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Zoe Quinn Biography

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“Much of the existing dialogue around the issue of online abuse frames it as violence against women, and that's a major problem. Most of the space being taken up focuses on gender and ignores race, sexuality, and every other type of identity and the intersections thereof. Yet most of the people whom I consider to be the top experts on online abuse and how to defeat it are not white.”

Diversity And InclusionViolence Against WomenIntersectionalityOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentMarginalized PeopleInternet AbuseIgnoring Outside VoicesRace And Racism
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“Victims are told not to say anything about the proceedings, because talking openly about your case can annoy your judge and benefit the defence. Abuses are not really known for their ability to practice this level of self-restraint, giving them control over there narrative around your case—and since court cases are frequently considered newsworthy events, this can give them a whole new platform to recruit more supporters.”

Domestic ViolenceMedia ManipulationIntimate Partner ViolenceAbusive PeopleVictims Of CrimeManipulative People Legal SystemVictim S Rights
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“Generally speaking, the bigger the following someone has, the less interested a service is in banning them. Platforms like YouTube thrive on traffic, and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe get a percentage of the funds raised. The incentives for these companies to remove abusive uses or not as compelling as they should be. I want to believe that it's not intentional, but it's hard to understand why episodes of Game of Thrones are wiped from places like YouTube within nanoseconds well chronic abusive users are allowed to flourish.”

YoutubeHate SpeechTrollsTrollingOnline AbuseOnline HarassmentCrowdfundingAbusive PeopleMonetization
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“We should be judging the effectiveness and value of any of our solutions by how well they'd work for people with the least institutional power.”

IntersectionalityMarginalizationOnline AbuseSystemic FailureMarginalized PeopleInternet AbuseIgnoring Outside VoicesSystematic OppressionInstitutional FailureInstitutional Power
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“We should be judging the effectiveness and value of any of our solutions by how well they'd work for people with the least institutional power. Aside from idealism, it's pragmatic—if marginalized users are the people being targeted the most and being targeted the worst, then designing solutions that focus on the majority and treat the marginalized users as edge cases is not logically sound, because they aren't. Conversely, there's no reason to assume that the solutions that work for the people who need it most wouldn't also work for people who aren't as much at risk.”

IntersectionalityMale PrivilegeMarginalizationOnline AbuseInstitutional OppressionSystemic FailureMarginalized PeopleInternet AbuseIgnoring Outside VoicesSystematic Oppression
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“After a few months of giving each other space so we could each do our own soul searching, I got a text from him asking if I'd like to smoke weed and go to a Hello Kitty art exhibit. How can you NOT reconcile with someone in that environment?”

ReconciliationQuirky CharactersIrresistible Man
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“My romantic rejections of industry veterans have severely hurt my career—saying no to the wrong man has led to exclusion from professional events, lost contract gigs, my name's removal from my own work, and worse.”

Sexual HarrassmentComputer Games Industry
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“They shared elaborate fantasies about raping and murdering me, discussing the pros and cons of each. They talked about how to break into all of my accounts to try to find more ways to invade my privacy. They bragged about victories like flooding my game's page with hatred and nude photos of me and went so far as to create guides to share tactics on how best to ruin my life. They even orchestrated plans to donate to various charities specifically to make themselves look like concerned citizens and not a mob of people trying to get me killed. They build friendships and bonded with each other by reinforcing their dedication to the righteous cause of taking me down, reminding themselves at every turn but they were the good guys.”

MisogynySelf RighteousnessTrollingOrganized AbuseOnline AbuseOnline HarassmentGamergateDogpilingOrchestrated Campaign
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“They start coordinating strategies to accomplish their goal, Sharing the information they've been able to glean and formulating plans. Attacking you becomes a participatory Game in which people try to one up each other in terms I have who can get to you the most. That first night, I was struck by how many of the threats or disgusting remarks sent my way we are made so publicly, lowercase while tagging other people. The ones that were especially vicious were rewarded (in social media terms) with likes, shares, and people joining in on the abuse.”

TryingOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentDogpiling
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“What they get wrong is precisely this false belief that online prejudice is easily compartmentalized or categorized into, say, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or ableism when really it flows freely between these various bigotries.”

IntersectionalityOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingMarginalized PeopleIgnoring Outside VoicesMarginalised GroupsIntersectionalInternet Harassment
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“As I'm sure you can imagine, it's profoundly dehumanizing to listen to a virulent the angry stranger shout about how horrible you are to people who are primed to hate you.”

BloggersDehumanizationOnline AbuseOnline HarassmentInternet TrollsDehumanize
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“Mass reporting a common tool to try to make the legitimate sites belonging to targets of online abuse vanish as many systems our automated to react to a large volume of reports. Law-enforcement agencies and government bodies like the IRS have online reporting systems that can also be manipulated this way by a mob.”

Online AbuseOnline HarassmentMalicious IntentManipulativenessMalicious ActsBrigadingFalse Reports
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“GamerGate wasn’t really about video games at all so much as it was a flash point for radicalized online hatred that had a long list of targets before, and after, my name was added to it. The movement helped solidify the growing connections between online white supremacist movements, misogynist nerds, conspiracy theorists, and dispassionate hoaxers who derive a sense of power from disseminating disinformation. This patchwork of Thanksgiving-ruining racist uncles might look and sound like a bad joke, but they became a real force behind giving Donald Trump the keys to the White House.”

RacismSexismHate SpeechOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentWhite SupremacistsInternet TrollsSacrificial VictimsConspiracy Theiruests
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“Internet Inquisitors harness this fandom to make money. Multiple websites have been set up since the beginning of GamerGate to pander to this audience, gaining ad revenue and a following. YouTube, Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo, Patreon, and other money-making platforms are leveraged by the more opportunistic among them.”

MisogynyHatersHate SpeechOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentCrowdfundingProfiteeringMisogyny OnlineProfit From Your Struggles
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“Maybe you'll express an opinion on a political issue and it will get noticed by that wrong person. Maybe you'll wake up to find that a company you once bought shoes from online was careless with security, and now your personal information is in the hands of anyone who bothers to look. Maybe someone who has a grudge against you is relentless enough to post and promote bogus information about you online—stuff that can never be erases. Maybe you're a member of a demographic that is constantly targeted—you're a woman, you're black, you're trans, or any combination of these or other marginalised groups—and someone who wants to get people like you off "their" internet decides to take it upon them to make your life hell. Online abuses target countless people every year for any number of arbitrary reasons.”

PrejudiceDiscriminationTrollsOnline HarassmentOnline Bullying
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“The less you look and sound like a 1950s sitcom dad, the more likely it is that you'll find yourself where I did—having your life torn apart by neo-Nazis.”

PrejudiceMisogynyHate CrimeOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentHate Campaign
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“A mob has more tools at its disposal then individual actors do. Popularity—the quantity of clicks of use on any given time is tracked and exploited by algorithms online, and a mob is a critical mass. If thousands of people are linking to something about you, that will quickly become the first thing people see when they google your name, regardless of whether it's a fact checked news article or SmegmaDan69's video about what a bitch you are.”

BullyingOnline AbuseOnline HarassmentMob Mentality
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“So do you go to the police or not? Well, if you don't, people will claim that the abuse wasn't real because theres no police report about it. If you do enter the system, you have to accept that all of what I've detailed in this chapter is what you're facing; be willing to sign up for the years-long process in the event that case actually goes to trial; know you have little chance of seeing justice because legislation and law enforcement have not yet caught up with the pace of online crime; and, even if you re successful, accept that a court order may not do much to stop an obsessive abuser.”

StalkingOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentInternet TrollsInternet Abuse
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“In some situations, the attempts to "do something about this" can directly stress the person being targeted or make their situation worse. One example from my own experience is that people frequently screenshot and send me something horrible someone has said about me to give me a "heads-up" when I have purposefully reorganized my life to keep that stuff as far away from me as possible.”

