Phil Mason, better known online as Thunderf00t, is a scientific researcher and YouTube bloviater who’s turned his hate-crush on video game critic Anita Sarkeesian into a surprisingly lucrative part-time job; his seemingly unending stream of YouTube videos attacking Sarkeesian, many of which have drawn hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, have without a doubt contributed mightily to the harassment directed against her by the online mob known as #Gamergate.
Now Mason is trying to defend himself against charges that he has become the de facto leader of a vast hate mob that harasses Sarkeesian and other women … by encouraging his followers to harass a woman who charged him with exactly this.
And a good number of Mason’s 400,000 YouTube followers have taken him up on this challenge, flooding the Yelp page of the business the woman runs with her husband with fraudulent one-star reviews and besieging her and her family business with angry and harassing phone calls (at least one of which the perpetrator has put online).
The story of this particular debacle began this past January when the YouTuber who calls herself Laughing Witch sent a letter to Mason’s employer, accusing the YouTuber of harassing Sarkeesian and other women and repeatedly suggesting that he and his followers were a bunch of Nazis. Her email was part of a letter-writing campaign by a number of feminist Youtubers who hoped their letters would get Mason fired from his research job.
Mason, who apparently faced no repercussions from the letter-writing campaign, decided last week to retaliate against Laughing Witch — real name Jennifer Keller. He posted a video about Keller’s letter, following up with a second video posting her name as well as screenshots from the web page of Porcelain Tub Restoration, the company she runs with her husband.
While Tunderf00t didn’t explicitly command his army to harass Keller and her husband, he suggested to his supporters that they post their thoughts about her on the business’s Yelp page — and they did, cratering the company’s rating with literally hundreds of fake one-star reviews.
Yelp has been removing the most obviously fake ones, as well as those referencing her letter about Thunderf00t, but many remain up as “not recommended” (in other words, questionable) reviews, including a number of clearly trollish ones accusing Keller of being a Nazi.
These negative reviews, as ludicrous as many of them are, have apparently hit the business hard. Keller and her husband have set up a FundAnything page in an attempt, they say, to make payroll in the wake of the attacks on their and their company’s reputation online. On the FundAnything page Keller’s husband, Paul Burns, writes:
We are getting slanderous lies about our services and people posting deplorable images on review sites, as well desecrating our star ratings and customers calling. No one clicks to a service company with 1 star rating.
According to Burns, the 26-year-old “family based service business with 14 employees” may be forced to close “because of a brutal mob attack on our social review sites.”
Mason’s response to this campaign being waged in his name? Another video, in which he declares that “Karma [is] ONLY A BITCH, if you are one!”
Except that this isn’t “karma,” a supernatural force that Mason, a self-avowed “skeptic,’ presumably doesn’t believe in anyway.
This is an organized harassment campaign, instigated and encouraged by Mason himself.
While I’ve enjoyed Laughing Witch’s videos in the past, I think the letter writing campaign was wrong. Writing employers is a low blow. And despite Mason’s many flaws as a thinker and a human being, he’s no Nazi.
But the wave of harassment he’s brought down on Keller — and which he has not made even the slightest attempt to rein in — is indefensible.
And it’s getting worse by the day: 8chan’s Baphomet forum, a haven for malicious doxers and harassers, has now jumped aboard this harassment train, targeting not only Keller but her supporters as well. They’ve doxed one other YouTuber already, and are working on doxing others.
In a Baphomet thread, one anon happily reports that the attacks on Keller are causing her great distress:
While Mason at first suggested that he would call off the attack if Keller apologized to him, he has since refused to accept her apology, and seems positively gleeful about the pain he’s caused her and her allies.
The internet has officially hit another new low.
I’ll post more on this as it develops.
NOTE: Thanks to Daily Kos blogger idlediletante (Margaret Pless), who provided me with a number of tips on this story. She’s written three posts on the subject so far:
Family Business Brigaded on Yelp by MRA YouTube Stars
Phil Mason is Working With Baphomet to Ruin DC Business
How it Feels to Be Targeted By An Internet Hate Mob: One Man’s Story
@Bryce:
In my opinion, if his employer has nothing to do with it then they have nothing to do with it. It is not wrong to make them aware of it – especially if he ever takes on a teaching position – but they shouldn’t be expected to give a damn, and trying to get someone fired over stuff they said on Youtube is pretty weak sauce. What a man does in his own time is his own affair, after all.
That said, if it is the opinion of his employer that Dr Mason is edging towards breaking the law, then that becomes different. As I posted earlier, Czech law comes down very firmly against hate speech and does not have balancing free speech provisions.
