So, you were put on some people's list of bad folks on Twitter, and you're trying to drum up folks' sympathy?

I mean, they could be wrong, but by your own admission, you've given some people reason to think you're probably not someone they want to talk to on Twitter anyway. There are so many people on Twitter; even if every person in the enthusiast press blocked thousands, they'll still have a connection to plenty of people. I don't think people using BlockTogether are going to be hurting too much from this, and I doubt you really -need- to tweet at any of these people.

Sure it's an imperfect solution, but that doesn't mean not using it is a better solution. Seems like a prudent move for more people to band together on something like this, and while potentially decent people like yourself may be caught in it due to a bad tweet here or there, I doubt people using a list like this will ever lack plenty of people to talk to.

@truthtellah: I've been followed by many of the folks in the press and who are developers who if they signed up for this service would block me without likely knowing they did so because the lists are so long. I would have no way to tell them they'd done so.

Change your name or something. People are assholes (yourself included, by your own admission), so figure out how to deal with it now or else your life is gonna suck.

Love this story . Love the idea of consequences of saying things on the internet. The people you tweet at are still real people.

Thanks for sharing.

If it actually bothers you create a new twitter

@truthtellah: It didn't come across as him trying to drum up sympathy in any way, it's just an interesting topic.

This is my first time hearing about this but it just seems (for lack of a better word) like a dumb thing to do. Just because you can't see people doesn't mean they stop existing, It just means that you've put up a wall around yourself. I know the phrase echo chamber gets thrown around a lot when describing the "Social Justice" crowd and the people that surround them but doing this just seems like another step in that direction. I don't want to say "Just put up with it" to the people who deal with internet abuse but when you go out of your way to make sure you don't hear or see anything that even slightly bothers you, you end up never getting criticism, constructive or otherwise.

When you start with 'when this this whole feminism explosion happened..." you're not going to win many people over. In fact, it says quite a lot.

You're just a minor casualty of a stopgap solution to a giant, fucking headache of a problem, unfortunately. Twitter doesn't provide proper tools for dealing with harassment, so blocktogther is kind of necessary. Your best bet is to email whoever is in charge of that list and convince them you're not an asshole. Otherwise just create a new Twitter account or move on.

actually iirc the way it works is it wont block anyone if you are following them, so you wouldn't be blocked by people that follow you

But it... did happen. Now we can't even acknowledge that the feminist movement has decided to weigh in much more on games in the past several years? I don't see anything even the least bit offensive, belligerent, or untrue with that statement.

"I remember back when the whole FPS explosion happened..."

How DARE you, sir! I stopped reading right there, you hateful FPS detractor!

That really says quite a lot?

I support our new feminist overlords, have and will likely in the future. I was just using it as a frame of time, not a condemnation of the politics.

For the most part, it's about people harassing them and trying to protect themselves as a community. If someone harasses a friend, it may be useful to say, "Hey, this guy is a dick. They'll probably be a dick to you, too." A list like this, while imperfect, does help spread around information on a large crowd. It somehow actually gives some accountability to people tweeting crap to others.

People have the right to decide for themselves if they don't want to talk to someone or protect themselves, and where Twitter fails, it makes sense for people to band together. On Twitter, you don't get to decide who says shit to you, and with this, you at least don't have to wait for the same people to harass you, your friend, and their friends before each of you can block that person.

If someone is really worried that they may get blocked by people, perhaps the issue is more with you and not the people blocking you. It's not a perfect solution, but it makes sense.

That's a good way to put it. Unfortunately, this is an imperfect stopgap measure thanks to Twitter's insufficient tools to manage the daily crap many people have to put up with on the service.

@spaceinsomniac:

Hi!

@granderojo: Sorry if I read something into it. It just read odd. Because frankly these issues didn't just happen recently. They've been happening forever. It's just throughout history, at different times, they draw a spotlight. Which is unfortunate that so many spotlights have been drawn upon these issues and yet here we are again.

Love the idea of a "do not call" list for twitter jerks. maybe op isnt one or made a mistake and learned his lesson. good for him if true. but with the shit thats been happening recently I cant blame people for taking action against that group.

@spaceinsomniac: not really sure of the point youre trying to make through all the over-agressive sarcasm.