AlliesGood IntentionsTrollingOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentInternet AbuseHelping Victims
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“I don't care if he posts about what he had for lunch sometimes; I want to know why that somehow gives him a free pass to post death threats on your service.”

Social MediaOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentInternet AbuseIgnoring AbuseFailing To ProtectRefusing To Co Operate
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“How do you tell someone that the people who could have stopped it saw what was happening to them and, even though you fought tooth and nail, were determined not to care?”

Social MediaOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingOnline HarassmentInternet AbuseDismissiveIgnoring AbuseRefusing To CareRefusing To Co Operat
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“Seeing people who personally profited off the abuse against me being selected for Trump's cabinet scares the hell out of me. I don't know how to express to anyone the extremely weird issue of having your personal trauma wrapped up in international trauma.”

TrumpTrumpismNeonazisOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingTrump AdministrationAlt RightInternet AbuseRetraumatizationInternational Trauma
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“Most of the activists and survivors I know... knew the loudest, most hyperbolic garbage will rise to the top if left unchecked. We knew enough people in charge either don't understand, don't care, or are part of the problem.”

TrumpAbuse Of PowerPopulismTrumpismNeonazisOnline AbuseTrolls And TrollingTrump AdministrationAlt RightInternet Abuse
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“The detective assigned to my case told me that restraining orders turn to work out one of two ways—either the paper is good enough to scare off your abuser, or they double down and never stop unless they are thrown in jail. Unsurprisingly, Mine turned out to be the latter type, using the restraining order itself as an excuse to market his crusade against me to entirely new hate groups online.”

MisogynyDomestic ViolenceHarassmentTrollingOnline AbuseHate GroupsRestraining Order
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“Even if you stick mainly to mainstream sites, you've probably seen glimpses of the internet's underbelly in the comment section at the bottom of news articles. The article could be about local man saving a box of kittens from a burning building, but no matter: the comments will accuse him of hating dogs, setting the building on fire in the first place, and secretly being Barack Obama's Kenyan uncle.”

TrollsTrollingCommentsOnline BullyingComments Section
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“In criminal proceedings, laymen might assume it's one person versus another, but it's not—it's the state versus the defendant. That means that you, the victim, do not have anyone on your side by default, while defendants have lawyers who are eager to tear into you from all angles. You are an asset to the state's case, not the other way around.”

DefenceLegal SystemProsecutionVictims Of CrimeVictim Of Crime
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“As a queer, feminine person making unconventional games in an industry known for being at best oblivious and at worst overtly hostile to women, I've had to make games while tap-dancing through a political minefield over my identity, occasionally falling face-first onto explosives.”

Computer Games Industry
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“...when someone comes to me who possesses any traits that stray from what might appear in an American i950s-era sitcom, their identities are part of their abuse. They are targeted by certain people who want them to suffer for existing.”

IntersectionalityMarginalizationOnline AbuseMarginalized PeopleInternet AbuseIgnoring Outside VoicesInstitutional Power
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“While online abuse can happen to anyone, it is by no means an equal-opportunity occurrence. We're dragged the same sort of cultural baggage that we live with offline into online spaces like a gross piece of toilet paper stuck to our shoes.”

PrejudiceSocial MediaDiscriminationIntersectionalityOnline AbuseInternet AbuseInternet HarassmentMicro Aggressions
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“These pundits are community leaders of the sort—they validate feelings and provide guidance. Internet Inquisitors position themselves as authority figures and truth tellers; they confirm the mob's hatred, paranoia, and insecurities and directed towards the nearest combustible witch on their radar. They serve as morale boosters, assuring the mob that they are correct, that their path is righteous, and that it's the world that's wrong (or in this case, the person they're offering up as a sacrifice).”

MisogynyWitch HuntMob MentalitySacrificial VictimsInciting IncidentMob LeaderSelf Styled Authority
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