So Twitter has finally given Milo Yiannopoulos the boot — apparently for good — after the Breitbart “journalist” gleefully participated in, and egged on, a vicious campaign of racist abuse directed at Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones on Twitter earlier this week.
This wasn’t the first time that Milo, formerly known as @Nero, used his Twitter platform — at the time of his suspension he had 338,000 followers — to attack and abuse a popular scapegoat (or someone who merely mocked him online). It wasn’t even the worst example of his bullying.
What made the difference this time? Leslie Jones, who has a bit of a Twitter following herself, refused to stay silent in the face of the abuse she was getting, a move that no doubt increased the amount of harassment sent her way, but one that also caught the attention of the media. And so Milo finally got the ban he has so long deserved.
But what about all those others who participated in the abuse? And the rest of those who’ve turned the Twitter platform into one of the Internet’s most effective enablers of bullying and abuse?
In a statement, Twitter said it was reacting to “an uptick in the number of accounts violating [Twitter’s] policies” on abuse. But as the folks who run Twitter know all too well, the campaign against Jones, as utterly vicious as it was, wasn’t some kind of weird aberration.
It’s the sort of thing that happens every single day on Twitter to countless non-famous people — with women, and people of color, and LGBT folks, and Jews, and Muslims (basically anyone who is not a cis, white, straight, non-Jewish, non-Muslim man) being favorite targets.
Twitter also says that it will try to do better when it comes to abuse. “We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter,” the company said in its statement.
We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders. We have been in the process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted. We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.
This is good news. At least if it’s something more than hot air. Twitter desperately needs better policies to deal with abuse. But better policies won’t mean much if they’re not enforced. Twitter already has rules that, if enforced, would go a long way towards dealing with the abuse on the platform. But they’re simply not enforced.
Right now I don’t even bother reporting Tweets like this, because Twitter typically does nothing about them.
https://twitter.com/Bobcat665/status/735282887965085697
And even when someone does get booted off Twitter for abuse, they often return under a new name — and though this is in direct violation of Twitter’s rules, the ban evaders are so seldom punished for this violation that most don’t even bother to pretend to be anyone other than they are.
Longtime readers here will remember the saga of @JudgyBitch1 and her adventures in ban evasion.
Meanwhile, babyfaced white supremacist Matt Forney’s original account (@realMattForney) was banned some time ago; he returned as @basedMattForney. When this ban evading account was also banned, he got around this ban by starting up yet another ban evading account, under the name @oneMattForney, and did his best to round up as many of his old followers as possible.
https://twitter.com/onemattforney/status/753087810006085634
A few days later, Twitter unbanned his @basedMattForney account.
And here’s yet another banned Twitterer boasting about their success in ban evasion from a new account:
https://twitter.com/_AltRight_Anew/status/755643864036339716
And then there are all the accounts set up for no other reason than to abuse people. Like this person, who set up a new account just so they could post a single rude Tweet to me:
In case you’re wondering, the one person this Twitter account follows is, yes Donald Trump.
And then there’s this guy, also with an egg avatar, and a whopping three followers, who has spewed forth hundreds of nasty tweets directed mostly at feminists.
Here are several he sent to me, which I’ve lightly censored:
And some he’s sent to others.
So, yeah. Twitter is rotten with accounts like these, set up to do little more than harass. And if they ever get banned, it only takes a few minutes to set up another one.
Milo used his vast number of Twitter followers as a personal army. But you don’t need a lot of followers to do a lot of damage on Twitter. All you really need is an email address and a willingness to do harm.
It’s good that Twitter took down one of the platforms most vicious ringleaders of abuse. But unless Twitter can deal with the small-time goons, with their anime avatars and egg accounts, as well, it will remain one of the Internet’s most effective tools for harassment and abuse.
@Dalilama:
I’ll share it around
@Ohlmann (on Marx):
I don’t know enough about Marx to say whether or not he’d disapprove, but I think it might take some getting used to even if he approved of it.
