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Tag Archives: harassment

Polygamer #79: Abbey Perl of the Diverse Gaming Coalition

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Ken Gagne

Abbey Perl is the founder of the Diverse Gaming Coalition, a non-profit organization charged with ending bullying both online and off. Founded in 2016, the Diverse Gaming Coalition provides resources, education, and safe spaces by organizing events and entertainment media.

In this episode, I spoke with Abbey about her own experience with bullying and being doxxed; how her non-profit tackles bullying while also being fun; the story behind the group’s comic book, Life on the Outside; the difference between bullying and harassment, and whether solutions should be technological or societal; lessons learned from Abbey’s PAX East 2016 panel; and why WordPress is better than Wix.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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https://media.blubrry.com/polygamer/www.polygamer.net/wp-content/uploads/podcast/pg79-abbey_perl.mp3

Podcast: Download (Duration: 49:38 — 23.6MB) | Embed

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Posted in Podcast | Tags: Abbey Perl, Abbey Sager, bullying, Diverse Gaming Coalition, harassment, PAX, PAX East |

A year of GamerGate and online harassment

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Ken Gagne

A year ago this month, shortly Polygamer‘s launch, GamerGate erupted across the Internet. I was at a Boston Indies meetup, preparing to give a lightning talk, when a speaker presented five ways to support women in gaming. One method involved Depression Quest, of which I was already a fan.

Holy crap. From everything I know, text adventure Depression Quest hits the nail on the head. http://t.co/C8WXorOJxq #IF

— Ken Gagne (@gamebits) March 6, 2014

Based on my positive experience with the game, I retweeted the advice to police the game’s reviews, without understanding why it was in need of such.

2. Report Abuse: Flag abusive reviews for Depression Quest. http://t.co/lpAA2axzt0

— Ken Gagne (@gamebits) August 18, 2014

When I discovered the larger context of this advice, I pinged fellow podcasters: are you going to cover GamerGate? No, they said — we’re hoping it will blow over. But within a month, it was evident that GamerGate was not going away. A year later, there have been several pieces published reflecting on GamerGate, with some common themes and lessons.

First, Quinn spoke with her new home’s newspaper, The Seattle Times, about how women game developers fight sexism in industry. The article lists several positive accomplishments within the industry in response to (but not arising from) GamerGate, such as the diversification of Intel and DigiPen; the founding of Quinn’s own Crash Override anti-harassment network, for which she granted Polygamer an interview; and the software being developed by Kim Swift or published by BioWare. But the article ends unhappily:

And whatever message the Gamergaters intended to send about women in games, it’s not the one that necessarily registered.

While at DigiPen, I asked a group of young female students what lessons could be gleaned from Gamergate.

Without missing a beat, they said, “Be careful who you date.”

That may not be the message GamerGaters intend to send, but it’s not the lesson we want women to learn, either. The repercussions of Quinn and Eron Gjoni‘s relationship are inappropriately public and wildly disproportionate. Placing the responsibility for GamerGate’s existence on the decision to date Gjoni is blatant victim blaming. Gamers should be able to engage in intimate relationships without concern that your ex will incite an Internet hate mob against you.

As DigiPen’s students demonstrate, victim blaming is something anyone is capable of, as society has practically trained us to believe the victim should’ve avoided the situation entirely; it takes a conscious effort to avoid. When I wrote a guide to avoiding being doxxed, I asked my editor to review it with victim blaming in mind. Was I inadvertently suggesting that, if someone didn’t want to be doxxed, she shouldn’t let her information out there in the first place? That too is not the lesson we need to learn.

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Posted in Sexism | Tags: Brianna Wu, GamerGate, harassment, Twitter, Zoe Quinn |

John Oliver on online harassment

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Ken Gagne

Weekly news show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver takes a satirical approach to news, similar to The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. But that doesn’t mean the issues it addresses aren’t serious. On the June 21, 2015, episode, Oliver tackled the issue of online harassment, opening with a clip from the documentary GTFO and featuring interviews with Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu:

I’m sometimes asked why I focus on sexism in gaming and not in other fields, like politics or the film industry. It’s not because gaming is the only arena in which sexism is rampant — it’s not — but it’s where it’s most flagrant. As Oliver said, “This does not just affect women in gaming; it can potentially affect any woman who makes the mistake of having a thought in her mind and then vocalizing it online.” Harassment is not free speech when it scares other people into sacrificing their own right to speak their minds. We need to all feel safe enough to stand up for ourselves without fearing threats to our lives, bodies, and loved ones.

Fortunately, as Oliver reported, some major players in the online space are starting to take responsibility for their role in allowing such harassment to occur. In the past months, revenge porn has been prohibited by Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Whether these new policies will be effective or enforceable remains to be seen, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Posted in Elsewhere | Tags: GTFO, harassment, HBO, John Oliver, Last Week Tonight |

Crash Override Network combats online harassment

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Ken Gagne

For six years, I worked as an editor at Computerworld.com. Since 2013, I’ve been a freelance writer for the website, which published my anti-doxxing feature this past November. As a follow-up to that piece, editor Rebecca Linke dusted off my old blog, Techbits, and allowed me to offer the following editorial commentary on this week’s Polygamer interview with Zoe Quinn and Alex Lifschitz.


The Internet is becoming a more dangerous place, with trolls and pranksters able to escalate online grievances into real-world threats. Doxxing — the unauthorized publication of someone’s personal contact information or financial records — and swatting — anonymously reporting a fake threat in order to get a SWAT team sent to someone’s home — are two of the more alarming methods being used.

But the tide may be turning, as more intended victims start to fight back. The latest is Zoe Quinn, the original target of GamerGate, the disorganized movement ostensibly about ethics in games journalism but more commonly associated with misogyny and harassment. Quinn has been continuously harassed and threatened since last August. She has not been home in nearly six months, saying, “it’s no longer safe to be [there] while we try and figure out how to move on from this meteor hitting us and be people again.”

Enough is enough.

Continue reading at Computerworld.com »

Posted in Elsewhere | Tags: Alex Lifschitz, Computerworld, Crash Override, cyberbullying, doxxing, harassment, IDG, swatting, Techbits, Zoe Quinn |

Polygamer #15: Zoë Quinn & Alex Lifschitz of Crash Override

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Ken Gagne

In January 2015, Zoë Quinn and Alex Lifschitz debuted Crash Override, an online anti-harassment task force. The organization provides crisis center support, ongoing assistance to victims, and community outreach and activism. The network is staffed by online abuse survivors such as Lifschitz and Quinn, the latter being the developer of Depression Quest and the original target of GamerGate.

In this interview, Quinn and Lifschitz discuss how Crash Override was designed to combat this new movement of hate, how to be proactive without being victim-blaming, the ways in which Crash Override will grow and be funded, and why the video game industry allowed GamerGate to happen.

Download the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Continue reading →
https://media.blubrry.com/polygamer/www.polygamer.net/wp-content/uploads/podcast/pg15-crash_override.mp3

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:38 — 26.4MB) | Embed

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Posted in Podcast | Tags: abuse, Alex Lifschitz, Crash Override, crisis center, cyberbullying, Depression Quest, doxxing, GamerGate, harassment, task force, Zoe Quinn |

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