Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Onward!

Re: Onward!

tara — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:26:09 -0000

I am writing under an alias because of the nature of the topic. I have had people harassing me on my blog and my comments are on modertion.
I don't think using abusive language even if it is not a death threat is freedom of speech. In real life would you associate with nasty unreasonable people? It is possible to disagree in a polite way and we need a code of behavior for blogging otherwise sensitive souls are going to never come here. If a person wants to abuse say a film star he can't get near him but it is so easy to abuse others through comments. for no reason at all! its sick and i think we are to some extent responsible for the kind of comments we allow.

Re: Onward!

hazel8500 — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 11:57:52 -0000

This past month has taught me some very valuable lessons, the big one= like attracts like.

I really like your new stance here, to focus on what is good in the blogosphere. I'm definitely going to take a page out of that book.

I'm glad you've decided to continue onward.

Hazel.

Re: Onward!

LayZ — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:12:09 -0000

@62"there are calls for prosecution, civil actions, and even legislation that would purportedly leave no one in a government’s jurisdiction anonymous on the Internet."

I can't speak for other countries, but here in the US there are already laws against threatening people with death or harm, as well as using the internet for predatory purposes. So, we have sufficent speech regulation on the internet, as I see it. Anything short of breaking a law, the govt doesn't need to get involved. And if they do, the it becomes Constiutionally risky. The last thing we need is MORE regulation or laws. Although there are some that like to think so, or wish that it were so, there are no laws protecting you from being offended or getting your feelings hurt.

Re: Onward!

shimmershade — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:02:42 -0000

Discussion of free expression, as in what forms and terms of expression one would choose to accept, not accept, or editorially control, should be ongoing. Constitutional freedoms of speech and of the press are narrower issues, but they pertain to the subject of accountability and do bear discussing; after all, there are calls for prosecution, civil actions, and even legislation that would purportedly leave no one in a government's jurisdiction anonymous on the Internet.

Jurisdictions must be specific by nation or nations, state, province, or locality, but the Internet generally cannot be. No legislature will arrive at a cure for all Internet misconduct.

Confusion and dishonesty over Internet identity persist year after year. Generalizations about cowardice and having something to hide never aid discussion, and those generalizations are usually self-serving on the part of those making them. Ironically, not many individuals who make the generalizations give us all the items of information we would need to vet them thoroughly; those items include full name, address, contact information, and references. We all draw a line somewhere, don't we. And why is that?

There are persons in the world who are denied access to the Internet by governments. Otherwise, anyone with Internet access can proceed to use the web to blog or for other purposes, quitting temporarily or permanently as desired or deemed necessary. Speaking out against crimes and incivilities, and discussing strategies for safety and for management of discourse, can help to render efforts at harm less effective, especially if we clarify thinking on identity/anonymity issues. It's not all hopeless.

Re: Onward!

Richard Drake — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:48:56 -0000

@55

Well said LayZ. I'm never had the priviledge of being a citizen of the USA (cf the cool allusion to Casablanca). But even I can see that the First Amendment is a completely ridiculous and irrelevant point to bring up. Yet again and again it is.

Just having the First Amendment, which I happen to think is a great idea, part of what makes America great as an example to other nations, disn't guarantee that the culture of the USA was going to be great or is going to be great in the future.

The First Amendment didn't produce Louis Armstrong, Saul Bellow, HL Mencken, Terrence Malick or whoever you would choose. Sure, it helped allow them not to be persecuted. But it couldn't produce them. Fortunately, other positive forces in the culture meant that America and the world were enriched by such as these.

Now, I'm not sure Kathy Sierra would ever have risen to quite those heights.

But it is absolutely outrageous for people to be angrily quoting the First when the one certain result of the current debacle, right now, is that Sierra has been forced out of the much feted 'blogosphere'.

Your culture stinks, people. It is leading to anyone anywhere with a grudge being able to shut down all the good people, one by one. And you are seriously calling that Freedom of Speech!

Well, God bless America. You're going to need it.

Re: Onward!

Dawn — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:44:52 -0000

Goebbels, I suggest you get a life, rather than live vicariously through Robert. You think you come off as tough and clever, but your continuous negative comments just show how pathetic you are to keep demanding attention here.

Re: Onward!

LayZ — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:54:51 -0000

@58

"Weakness can be provocative by enticing others into adventures that they otherwise would have avoided."
- Donald Rumsfeld, 1977

Re: Onward!

