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1/ A high-profile journalist writing a book about online radicalization told me recently that all his research kept pointing back to Gamergate, and he regretted not taking it more seriously.

I'd like you to imagine an alternate timeline where we took it seriously.
2/ We'd have stopped the massive disinformation juggernaut on Facebook before it wrecked American politics.

Women in tech were *BEGGING* Facebook to act on this, as we realized these tools destroying our reputations would be welded against others.
3/ The online radicalization pipeline of YouTube would have been acted on before it recruited an entire generation of angry young men to extremism.

Reddit would have moderated /theDonald before it could have become a disinformation disease vector.
4/ The foreign interference with elections through social media manipulation would never have happened, as we were trying to get Twitter, Facebook and Reddit to take this seriously in 2014.

The alt-right would have been stopped and Trump would not have won in 2016.
5/ Law enforcement would have prosecuted 8chan for the many felonies, including trafficking child pornograpy. The Christchurch massacre would never have happened.

Breitbart and their clones would not be allowed to cheat social metrics to fan the flames of bigotry and hate.
6/ Metaphorically, Gamergate was our moment to kill baby Hitler. Only, no one needed to die - you just needed law enforcement, Facebook, Reddit and Youtube to take the harassment of women seriously.

They did not. And now our entire political system is poisoned.
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Brianna Wu
@BriannaWu
1/ Software engineering is my career expertise, not banking. But, let me know if I’m missing something.

The oversimplified theory behind a bank’s value to a community is they lend money for an asset like building a house. It appreciates and more wealth is eventually created.
2/ It seems obvious we should pause rent for coronavirus. And since many landlords are normal people who own a building, it makes sense to me we should pause mortgage payments as well.

What’s the downside to the bank? Doesn’t stability help their core mission of creating wealth?
3/ I just don’t see how in the long view the nation pausing mortgages hurts the banks.

It seems like if anyone can do some sacrificing, it can be a spreadsheet waiting a few more months for a loan to get paid off.

But please help me understand if I’m missing something.
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Brianna Wu
@BriannaWu
1/ Tech and #IowaCaucuses:

We now have credible reporting out about the app that wrecked Iowa. This was a preventable disaster caused by willful ignorance about development practices.

Bottom line: The Democratic Party funded their friends rather than following best practices.
2/ We don’t ship a CALL OF DUTY game without a network stress test. But, when democracy is on the line, what does the Democratic Party decide to do?

Hastily throw together a mediocre app in under two months. Have no real user testing, have no real training and jope for the best.
3/ If this was 1990, MAYBE you’d give them a pass.

But we’ve had best practices to ship this kind of software for TWENTY YEARS NOW.

An indie iPhone game undergoes more user testing than this app did. It’s beyond indefensible, and people need to lose their jobs over this.
Read 6 tweets
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Brianna Wu
@BriannaWu
1/ This is a post that some people aren’t going to want to hear, but it’s still true. Please RT.

For the 2016 election I received a ridiculously large amount of vitriol from “Bernie Bros.” I critiqued Sanders vigorously about it.

I still was tracking my mentions from Gamergate.
2/ Later, Twitter released an open source directory of accounts they suspended for being Russian Sock puppets.

I crosschecked the two lists - Tweets with harassment from “Bernie Bros,” and Russian sock puppets.

There was a large overlap. Not all, but statistically significant.
3/ Real talk: There are absolutely some Sanders supporters that are obnoxious. But, the conclusion I came to was that much of the “Bernie Bro” phenomenon was Russia exacerbating the situation to divide us.

I don’t like admitting I was wrong in 2016, but I was.
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