Randi Harper is one of the women that Gamergaters love to hate the most. A software developer, she became Gamergate Public Enemy #4 — after the troika of Sarkeesian, Quinn, and Wu — when she developed a BlockBot that enabled Twitter users to easily shield themselves (insofar as this is possible) from possible Twitter harassment at the hands of Gamergaters and others of their ilk.
This little bit of software garnered her many months of vicious harassment herself, and ultimately a three-part smear series on Breitbart by Gamergate’s pet “journalist,” Milo Yiannopoulos.
Now one Gamergater is going after Harper’s Patreon supporters, using personal information taken from the crowdfunding site when it was hacked earlier this month.
After finding the names and addresses of Harper’s several hundred Patreon supporters in the leaked data, British blogger Sam Smith took it upon himself to “warn” these people of Harper’s alleged crimes against decency by sending a mass email to everyone he found on the list.
But to a lot of people — myself included — his supposedly friendly warning read more like a blackmail attempt.
One of the recipients of the email shared it with me yesterday. It starts off in a decidedly unfriendly manner:
I am the author of the major blog www.matthewhopkinsnews.com. I am sending you this email because your name appears in a list of people who donate to a Patreon operated by a person called Randi Harper. The list was confidential but has been hacked and placed online by unknown third parties. As a result of the leak you may be named, so please read this email carefully.
Smith — who goes by the name “Matthew Hopkins” online, styling himself as a sort of digital reincarnation of the original “Witchfinder General” — then lays out what he sees as Harper’s ethical failings, linking to Yiannopoulos’ three-part smear job as proof. Among Smith’s complaints:
Harper has … admitted to drug abuse, including attempting to smoke meth from a broken lightbulb. She also irresponsibly dyed her dog blue and accidentally allowed it to lick up her drugs.
Dyeing a dog blue may annoy the dog, but if done properly it will not harm it. And literally billions of human beings on our blue planet have used drugs at some point in their lives.
Now we come to the blackmaily bit, which Smith insists is not blackmaily at all:
You are supporting a person who is associated with some of the vilest imaginable extremism. …
As a responsible journalist, I can assure you I shall not be publishing the list. However, some of you may work in regulated roles with responsible access to information, vulnerable adults or children. There may be a lawful public interest in my contacting the relevant authorities (including an employer).
Smith went on to ask Harper’s supporters if they, personally, “endorse her extremist views” and if they felt “aggrieved at Ms Harper’s failure to safeguard your personal data.” (Never mind that it was Patreon’s job, not Harper’s, to protect the data on its servers.)
If Smith’s email was intended to rattle its recipients, it seems to have succeeded. The person who sent the email to me reported that “[i]t left me quite shaken and furious.”
If the email was intended to scare donors into abandoning Harper, it has apparently backfired in a big way. Indeed, Motherboard reports that, according to Harper,
Smith’s efforts has had the opposite effect: her backers have responded by doubling, and sometimes tripling their donations. Her campaign has jumped more than $1,300 a month in donations after the emails went out.
For his part, Smith insists, as he did in a post yesterday, that his email wasn’t intended to be threatening. He had simply
decided the ethical thing to do would be to warn the people concerned, reassuring them I would not release the data and also what might happen, as I thought the Patreon boilerplate warning insufficient.
That bit about there being “a lawful public interest in my contacting the relevant authorities (including an employer)?” That was
actually just boilerplate legal language related to UK law. Obviously I am analysing these supporters and in some limited circumstances I might be required to report things – for example if they were a risk to a child. As a person who may wish to enter a regulated profession, I would be expected to cooperate with the authorities. Far from being a blackmail demand it is just standardised ‘cover-yourself’ legal language.
I will have to consult with the monkey lawyers flying out of my butt on that one.
Some Gamergaters have insisted that Smith isn’t really one of them, which is a bit silly, considering that he is a regular on the KotakuInAction subreddit — one of Gamergate’s main hubs of activity — who happily posted a photo of himself hobnobbing with Yianopoulos at a #Gamergate meetup in London last April.
But it is worth noting that the overwhelming majority of those posting about Smith’s email blast on KotakuInAction since word of it got out earlier this week have been strongly critical, blasting it as the sort of thing that (in their mind) only evil anti-Gamergaters would do. (Never mind that they haven’t.)
Of course, Gamergaters (and the mythic “third party trolls” they like to talk about so often) have been doing far worse to Sarkeesian, Quinn, Wu, Harper and many others among Gamergate’s favorite villains for more than a year now.
Still, the reaction to Smith’s blackmail-that’s-not-really-blackmail-honest suggests that at least some Gamergaters have a few sickly shreds of decency still living deep inside them somewhere. I can only hope they can nurse their decency back to full health before they ruin the lives of more people in their attempt to rid the game world of anyone and everyone who disagrees with them.
And I hope Patreon brings the full force of its lawyers down on Smith.
@ EJ
Ha, they look brilliant. Speaking of painting dogs and also to follow on the Hoxton discussion from the other thread.