Dan G — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:34:40 -0000

Robert, reading you post it almosts sounds like you're giving in to these people.

We do not have to.

Re: Onward!

Wax Banks — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:20:17 -0000

Mark gets it right, here:

Interesting how you just now have become aware of the ‘death threat phenomenon’. Maybe if you ‘got out a little’ you might see this is old news.

As I wrote on my own site (the second post is long but seems like helpful remedial reading, under the circumstances), the content of the original offensive posts isn't particularly shocking to people who've spent much time taking part in genuinely freewheeling online communities. Or spent time with Internet-enabled adolescents, for that matter. What's stunning, though, is the fact that self-identifying Internet professionals - like Robert Scoble, for instance - can be surprised and outraged that such nasty speech goes on outside their own comments threads.

Mr Scoble, I thought you acquitted yourself poorly in your original post on this matter; shows of sympathy may be well-meaning (and of course I don't doubt the sincerity of your concern) but the self-importance and hermeticism on display on this blog were and are pretty remarkable. I've no strong opinion one way or the other about Kathy Sierra and her blog but the fact remains that her very public reaction seemingly (seemingly!) had more to do with the belated recognition that this sort of stuff happens all the time than with the specific utterances in question.

Invocations of Nazism in a blog post like this one, Mr Scoble, should be called out just as contemptuously as similar invocations anywhere else. You sound surprised that your blogging - which is, after all, your primary source of notoriety and apparently business contact - isn't 'fun' anymore. No offense, mate, but you used to shill for Microsoft for a living (which today's AppleTV post suggests you're embarrassingly happy to do for free), and now you play Web-tech Pollyanna for the copious-free-time set. It's always been a business.

Worst, you write:

I’m sorry that four people had their names dragged through the mud for something that Maryam and I believe they didn’t do. It makes me very worried about my comments.

Shouldn't that make you very worried about Kathy Sierra's blog post? That's the mud-dragging you're referring to, right? Shouldn't you be considerably more worried about your own post, and the conversational bubble you apparently live and work in?

Danah Boyd's response to all this is fairly sensible (her troubling telling of a troubling story from her past notwithstanding); that shouldn't come as a surprise, since she reads this sort of thing all the time. It's her responsibility as a public intellectual and as a citizen of the wider (digital) world. As a figure in online business, you have related (though not identical) responsibilities. Perhaps that's part of your shock last week: finding out you'd been shirking them.

Good luck.

Re: Onward!

LayZ — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:13:21 -0000

"“At the same time, we need to look closely and carefully at the implications for free speech. The First Amendment allows and protects language that many find noxious.”

Can we stop associating this with Free Speech? Free Speech is only relevant when the govt is involved. The govt is the only entity that has controls on how it can or can't limit speech. A private entity can do pretty much whatever it wants in regards to regulating speech. Scoble, for example, is well within his "rights" to decide what can and can't be posted here. If he doesn't want "noxious" speech on his blog, he can regulate that. And he would NOT be infrining on anyone's free speech rights if he were to do so.

So, any private citizen can bring up a site and allow or disallow any comments they want.

Where the problem comes into play is when we start talking about inacting laws to regulate comments and anonymity. (And to his credit, Scoble is against that.). Now, when that speech begins to infringe on the rights of others (i.e. death threats) then the govt (read:law enforcement).

I'm curious why at the very first perceived threat Sierra didn't shut down comments until she got to the bottom of it?

Re: Onward!

Robert Scoble — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 04:01:23 -0000

IslandOwl: those stats are so sad. Thanks for posting them!

Pradeep: yeah, that was a different video. That one was filmed by ABC in San Francisco.

Re: Onward!

IslandOwl — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 03:56:43 -0000

Yes, I am a new commenter and yes, I am using an alias instead of my name . . . because I am female.

I wanted to recommend the book: Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft, PhD. The byline of it is "Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men"

I think if everyone read that book we could begin to truly shift the misogny and abuse. But right now all cultures are continuing to aid in "The Making of an Abusive Man" (which is the title of chapter 13).

The annominity of the internet is not the issue. It is one small tool that amplifies an issue that is rampant throughout our country. I use the term "our country" intentionally because it literally does not matter what country the reader is in. The issue of the control and abuse of women is international.

# Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime.
# [In the US] Seventy-eight percent of stalking victims are women. Women are significantly more likely than men (60 percent and 30 percent, respectively) to be stalked by intimate partners.
Stats are from: http://www.endabuse.org/res...

