Three things really drive technology forward in America: war, porn, and being a racist asshole.
It was nearing closing time in March last year when a manager at Boffi Georgetown dispatched a series of alarmed messages. Observing two men yelling outside the luxury kitchen and bath showroom, Julia Walter reached for her phone and accessed a private messaging application that hundreds of residents, retailers and police in this overwhelmingly white, wealthy neighborhood use to discuss people they deem suspicious.
“2 black males screaming at each other in alley,” Walter wrote. “. . . Help needed.”
One minute later, a District police officer posted he would check it out, and Walter felt relieved. But as weeks gave way to months and the private group spawned hundreds of messages, Walter’s relief turned to unease. The overwhelming majority of the people the app’s users cited were black. Was the chatroom reducing crime along the high-end retail strip? Was it making people feel safer? Or was it racial profiling?
These are questions being asked across the country as people experiment with services that bill themselves as a way to prevent crime, but also expose latent biases. The application “SketchFactor,” which invited users to report “sketchy” people, faced allegations of racism in both the District and New York. Another social network roiled Oakland, Calif., when white residents used Nextdoor.com to cite “suspicious activity” about black neighbors. Taking it even further was GhettoTracker.com, which asked users to rate neighborhoods based on whether they thought they were “safe” or a “ghetto.”
Now “Operation GroupMe” is stirring controversy in Georgetown. In February of last year, the Georgetown Business Improvement District partnered with District police to launch the effort, which they call a “real-time mobile-based group-messaging app that connects Georgetown businesses, police officers and community members.” Since then, the app has attracted nearly 380 users who surreptitiously report on — and photograph — shoppers in an attempt to deter crime.
The correspondence has provided an unvarnished glimpse into Georgetown retailers’ latest effort to stop their oldest scourge: shoplifting. But while the goal is admirable, the result, critics say, has been less so, laying bare the racial fault lines that still define this cobblestoned enclave of tony boutiques and historic rowhouses that is home to many of Washington’s elite.
Since March of last year, Georgetown retailers have dispatched more than 6,000 messages that discuss suspicious people. A review by the Business Improvement District of all the messages since January — more than 3,000 — revealed that nearly 70 percent of those people were black. The employees often allege shoplifting. But other times, retailers don’t accuse these shoppers of anything beyond seeming suspicious.
Anyone actually still surprised that there’s money to be made in “reducing crime” with multiple social networking apps in 2015 for scared white folks to complain about those people being around? You haven’t been paying attention to the people running Silicon Valley, the people using “All lives matter!” as an actual argument, or, you know, a basic understanding of race in American history. All three are pretty much filled with examples of assholes, but combining them is turning into a spectacular exercise in everything wrong in social tech and how online harassment translates into real-life consequences.
Social tech has been a real nightmare over the last couple of years as a prime tool for harassment, racism, misogyny, hate speech, you name it, and I see nothing but “you gotta break a few eggs” shrugs coming from the heads of these multi-billion dollar companies that run around “disrupting” things for a living.
It’s getting pretty tiring.
El Caganer
Christ. 30 years ago my girlfriend at the time used to tell me that whenever she got out of her car at the mall or the supermarket, all the white women would stuff their purses under their arms. Nothing changes, does it?
Thoughtful Today
“heads of these multi-billion dollar companies”
Uber-mensch libertarian a$$holes.
Betty Cracker
True. But social platforms have also helped people combat those scourges. Is social tech uniquely divisive, or does it just reflect a divided society? I’d say the latter.
MattF
Here’s another example (that, happily, failed)— Why, after all, did the venture money behind Leap think it was such a great idea? Besides avoiding ‘them’.
Ian
Social media gives assholes a louder microphone to spew their shit.
You identify a problem you don’t like. (I don’t like it either). What is the solution? Or at least a proposal?
Joel
@Betty Cracker: sunlight is the best disinfectant, unless your problem is algae.
