Erin 💽✨(Boosts encouraged)
Have you ever personally been on the receiving end of an internet harassment campaign?
(personally here meaning “you, specifically; or a small group containing you”)
Yes
No
Poll ended at .
If you answered yes to the first question:
Did you have nightmares about it?
Yes
No
Poll ended at .
If you answered yes to the first question:
Did it change the way you interact with people on the internet or in real life?
Yes
No
Poll ended at .
Matthew Martin@erincandescent Each experience like this and you recalibrate your trust in people in general downward. My preferred coping mechanism is to not engage them, which works well in social media, but for people who are in your condo building, the harassment never stops until you move out.
also_sam@erincandescent yea, it was the moment I realised that opsec is fucking important and not just some afterthought
another determining factor in that was when I did OSINT (coronavirus related protestors that were violent or harassing people, that kinda stuff) around 2020-2021 is how much data people just throw around, and how scarily easy it is to combine public sources the author may think are separate to create a really accurate profile of an author
(I should write more about this)
another determining factor in that was when I did OSINT (coronavirus related protestors that were violent or harassing people, that kinda stuff) around 2020-2021 is how much data people just throw around, and how scarily easy it is to combine public sources the author may think are separate to create a really accurate profile of an author
(I should write more about this)
Bethany Black@erincandescent yes, have had multiple campaigns against me, the one that was the worst was when I had both TERFs upset at me for existing and trans people upset at me for talking publicly with TERFs to try to win people over to being more accepting of trans people.
The fallout gave me agoraphobia and PTSD, and stopped me from engaging in trans activism any further which had a knock on effect on my ability to earn a living. I deliberately avoid confrontation online now
TL Jordan@erincandescent
Yes to all three questions.
Yes to all three questions.
Kit MaloneI was one of the campaign leads in a post-Dobbs battle over abortion and was already known well for my LGBTQ work. During that time my photo was shared to local proud boys via Twitter and local hard right personalities started namedropping me online.
By the end, folks were showing up at my office, I was assaulted at the capital twice, and was often confronted in the hallways by angry strangers who knew my name. It was traumatic. I left traditional social media.
@erincandescent (worth a postscript that my entire team experienced some version of this)
Jo Shields@erincandescent @oracle ever worked on the wrong open source project? One which the guardians of freedom don’t approve of?
kolya@erincandescent how many people in a campaign?
@kolya I don’t think there’s a fixed number; it can be just one person doing the actual harassment if other people listen to them
Zalasur 🐸🇺🇦@erincandescent I was on Twitch a few years back and got hit by one of those "hate raids". This contributed to my decision to leave the platform, ultimately leading to my creating my own Peertube instance.
Elzen@erincandescent @olasd Does « a single person randomly erasing things in every collaborative notes he finds links to and repetitively adding the association's board's address to several totally irrelevant mailing lists for a few months » count as an harassment campaign ? 🤔
mimi 🌸@[email protected] being scared to answer this question, because im scared i will get harassed or something like that again 
ersatzmaus@erincandescent Does "one crazy guy following me around on IRC for a decade or so sending automated (I hope, for his sake) insults to me" count?
Frost, ᛁᛊᛟᛚᚠᚱ 🐺❄️
@erincandescent ...I think yes, but we mostly never saw it, and being on our own instance probably helped limit the damage? It certainly wasn't nightmare inducing, so I don't know if it counts.
Aurin Azadî@erincandescent Nope, but I know at least one person who was.
AstroMancer5G (she/her)@erincandescent
Once here, once on Twitter. The one on Twitter blew up to thousands of fash replying to a single post over the course of weeks. The one here was swiftly ended through fediblock.
@kagan
Once here, once on Twitter. The one on Twitter blew up to thousands of fash replying to a single post over the course of weeks. The one here was swiftly ended through fediblock.
@kagan
Kagan MacTane (he/him)@AstroMancer5G I'm sorry those things happened to you at all, but glad the second one was at least able to be stopped quickly.
Simonoid@erincandescent I think for me it was being a moderator of a online gaming community (ingress).
Not everyone is a balanced individual and the internet just exposed me to more humans. So it was bound to happen eventually.
Not everyone is a balanced individual and the internet just exposed me to more humans. So it was bound to happen eventually.
Marc Trius
Mx Verda@erincandescent a small one, yes, but teenagers, not adults.
Amir E. Aharoni@erincandescent Does it count if it was one day long?
Anroth Elf@[email protected] Sure. I've run a number of Mastodon and other Fediverse instances just messing around.
It's SHOCKING the kind of targeted hate you get if you don't add a hefty defederation blocklist. We're talking DMs in the 100s and 1000s if you don't lock that shit down.
The Internet stinks. Always has.
It's SHOCKING the kind of targeted hate you get if you don't add a hefty defederation blocklist. We're talking DMs in the 100s and 1000s if you don't lock that shit down.
The Internet stinks. Always has.
botvolution@erincandescent
I used to do a bit of stuff on twitter outing inauthentic, disinfo and generally fash accounts. Got some nasty people banned (this was before EM obvs).
Some took exception to my activity and I got brigaded by bottom feeders a few times.
Unpleasant, but because I was also using the API for supporting data, I could do mass bans very quickly. It didn't stop me.
EM stopped me, by suspending my main account and killing the API tho.
🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦@erincandescent @The_Whore_of_Blahbylon LOL, yeah. I was a dishonorary member of the Usenet Cabal (WDNE) in the fevered brains of various Usenet loons in the `90s despite never running a significant site. Most actively, I was on the wrong side of the Church<spit> of $cientology when they were trying to shut down a.r.s because it was populated with schismatics and Subgenii. I had Co$ goons staking out my home for a while trying to figure me out and/or spook me.
Jenny List@erincandescent Yes, yes, and yes. We had a targeted harassment campaign at @trans_rescue, and it was really damaging.