In either case, however, there is a clear moral difference between “maybe one of us should contact his employer to let them know” and “everyone, start your letter writing campaign, let’s bombard them until they fire him!” These are not the same thing at all, and from what I’ve seen on this thread one cannot accuse it of falling in the second category. There are no form letters. There are no lists of people to contact. Nobody is talking about how many they’ve sent. Contrast this with the threads of, say, Operation Disrespectful Nod and you’ll see the difference.
Patreon is a different issue entirely, of course.
An anecdote:
Once upon a time I was working in airlines. I was an inquisitive sort, and so I read through various older employee materials, including an outdated manual for company spokespeople. In that, I came across a most curious case.
It appears that in the opening years of the new millenium, an American TV programme had been made about Alaskan polar bear hunting, wherein they interviewed several of the hunters and asked them about what sort of person they were. One of them, when asked about employment, proceeded to open her yap and state that “Oh, I’m an engineer for [name of airline.]”
Strangely, the airline started to get people contacting them demanding that she be fired. It became a big enough thing that spokespeople were briefed on it and was put into the written handbooks, where I came across it years later.
The company’s opinion was that as what she had done was entirely within the bounds of the law, both in Alaska and in the place where the company was headquartered, she should have no sanction placed on her for what she did in her off hours; and even if that were not the case, disciplinary issues between the company and its staff were purely internal matters and they were not going to allow letter-writing campaigns to dictate their HR policies.
That’s how companies deal with this sort of thing. If no laws were broken and the employee is in good standing, they don’t tend to care. If you see someone get fired as a result of public pressure, it’s a fair bet that they were already in trouble with HR and the company didn’t need that much pushing to get rid of them.
No, because “hitting back” does not achieve justice, and it does not even guarantee that the other party will stop their attacks. I absolutely agree with Paradoxical Intention above that I would be in damage control mode, notifying my boss, the police, my family, etc. etc., taking means to protect myself and the people close to me, and to report the harassment through every legal means available.
Seriously, I learned that “hitting back” wasn’t okay in *preschool*. This is not a hard concept. If someone is attacking you, you get an authority to help.
I mean, only if that includes restraining orders. But no, I would not send any kind of, “Don’t mess with me, I can screw your life up” message. Firstly, it’s illegal. Secondly, it’s immature. Thirdly, it has just as great a risk (if not greater) of escalating the conflict as it does of ending it.
I think it’s disgusting when people set out to make their adversaries’ lives miserable, and I certainly won’t stoop to that just because someone else did it first.
There is a much better way. It involves talking to your boss like a grownup—which goes a long way towards proving that you don’t need to be fired—and involving the police and your lawyer, provided the harassment is severe enough to warrant it. If the harassment is not severe enough to warrant legal intervention, then it sure as anything isn’t severe enough to justify burning someone’s business to the ground.
This, this, this. Thissity this.
I still have mixed feelings about what LW did (although knowing that TF invokes his university so often in his videos slides me more towards feeling like it was probably fair to contact them), but TF was not just “hitting back”. It’s like he got slapped with a flyswatter and he retaliated with a bazooka.
@Bryce
For me I think it would depend on the the specific beliefs involved, and the specific job involved.
I think you’re ignoring the damage that “opinions” can cause.
For instance, a man posts anonymous youtube rants about how women suck at math and blacks are stupid. You recognize him as a math teacher at a local high school. Do you trust him to be a good teacher, to be fair to all his students? Would you want him teaching your daughter?
A loan officer rants about how irresponsible women are with money, how they shouldn’t be trusted with it. Do you think he’s fair to female loan applicants?
Should we report these guys? Don’t they have a right to their opinions?
I think they should at least be reported if they’re in a position of responsibility.
“this is him going on the internet, representing the university by claiming they’re the ones giving him credentials, and then spouting bigotry.”
Do you have a specific instance of him explicitly using his university title (not his PhD, which is a title he earned elsewhere) or implying his university endorsed any of this abuse? He’s a scumbag, but I’ve never seen him do this. Saying he’s a scientist or talking about his research isn’t the same as saying his employer endorses his views. Just because he says these things on YouTube doesn’t make it different than him saying them at a bar. All that’s changed is the number of people listening. His views might be odious, but his employer shouldn’t fire him unless he’s specifically saying they endorse his views. “I work for NASA, and I believe in aliens,” shouldn’t get someone fired. “I work at NASA, and NASA is covering up evidence of aliens,” should.
“I think they should at least be reported if they’re in a position of responsibility.”