Another Holocene Human
The people running these companies severely don’t care. We also don’t have anything like privacy laws. There’s more than one layer of exploitation, and the human damage is just dismissed as whiny losers.
PHP boards had their troll problems (some rather … epic … like what happened in Harry Potter fandom* in the early 2000s), but it has nothing on the shitfest that social media has become. GamerGate anyone?
*-I only know about this because of massive documentation after the fact, including detective work by frustrated board mods matching IP addresses and so on–it was sort of related to Cassie Claire wank, which I can’t get enough of, so I plunged on in
debbie
Looking in the mirror, are we, Julia Walter?
BGinCHI
Racist assholes in Georgetown??
No way.
debbie
@Another Holocene Human:
That’s the problem right there. it’s all run by people and so will never overcome people’s own shortcomings.
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: I’ve watched social media poison IRL relationships because you can just repost stupid, mendacious image memes, display to all of your “friends”, and let the nasty arguments begin. In real life some political discussions occurred but most people have the social skills to back off. (One or two don’t, they have a reputation around the job.)
If you’re a woman, do you REALLY want to know what Joe on your shift thinks is acceptable to say about all women? If you’re a meat-eater, do you REALLY want to know that Mary on your shift thinks you’re a moral monster?
The people that got into conflicts weren’t terrible people, either. And they actually weren’t even the most politically committed. You know, the ones who try to corner you and campaign for their party/candidate at work.
It’s amazing what people will do/say when they don’t see faces. I saw some friends of mine trying to school native Venezuelans on Venezuela. I think in person they would have hesitated to speak on it at all, at least in the group. Maybe in some ways it was a good discussion (they were all university students) but in another way it was very hurtful.
MattF
I’ll note, for the record, that Georgetown ain’t what it used to be. Zero movie theaters, zero bookstores, zero funky bistros. It’s all national brand storefronts and crowds of tourists. I used to go there regularly just to walk around, but no more.
gene108
If I were a shop owner of a high end boutique, I would profile teenage white girls. From my experience, in high school, these were some of the most prolific shop lifters.
Mostly, I think, because no one thinks to look for middle class white girls as crooks; they have and do take advantage of their opportunities to get away with stuff.
BR
@Another Holocene Human:
There was a great piece by Sherry Turkle (who has been studying the impact of technology on society for a long time) recently:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/stop-googling-lets-talk.html?_r=0
The decline in empathy in the social media age she discusses is real, and has been confirmed in many studies (from my limited knowledge).
Steve From Antioch
Operation Groupme has grown to 380 users in only 20 months?
If they ar exploding at a rate of 20 users per month, it is only a matter of time until everyone in Georgetown is involved.
#alarmistbullshit, #tryingreallyhardtostringafewassholesintoatrendweshouldgiveashitabout
ThresherK
@MattF: So, I went there once, to a newphew’s commencement in 2004. Does that one experience qualify me to tell people about how it used to be?
PS Also note that the name “GhettoTracker” goes into the category of #SupposedToBeSubtext.
Woodrowfan
@MattF: and the worst f-ing traffic in DC. my fav 2 Georgetown traffic stories.
1. watching a guy in a Volvo covered with Kucinich stickers pull an illegal u-turn in the middle of Wisconsin Ave, not only blocking Wisconsin both ways, but blocking a couple side streets too. Single most thoughtless, self-centered traffic maneuver I remember ever seeing. It took him several light cycles to complete, blocking all the roads the whole time.
2. Watching a guy try to parallel park a full-sized Hummer on a side street. (For those not in DC, the side streets in Georgetown can just fit a Mini Cooper. )
MattF
@ThresherK: Uh, what? I used to walk over there regularly on weekends.
ETA: I also had a girlfriend who lived there.
NotMax
If #GangAftAgley isn’t already a meme, it ought to be.
Woodrowfan
@gene108: good point. alas, white girls shopping in Georgetown probably have rich Mommies and Daddies with expensive lawyers on retainer.
