking site’s move came as a female MP called in police over rape threats she received via Twitter and detectives continued to investigate similar highly offensive messages sent to a feminist campaigner.

Caroline Criado-Perez, a writer, faced a deluge of online vitriol, including warnings that she would be killed, after she successfully lobbied for a woman to appear on a British banknote.

The trolls also targeted Stella Creasey, the Labour MP for Walthamstow in east London, for speaking out in support of Miss Criado-Perez.

Miss Creasey said she was “frankly incandescent” at Twitter’s response to the vile abuse she suffered over a 24-hour period. [Read more…]

Criado-Perez Twitter abuse case leads to arrest

A guy has been arrested over the deluge of threats aimed at Caroline Criado-Perez on Twitter.

The 21-year-old was detained earlier in the Manchester area on suspicion of
harassment offences.

Oh yes? Interesting.

Via her Twitter page on Sunday evening she said she was at a police station making a statement and that there were “many more threats to report”.

The Metropolitan Police said an allegation of “malicious communications” had been made to officers in Camden on Thursday. [Read more…]

A deafening silence from Twitter

The Independent reports that Twitter is facing a major backlash for not responding to abuse. I am pleased to hear that – Twitter has been crappy about dealing with one kind of abuse I get there, and it’s so crappy about offering ways to deal with other kinds that I didn’t even try.

A host of MPs and other leading public figures have threatened a boycott after a feminist campaigner highlighted numerous threats of rape and other violent acts being sent to her on Twitter. Caroline Criado-Perez, who finally won her fight to have prominent women represented on Britain’s bank notes this week, claimed that her complaints to the site have been ignored. [Read more…]