(On Warmachine/Hordes):
The impression I have of it is that its fanbase, and Privateer Press themselves, hold their toxic masculinity very dear to them. I remember having a fan explain to me that an attitude of aggression towards one’s fellow players was a good thing, and that anyone who disagrees should “grow some nuts”; and from what I’ve heard elsewhere this is a representative sample.
That may be an outdated impression. They may have gotten better and purged the bad elements of the player base. I don’t know.
@ej
Of course Marx was sexist, everyone was. He was a “man of his time”. Not a time we want to return to of course. Even Doctor Seuss and Ghandi were outrageously sexist by today’s standards. Although, to give Marx his dues he was against the concept of ‘coercion’ – that being the tendency of male artisans or farmers forcing their wives and children to work for them without recompence.
@Dalilama:
I think your link is broken. I clicked on it to donate and I got the We Hunted the Mammoth “page not found” screen.
@ Virgin Mary
I think it’s the most popular pub name in England; but this particular one is just behind Covent Garden.
Heh, he liked his pubs. When he talked about the workers owning the means of production he probably meant home brew kits. 🙂
I do like drinking in historically significant pubs though. My special faves are The Eagle and Child in Oxford and that one opposite Borough Market that became Harvard University (through a convoluted set of circumstances)
ETA: he did sack one of his servants though after he got her pregnant; but like you say, man of his times.
@EJ/Warmachine : the forums are about the most toxic place I have ever seen, but I did not see much actual sexism or toxic masculinity. It’s more that people are viciously aggressive toward everyone and very, very whiny.
The guy I play with aren’t visibly sexist. Interestingly, most aren’t typical geek, and most have low-pay service or industry job
Warmachine shedded its very, very infamous “play like you have a pair” page 5. On several years, I did not see significant other inflexions : women are still rare but existing in all factions, no character ever spout actual misogyny or treat men and women differently, relatively few testosterone-dripping bodybuilded guy in favor of relatively lean soldiers, a mix of fan-service women and realistic women, among other.
@Marx : my reasonment is that, while quite a lot of old people refuse any social change, the majority or at least a big bunch of them just accept it. I don’t know the personality of Marx, but he don’t seem to care about men and women all that much, so my hypothesis is that he would be fine with misogyny and will likely have a higher amount of insensitive or misogynistic sentence than other, but won’t actually fight against woman equality once introduced with it and would understand the situation quickly. It’s not like woman equality is fundamentaly changing anything to his communist theory.
@ohlmann
Women were and indeed still are treated terribly, you only need to look at the women and children’s workhouses and the cotton mills etc. in the last century. Women have to a) breed the next generation of workers for ‘labour power’, sustain them (prepare food, breast milk etc) give of their own bodies and health, as well b) as be used for coercive domestic labour by their husband/slave owner, tend house for him after his gruelling labour, and restore him by making him food, and having sex to produce more children to die up chimneys or down coal mines. They did not receive anything for this except perhaps their next meal and rags on their back if their master was compassionate, because they couldn’t own property. I’m sure Marx was very aware of this.
I’m going to post this pic here again because it’s awesome cool, Malala Yousefzai speaking at the IMT Marxist School in Swat, Pakistan.
http://politicalblindspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/SWAT_Marxist_school_Malala_Yousufzai.jpg
@Virgin : I am not sure to understand, so I will just say that I am aware women are very badly treated, and it was even worse one century ago.
But that don’t mean that a product of one time won’t be able to adapt quickly. For each grandpa who is an irrefutable bigot, another one just don’t care that his grandson is now a women happily married with a black woman. I suspect the one who are against social progress were already a lot more sexist when they were young than the one who accept new times.
(of course, a sudden meltdown is still possible. But I guess the main source of meltdown would be when he will read about Stalin and the Khmer Rouge)
The pub I would like to visit is the one named for John Snow. Partially because of the similarity in name to Jon Snow from ASOIAF/Game of Thrones. Plus the book that taught me about John Snow was called Ghost Map and Jon Snow’s direwolf is named Ghost.