Betty Cracker
@Another Holocene Human: True, but social media has also given voice to the voiceless and let random people in Florida like you and me get to know a nice fella on the other side of the planet like Amir Khalid. I don’t know whether on balance social tech has done more harm than good, but I suspect it doesn’t really matter in practical terms; the genie ain’t going back in the bottle.
Maybe our best path going forward is to use social tech for good rather than evil. Hell, Zandar is doing that right now by making us aware of how an app was misused. If enough people get what is happening, think it sucks and speak out, sometimes we can shut this shit down.
Another Holocene Human
@MattF: I was in DC a few years ago and we did the little bus tour and the bus driver was a bit of a comedian. She promised to show us the Georgetown Subway. And she delivered. :)
(I do have to thank her for taking us up to U St, somewhere I had never ventured when I lived there.)
Another Holocene Human
@gene108: I can recall in teen magazines when I was a pre-teen, that teens would often write in letters to the advice column indignant about being profiled as thieves by retailers.
I, in fact, got kicked out of a Sharper Image as a teen. My friends and I were mocking the merchandise (and probably handling it a little too enthusiastically). Actually, it’s a miracle we didn’t break anything.
Another Holocene Human
@Woodrowfan: Maybe #1 had spongy orthorexia-V*g*n brain and the manoeuvre was borne of panic and incompetence.
I’ve seen incompetent driving and I’ve seen selfish driving, and sometimes both, but that Volvo thing sounds like sheer ignorant stupidity with a side of freakout. Drivers do really dumb things when they’re lost and panic. (You didn’t say if the Kucinich mobile had DC or MD plates.)
eta: Isn’t Wisc Ave 4 lanes? I have this mental picture of a widerish street.
Jeffro
OT but hey check it out: the GOP (Rubio, anyway, as well as Bush last week) is doubling down on the Mitt Romney “47%” ‘free stuff’ approach to winning over voters
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/marco-rubio-democratic-debate-free-stuff
I bet it plays well with the FOX News demographic…ironically enough…
Another Holocene Human
@Woodrowfan: Well, maybe? Would probably stop them from jumping on mere suspicion, whereas they feel free to attack Black people that way. In GNV we always thought that rich parents made the frat/sor crowd untouchable, but Gainesville city government was actually able to rein in the fratoholics quite a bit in Midtown and downtown. (We do know they are taking buses somewhere offsite to have their parties and presumably drink, but the wildness in town–and the scrums, and the stabbings, and the insane crowds–has come down.)
MattF
@Another Holocene Human: In Georgetown it narrows to two, twisty lanes.
schrodinger's cat
@Woodrowfan: I don’t know why these huge SUVs try to even try to parallel park their bus sized vehicles, find a parking garage already.
I have lived in actual snow country, New England and upstate NY but never I have seen as many hummers as I saw when I lived in DC. Why does one need a hummer in DC? It must be a status symbol or something among the wealthy Republican set.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: Wisconsin Ave has three to four lanes on both sides, as far as I can remember. Its been a while since I last drove there.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Why, thank you.
How long have social media been with us? Less than a decade. Mobile phones have been around since the 1980s; some of us still haven’t learned the etiquette for using them. I think that with social media, which are so much more pervasive and more complex, even the tech people haven’t figured out their uses and unintended consequences. Tech keeps coming at us, to some extent overwhelming our ability to adapt to it.
ThresherK
@MattF: No, hey, sorry, I’m not snarking on you (bad phrasing on my part), I did go there, just once, 11 years ago. Now I am wondering if my one trip there allows me to share in the memory of how it used to be better.
If I visit my nearby friends, and we go to Georgetown, will it just look like an upscale “lifestyle center” outdoor mall in the richer suburbs of Boston, except on public streets?
Watchman
For an “IT professional” (which is funny because you’re a call center monkey with no degree) you sure don’t like technology that much.
