Thread by @AlexandraErin

Back during the heyday of Gamergate, more than once I had someone try to push back against me saying it was rife with harassment with a statistic they thought would just blow me away and exonerate GG of that charge, proving I was slandering a safe and good, sincere movement.

He told me that someone had analyzed the Twitter traffic about Gamergate and had determined that only a mere 5% of the chatter was abuse and harassment. That's all. Only 5%. 95% of it was other stuff, not abusive at all.

The vast majority of it.

So could I talk about Gamergate as this horrible hotbed of harassment when the vast majority was other stuff?

My answer was: because of the statistic he had cited. 5% of it was toxic abuse? Man, that's high. That's an unavoidable concentration. That's not one or two bad actors.

I mean, if you figure it's 5% of the people doing it (and there's not necessarily a 1:1 correlation there), then at the point you come to the attention of 20 Gamergaters, you're getting harassed.

And guess what the "good" ones loved to do? Call two or three 19s of their friends.

Sure. I'm not sure their methodology was sound or was equipped to recognize harassment, plus it only saw public messages.

But taking the number he gave for the sake of the argument, he indicated a serious harassment problem.

https://twitter.com/jodywallace/status/1235761542592937984

And I'm glad that comment was made because I want to be clear there's nothing magic here about the number 5. I'm not saying that if you get below 5% you're golden, it's fine, it's safe. No, not at all.

When you have an online sub-culture whose MO runs towards amplifying critics in order to bring attention to them and swamp them with negative attention... I mean, at that point even "good" replies can get abusive. Sea lioning. Brigading. Stuff an algorithm won't read as "bad"...

...but a lot of it. And say you've got 1% of your group that is just VICIOUS, out for blood and waiting for someone to get identified as an acceptable target.

Just 1%.

And figures with tens of thousands of followers regularly single out critics for the treatment.

I bring this up because I see a lot of resistance to the idea that the toxic crusaders in Bernie's camp are even worth addressing, they're so few in number.

1%. 0.1%. 0.01%. I don't know the actual percentage of people but... they're more prolific and persistent in their engagement than the average, much more numerous, good-faith Bernie supporter.

And I gather there's like a whole lot of people on Bernie's team, right?

It is a problem, it is a problem worth addressing, and it's something that I super can't ignore as I'm representing Bernie to those they've been targeting.

Do I have a solution?

No.

But not talking about problems because they're bad news and hard to deal with is for pandemics.

Step one to doing something about it is just not acting like it's out of bounds to talk about this because it's not everyone or not even most people. It doesn't have to be everyone if it's prevalent enough to be unavoidable.

Being willing to talk about it or just even not dogpiling people who do talk about it, that would go a long way towards establishing that yes, there is a distinct subset that is responsible for the toxicity and no, they're not representative.

*sigh*

Berners, do you want to win?

I keep asking. Are you in favor of being FOR Medicare 4 All, or do you want to actually have it because you won?

"Everybody has this problem. There are paid trolls. It's Trump fans." is not going to win. We might win in spite of it.

I'm new here, I was for Warren yesterday, I don't want to rock the vote. If we all sort of generally decide that we'd like to be FOR Medicare 4 All in 2021 and 2022 and 20223 and those of us alive in 2024 and so on, without ever actually getting it, I'll abide by that.

If we're willing to do whatever it takes to win *except* this kind of work, I'm not going to push. I know I haven't earned any kind of leadership position here. If we're in it to win it 100%, minus community relations and online anti-abuse stuff, cool! I'll pick up the exceptions

Toxic Pete Buttigieg fans aren't our problem to solve. Abrasive Tulsists and abusive Bidenistas aren't stopping people from seeing Bernie as a safe and viable partner in advancing progressive policies.

Harassment under the Bernie banner is, though.

Tonight, motivated by seeing people call this "bad faith" and "a distraction" and a "fake issue" and with memories of the same dynamic in play in other online subcultures over the years, all I am doing -- all I am asking -- is can we agree this is a problem worth talking about?

If you think "Why would we allow talk of something damaging to our side?" -- well, you can't stop it. It's being talked about and will be talked about. And you pointing out it's not rational or fair to do so won't convince anyone, any more than you can win votes with that appeal.

I ask you, how has it worked so far? Has it worked great to tell people to shut up about it? Have you changed anyone's opinion? Won any hearts and minds?

Is there some great success story to this strategy? I ask because I'm new here. Maybe I'm behind!

Maybe I missed all the wonderful strides that have been made for the progressive cause by telling people to stop talking about uncomfortable stuff. If so, I look forward to catching up.

But if not. Maybe try something else?

And again, my proposal is not radical and it's not all-encompassing. It's not going to fix anything.

The defensiveness leads to more dogpiling which all runs together in the eyes of people trying to figure out where the abuse is coming from. Is it fair? No. But it's avoidable!

It's avoidable by not being defensive and by giving people space to talk about it.

I tell you this as an observer of human interactions online and someone who manages to say all kinds of zany garbage without getting much flak: never post defensively. Ever. Social media rule 1.

When you're feeling defensive, disengage. When someone says something and you feel like you've GOT TO defend yourself, your honor, your candidate, whatever.

Try maybe don't?

Just try it.

You'll be amazed what rolls away like water off a rain boot. Just little beads of water.

Let people talk about it. Give them space. You know it's not Bernie doing this. You know it's not most of his voters doing it. Jumping in, jumping on people, only feeds the impression that it's a top to bottom whole deal kind of thing.

That's it. Step one. Let the talk happen.

Step two isn't going to be something everyone can do, but that's okay, it doesn't have to be everyone anymore than it needs to be everyone doing the abuse for it to be a problem.

Step two is people, past their defensiveness, reach out and engage to people who have vented.

People who have vented, and found support among each other. Reach out and validate their concerns, validate what they've experienced. Let them know that you, that we, are motivated by compassion and hope to work with them, not chase them away.

But that's getting ahead. That's getting into advanced stuff.

Dialing back, again: all I am asking tonight, all I am asking right now, is can we agree that a small percentage of people carrying out horrific and vile abuse under the banner of Bernie is a problem worth discussing?

I'm new here, I'm not in charge of anyone but myself, I can't compel an answer from anyone else.

So to anyone from the Warren camp or anyone else who has experienced this, I tell you my answer: yes, it is a problem, yes, it is worth discussing, yes it needs addressing.

And while I am trying my best to earn people's trust and votes for Bernie Sanders, part of that is that I will not engage in even defensive dogpiles, I will not ignore abuse I see happening. I will report it and discourage it, where I think discouragement will work.