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The no-platforming of feminists in Britain, on Twitter and elsewhere; or, Why Paul Mason News UK has blocked several feminists, Lady Gaga and President Obama
Tags @aratina, @jdbillingham, @ool0n, @oolon, @petertatchell, @the_block_bot, @wmarybeard, abuse, blockbot, caroline criado-perez, garrison jackinsky, james billingham, lady gaga, paul mason news uk, peter tatchell, president obama, prof. mary beard
On Sunday, a letter, protesting in the name of free speech against the no-platforming of feminists, and signed by over a hundred British academics, activists, scientists and others, was published by the Observer. That letter was also signed by the very well-known Prof. Mary Beard (@wmarybeard) and Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell), both of whom came in for sustained attack and harassment on Twitter all Sunday and Monday - and the harassment continues. Prof. Mary Beard wrote a little about the attacks upon her and Tatchell. Peter Tatchell wrote a little himself on all that too. Other press reports of the harassment are here and here and here. Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) tweeted in support of the letter. The letter's protest was in essence against de facto censorship - the prevention of certain people, notably feminists, from being allowed to speak at various British universities.
On another note, a while back someone made an awful attempt to map through crowd-sourcing all the unsafe parts of town in the USA. That was called the GhettoTracker, and it was promoted as showing on the web "which parts of town are safe and which ones are ghetto, or unsafe" (in the USA). What was wrong with the idea? Leaving aside the barely disguised racism, the effort was advocating safety through avoidance of certain areas, and those areas were only chosen by participants on the site, as per their own personal and subjective criteria. There was no real audit trail of showing exactly why any specific area was portrayed as unsafe, and no real accountability. The participants in the crowd-sourcing of designating some areas as unsafe are mostly anonymous to the public. It was obviously bound to go wrong and nasty. Nitasha Tiku of Gawker called it, a "vile crowd-sourcing experiment in travel guide segregation".
Likewise, there are attempts on a similar subjective basis to segregate and shun some people on the net, and likewise safety - albeit in cyber-form - is one of the themes used in promoting such efforts, but as shall be seen, the safety claim is in fact a lie, false advertising. One of those attempts, albeit sourced from a tiny clique and not even from a large crowd, is the BlockBot, a creation of James Billingham, a British programmer, and Garrison Jackinsky (@aratina), an American. Billingham's Twitter account was originally @ool0n, suspended by Twitter (for abuse?); his present Twitter accounts are @oolon and what is supposedly his professional account, @JDBillingham, but which he also uses to promote the BlockBot (e.g. here). It is now run by a team of people, whose Twitter handles can be found here. The app is now being deliberately used to no-platform many feminists on Twitter.
From the start, the BlockBot was falsely advertised as being against abuse, but it was designed just as a tool to block any critics of two tiny cliques, one being a clique of fans of PZ Myers on Freethought Blogs (FTB), the other being a clique who would take control of a then-new bulletin-board called AtheismPlus (Atheism+), and who would go on to become the team now managing the app. The website for the BlockBot still acknowledges the links to those two small groups. There is much overlapping of members of the two cliques, but both are fairly distinct from each other. The BlockBot consists of four main parts:
Paul Mason News UK (@paulmasonnews) made a TV report on BBC TV approvingly about the BlockBot. It was immediately pointed out to the BBC that a great many wrong accusations and imputations had been made in that report - to wit, that many of those listed on the BlockBot to be blocked on Twitter were not in the least abusive nor trolls. Paul Mason backed down in a following TV report, just noting the bare minimum that a lot of the advertising of the BlockBot was only along the lines of "He said, she said", i.e. unfounded (as well as untrue).
Paul Mason had also written a column in the Guardian in which he claimed there had been an eruption of "trolling, rape threats and 24-hour psychosis into my [Twitter] timeline". His supposed rationale was acting against the trolling of and attacks upon women - but the BlockBot proved to be bogus as a tool for that. Many of the false claims were pointed out at once to him. Helen Lewis (@helenlewis), Deputy Editor of the New Statesman, had been put on the BlockBot list of those to be blocked, merely because she noted that the acronym TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Feminist) is often used as a slur. Feminist Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) had been put on the block list merely for expressing polite disappointment that another organization was supporting the full decriminalization of prostitution.