MattF
@ThresherK: The residential areas away from Wisconsin and M are very nice and very wealthy. Old (but small) townhouses, beautiful brickwork.
ETA: Also, the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks are spectacular.
burnspbesq
@Betty Cracker:
You’re jumping to a conclusion there, or making a value judgment that isn’t necessarily supported by data, or both
It would be an interesting counterpoint to this discussion to see some actual data regarding who does crime in the affected area. Having lived in the DC area (albeit a while ago), my intuition tells me that those data might be a little, umm, inconvenient for Zandar’s narrative.
There will be some issues with those data. Who gets arrested/prosecuted/convicted would have to serve as a proxy for who actually does crime, and it’s not a perfect proxy. But it’s probably the best one we’ve got. The possibility that general public knowledge of the use of the app has a deterrent effect on potential criminals introduces another element of noise into the data.
On balance, however, knowing is better than not knowing.
benw
hey Police 2 blk malez r mebbe robbin N stor can u chkit? K thx
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: I’ve learned a ton by having conversations with people from across the world. I wouldn’t really consider a blog to be social media, though. We had Usenet, message boards, email, guestbooks (remember those?), email groups, perl BBs, PHP BBs, blogs, blog comments, etcet, but those were all considered 1.0. I think what connects all of the above are people coming together to have discussions on particular subject matter, whether it’s “cancer survivor support” or “HO model enthusiast”. Trolls were unwanted disruptors to these discussions (in whatever form, obvious, or very subtle). Web 2.0, social media, is different because it’s about person to person social networks. Livejournal in a way kind of portended it because you had friends lists, sort of a hybrid between a newsreader feed and the facebook feed that would come. I didn’t like Livejournal, and I didn’t like what it did to the online fandom communities I was a part of. In some ways it offered access to kind of famous people like writers who wouldn’t have given out their email in that way. But in other ways LJ set up all of this ridiculous drama over friending and blocking and locking and deleting journals and mixing personal stuff with fandom stuff, which was yanked away from collective, communal ownership and now could be baleeted at will or “pulled for publication” as 50 Shades of Grey was. And there was no longer a community where people could work on a common project. It was cliques of friends having discussions (and sadistic trolls trying to set friends against each other).
It’s like all the worst aspects of social relationships with none of the benefits. Some of the reasons people deleted their accounts is because they were being harassed in ways that weren’t possible on a properly moderated board. And when they did that, they quit fandom because they no longer felt safe there. And this is all years before Twitter and GamerGate.
Twitter is awesome. You can talk to the people who break the news! The people who make the news! You can organize a revolution! You can also make private citizens’ lives hell.
Granted, doxxing goes back to the dawn of the internet. Sysadmins who were fed up with certain users’ behavior would remind them that they weren’t anonymous, and they were on Usenet at their and other admins’ sufferance.
But it’s not just doxxing, I think? Because in social media, the internet you see revolves around you. Great, right? But if something goes wrong, the entire internet becomes this hostile, anxiety-providing ring. It’s very different from the old days where if you didn’t get on in alt.pollywogs, well there was always misc.spelunking. If the owner of FastCarsPHP let a total troll become mod and everyone left, you could hang out on SuperCarsPHP instead and probably find a lot of the same people there.
Web 1.0 created spaces. Web 2.0 is about networks–attached directly to you. Web 1.0 had owners and moderators. Web 2.0 has megacorporations and self-reports+bots. Web 1.0 had as many alternatives as there was internet. Web 2.0 has the power to silence you.
schrodinger's cat
@ThresherK: Georgetown is a nice place to walk around, do some shopping and grab something to eat. Especially M street. I loved to hang out there.
Another Holocene Human
@burnspbesq: You’re begging the question.
“Who does crime” is a rather different notion from “who gets arrested for crime”.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: My feet hate cobbles.
