Zoë Quinn was a central figure in the Gamergate controversy, which has led to her co-founding the Crash Override Network, dedicated to helping those subject to online abuse. In this NewScientist (2 September 2017, paywall) interview she talks about what happened during that shitstorm:
“People don’t understand how this sort of thing can happen over less than nothing, so they think there must be some truth to it,” says Quinn. “The rumour persists because people don’t bother to look it up. Even if they do, there’s so much garbage on the internet, it’s hard to tell what’s true.”
Within weeks, the mob organised a crusade against what it framed as corruption in the games industry. Some websites cracked down on users who supported the harassment – and were in turn accused of censorship. Still, each credulous story from mainstream news sites gave the campaign validation. “The adults running these outlets should have damn well known better,” says Quinn. “Every scrap of legitimacy the abusers got was a new circle of hell for me. That’s the shocking part, and arguably the most upsetting.”
The news media is often running on the fringes of profitability, and sometimes the first to go will be those responsible for validating the facts in an article. This failure in their central-most responsibility – to get the facts right – have in her a poster-child for the results of their neglect of this responsibility.
Not that any of this is unique, except in scale. Computer are multipliers, and they are disinterested in truth or fallacy. They just multiply.