I dont think someone choosing not to further interact with someone on social media means they are being silenced. If I remove someone from my facebook friends list is that me silencing them? they can still post all they want and the people who want to listen can still be their friends but they people who don't...don't.

@spaceinsomniac: I remember this tweet. She had called Ben a smug twat in a tweet just prior to that one for an opinion piece Ben had written on Bioware making a change to their game. I'm not saying that she should be whole sale blocked but you were inflating her story a bit. I probably didn't agree with Ben either, the best thing to do in this case if his opinions do get to you is to not follow & stop reading his work which is what I've done. Nothing personal to Ben, his opinions just aren't for me.

My reason for making this topic really has nothing to do with gamergate other than it prompted the use of Block Together. My intent is not to feed the flames of either side.

@spaceinsomniac: Kuchera is a jerk (the nicest possible way I can put it). He did her a favor. I'm sure he hasn't tweeted anything worth reading since then anyway.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the rest of the post. Blaming the victim? Getting blocked on Twitter doesn't make you a victim.

Also, you should do better fact checking.

Make a burner Twitter account, it's not that hard if you really want to see what these people are up to.

@corwag:

Yikes dude.

@jasonr86: This guy seems to really want to see what these people are saying. Is it creepy? Way creepy.

Might be one of the first times we've agreed on something completely in these shitstorms. Good on ya.

@spaceinsomniac: Maybe if you held off on the sarcasm for one moment, we could talk about our different feelings on the subject. Personally, I don't know the context of their exchange or their history(though it looks like she did insult him before that), but I'd say, regardless of his quality as a person or writer, Ben Kuchera can decide whoever he wants to not talk to on Twitter.

While we're on the topic, it might be helpful if we had a "block" option on Giant Bomb, as well.

It could allow some threads on difficult topics to actually have a chance, and, frankly, people may be saved from continuing to put up with the insulting and ignorant comments of some members who consistently skirt the rules by just being one shade shy of bannable.

Well damn. I retract my example then, along with my sarcasm. But getting blocked on twitter would make you a victim if you didn't do anything to deserve it, especially if it ends up somehow affecting your career and you're not even aware of it.

And he would be doing her a favor if it was just her being blocked by him. Instead, it's her being blocked by an entire group because of him.

But yeah, it turns out that was not a good example. I'll certainly admit that much.

And that's certainly understandable. I'd like to keep that out of this thread as well, as this is a completely different topic. For anyone who thought I was alluding to it, that was not my intention.

@corwag:

I mean. He was blocked dude. Fair or not, wouldn't it be the mature thing to accept their wishes and leave then be? This thread is fine. But this thread isn't against their wishes. Right?

I'm not going to make a burner to stalk people. This thread, like I've said, was made as much for press/devs that follow me currently who have talked positively of Block Together as it is for the GB community. This blog was just the vessel I used to telling my followers in a more concise way.

@spaceinsomniac said:

Regardless of the missing context, putting "journalists" or "journalism" in quotes is a pretty good way to get blocked by journalists. You can't really blame him for simply blocking the jerks that are insulting him and his profession on his personal account.

I would agree that if someone tells you that they want you to leave them alone, you should probably leave them alone. I suppose his concern is that someone thinking he's a jerk will carry over into all of these other people asking him to leave them alone when he thinks he has reason to want to talk to them.

I do think BlockTogether is more of an imperfect stopgap than a solution, and I hope Twitter will take this as an opportunity figure out better tools for people to not just be subject to the whims of jerks. Twitter is first and foremost a place for people to put their voices out there, but I don't think it has to be a place where people have to put up with just anyone messaging them.

I think if you're mature enough to understand that people really find it to be an important and useful stopgap solution and that it will naturally be imperfect, then I think you should be fine. It can be a bummer but keeping cool and proving that you're not worthy of it, whether or not it's acknowledged, is the real lesson. At the very least you've got other areas you can continue to be a good member of internet society and maybe things will turn back around.

Actually I was curious how blocktogether was playing out and I heard that it's been useful in cutting down on the noise for many; however inherent to the one-to-many relationship and that a small subset of a subset on twitter are using it, the collateral damage will likely remain low if kept as is. Stick it out duder and continue to be cool, that's as much as anyone would want you to do.