Phil isn’t, really. He works in a research lab. His public role is equivalent to an auto mechanic. Should an auto mechanic be fired for making racist YouTube videos? Answering “yes” here implies an auto mechanic could just as easily be fired for posting videos supporting abortion rights or gay marriage. We can’t completely drive people out of society just because we disagree with them. Phil is wrong and obnoxious. Ruining his life won’t fix that.
In fact, if your line of reasoning is acceptable, you can’t really object to the harassment of Laughing Witch. Don’t her customers have a right to know about her behavior? Isn’t she also in the public expressing her views? How is posting about that on Yelp out of line? If you think sabotaging Laughing Witch’s business is inappropriate, going after Phil’s job should also be inappropriate. That’s holding a double standard against people because we disagree with them.
@sbel
It’s easier when discussing cut and dry instances of racism; not so easy to demonstrate in reference to other forms of bigotry, ethnocentrism etc. Statements such as “Islam is incompatible with Western values and therefore a threat” for example differ inasmuch as they are (ostensibly) an attack an ideology , a framework of beliefs rather than individuals. (Again this is for the sake of argument, and ignoring how far right uses paranoia about radical Islam to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment.) Sure you can come to valid conclusions about an individual based on that, but it’s a longer bow to draw in order to demonstrate how those attitudes are going to be harmful to people around them.
@delphi_ote
But as far as I know, they weren’t discussing the letter about Thunderf00t on Yelp. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.) From what I saw, they were giving the business — which seems to be solely her husband’s business anyway — bad reviews. So they were punishing her for sending a letter about Thunderf00t to his employer.
In fact, it seems that everything that Thunderf00t and his minions are doing is to punish Laughing Witch, not expose what she did.
There’s a reason for that: Not too many people would get worked up about what she did. So Thunderf00t et al. have to go with Plan B — punish the evildoer’s husband and thereby the evildoer.
Actually, there’s another reason they’re opting to punish Laughing Witch: They think it’s fun to try to ruin her life.
“In fact, if your line of reasoning is acceptable, you can’t really object to the harassment of Laughing Witch. ”
Mine? I don’t think so. I didn’t endorse harassing anyone. I was talking about the damage prejudiced people can do in positions of authority, and I meant that they should be reported to their employers if their prejudice and authority is such that they may be hurting people. I don’t see how any of that applies to LW. I don’t know enough about TF to know if any of it applies to him.
“How is posting about that on Yelp out of line?”
It’s against Yelp’s ToS. Many of them are also actually lying, claiming that the company does bad work. Lying to harm someone is very rarely a good thing to do, and I don’t think this is one of the rare exceptions.
“If you think sabotaging Laughing Witch’s business is inappropriate, going after Phil’s job should also be inappropriate. That’s holding a double standard against people because we disagree with them.”
I do agree that TF should probably be reported to Patreon so that they can investigate and determine if his videos do break their ToS. I’m sorry that you can’t see the difference between reporting something someone said or did to their boss and spreading lies about someone to ruin their business.
(“Phil”? Who the hell calls him “Phil,” aside from his most die-hard fans?)
Why does somebody have to be 150% perfect before harassment, doxxing and driving to suicide is seen as wrong? HARASSMENT, DOXXING AND DRIVING TO SUICIDE IS ALWAYS WRONG. Jesus Christ, how hard is it to not blame the victim?
@Bryce
I dunno, the way that’s phrased, it kinda implies that all muslims are enemies of western civilization.
@delphi_ote
Following up on my earlier comment, it appears that I was wrong on one point: Some of the “nonrecommended” Yelp reviews did discuss what Laughing Witch did–although others were just bad reviews written by the TF brigade.
But I stand by my conclusions: These minions of TF are punishing Laughing Witch because they think it’s fun to try to ruin her life.
They’re abusers, every one of them.
Hello.
@delphi_ote
This is a problem of public image, and a principle of unspoken assumption.
Let takes an example (well, this is relevant in my country, i do not know about yours) :
– a policeman, in a TV interview, say he despises a lot the persons of color
– obviously, the administration does not endorse his point of view
Do you think this can go like “it is ok, it is just a policeman, not all the police” ? Well, basically, no. He can be (and sure is going to be) trialed in an administrative court, basically for undermining the image of the administration (and probably for racism in a public court, but that is a different part and case). Because of generalization and unspoken assupmtion.
So, even if the university does not endorse his points of view, him speaking them in a public place is indirectly (mentally ?) linked to the university he works at. This is simply public image.
Sorry, i am not sure to be very clear in my explanation.
Have a nice day.
TF has surely claimed the title of Worst Dr. Phil in the World.