If anything, I think the anonymity of the internet is helping out the issue in a great way! What we are seeing in the Internet Community is actually more VISIBLE because the anonymity is allowing the writer to voice their thoughts and desired actions in a public way. That sort of sickness goes on all the time but up until recently it has only been occuring behind closed doors and the backseats of cars where no one heard the screams. The outcry of rage at that kind of behavior is what NEEDS TO HAPPEN to make change happen.

Thank you to you Robert and everyone else who is being loud about it. And please seriously take a look at the book. It is a gem and will help anybody and everybody to be there more fully for people like Kathy and the rest of us. With the stats being one out of every three women in the world experiencing some form of abuse - chances are you know many of us - even if you are unaware of it!

Re: Onward!

Pradeep Mohandas — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 03:20:12 -0000

sorry about the link to the last one:

Go here: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/

Under the video tag click on more video. Your video appeared on: 1:50 pm March 30, 2007 under the title: "Cyber Threats Spark Protest" (1:36 min video).

It's lame that I can't link to it directly. Sorry!

Re: Onward!

Pradeep Mohandas — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 03:17:12 -0000

hi,

I did see you in CNN (the online video). I dunno about the TV version since I don't get CNN on my TV. Who has time to watch TV anyway?

Here's the link to the video: javascript:cnnPlayListVideo('/video/tech/2007/03/30/louie.ca.blog.blackout.kgo','3')

Re: Onward!

Goebbels — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 01:00:21 -0000

Karoli:

If you can't attach someone to some identity, you don't have accountability. If you can attach someone to some id, you don't have anonymity.

Re: Onward!

Robert Scoble — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:40:07 -0000

DaveD: I don't delete comments unless they are really over the line.

Re: Onward!

DaveD — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:10:25 -0000

No. I'm sorry, I have to comment a second time - now that I've read Chris Locke's non-apology for anything. Since he hasn't posted much, nor allows comments, let me post here:

"Thanks to Tim O'Reilly, Kathy and I began exchanging email last Wednesday. I think it's fair to say we were both surprised by the results. On neither side was there any evidence of the acrimony that has been so widely attributed to both of us. By the next day we were speaking on the phone -- for nearly two hours. If you had overheard our conversation, you would have thought us old friends. While some publications were speculating about various permutations on men who hate women on the web -- including the suggestion that anything I could possibly say was "hysterical masculine self-pity posing as righteous indignation" -- Kathy and I were swapping industry war stories... and laughing! You had to be there to believe it."

Okay. And this means... what? That you believe Kathy views you as a friend of some sort? How self-centric of you Chris! Way to speak of empathy!

And that's only the intro....

"It's true we laughed, but not at the core issues. No one was laughing about the offensive words and images that were posted to the blogs I was involved with."

So you AREN'T friends. But I thought you were after that self-flattering first paragraph. BTW"Some of the things that were posted about her were admittedly frightening, and far beyond tasteless. The post about Maryam Scoble was cruel and disgusting. These postings prompted the decision to delete both blogs (and not, as has been reported, Terms of Service violations, which were assessed retroactively)."

Ah. But One would think deleting a SINGLE blog would be enough. Not for you I see. Continuing on with this phantom olive branch....

Careers and reputations have been seriously injured by a rush to judgement that was often sadly short on evidence of crime or culpability.

Yep. Now we are getting to your self-centered view of all this. Kathy was actually hurt... emotionally. She actually posted images and more. And you? You pulled the site - after the damage was done. Then had the audacity to say it was YOU who was wronged.

Still waiting for some words to the effect that YOU opened that second site with the intent to carry on what the first site became....

"Misogyny is real -- and vile. Violence against women is wrong. It must not be tolerated. This issue should be explored and discussed, not swept under the rug, not rationalized away."

You came close here. But here's the key question - WHEN did you shut down YOUR site. You know the second one you simply had to start up because that first one was shut down? Before, or after? If you have to ask what I mean - then you really don't have a clue.

"At the same time, we need to look closely and carefully at the implications for free speech. The First Amendment allows and protects language that many find noxious."

That pretty much answers my question. I could uote more of your ego-centric ramblings, but I'm sorry - you make me sick. You think you can have somebody POST - POST!!!! - pictures and words like they did on your site - and somehow frame this as First Amendment issues?

Hey, buddy.... I can call you that right? After all, you and Kathy are bestest of buds after that 2 hour phone call you both laughed through.

Hey bud, I'm sorry, but I am STILL waiting for something - anything? - that says you might atually feel you did the slightest bit wrong.

