It's basically the rapist mindset, but applied to online services. There are many men out there with diseased rapist minds.

In my comment I was referring to the article's approach to classifying the "trolls".

According to the article.. the [implied numerous] people they classify as the enemy are there because of her "ground breaking work".

The average person doesn't get a huge wave of trolls by just being there. Being the focus of an NPR puff piece interview, I would say she is a minor celebrity.

Does she deserve the hate? The person no, the celebrity image: hesitant yes. (I have a hard time saying no to the second part due to the influence and analogues .. i.e. public figures/politicians)

I believe that people are probably fighting with the celebrity image/influence. I mean why would you care about some individual that had some opinions as is with the person in the article.

----

On to what you mentioned:

Yes, there are unhinged people. The levels of "abuse" (their definition, which I disagree with what's classified as) between someone that agressively tries to influence others and an individual. There are probably many reasons for their behavior, but I would agree that they aren't acceptable to society. Are group block lists a good reason for these individual 1 on 1 interactions? No, The Travis scenario is not healthy. (Scala reference right there.. it's a guy who maintains blocklists based on you who follow)

I don't know why you're so resistant to the idea that harassment is commonplace for certain groups of people. Look at the stark difference when this founder replaced her picture with her male cofounder's on their support chat, for example [1].

Or again, just ask women or other marginalized people in your life what their experience is like online. Tons of ordinary non-famous people I know have stories just like these.

[1] https://www.kapwing.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-my-real-photo/

I think the above poster isn't resistant to the idea that harassment is commonplace for many people. What they are resistant towards is the repeated insistence that we should try and extrapolate broader trends from anecdotes.

Here's some research on the distribution of online harassment with respect to gender that's a bit more rigorous than "just ask women": https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08944393198655...

Maybe they are, but that’s not the argument they made.

Anyway, the problem with posting links to studies in online discussions is that it’s very easy to cherry-pick data that fit whatever conclusion you want to draw (here’s some research that comes to the opposite conclusion as yours [1]). Everyone ends up soapboxing and the discussion is fruitless.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/07/11/online-haras...

The Pew study also found that men are more likely to experience harassment. I'm not sure why you seem to think it reaches the opposite conclusion.

> Men and women experience and respond to online harassment in different ways. Overall, men are somewhat more likely to experience any form of harassing behavior online: 44% of men and 37% of women have experienced at least one of the six behaviors this study uses to define online harassment.

Because context matters, e.g.:

> Similarly, women are about twice as likely as men to say they have been targeted as a result of their gender (11% vs. 5%). Men, however, are around twice as likely as women to say they have experienced harassment online as a result of their political views (19% vs. 10%).

> By contrast, women – and especially young women – encounter sexualized forms of abuse at much higher rates than men. Some 21% of women ages 18 to 29 report being sexually harassed online, a figure that is more than double the share among men in the same age group (9%). In addition, roughly half (53%) of young women ages 18 to 29 say that someone has sent them explicit images they did not ask for. For many women, online harassment leaves a strong impression: 35% of women who have experienced any type of online harassment describe their most recent incident as either extremely or very upsetting, about twice the share among men (16%).

The context is that I provided research that reached the conclusion that men were more likely to experience online harassment. You provided an article that corroborates this claim, and now you're moving the goalposts to just specific types of harassment.

I think if you look up the thread at the harassment I've been discussing from the beginning, you'll find that I'm not moving the goalposts.

So for example, I've been insulted online. However, I've never had anyone persistently follow me around, even after I've taken explicit actions to evade them. The only people I know to which that has happened are women.

That comports with the article I cited…

> In seven days as “Eric Lu”, I got only one rude-ish message, and it was less severe or personal than comments I’d gotten before.

> I switched our message avatar from Eric to "Rachel," and immediately - less than one hour in after changing the photo - the heckling and name-calling resumed:

…and your study…

> Men experience more name-calling and physical threats, while women are more likely to experience sexual harassment (Pew Research Center, 2014; Powell & Henry, 2015). Pew Research Center (2014) additionally finds that young women experience certain severe forms of harassment at disproportionally high levels.

…and mine…

> In terms of specific experiences, men (30%) are modestly more likely than women (23%) to have been called offensive names online or to have received physical threats (12% vs. 8%).

> By contrast, women – and especially young women – encounter sexualized forms of abuse at much higher rates than men. Some 21% of women ages 18 to 29 report being sexually harassed online, a figure that is more than double the share among men in the same age group (9%). In addition, roughly half (53%) of young women ages 18 to 29 say that someone has sent them explicit images they did not ask for. For many women, online harassment leaves a strong impression: 35% of women who have experienced any type of online harassment describe their most recent incident as either extremely or very upsetting, about twice the share among men (16%).

Maybe "harassment" is too vague a word. It takes a big umbrella to cover both "offensive name-calling" and "stalking". But it's very weird to take the percentage of men vs. women who received any kind of online vitriol — regardless of the type or severity — and use that number as a proxy for the entire problem. Kind of like saying "more people each year get paper cuts than die in car crashes, so we should prioritize paper cut protection over auto safety."

So in the end, yes you are changing the goalpost to more specific forms of harassment. Women are more likely to receive explicit photos of have harassment sexual in nature. Men are more likely to receive physical threats. If you're exclusively talking about sexual harassment online you'd have a point, but this was never stated.

> However, I've never had anyone persistently follow me around, even after I've taken explicit actions to evade them. The only people I know to which that has happened are women. That comports with the article I cited.

No, it does not. Men and women experience stalking at nearly equal rates. The difference was only 1% (6 vs 7%) in 2014 and 2% (6 vs 8%) in 2017. And men actually experience slightly more "sustained harassment" (7 vs 6% in '14, 8 vs 7% in '17). And a large disparity in physical threats (12% vs 8%). The only category of serious harassment where there's a large disparity between men and women is sexual harassment, 4% vs 6% in '14, 4% vs 8% in '17.

Even when we break down the type of harassment by severity, there isn't much of a gendered disparity.

> Kind of like saying "more people each year get paper cuts than die in car crashes, so we should prioritize paper cut protection over auto safety."

If you think a man receiving a threat of physical violence versus a woman receiving an unwanted dick-pic has the same level of disparity between a paper cut and a fatal car crash, then sure.

Ultimately I don't have that much stake in whether or not you choose to believe in anecdotes or data. Just know that when you tell people to "just ask women" be prepared to encounter people who have done so and gotten different answers than you. Just because you've encountered a stark disparity between your experience online and the women you've talked to doesn't mean everyone else's anecdotal experience is the same. For that reason empirical observations make a much better foundation for any claim - but sometimes they don't always comport with your personal experiences.