{"id":5096,"date":"2016-11-15T18:55:35","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T23:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5096"},"modified":"2025-04-14T00:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T04:29:10","slug":"in-the-atlantic-about-using-tech-to-combat-online-harassment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5096","title":{"rendered":"In The Atlantic, about Using Tech to Combat Online Harassment"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’m quoted in this article in The Atlantic on the use of technology in \u00a0leveraging sociological dynamics to combat online harassment: “Why \u00a0Online Allies Matter in Fighting Harassment.”<\/a><\/p>\n

An experiment \u00a0by Kevin Munger<\/a> used bots to test which groups white men responded to when \u00a0being called out on their racist harassment online. Findings largely \u00a0unsurprising (Powerful white men; they responded favourably to powerful white \u00a0men), save for the fact that anonimity INCREASED effectiveness of treatment, and \u00a0visible identity decreased<\/strong><\/em> it. That one was weird. But it’s still \u00a0nice to see all of this codified.<\/p>\n

Good to see use of Bertrand & \u00a0Mullainathan’s “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” as \u00a0the idea of using “Black Sounding Names” to signal purported ethnicity of bot \u00a0thus clearly models what he thought those he expected to be racist would think, \u00a0rather than indicating his own belief. (However, it could be asked whether \u00a0there’s a meaningful difference, here, as he still had to choose the names he \u00a0thought would “sound black.”)<\/p>\n

The Reactance study Munger discusses\u2014the \u00a0one that shows that people double down on factually incorrect prejudices\u2014is the \u00a0same one I used in “On The Invisible \u00a0Architecture of Bias.<\/a>“<\/p>\n

A few things Ed Yong and I talked about that \u00a0didn’t get into the article, due to space:<\/p>\n

-Would like to see this \u00a0experimental model applied to other forms of prejudice (racist, sexist, \u00a0homophobic, transphobic, ableist, etc language), and was thus very glad to see \u00a0the footnote about misogynist harassment.<\/p>\n

-I take some exception to the \u00a0use of Dovidio\/Gaertner and Crandall et al definitions of racism, as those leave \u00a0out the sociological aspects of power dynamics \u00a0(“Racism\/Sexism\/Homophobia\/Transphobia\/Ableism= Prejudice + Power”) which seem \u00a0crucial to understanding the findings of Munger’s experiment. He skirts close to \u00a0this when he discusses the greater impact of “high status” individuals, but \u00a0misses the opportunity to lay out the fact that:
–Institutionalised power \u00a0dynamics as related to the interplay of in-group and out-group behaviour are \u00a0pretty clearly going to affect why<\/strong><\/em> white people are more likely to \u00a0listen to those they perceive as powerful white men, because
–The interplay \u00a0of Power and status, interpersonally, is directly related to power and status \u00a0institutionally<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

-Deindividuation (loss of sense of self in \u00a0favour of group identity) as a key factor and potential solution<\/strong><\/em> \u00a0is very interesting.<\/p>\n

Something we didn’t get to talk about but which I \u00a0think is very important is the question of how we keep this from being used as a \u00a0handbook. That is, what do we do in the face of people understand these \u00a0mechanisms and who wish to use them to sow division and increase<\/strong><\/em> \u00a0acceptance of racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, etc ideals? Do \u00a0we, then, become engaged in some kind of rolling arms race of sociological \u00a0pressure?<\/p>\n

\u2026Which, I guess, has pretty much always been true, and we call \u00a0it “civilization.”<\/p>\n

Anyway, hope you enjoy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m quoted in this article in The Atlantic on the use of technology in \u00a0leveraging sociological dynamics to combat online harassment: “Why \u00a0Online Allies Matter in Fighting Harassment.” An experiment \u00a0by Kevin Munger used bots to test which groups white men responded to when \u00a0being called out on their racist harassment online. Findings largely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,1125,1122,1128,1123,1126,655,684,1124,769,1127,872],"class_list":["post-5096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-future-worth-thinking-about","tag-bigotry","tag-bots","tag-ed-yong","tag-online-harassment","tag-power","tag-prejudice","tag-racism","tag-social-dynamics","tag-sociology","tag-the-atlantic","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WByP-1kc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5282,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5282","url_meta":{"origin":5096,"position":0},"title":"On Social Tipping Points","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"June 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, I talked to The Atlantic's Ed Yong about new research in crowd sentiment tipping points, how it could give hope and dread for those working for social change, and how it might be used by bad actors to create\/enhance already-extant sentiment-manipulation factories. From the article: \u2026\u201cYou see this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/65\/Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg\/640px-Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg","src":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/65\/Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg\/640px-Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/65\/Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg\/640px-Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg 1x, https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/65\/Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg\/640px-Argentina_-_Mt_Tronador_Ascent_-_65_-_Casa%C3%B1o_Overa_glacier_%286834408616%29.jpg 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5729,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5729","url_meta":{"origin":5096,"position":1},"title":"My New Article at American Scientist","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"July 7, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"As of this week, I have a new article in the July-August 2023 Special Issue of American Scientist Magazine. It's called \"Bias Optimizers,\" and it's all about the problems and potential remedies of and for GPT-type tools and other \"A.I.\" This article picks up and expands on thoughts started in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ableism\"","block_context":{"text":"ableism","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=ableism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3517,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=3517","url_meta":{"origin":5096,"position":2},"title":"A Future Worth Thinking About","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"February 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"This, I believe, will be the official blog space for my Patreon project, \u201cA Future Worth Thinking About.\u201d Partially because I feel need to differentiate it from the random noodling I do on Tumblr, and partially because I need a blog for that project with actual formatting tools. Coming soon:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4838,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4838","url_meta":{"origin":5096,"position":3},"title":"On The Invisible Architecture of Bias (Audio & Text)","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"April 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Damien Patrick Williams (Originally posted on Patreon, on September 30, 2014; Direct Link to the Mp3) Today I want us to talk about a concept I like to call \u201cThe Invisible Architecture of Bias.\u201d A bit of this discussion will have appeared elsewhere, but I felt it was high\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5135,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5135","url_meta":{"origin":5096,"position":4},"title":"Cops, Drones, and The Fundamentally Inhuman Status of Minority","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"July 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"[Originally Published at Eris Magazine] So Gabriel Roberts asked me to write something about police brutality, and I told him I needed a few days to get my head in order. The problem being that, with this particular topic, the longer I wait on this, the longer I want to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5345,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5345","url_meta":{"origin":5096,"position":5},"title":"Of Predictive Algorithms and Emojis","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"January 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"We do a lot of work and have a lot of conversations around here with people working on the social implications of technology, but some folx sometimes still don't quite get what I mean when I say that our values get embedded in our technological systems, and that the values\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"algorithmic bias\"","block_context":{"text":"algorithmic bias","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=algorithmic-bias"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/20190114_231648.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/20190114_231648.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/20190114_231648.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/20190114_231648.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/20190114_231648.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5096"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6137,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions\/6137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}