Lady Gaga was put on the BlockBot list of those to be blocked (for obscure reasons). So was President Obama; his being put on the BlockBot list was hastily removed by the other BlockBot people, but of course the damage had already been done. Anyone suscribing to the Blockbot app who was not following President Obama's account at the time would have had him blocked automatically by the bot. Unless they saw the later follow-up tweet, that block would still remain in force. Dr Rachel Hewitt (@drrachelhewitt) was listed on the Blockbot; incredibly, racism was given as one of the reasons for that listing. Dr. Hewitt had noted that TERF is often used as a slur, as is "Paki". For noting that, it was claimed she was being racist.
Several people have been listed for blocking by the BlockBot by pure mistake; even when their Twitter names are removed from the list, unless users of the app manually remove that person from their personal block-lists, that person will go on being blocked by them. There appears to be still no way for anyone "wrongly" added to the BlockBot list to be automatically unblocked, judging from this recent tweet, or this one, and many others. It should be noted many users of the BlockBot app won't bother checking the Twitter feed from @TheBlockBot, let alone get around to manually unblocking those BlockBot has blocked for them, but whose blocking has been dropped.
You can be as abusive as you like on Twitter, and still not be put on the BlockBot list. Like those who make the often-repeated cry of "Kill all TERFs" or "Burn all TERFs". Or like M. A. Melby (@MAMelby), who is quite often abusive on Twitter directly to people, and who is one of the team currently managing it. Or like @RaavynnDigitaL here. You can troll as much as you like - Billingham (@oolon) used to troll a good deal on Twitter and on blogs (for which he was banned from several blogs). So too with Garrison Jackinsky (@aratina). You can tweet fantasies of violence towards other Twitter users and not be put on the BlockBot list, e.g. @latsot, who was eventually suspended for a while from Twitter because of his abusiveness. Billingham (@oolon) actually protested against the suspension of @latsot at the time.
You can get away with death-wishes to gay activists. For example, @cogsdev, who in a coward's way remains pseudonymous, tweeted to Peter Tatchell that @cogsdev would like to see the murder of Tatchell being tweeted about. Of course, @cogsdev is not on the Blockbot list, since he belongs to the "right" team - although at the very least two of the BlockBot team have to know about his vile tweet, since they've been closely following the Twitter threads on all this. It's surprising that Peter Tatchell and Prof. Mary Beard have not yet been put on the Blockbot list; those now running the BlockBot appear to be trying to get the nerve together to do so. You can dox women on the net (publish not easily-available information about the names, residences and occupations of women) and not be put on the BlockBot - James Billingham (@oolon) came out strongly for at least one such doxing. In other words, you can abuse and harass women on Twitter as much as you like, and the Blockbot team will condone it, as long as they perceive you to be on their side.
There are two ways real damage is done by the BlockBot, its creators and the people now running it. One way is when people take the claims made for it as face-value, when they actually believe the advertising made for it. The other way is when the Blockbot lists of those blocked are shared on some platform such as Block Together (@blocktogether) and people uncritically adopt those lists and incorporate them in their own. The BlockBot is not about protection of women on the net - that is shown by the vile abuse and doxing thrown at women on the net condoned or even promoted by those running the BlockBot. Given the false advertising used for the BlockBot (see below), a reasonable conclusion is that it is a disingenuous attempt at no-platforming on Twitter anyone the bot's team doesn't like - including a whole lot of feminists. The bot is a way of sneaking in the mass-blocking of targets by many who won't realize what is happening.
As for the false advertising, there is the @TrollOrNot account to auto-answer if someone is listed by the Blockbot. Then from its website:
That is its purported reason for being. Since British laws about libel are quite forceful (if you can stump up the roughly $250,000 you will need to pay for any such lawsuit, win or lose), the Blockbot team hurriedly added such disingenuous disclaimers such as:
No, it is only claimed for the Blockbot (on that very page) that it is an app to be used as a tool to block "the nastiest of these people", of "anti-feminist obsessives". How dishonest, when in fact the tool was developed and is used by obsessives against non-abusive, polite feminists.
As for Paul Mason and how he has President Obama and Lady Gaga blocked on Twitter; only Paul Mason of course can say all those on his personal block list, and only those who are blocked by him can see so by visiting his Twitter page. It's a reasonable deduction that Paul Mason has Lady Gaga and President Obama on block, since he used the BlockBot app. One small test of mine indicates he may not be using it any more; however, all the blocks that the app put into operation for him are still in force (according to what I could test of it). Those whom he followed on Twitter before using the app remain unblocked, since the BlockBot does not block anyone you actually follow. Thus Paul Mason does not have Caroline Criado-Perez (@CCriadoPerez), Beatrix Campbell (@beatrixcampbell), Julie Bindel (@bindelj) or Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) on block, since he was and is following them. But he will unwittingly have a good many other feminists on block.