The main reason though is that I’m a weirdo and I like reading about diseases and how epidemics and pandemics shape history. John Snow may not be the most famous historical figure who was from or lived in England, but he’s one I know due to this kind of morbid interest of mine.
I bet the workers at the John Snow pub have to deal with a lot of annoying customers who think it’s a GoT themed pub. It might be fun to go in there as a tourist who actually knows about how it got its name.
@ohlmann
I’m not a supporter of Stalin, heavens no!
Read up about the ‘Road of Bones’!
@wwth
There’s a pub named after Jon Snow? The Channel 4 news anchor?
Cool 😉
@Virgin : I truly don’t understand, but I never wanted to insinuate that. Stalin don’t have a lot to do with actual communism, he is just a dictator. I will stay at that before doing other miscommunications.
I didn’t know there was a newscaster named Jon Snow too. People must shout “you know nothing, Jon Snow” at him all the time.
Milo trying to assert that he is not racist because he has sex with black men immediately made me think of Another Country, where James Baldwin writes such an insightful expose of a white mans racism whilst in a relationship with a black woman that I still remember it, over 30 years after reading it.
I expect James Baldwin knew from personal experience how racist some of the gay white men around him were.
@ WWTH
Hope I’m not teaching you to suck eggs here, but you familiar with the current theory that the Black Death may have been a form of retro virus and that the descendants of the survivors may have been left with a higher resistance to HIV as a result?
There was also a documentary recently that made a very convincing case that the collapse of Easter Island had nothing to do with chopping all the trees down but that the population was nearly wiped out by exposure to germs introduced during a very brief visit by a Dutch ship.
The theory that the white men genocided the native american with their diseases alway bugged me. It’s perfectly realistic, but framing europeans as having diseases and diseases immunity so good it’s basically a super power don’t fit well with me. I instinctively see that as european exceptionalism even if it’s way more realistic than the variations that say that european civilization is superior.
The Americas were isolated from the disease loci found in Africa and Eurasia meaning that the indigenous peoples never built up any immunities to diseases which were commonplace in the ‘Old World.’ It wasn’t any special ability in the part of the Europeans, just prior exposure that gave them resistance. When those same diseases first hit Europe, they were responsible for the loss of much life.
Yeah, the game Hoxton is definitely a criminal, but he’s also oddly enjoyable personality-wise. Not nice, per se, but he’s got some good lines. (The game is Payday 2, if you’re curious.)
Maybe. Tuna’s not my favorite, but it could be worth it to piss off the dudebros.
I’m that kind of weirdo too, what book?
That’s… kind of not what the point of that is? Europeans had immunity because their ancestors lived with those diseases. Native Americans hadn’t been exposed to them, so their immune systems hadn’t had a chance to develop immunity. It’s not that European immune systems were particularly good, definitely not “basically a super power”; they’d developed immunity over time. It’s like the difference between a forest that’s already burned down and a dry, untouched forest. There’s less for a fire to burn in the previously-burned forest, but lots in the untouched forest.
ETA: Or what pitshade said. Plus, it wasn’t intentional, but it did go along well with their plans.
OT, but how do I post images? I cannot figure that out and it’s frustrating.
Ohlmann: There was an interesting video by CGP Grey that points it out as a structural issue
@Ohlmann
Diseases like smallpox had been in European populations for many generations, which allowed those generations to build a tolerance. Literally, some Europeans had genetic resistance to these diseases, enough that even those who didn’t could potentially be protected by herd immunity. Not to mention that while the miasma theory of disease turned out to be inaccurate, some of the methods used to combat ‘miasma’ could block airborne pathogens.