Dupont Circle is a good place to hang around. Good food, too. I wonder if those bookstores have survived. They were a hotbed of heterosexuality.
ET
This really did become something that the developers should have seen coming. ….
What is also interesting is that this app and the neighborhood buzz around it got to a volume level that caught the attention of someone at the WaPo and they wrote about it.
Watchman
@burnspbesq:
Exactly when has reality ever actually supported any of Zandar’s narratives?
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: Dupont circle is pretty good too. I also like the area around the National Gallery of Art. Lots of good restaurants plus not quite as busy as M or Dupont streets.
ETA: Not that many cobbles on M, side streets had more cobbles if memory serves me right.
Shakezula
Oh pshaw! It isn’t like there’s ever been an instance of a black person being illegally detained/maimed/killed by the police because they made a white person nervous.
You worry too much.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Don’t forget the part where the hummers are covered in American flag stickers and back in 2000 those inevitable “W: The President” stickers which are reminiscent of nothing so much as stupid evangelical “make Christianity cool by appropriating major brands” advertising.
I loved it when some Dems cam up with those “F The President” stickers.
I do know that there were some military people who drove actual Humvees (very impractical). But I also recall all this talk of armored cars and such after 9/11, and this illusion that an H2 would “keep [your] family safe”.
I never saw such a bunch of fraidy cats.
schrodinger's cat
You can also walk from Dupont circle to M Street, stiff walk, but nice.
Mike J
Of course this happens in Georgetown. The only reason there’s no Metro stop in Georgetown is the residents are terrified that the hordes from Anacostia will come steal everything from their townhouses and carry it away on the subway.
Patricia Kayden
When I read the title for this post, I thought it would be about Huckabee’s racist tweet about North Korean chefs.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/huckabee-i-trust-bernie-sanders-i-trust-north-korean-chef-n444071
bystander
It’s the Internet. How do we know Amir Khalid isn’t some Jewish teenager in Scarsdale?
Another Holocene Human
@MattF: Ah. Checked the map, didn’t realize the Cathedral was also on Wisc Av. Weird road. I was thinking of the stretch near the MD border.
Shakezula
@Another Holocene Human: Kramer is still there, Second Story, still there. The two gay bookstores (Lambda Rising and the other one that was right by the Metro exit I can’t remember … argh!) victims of wider acceptance of gay literature/books and the internet. (RIP).
Also a big Books-A-Million, but who cares.
cmorenc
Dilemma: I live in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly, though not 100% exclusively, non-AA; one black family several streets over is all I know of, and I never run across them except when I’m on a long walk with my dog through their part of our leafy N. Raleigh neighborhood. I wouldn’t think anything of it if I saw a couple of AA high-school age guys walking past my house out on the street, but what if I saw them walking up my next-door neighbor’s driveway when the outward signs of her house would indicate to a passer-by that she was probably not at home? Should my reaction be different if it was instead a 40-ish looking white guy in a suit and tie?
I don’t think I’d push any panic buttons – at least not yet in the case of the young AAs, not even if it was my own driveway at a moment when the outward appearance of my house would indicate no one is probably at home, even though it turns out I was. Nevertheless, would I be doing improper racial profiling by noticing that the two young AAs going up driveways are a bit out of the pattern of events and I cannot safely presume with 99.99% that they are probably benign? And keep a watchful eye on them, even while not reaching to dial 911 on my cell unless they do something more concretely suspicious – but inform my neighbor what I observed when she comes home? And yet, by contrast, hispanic landscaping crews doing regular maintenance on yards when the homeowners are away that they would not grab the same threshold of out-of-place attention two AA male teens would, since it’s rare for landscaping crews to have AAs on them (at least here). I wouldn’t likely mention the presence of a hispanics unless afterward, I was informed something valuable had gone missing from her yard about the same time as I noticed them.
IMHO I can make a fair distinction here between noticing something that’s out of the common pattern that takes neighborhood demographics into account in deciding what I should take notice of, versus leaping too readily to pejorative presumptions that they’re up to no good.