Some years back there was a Banksy exhibition. As part of that he’d painted up some live animals (pigs as police, sheep as concentration camp inmates etc). Some people were protesting that.
My artist friend stencilled “Painting animals is wrong” on my dog and joined the protest.
@ catamara
If you’re ever in London, go to the Royal Courts of Justice. If you turn left down the corridor just after the main desk they have the original hand written transcript from Guy Fawkes trial in a cabinet.
@Carayak,
I’ve been following the ‘peeple’ saga, and as far as I know, the app still hasn’t launched and I suspect it never will. It was a horrible idea, and would’ve been a godsend to GG. I admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude over the amount of flak it’s would be developers were receiving, though I also felt sorry for them as I believe they genuinely didn’t have a clue how much of a terrible ideas theirs was.
Peeple was, to quote the immortal Robin D. Laws, a bad idea whose time had come. There’s a lot of money to be made by crowdsourcing data and presenting it back to people in a useful, analysable format: it’s why LinkedIn, Facebook, OkCupid, Yelp, etc. are as big as they are. The closer and more personal you get with the data, the more money you can make.
Capitalism is like magnetism in some regards: companies are going to get drawn towards a peeple-style product because it’s very obviously the winning move in the data market. At the moment the legal and reputational cost of doing it is too high, but they’re inevitably going to keep trying. They can’t not, after all.
@Alan:
That sounds like the East London I know. Irony will eat itself.
I read a book about Matthew Hopkins the other year. From what I remember, he died of tuberculosis (or similar) in his late 20s. Unfortunately there’s not too much known about him for sure, although his surviving writings suggest a nasty, sarcastic piece of work. He was more a ‘facilitator’ for local witch hunts than a witch hunter himself, if that makes sense, but he made a lot of money out of it. Fortunately there were clergy who stood up to him. But yeah, why anyone would want to be named after him is beyond me.
If I could afford it I would donate to Randi simply based on this (though I do really disagree with the dog dyeing thing, if not for health reasons, then certainly for reasons of taste – but then is there any verification of her nefarious deeds?).
Any employer or ‘relevant authority’ who isn’t this man will be immediately hitting the delete button on any emails they might receive from him. His vagueness and hyperbolic language are dead giveaways as to his complete lack of credibility.
by ‘who isn’t this man’ I mean anyone who does not share this view, which. I would imagine is 100% of people in positions of authority, and pretty close to 100% of everyone else.
Threat? What threat? All I did was the ethical thing of warning youz that sometimes accidents happen, you know. Like, sometimes houses burn down with people still inside. Sometimes masked men ambush you on the street and break your kneecaps with lead pipes. It happens. Sometimes tragedy strikes. Threat? What threat?
Jimbtho
He was 17th Century Milo, in other words, jumping onto an existing bandwagon and exploiting it for his own gain, oblivious to anyone crushed beneath its wheels.
As I think I’ve mentioned before it’s worth noting that in some jurisdictions a convicted witch’s estate was forfeit to the authorities with the informant getting a cut.
In some other jurisdictions the witch’s estate was not subject to confiscation.
Silly witches all chose to live in the former jurisdictions, turned out there weren’t any witches in the latter.
I did not realize that Sexy Jon Lovitz and Sexy Disco Ivan Drago were actual Halloween costumes.
@EJ,
what made the potential Peeple app so insidious was the initial concept that you could set up accounts on other people’s behalf. Most other social media platforms where people can trash each other serve some other purpose, remember how Steam’s game review section was used to harass Zoe Quinn with all those ‘positive’ reviews of her game that were actually tearing her down? Peeple would have been only about giving your verdict on people’s characters, it would have made stalking and slandering so much more convenient.
A better app would one which would conveniently scan review and social media sites for mentions of a person and compile the data to give you a profile, a lazy person’s google basically.
@Alan,
not unlike the fact that Elizabeth Bathory only went to trial because she started nagging the Crown to pay back the money they money they owed her. Only in her case she’d actually done something.
Accusing someone of witchcraft was a very convenient way of getting rid of a woman you didn’t like or whose lands might come in handy. Have you ever seen ‘Hour of the Pig’? That covers unjust witch trials.
@sn0rkmaiden:
Ugh, that’s horrible. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect platform for harassment.
Re Elizabeth Bathory: I was under the impression that her religion also played a part. She was a Protestant, after all, in a country which was busy forcibly converting its population back to Catholicism.