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
It meas ME think of this, which I saw just yesterday. Help me even, someone? Please? Because I just can’t:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GI_fh7FZIU&w=420&h=315%5D
Settle in, folks. It’s a long one, choked with hypocrisy, double standards, projections, irony and absolutely zero self awareness.
delphi_ote
I’m not so sure it’s as cut and dry as all that. Regardless, your examples are flawed in that one of those is clearly, deliberately hate speech, while supporting abortion rights or gay marriage is not. At least, not inherently.
@sbel
It was a poorly put example of what someone with opinions similiar to Mason’s might think.
I’ll try and use another: A ‘libertarian’ with rather obnoxious, social darwinist type beliefs starts airing their opinions via a blog under their full name. People start contacting their employer over this, and some, being particularly angry take it a step further and invent a narrative about this person, making irresponsible accusations (“They’re on that end of the political spectrum, they’re probably racist too” etc,).
Management overreacts, they lose their job.
This kind of thing becomes more common place and it’ll end up being used as a form of mob-based censorship.
Delphi_ote,
Did the mechanic record his racist videos at the garage where he works? Because if he did, he’s implying that his employer endorses those views even if he doesn’t say it outright and that is definitely a fireable offense.
I’d like to reiterate the point, even though it’s been made before, regarding the chronology of the harassment and Yelp attack.
The Yelp attack happened in the immediate aftermath of Thunderf00t posting LW’s personal information, and the link to her husband’s business’s Yelp page, in a YouTube video. Not before. The mere fact that LW’s personal information could have been found before TF posted it does not mean that what he did is not doxxing, and sending forth a hate mob. The fact that this is exactly what he did is not in dispute. He even made a celebratory video called “Karma is a b*tch only if you are one” to confirm his intentions in releasing her information directly to his subscribers. (And simultaneously confirming that he doesn’t understand the difference between Karma and revenge.)
There is absolutely no way to look at the chronology of the events, and not come to the conclusion that TF’s supporters are being completely disingenuous when they claim that just because LW had “doxxed herself” months before, that TF was not engaging in doxxing by including her personal information and the Yelp page of her business in a “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” YouTube video.
When it comes to TF’s university job, I come down strongly on the side of academic freedom only when it comes to his expressing troublesome opinions. I would not want to set a precedent in which a feminist professor could be fired for “harming the image of the university” because she used her credentials to attract a YouTube following, and then made videos the university found troublesome. One of the best parts of attending university for me was finding out that my professors were not gods, and in fact quite capable of holding very unreasonable beliefs. However, creating an environment that is hostile to your co-workers or students is another thing entirely. TF’s complete lack of understanding regarding harassment culture is very troublesome from an academic perspective, at the very least for the chilling effect on speech it has, and while it might not warrant an outright sacking, it should warrant a very stern warning from HR. If I were a student, especially a female student, I would feel wary of publicly criticizing Dr. Mason, no matter how warranted I felt it was, because I could not be sure that I would not end up falling into the category of “someone trying to ruin his life” and be deemed to be “fair game”, if my criticism led to any disciplinary action. He has shown that he believes that doxxing someone and sending forth a hateful mob to ruin that person’s life is a weapon he is willing to use; and to use it to extract the “right” apology from his victim. This is antithetical to a university setting, in which debates often get heated, and the free and safe exchange of ideas is paramount.
When it comes to TF’s use of Patreon, however: he has explicitly broken their ToS regarding doxxing. If Patreon decides to allow the kind of doxxing and encouragement of fraud that TF is engaged in, on the grounds that “the information could have been found elsewhere”, then they are in effect completely annulling that portion of their ToS.
Apologies for the tl;dr.
@littleknown Only videos in the patreon list are patreon videos, I didn’t think the ones in question were or did he put them in the list?
And also, where are these in the ToS as I can’t find them? I am assuming there are actual terms like this somewhere I haven’t checked or that I missed, and you are not referring to the completely unrelated section16 of the ToS called Confidential Information, which is about Patreon company information only.
I’m going to be less eloquent:
Fuck this man.
Fuck his followers.
And fuck anyone pulling some bullshit golden mean “no u” garbage.
I don’t know how I feel about this. Honestly don’t. I remember TF as a relative newcomer to the web, hadn’t heard anything about him in ages (enough time most of the online personalities I remember to fade away). The landscape has changed. The rules, too.
Back in my day (the early days of the Internet), there was a healthy fear of the web. Some of this was ignorance–reasonably smart people were afraid of viruses like they were demons that would occasionally be called from the deep, there were scams and warez, everyone online was still separated by the cloak of screen anonymity. Skyping wasn’t quite a thing. Faces were rare. Info was precious and scarce online.