Another Holocene Human
@Patricia Kayden: You’re the real racist for thinking it’s racist.
C.V. Danes
If something can be used for wrong, it will be used for wrong. In this, tech is just like everything else.
Perhaps I’m a cynic (actually, I know I’m a cynic), but whenever I look at technology, the first question I have is how it can be used nefariously. Because it will be used nefariously. Techno-utopia is generally pie in the sky, but techno-nefarious is usually the reality.
Chyron HR
@Watchman:
Brilliant plan.
Another Holocene Human
@cmorenc: Check this out: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/watch-white-black-bike-thieves-treated-differently-article-1.1368401
“What Would You Do? Bike Thief”
Another Holocene Human
@Chyron HR: It’s my fault. I kept mentioning the T-word. It’s like the batsignal for T-rolls.
VOR
@schrodinger’s cat: Might be a remnant of the tax deal under the Bush Administration. Basically, there was a tax credit available to farms and small business for purchase of work vehicles, defined as vehicles over 6000 pounds. There were a small number of SUVs, including the Hummer, which qualified so those vehicles became very popular for self-employed people or small business owners. IIRC the tax credit eventually expired.
NonyNony
@Chyron HR: Changing his name foils the pie script temporarily, which is annoying.
Another Holocene Human
@Shakezula: Kramer’s is the one I’m thinking of. Straight men and women of a certain age, looking for love amidst the stacks. It was kind of cute.
I just googled and it looks like Mr. P’s, where “ex-gay” John Paulk got busted “waiting to use the bathroom” is no more! (Also on a historical note they’re mentioned in an article about Marion Barry’s rise to power I guess as a fundraising hub.)
Another Holocene Human
@VOR: Was the Sloburban in that range? I now remember that tax credit and being outraged. Anyway, I also remember those damn Suburban Exurban Bus vehicles being ridiculously popular.
MattF
@Another Holocene Human: Kramers (the bookstore + restaurant on Connecticut) is still there. The others (including even Books-A-Million) are all gone, baby, gone.
ETA: Second Story Books, on P street is also still there.
C.V. Danes
@cmorenc: The question you have to ask yourself is what caught you’re eye as being suspicious: the fact that they approached the house, or the fact that they were black and approached the house?
You are not necessarily an evil racist for focusing on their being black, because our society has brainwashed you in thousands of ways since birth to think that way. It takes a lot of work to consciously undo that level of programming. But at least you’re thinking about it.
Betty Cracker
@burnspbesq: You are right that I accepted the premise without independently examining the evidence. But it seems all too plausible to me.
@Another Holocene Human:
I disagree with that notion, but good point about the evolution of social media and the shift in focus from communities to individuals. I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion, i.e., that corporations now have a power to silence you that they didn’t before (they always did — even more so in the past, I’d argue). But I’m not sure it matters. We have to go to war with the tech we have, amirite? Or invent / support something better. Just wait awhile. It’ll change again.
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J:
When they eliminated exit fare some NIMBY’s swore that young toughs from the inner city would descend upon suburban Newton on their free fare* and cart away everything they could find. As one trolley operator told me, he never had anyone boarding with refrigerators and big screen TVs.
The truth is that Newton gets picked over by Travellers ever year who apparently seem to arrive on gasoline-powered vehicles that traverse roads.
Oh, and they’re white.
*-not really free, you had to pay a subway token to get in unless you boarded in Brookline, so I guess if you left from Mission Hill and walked to Brookline Village station … trolololol
cmorenc
@C.V. Danes:
Well, to be honest it’s like trying not to think about a white bear, especially when it’s especially rare for white bears to be seen in my neighborhood. (Nice little upside-down metaphor that nevertheless aptly fits the situation we’re talking about).