Alan, that Guardian article on mandatory reporting was very interesting. I live in the U.S. and am a mandatory reporter and I have to say I have very mixed feelings about it. I’ve had more than one experience of being legally obligated to ‘out’ an adolescent sexual assault victim which seems like a huge violation of zer privacy and removes all agency from the victim, plus has often put the victim in danger of further harm from the perpetrator. That being said I’ve also worked with not an insignificant number of adult victims of child sexual abuse who came into contact with people who should have reported and didn’t so the abuse wasn’t stopped, investigated, or prosecuted. I think there are a lot of unintended consequences to victims that make mandatory reporting laws problematic, however I don’t really know what a better policy would look like. I often feel like I’m trying to walk a thin line between protecting vulnerable people and not being another arm of law enforcement. Professionals also at times face negative consequences for reporting, reporters are not meant to be identified, however when a report is made (at least in my profession) the entire incident must be documented, if those notes end up getting introduced into court then the reporter is identified, this has at times led to lawsuits against professionals. It’s a really tricky issue.
Wow. Much insightful. How art. Wow.
I do believe that was the case in Salem, although I don’t know if the informants got a cut. What they got was the eye of the court turned from them.
My husband went through a background check for a Secret clearance through the Department of Energy (they were the sponsoring organization) and you know what? They didn’t give a shit about what people he knew had done.
Shockingly, they cared about what HE had done.
He had to list all the places he’s lived and all the time he’d spent abroad. He did have to admit to any drug use and explain all of his debts. They want to know if he’s participated in anti-government groups or activities.
But, overall the list of “if you’ve done this you cannot get a clearance” is relatively small. What they want to know is if the candidate has a problem with something they’ve done. Debt isn’t bad; unmanageable debt with collectors hounding is a problem, because someone could offer to “make it go away” in exchange for information. Being LGBT isn’t a problem, but if you’re not out to your family, it can be held over your head to pressure you into giving up information. Doing drugs in the past isn’t much of a problem, so long as you can admit it and it holds no sway over you NOW.
Now, this is for the Secret clearance; I haven’t the beginning of a clue about Top Secret or the Special Compartmentalized clearances. But I’ll bet they don’t look for substantively different things, they just dig deeper.
So yeah, not even the FBI is guaranteed to give a fuck about who gives money to someone who has done drugs and engaged in weird pet grooming.
Oh the dyeing the dog thing is an issue because dyes ment for people are not tested on fogs, and some dogs have allergic reactions or skin problems from some dyes that can be pretty bad. So it can be a bug issue depending on what dye is used.
So, apparently supporting an adult who as a kid pretended to be terrible is now “some of the vilest imaginable extremism.” Move over ISIS, step aside Stormfront, we got a new player on the block. This person was an edgy teen on 4chan. Which is ironic considering gamergate was started by edgy teens on 4chan, so you’d think they’d have just the tiniest bit of self awarenes to…
Ok, couldn’t finish that sentence.
I’d mention how bizarre it is to warn of vile extremism while linking exclusively to breitbart, but… enough irony detectors have suffered this day.
@ lattecat
How is dying a dog’s fur irresponsible
Bleaching a dog’s fur can burn it or poison it because you’re applying the chemical to a much larger portion of the body than you would to a human. (Plus, there’s always a chance that a dog could lick up some of the bleach). As for plain old peroxide and bleach free hair dye; most of them are nontoxic, and many people who dye their dog use homemade dye made from food coloring or Kool-Aid anyway. A diet of store bought dog food, flea dips, and flea collars are far, far worse for your dog’s health than dying him blue with Kool-Aid. Or a dye like Manic Panic .
Regarding dyeing dogs — like Robjec said, the dyes aren’t tested on dogs (in theory, in practice who knows), but things like kool aid are probably fine since it’s basically colored sugar. Silly, but prolly harmless.
Alan — so your side of the pond has no mandatory reporting? Interesting, ours certainly has issues as Sunny pointed out, but the things you have to report are basically child abuse, suicidal people, and actual threats to someone’s actual physical safety (“I’m going to X”, not “man I want to punch him sometimes”). I’m perpetually torn on this one since if I tell my psych I attempted suicide years ago, they really can’t break confidentiality over it, whereas if I say I did it last week, they have to // will, and certainly if I say I’m going to they’re required to (like, probably won’t let you leave the office except by ambulance). Which opens a whole can of (irrelevant) worms since I’m, you know, a fucking adult.
@robjec
“Oh the dyeing the dog thing is an issue because dyes ment for people are not tested on fogs, and some dogs have allergic reactions or skin problems from some dyes that can be pretty bad.”
Nope, but they’ve been safety tested on humans, so now I’m imagining some bizarro “Dogs Playing Poker” world where all the trendy dogs only buy cosmetics labeled “Human Cruelty Free”. ;p
@ Argenti
Nope, the only general obligation is you must report if you know someone is planning an act of terrorism (which as we’ve discussed previously is a very specific definition)
Also certain financial institutions must report if they think a client is money laundering.
But that’s it. As you’ll see in that Guardian article, even proposals to make reporting of child abuse mandatory for social workers and medical professionals has proved controversial.
Yup, as far as most security clearances and regulated professions are concerned, past substance abuse isn’t a big problem if you took responsibility for it and got help.
I really doubt that giving money to Randi Harper would compel a mandatory reporter to report you to the police or your boss or professional association. He’s using boilerplate legal language so he can have some faux plausible deniability.