The rules were simple. It was never the victims /fault/ when something happened, or at least rarely it was, but the victim has responsibilities. Not being a target was one. Like people being conscientious walking through dark corners of a city at night–you didn’t do it with a wad of hundreds hanging out of your pocket and didn’t stop to take naps on the sidewalk. You certainly avoided some eye contact and you were taking your risks if you confronted someone aggressively.
Now, very passionate people–very personally–start wars. I’m watching people engage in what they believe (and I don’t either believe or not believe; having no real opinion I don’t think) are right and necessary conflicts of ideology on the web.
It seems the rules have changed. Now, it’s more civilized. The city is better kept, cleaner, and brighter and there are fewer truly “bad parts”. With civilization comes rules and we’re learning them as we go and not everyone interprets or adopts them at the same pace–and the wars they think are important rage on and on any given day one faction or another is calling activities war-crimes when their recent history is spotty on that.
I saw the video of LW. It seemed to me like her goal was to hurt TF in real life. To encourage others to harass (or have police, employers, colleagues, etc. that are not part of the “war” harass him). Someone’s probably invented a term for that, now, but I won’t presume which one of the many new terms for internet warfare are legit. She took it offline. She encouraged others to. She believed this was no crime. I saw her apology video and it didn’t seem to me she recognized the act itself as wrong, a real war crime–only the consequences and I’m sure very real pain of being abused (and her family and colleagues abused as well) by TF supporters.
I saw TF’s vide. It seemed to me like his goal was to make a very public (seemingly political, in the context of whatever ideological war this was about) outcry about how he’s been treated. He wanted to point fingers and call “the other side” war criminals, and less-than-effectual ones (which seems offensive to me, almost mocking). He allows it to be suggested, by sharing LW’s information (in a sufficiently similar enough way as his was, that I think) but he was saying it to a much larger (though I have no reason to believe worse) population.
I fully believe if LW had the numbers, TF would have been more harmed–and that would have been seen as righteous on that side. I believe TF is smart enough to realize that his presentation of the facts would almost certainly lead to a desparate hell for LW. One side had threw a grenade, the other side threw a nuke.
The stakes are so high now. Personal information isn’t rare anymore, nor precious. It’s abundant and cheap. Like the availability of airplanes and missiles. One can deliver damage anywhere and any time and easily where once upon a time, it was slow and crawling.
I don’t guess anyone wants to read such a long post–I hadn’t expected to write it. I just happened to come by and read this and the linked items and figured I’d write my name on the wall as I passed by.
@happyelf: I must confess I was relying on what I had seen posted earlier in the thread as to what Patreon’s guidelines are:
Earlier in the thread, a TF supporter, Iris Scanner, attempted to make the argument that TF’s posting of LW’s personal information and Yelp page did not constitute doxing or coordination of fraud.
If those are not part of Patreon’s guidelines (what I would classify as part of their ToS), then I retract that part of what I wrote. However, they are very reasonable guidelines, and it would be very reasonable of Patreon to hold their Creators responsible not only for any doxing and coordinating of fraud that they do in Patreon videos, but also other social media, such as YouTube. It’s more than a bit dubious to say, “Well, clearly TF only used his Patreon money to make Patreon videos, and Patreon shouldn’t care what their Creators do on any other social media platform”.
Not to mention, those guidelines are eminently reasonable for YouTube, as well. Shutting down YouTube channels that dox individuals and coordinate fraud and harassment is a very basic step to combatting online harassment. (Are you listening, @googleideas?)
Thunderf00t works for an Institute called The Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry AS CR (Which only matters because of the following): They probably googled him before they hired him, when you google Dr. Phill Mason (all of his Thunderf00t related bulls*it comes up) – and they haven’t seen anything wrong with his hate-filled videos. And it can’t be that they haven’t searched him on the Internet before he got the job.
And this is the scary part about the story – that a research institute has no problems to employ a drama-rage-filled hate-mob supporting a-hole!
Says more about the institute that he works at than about him! I just have to add that I don’t support the whole (writing a letter to his employer thing). Some people are a-holes, others obviously don’t have a problem in employing a-holes. That’s life!
The only sad thing is that I always liked Prague, but now I will forever be remambered that Thunderf00t works there somewhere, which ruined the place forewer!
Also, he doesn’t works at a university, which means that he at least can’t make students feel bad around him, if they happen to be muslims or women, which is a positive thing. But it sucks for the women that work in the same institute as him!
(Also, excuse my bad grammar, I am not a native English speaker)