The Cherokee, Wichita, Sioux, etc. had no history with these diseases, so almost no one had genes to resist them, and certainly no one was going to benefit from herd immunity. Further, a lot of people forget that this “disease naivete” worked both ways, which is why white guys who caught syphilis would be dead in less than two years, and why “Montezuma’s Revenge” is a persistent tale.
@repentantphonebooth
Holy shit, didn’t see you back there! Sorry, I can’t help you with anything concrete but I heard the false accusation rate for other violent crimes was pretty much the same as each other. I wouldn’t know where or how to start searching for the actual numbers. But I’m curious too, so does anyone have any leads?
I was wondering about that! Good to know that my logic was sound. It makes sense: Native Americans didn’t have immunity to European diseases, so naturally Europeans wouldn’t have had immunity to Native American diseases.
re: Plagues, the book Guns, Germs and Steel lays down some excellent smack on the idea of European exceptionalism, while providing great theories and facts on why Europe grew to dominance when it did. The factors it gives are its east-west axis in Eurasia (as opposed to the north-south axis of the Americans, and of the passages to Africa and Oceania), and the few more easily domesticated plants and animals. Great book, very much worth the read.
@Ohlmann, i looked at that miniature. I’m no authority, but I’m gonna say sexist on that one. It follows The Disney Principle. The armour is form fitting and has boob plates, and… sure, she’s not a pretty face, but she’s evil. Everyone knows that ugly girls are evil, and pretty girls are good, right? Also, the ugly ones are queens who wield power, and the pretty ones are good princesses who either rely on the help of princes, or at best cooperate with princes, instead of wielding power directly.
They know their audience, and are pleased to serve them. I don’t think you have to look much deeper than that.
(That doesn’t mean you have to stop playing the game or enjoying it! You can criticize it and still enjoy the parts of it that you like. All of this is just my opinion, anyways.)
@all : I don’t say that theory is unrealistic. But it hinge on European being special, as in not only bringing with them some absolutely deadly diseases, but being resistant to it, and not encountering anything truly dangerous from the native american.
The simple fact the diseases spreaded to the whole of north america show they were big and connected enough to potentially have their own deadly disease. But in none of the european exploration did they encounter something truly dangerous to their society. Not just in America ; Oceania and the not-that-well connected area of Africa did not bring out any disease. That seem a lot of luck.
In a similar idea, no foreign diseases did even remotely as much damage in Europa than the one who apparently wiped out north native american.
That’s what I mean by “superpower”. The Europeans seem to have won the lottery five time in a row, by surviving extremely deadly diseases without problem, then successfully invading several continent without encountering anything horribly deadly, and even having their own disease doing the dirty work for them.
As I said, it’s still a perfectly rational and documented explanation, and more likely than anything else that I am aware of. But it still kind of bug me.
@Phryne
Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. The initial outbreaks that wiped out the Mississippian mound building culture were unintentional but there are later outbreaks of smallpox that were deliberately caused by selling/trading blankets laced with smallpox infected material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#Disease_as_a_weapon_against_Native_Americans
@Scilfredja : thanks for the opinion. It’s the kind of thing I seek, to open my perspective and see how other people see it.
I do disagree with the concept that Skorne (slavers and imperialists) are truly evil in a setting where several nation want to destroy the world, and everyone did more or less recently pogroms against supposedly dissenting populations ; and Makeda among Skorne isn’t shown as particulary evil.
(in short, when your factions are Mac Carthy America, Stalin Russia, and Elven Hitler, being the Babylonian slaver mixed with Imperial Japan don’t paint you as particulary evil. And all of thoses are able to look good by the virtue of not being one of the two genocidal maniac factions)
PP follow “evil is sexy” as a rule, and it painfully show on the two world-destroying factions, who are also the faction with pole-dancing stripper generals. Who honestly was the main thing keeping me at bay at first, together with the awful disclaimer in page 5.
… I guess I rant to much. The problem of ranting is that it make it look like I refuse your opinion, when I actually find that the disney analogy is a good point.