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Comments are welcome! Please keep in mind if you are not registered that comments posted here to this blog post may take a while to appear - up to 16 hours after you post them, since they go onto a moderation queue and have to be individually approved, in order to stop spammers. The answer to the so-called "Random Question" is always "human", with no quote marks.
On another note, a while back someone made an awful attempt to map through crowd-sourcing all the unsafe parts of town in the USA. That was called the GhettoTracker, and it was promoted as showing on the web "which parts of town are safe and which ones are ghetto, or unsafe" (in the USA). What was wrong with the idea? Leaving aside the barely disguised racism, the effort was advocating safety through avoidance of certain areas, and those areas were only chosen by participants on the site, as per their own personal and subjective criteria. There was no real audit trail of showing exactly why any specific area was portrayed as unsafe, and no real accountability. The participants in the crowd-sourcing of designating some areas as unsafe are mostly anonymous to the public. It was obviously bound to go wrong and nasty. Nitasha Tiku of Gawker called it, a "vile crowd-sourcing experiment in travel guide segregation".
Likewise, there are attempts on a similar subjective basis to segregate and shun some people on the net, and likewise safety - albeit in cyber-form - is one of the themes used in promoting such efforts, but as shall be seen, the safety claim is in fact a lie, false advertising. One of those attempts, albeit sourced from a tiny clique and not even from a large crowd, is the BlockBot, a creation of James Billingham, a British programmer, and Garrison Jackinsky (@aratina), an American. Billingham's Twitter account was originally @ool0n, suspended by Twitter (for abuse?); his present Twitter accounts are @oolon and what is supposedly his professional account, @JDBillingham, but which he also uses to promote the BlockBot (e.g. here). It is now run by a team of people, whose Twitter handles can be found here. The app is now being deliberately used to no-platform many feminists on Twitter.
From the start, the BlockBot was falsely advertised as being against abuse, but it was designed just as a tool to block any critics of two tiny cliques, one being a clique of fans of PZ Myers on Freethought Blogs (FTB), the other being a clique who would take control of a then-new bulletin-board called AtheismPlus (Atheism+), and who would go on to become the team now managing the app. The website for the BlockBot still acknowledges the links to those two small groups. There is much overlapping of members of the two cliques, but both are fairly distinct from each other. The BlockBot consists of four main parts:
- Its website, used only for bare and often misleading information.
- Its Twitter account, @TheBlockBot, used for tweeting self-promotion and taunts. Also for the often-enough reversals, where it is noted someone has been removed from the list of those to be blocked, and it is suggested that those using the app then also remove that person from being blocked, since there is no automatic unblocking of those blocked on the app's users' accounts.
- The actual BlockBot app itself, which has to be installed like any other regular app for Twitter. This app blocks for the user those on the BlockBot list.
- An automated Twitter account, @TrollOrNot, which if tweeted at with a question regarding any Twitter user will automatically replay if that user is on the BlockBot list-
Paul Mason News UK (@paulmasonnews) made a TV report on BBC TV approvingly about the BlockBot. It was immediately pointed out to the BBC that a great many wrong accusations and imputations had been made in that report - to wit, that many of those listed on the BlockBot to be blocked on Twitter were not in the least abusive nor trolls. Paul Mason backed down in a following TV report, just noting the bare minimum that a lot of the advertising of the BlockBot was only along the lines of "He said, she said", i.e. unfounded (as well as untrue).
Paul Mason had also written a column in the Guardian in which he claimed there had been an eruption of "trolling, rape threats and 24-hour psychosis into my [Twitter] timeline". His supposed rationale was acting against the trolling of and attacks upon women - but the BlockBot proved to be bogus as a tool for that. Many of the false claims were pointed out at once to him. Helen Lewis (@helenlewis), Deputy Editor of the New Statesman, had been put on the BlockBot list of those to be blocked, merely because she noted that the acronym TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Feminist) is often used as a slur. Feminist Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) had been put on the block list merely for expressing polite disappointment that another organization was supporting the full decriminalization of prostitution.
Lady Gaga was put on the BlockBot list of those to be blocked (for obscure reasons). So was President Obama; his being put on the BlockBot list was hastily removed by the other BlockBot people, but of course the damage had already been done. Anyone suscribing to the Blockbot app who was not following President Obama's account at the time would have had him blocked automatically by the bot. Unless they saw the later follow-up tweet, that block would still remain in force. Dr Rachel Hewitt (@drrachelhewitt) was listed on the Blockbot; incredibly, racism was given as one of the reasons for that listing. Dr. Hewitt had noted that TERF is often used as a slur, as is "Paki". For noting that, it was claimed she was being racist.
