Listen to episode 311 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
- Daf Yomi (Wikipedia)
- Sefaria
- The Disputation (YouTube)
- St. John’s College Great Books Curriculum
Listen to episode 311 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 310 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 309 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 308 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 307 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 306 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 305 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 304 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
Listen to episode 303 of my weekly podcast with Andrea Phillips and Naomi Alderman:
A lot’s happened since my “Innocent until proven guilty in a court” isn’t the end of the story went viral on Twitter. New and credible allegations of abuse in the games industry have emerged, and the pushback from those who believe all the allegations are lies has been typically fierce.
And yes, there has been tragedy – but this isn’t the moment to lay low. The attacks on victim of abuse may get worse before they get better, so I hope to share some useful lessons from my recent experience of receiving hundreds of abusive tweets (which isn’t at all comparable to the far worse attacks others have endured), including:
If you find yourself the subject of hundreds of abusive tweets but you want to keep using Twitter, your first step is to activate advanced mute filters:
In particular, checking Who don’t follow you will hide 99% of trolls. I didn’t check that one because I don’t follow many nice people whom I still want to hear from (yes, I’m a bad person) but you should.
In extreme cases, you may want to lock your account temporarily.
Don’t engage, just block. If you get an abusive or bad faith tweet, you shouldn’t hesitate to block the senders. That’ll clean up your notifications quickly.
Blocklists don’t work. Twitter allows you to block accounts en masse by importing blocklists. Unfortunately, all of the blocklists I found weren’t being actively updated, and they’re full of accounts that you might still want to hear from, e.g. @nytimes. I get why people might want to block @nytimes but that wasn’t what I was looking for, and it made me distrust the entire list. Other blocklists suffer from even worse selection biases. So I can’t recommend using them.
The truth is, even a well-resourced volunteer blocklist would struggle to keep up with the ever-changing number of abusive Twitter accounts. The only proper solution is via Twitter itself. Unfortunately, they seem to have little interest in cracking down on abuse or even developing tools for users to manage abusive tweets themselves. There is no way to easily bulk-block accounts; to turn off replies for a tweet; or to prevent a tweet from being quoted.
Why is quote-tweeting such a problem? See this example:
This quote hides the second line of my tweet, which said “Stop saying it. Here’s why👇” making it clear there was more to my argument. It goes without saying that plenty of people don’t read past the headline, but it’s also clear that truncated quote-tweets made that problem even worse in my case.
Interesting, Mastodon deliberately doesn’t allow quote-tooting:
…it inevitably adds toxicity to people’s behaviours. You are tempted to quote when you should be replying, and so you speak at your audience instead of with the person you are talking to. It becomes performative. Even when doing it for “good” like ridiculing awful comments, you are giving awful comments more eyeballs that way.
I only had a quick blast of this, other people get it far worse than me, and there is no doubt in my mind Twitter’s lack of action is contributing towards significant mental harm.
Some people care more about theoretical justice than actual justice. They are essentially fantasists, and you can spot them quite easily, because they often say something like this:
Better that 100 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man goes to jail. That applies to rape, murder, and any other crime.
I imagine the author of that (real) tweet muttering “checkmate” as they typed their version of Blackstone’s Ratio (the exact ratio varies between 10-100 “guilty”, with Benjamin Franklin at the top end of the scale).
Now, before we get into it, let’s be clear: invoking “innocent until proven guilty in a court” is applying a legal standard to a social situation, like shouting “first amendment!” doesn’t and shouldn’t protect you from people getting angry about what you’re saying. It is quite normal for people to earn reputations as bullies or liars amongst groups without proving anything in a court of law. It is only when a severe sanction is to be applied, such as a fine or imprisonment, that this legal standard is relevant.
Putting that aside, the problem with Blackstone is that not everyone agrees with it. Just because it’s a long-standing principle doesn’t mean it’s a good principle for today. As Daniel Epps writes:
English jurors [in the 1700s] literally feared damnation if they erroneously sent an innocent defendant to death. Moreover, given that English judges and juries faced binary punishment options, the Blackstone principle was consistent with simple notions of deterrence. Where only one level of punishment for crime is available, and where that punishment is quite harsh, following something like the Blackstone ratio would make good sense, especially when relatively minor crimes are at issue.
Thankfully, we live in a very different world now. So while we can have a calm and productive conversation about the validity of Blackstone in countries with English-derived legal systems, it doesn’t come close to being a “checkmate” rhetorical move when it comes to talking about allegations of abuse. Even if you believe in Blackstone, even if you don’t care much about convicting guilty people, it’s clear that we absolutely don’t care about preventing certain types of innocent people from being convicted.
Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more about the problems with Blackstone, check out The Consequences of Error in Criminal Justice: Why convicting one innocent person may be better than letting ten guilty people go free (PDF) in the Harvard Law Review by Daniel Epps, former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Epps isn’t the first scholar to doubt the the validity of Blackstone, but he expresses its problems well. It’s 87 pages long, but it’s surprisingly readable!
tl,dr: Epps believes:
So: I reject Blackstone’s Ratio, and you should feel comfortable doing so as well.
The truth is, I don’t think those quoting Blackstone at me have considered its implications for a single second – and if they have, they’re clearly more invested in abstract principles of justice than the lived experience of countless sexual abuse victims. This allows them to ignore the utter lack of justice I mentioned in my first post.
Disturbing beliefs from those attacking me:
Many attackers believe all accusations of abuse are essentially equal, which explains why so anonymous Twitter users made various accusations against me, also no doubt muttering “checkmate”. But the recent allegations made against videogame developers are notable for their detail:
Is this incontrovertible proof? No. But to me it constitutes a credible accusation, whereas simply tweeting “Adrian attacked me yesterday in London” is … not. I can’t believe I have to say this, but there you go.
I am fortunate enough that I am not in fear of losing my livelihood at the hands of a Twitter mob. No-one can complain to my boss or demand for me to be fired. And yet, even from my unimaginably secure position compared to most, even I thought twice about speaking out in support of victims whom I know personally. Life absolutely would have been easier if I just kept my mouth shut.
But it’s the responsibility of people in positions of power and security to speak out, especially when it makes you scared. If you aren’t scared, then you aren’t really helping – you’re just making yourself feel better. But it’s OK to be scared. Because if you weren’t scared, you’re not being brave, you’re just an idiot.
So you need to speak up. Don’t just say “I believe her.” Say “I will never work with ABC again.” Say “I will only work for companies that have strictly enforced rules against harassment and abuse.” Say, “I will donate to RAINN and The Survivor’s Trust.”
And if you see someone being attacked on Twitter, help them, even with just a few kind words. You know who gave me the most messages of support amid the flood of abusive tweets? Women – not men. Talk about emotional labour…