@octaslash said:

@spaceinsomniac said:

Regardless of the missing context, putting "journalists" or "journalism" in quotes is a pretty good way to get blocked by journalists. You can't really blame him for simply blocking the jerks that are insulting him and his profession on his personal account.

Yeah, it turned out to be a rather backwards example that actually reinforces why so many may want to block people on Twitter and not have to wait until they lash out at them in particular to do it. I imagine people who know Ben Kuchera probably trust his judgment on who they probably don't need to have messaging them. Other "journalists", as that user put it, may have reason to not want to talk to them either.

This stopgap measure may have some false positives, but ultimately, talking to someone on Twitter isn't a right. It's not an injustice for people to try to protect themselves first at the potential expense of a few decent people not being able to contact them through one means of communication. It may suck to feel you were wrongly added, but it's these people's right to do that if they feel it may be safest for them.

No one's saying it's perfect, but for many of these people on Twitter, it may be a better option than otherwise at the moment.

I feel like the Information Age has given rise to large amounts of Groupthink, confirmation bias, straw man, and "no true Scotsman" fallacies. How easy is it to find something that confirms what you believe. Or to block people that believe something else.

As a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter will add a subscription plan, and only those people who pay would be allow to tweet at verified accounts.

@truthtellah: Ben writes a lot of articles which draw a lot more ire than most journalists in the enthusiast press, and by that same admission he's blocked more people that usually don't tweet such things. When you block the same users as him you probably need to understand this baggage going in. I don't think you quite understand this either from what you're saying.

It's not a correct analogy. It would be if you said "I remove someone from my facebook friend list and then tell others to block them too". It's understandable in case of harrassment; but you have to know that if you use a list like the one the topic is discussing you're gonna damage many innocent "casualties". In the frenzy of these weeks it's not uncommon to find many cases of misinterpretation between people. I've seen many people tweet "wait that's not what i was saying i was supporting you"; do they deserve to be blocked by other people beyond the one that missed the point?

@granderojo: There's going to be a ton of false positives that get propagated through as lists are shared. There's no doubt that it's an imperfect system that's going to lead to some people blocking followers that otherwise they likely never would've taken issue with, but if it can stem the tide of unmitigated hate being channeled toward some people, I don't blame them for looking for some sort of solution.

@granderojo: As I said, I won't go into defending Ben Kuchera's quality as a person or writer, but if someone does trust his judgment, then more power to them.

I think we should try to be more understanding and empathetic toward why people would pursue a stopgap measure like this. There may be some false positives in there, but for people using such a blocklist, that's probably a risk worth taking for their own peace of mind.

Well in that list there are TheYoungFineCapitalists (entry #1114). They didn't harrass anyone, but it's obvious that someone that disagree with them put them there. They deserve to be blocked by people who don't even know they are there?

Edit:

So even the people using the list are recognisizing it can cause damage that kind of approach

There is an interesting point to be had here, however people are getting bogged down by the details of the initial subject and looking for reason. Ignoring feminism in this discussion there is an very interesting point.

WHAT IF? This actually has a bigger consequence?

What if someone who never said a bad word to one of these journalist's tweeted in the past and their tweet was misunderstood or it challenged a journalist in a way they felt insulted, even if it was legitimate and mature criticism, maybe too frequent of a direct interaction attempt one that is not inhuman just a very lower threshold for this Journalist. We know Ryan was block happy and he had his own reasons and we will never know, but he created his twitter space as he wished it to be.

However when their twitter space that is personalised to that user on who they interact with is then put on a wider list. Then that person who was blocked because they said something that user disliked enough to block, may be absolutely harmless or even wished for by another user is automatically blocked because of this list.

When talking about twitter as whole that is not important, however this is on a smaller scale...that could influence jobs or more so possible jobs. Like the OP says he interacts with Journalists and game devs, if someone who is trying to break into the industry starts getting shutters put up on them through twitter because of a tweet they made 12 months ago that IS harmless, however a game's industry professional blocked them for it and such a blocklist was widely accepted and touted as a MUST HAVE. Hell that professional may have given up the whole business and twitter to become a beer brewer! Meaning the entire ramifications are not even meeting the original intended goal.

The real question is "What kind of impact could being on an industry wide Twitter blocklist have on interacting or breaking into it. Legitimate block or worse an illegitimate block?"

Not why or what are the alternatives, because there are no alternatives at hand other than accepting the twitter abuse.