Several people have been listed for blocking by the BlockBot by pure mistake; even when their Twitter names are removed from the list, unless users of the app manually remove that person from their personal block-lists, that person will go on being blocked by them. There appears to be still no way for anyone "wrongly" added to the BlockBot list to be automatically unblocked, judging from this recent tweet, or this one, and many others. It should be noted many users of the BlockBot app won't bother checking the Twitter feed from @TheBlockBot, let alone get around to manually unblocking those BlockBot has blocked for them, but whose blocking has been dropped.
You can be as abusive as you like on Twitter, and still not be put on the BlockBot list. Like those who make the often-repeated cry of "Kill all TERFs" or "Burn all TERFs". Or like M. A. Melby (@MAMelby), who is quite often abusive on Twitter directly to people, and who is one of the team currently managing it. Or like @RaavynnDigitaL here. You can troll as much as you like - Billingham (@oolon) used to troll a good deal on Twitter and on blogs (for which he was banned from several blogs). So too with Garrison Jackinsky (@aratina). You can tweet fantasies of violence towards other Twitter users and not be put on the BlockBot list, e.g. @latsot, who was eventually suspended for a while from Twitter because of his abusiveness. Billingham (@oolon) actually protested against the suspension of @latsot at the time.
You can get away with death-wishes to gay activists. For example, @cogsdev, who in a coward's way remains pseudonymous, tweeted to Peter Tatchell that @cogsdev would like to see the murder of Tatchell being tweeted about. Of course, @cogsdev is not on the Blockbot list, since he belongs to the "right" team - although at the very least two of the BlockBot team have to know about his vile tweet, since they've been closely following the Twitter threads on all this. It's surprising that Peter Tatchell and Prof. Mary Beard have not yet been put on the Blockbot list; those now running the BlockBot appear to be trying to get the nerve together to do so. You can dox women on the net (publish not easily-available information about the names, residences and occupations of women) and not be put on the BlockBot - James Billingham (@oolon) came out strongly for at least one such doxing. In other words, you can abuse and harass women on Twitter as much as you like, and the Blockbot team will condone it, as long as they perceive you to be on their side.
There are two ways real damage is done by the BlockBot, its creators and the people now running it. One way is when people take the claims made for it as face-value, when they actually believe the advertising made for it. The other way is when the Blockbot lists of those blocked are shared on some platform such as Block Together (@blocktogether) and people uncritically adopt those lists and incorporate them in their own. The BlockBot is not about protection of women on the net - that is shown by the vile abuse and doxing thrown at women on the net condoned or even promoted by those running the BlockBot. Given the false advertising used for the BlockBot (see below), a reasonable conclusion is that it is a disingenuous attempt at no-platforming on Twitter anyone the bot's team doesn't like - including a whole lot of feminists. The bot is a way of sneaking in the mass-blocking of targets by many who won't realize what is happening.
As for the false advertising, there is the @TrollOrNot account to auto-answer if someone is listed by the Blockbot. Then from its website:
Quote:
"Twitter is polluted by a number of anti-feminist obsessives, who viciously harass those who dont support their warped views. The Block Bot is a Twitter application to automatically block the nastiest of these people."
Quote:
"(Note for those coming here when blocked, nowhere does the bot say you are anything, abusive, an MRA, whatever."
As for Paul Mason and how he has President Obama and Lady Gaga blocked on Twitter; only Paul Mason of course can say all those on his personal block list, and only those who are blocked by him can see so by visiting his Twitter page. It's a reasonable deduction that Paul Mason has Lady Gaga and President Obama on block, since he used the BlockBot app. One small test of mine indicates he may not be using it any more; however, all the blocks that the app put into operation for him are still in force (according to what I could test of it). Those whom he followed on Twitter before using the app remain unblocked, since the BlockBot does not block anyone you actually follow. Thus Paul Mason does not have Caroline Criado-Perez (@CCriadoPerez), Beatrix Campbell (@beatrixcampbell), Julie Bindel (@bindelj) or Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) on block, since he was and is following them. But he will unwittingly have a good many other feminists on block.
Comments are welcome! Please keep in mind if you are not registered that comments posted here to this blog post may take a while to appear - up to 16 hours after you post them, since they go onto a moderation queue and have to be individually approved, in order to stop spammers. The answer to the so-called "Random Question" is always "human", with no quote marks.
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