Robert, delete this comment if you must. I haven't posted anything until tonite about this whole shameful debacle. (I sent a private email to one blogger. But no posts.)

My previous post was out of frustration on things. This? I read what you linked to... after waiting for days to hear SOMETHING out of Chris' mouth that would make me believe he atually "gets it". And was promptly upset.

Re: Onward!

shimmershade — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:06:00 -0000

No one should propose standards of accountability that would not apply to web users of all ages and levels of knowledge and experience. No one should demand the production of personal information without addressing the likely consequences of the exposure of that personal information to the universe of web users, some of whom even use automated information-gathering tools to assist them in their hunting. Yes, responsibility is important.

Re: Onward!

Robert Scoble — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:05:29 -0000

DaveD: I agree with your sentiments. I just thought enough "punishment" had been handed out for the people involved that I didn't need to rub salt in the wounds. And all three have apologized to me and Maryam directly, so I know they feel awful about the part they played in this whole thing.

Re: Onward!

DaveD — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:43:47 -0000

I never read all of the original crap involved. Just caught most of it second hand.

I'm troubled, Robert. Over the fact that I'm MUCH more concerned about the posts - not the comments. About how a SECOND site was started up SOLELY because the FIRST was shut down due to the inability to be moderated.

Those are facts from what I can tell. The posts, however assinine and sophomoric, were legal. However much they crossed a line of morality that I think we ALL can agree to, were still freedom of speech.

And oddly enough, that included the POSTS about your wife.

And yet, the people running the sites... note the plural, because the second one would NEVER have come up without the first being shut down... the people running them are simply not innocent until proven guilty, but innocent of everything?

They bear SOME responsibility. At the very least - the responsibility of being a poor judge of human character, and of poor management of their sites.

Sorry, I haven't seen three of them say ANYTHING like that yet.

Re: Onward!

Colin — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:24:10 -0000

Sorry... busy day and late to this ....

Maybe I am just old and cranky, but I do not like the idea of laying down quietly, on the basis that bad people might choose to attack otherwise.

One of the great things about the net, since about 2003, is the resurgence of positive thinking, including blogging. Thats not a PollyAnna point - there is a renewed business vigour that is creating new and genuine value, and its predicated on real people working together and that means, self policing the bad people. Thats not the same as censorship, and I believe we all need to get over that hurdle.

Anyhow, welcome back Robert!!

Re: Onward!

Jennifer McLean - Credibility — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 21:05:32 -0000

Robert, I have always believed that good always comes out of bad. The good here is your renewed commitment to pursue the positive… those stories that improve lives and rewarding people who teach you something and/or uplift people and companies. To me this is the opportunity for the silver lining. This represents improved integrity and credibility and in the end gives you more loyal readers and us as readers more inspiring stories (what my marketing model supports).

Re: Onward!

Karoli — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:48:57 -0000

Goebbels,

Where did you ever get the impression that I wanted a non-anonymous internet? I would STILL be anonymous if I hadn't been outed by an irresponsible, vindictive 'someone'.

I want an accountable internet, whether or not anonymous.

Re: Onward!

Ginger Bush — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:17:00 -0000

Unbelievably, when I read about Kathy's experience, and related my own, men, a professional journalist mocked it and a college professor joined right in.
Blog swarms exist all over the place, on just about every subject, and I don't think Kathy, or I are targets, it's anger directed towards women and a locker room mentality; any woman would serve the same purpose for men so inclined.

Incredibly, another man who posted where I was reading felt that Kathy should not have publicized who she felt was responsible for the threats until she was sure- his brother had actually
told me online that I'd better watch out, that my name sounded like edible pantywear to him. This man writes and discusses Kathy's incident as if that had never happened.

Re: Onward!

Goebbels — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:08:17 -0000

"No, this case was about possibly one account being hijacked after a site was created as a place for ’sarcasm and insult’."

Whether it was one or more than one that doesn't change the fact that a non-anonymous id wouldn't have solved the problem.

"I disagree."

And? You want to go on a non-anonymous crusade. Fine. Pursue it. But don't proclaim that it won't create issues. PayPal exists solely to ambiguate an identity from its true source. There are reasons for it. GamerTags ARE being socially engineered because people have lots of non-anonymous info out there. If you want to promote the lack of anonymity, you should at least take the responsibility that comes with that direction, be aware of the resulting issues, and try to address them.

I have no interest in a non-anonymous internet. Particularly if it's because a few people were offended and insulted.