Shots fired.

By the way, I just want to clear about something. I think this @blocktogether thing is pretty stupid. If someone is a dick, block them. Having a blanket program that blocks a bunch of people who you've never interacted with is just dumb. Also, there's nothing stopping these people (if they truly are the assholes you think they are) from just creating another burner Twitter account and continuing to be a dick. But you know...

lol polygon

Block Together reminds me of that recent fiasco where the police used military-like arms in order to 'stop' a riot. It's the 'easiest' way for people on Twitter to block people that are assholes, or just as often, from having a voice they disagree with. If people are going to use the 'they're humans to' shortcut in their argument, they also have to be aware that humans are like water and will take the path of least resistance (in this case, least amount of effort possible).

Hopefully something more intuitive will take its place in the near future, but the people affected by this seem to care little about the collateral damage (blocking) that will happen; as long as they stop the influx of assholes that come their way.

Is it understandable? Sure. Is it right? We'll see.

One thing I keep hearing is how it's hard to report harassment on Twitter. So my question is does Twitter seriously lack a report harassment button? If yes, why the hell don't they have one?

Oh yeah, naturally. I'm surprised more parallels aren't being drawn between this block-list for Twitter users and the incidents in Ferguson that followed a police officer fatally shooting an unarmed black teenager.

@oldirtybearon: There is a report process, and it does work (I've seen accounts get suspended after being reported for continued harassment). The issue is that it's not a single button click. There's a form that you have to fill out and Twitter will often disregard flagged accounts if you don't provide a solid detailed report, and even if you do provide sufficient detail, Twitter's response may take a while.

This is why I don't use a block list. I don't trust other people's judgment of what is block-worthy.

@oldirtybearon: The current system really is deficient on this. It basically takes way too much effort for even just one person. It wasn't designed to handle concerted efforts by a lot of people. So, people are trying their best to figure out ways to manage it while Twitter finally gets around to improving their system. Right now, there are just flawed measures like this that try to make it more manageable.

Ultimately, I'd say a lot of concern over BlockTogether should really be pointed more toward Twitter getting their act together so people don't have to resort to stuff like this.

This isn't really the right way of doing "consequences" though. It's a temporary measure and I don't disagree with it as that, because sometimes you have to over correct to protect people from the awful things that exist on the internet. But this kind of thing ignores how these issues work. I'd bet 80% of the users on this site that are relatively active have posted some dumb, stupid, unpleasant shit at some point in their life. I know I did and said stupid shit as a kid and even now I occasionally struggle to reign in my sometimes overbearing personality. If I found out people who didn't know me were signing up to ban me because of something I said to some random person when I was a dumb kid being a dumb kid, I'd probably feel kind of screwed over. People mature. Consequences need to be a little more directed than "someone can add you to this list that may or may not be fair and legitimate!"

I think it's a good option if people need space from that shit and it's fine as a temporary measure but we need a better solution to this problem than throwing them all in a bin and pretending they aren't there. At the moment it's the best option a lot of women and supporters of women's rights out there. But that doesn't mean it's the option we should run with for the long run. Especially when it has to be some random clever internet user instead of someone like Twitter (known for their pitiful levels of support towards victims of abuse).

That's just an accurate description of feminism taking the stage kind of by storm in our industry. It wasn't a judgement call. I could say "and then the ice cream exploded into my mouth" and I don't think that would make people think I hate ice cream.

He even talked about the fact that he was just reposting one of the feminists that kicked off the onset of feminism, not offering criticism or commentary, so I don't see why you'd jump to the conclusion you jumped to.

@jarmahead:

Read my second comment.

I'm glad to see this.

Yep. You're right, and I apologize. Considering my feelings towards flippant sarcasm, I feel like a hypocrite. I'm not in the best of moods right now because I'm sick, but that doesn't excuse it. It especially made me look foolish with the awful example I used.

@chaser324: My guess is that Twitter wants an explanation of why you consider it harassment as a way to weed out people who would simply claim someone is harassing them because they disagreed with them or didn't like something they said that wasn't harassment. Using a bot wouldn't work, so they most likely need a pair of eyes to actually check everything out, and this may help reduce the number of reports they have to check out. I've seen people lash out and get extremely defensive for someone simply making a correction.