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: Oh, I apologize (for being unclear). It’s these free-flowing mobs of harassers that have the power to silence individuals, not the corporations, who aren’t too interested in that. (If they really want to silence you, they’ll let the relevant government lock you up.)
The corporations could, conceivably, stop the harassment. But they’d have to a) care and b) spend the money which gets back to a) care.
Amir Khalid
@bystander:
You have my solemn word that I really am a Malaysian in his fifties.
catclub
@Another Holocene Human:
The movie where Mt Baker erupts seemed like an ad for “This Jeep will keep your family alive.”
Roger Moore
@ET:
Maybe the apps are serving their intended purpose. It’s common to assume good intentions, but it’s not obvious that people who write apps like these have them.
RSA
@Roger Moore:
Girls Around Me, for example.
different-church-lady
Yeah, but “Twitter made the Arab Spring happen!” Or something…
Brandon
Am I the only one considering the connection that these apps are enabling a new system of gestapo style tactics with secret informants making reports to police on the activities of citizens they deem ‘suspicious’?
Frankly, whenever I read about stuff like this I always hope that it spreads to become an equal opportunity tool of oppression so that it can finally be ended. Unfortunately, it always takes a long time to get there and I suspect were are going to see a proliferation of digital files on the activities ‘others’ before things actually get better.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s not your fault. Zandar’s personal troll is going to keep coming back even after being hit by the ban hammer.
different-church-lady
Dear social tech app developers: your app is going to be used by assholes. This is not in question, it’s going to happen. Are you going to be prepared for it? Or are you just going to count them in your numbers and shrug?
different-church-lady
@Watchman:
I know people with degrees who have utterly no competence, utility, or redeeming human qualities whatsoever. Just sayin’.
gex
@Betty Cracker: I’m on the side of it being slightly more positive than negative. I feel like all the problems we have with social tech are just the normal expression of dysfunction that we have in every other sphere of life. But the power and beauty of what happened for me when Kate died seemed to be uniquely enabled by Facebook.
Not that I don’t rail about the fuckery I see on FB daily. But I try to remember those assholes would still hold those beliefs and those bigotries whether or not they were spouting them off online.
Joel
@Another Holocene Human: Not sure. I was a teenaged user of the early internet, and the racist/stormfront shit was unavoidable in just about any public forum. A lot has changed for the better, largely because a wider swath of the population is using the internet.
I do think your point about web 2.0 is a salient one, however.
different-church-lady
@Brandon:
This is not a technological problem. This is a biological problem. Place any tool, object, technology, or idea down in front of human beings and it is inevitable that some of them will choose to use it in the worst possible way. The only thing that changes is the novelty of the new method.
different-church-lady
@Another Holocene Human: I gotta read the posts more thoroughly and then read the comments more thoroughly, because this pretty much nails what I’m trying to say a lot better than I was belching it.
henqiguai
@Another Holocene Human (#22):
P*ssy.
signed,
ex-DC resident; born and raised, Deanwood-Kenilworth
Anonymous At Work
South Park already covered this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_the_Neighborhood
Specifically this quote: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0705931/quotes?item=qt0141877
Shakezula
@Another Holocene Human: Is that what’s going on at KB&A? Boring me, I just go for the books.
Brachiator
Social tech merely reflects what people want and believe, does it faster, and accumulates the results more quickly. And there are sites and areas where social tech allows asswipes to congregate and establish a sense of place for their nastiness. But it is foolish to blame tech for the worst aspects of human nature.
A restaurant in Westwood, where UCLA is located, discouraged too many black customers and would never sit them in the seats at the windows overlooking the street lest customers think it was a “black” place. People using social tech to note the customers are only doing the same thing that previously was done by word of mouth.
And yes, this restaurant got sued and quietly settled. But it didn’t stop anything. Some people feel suspicious or … uncomfortable … around certain people, and look for all kinds of excuses to justify their bigotry.
Shorter: quit blaming tech or Silicon Valley for aiding and abetting racism.
Look in the freaking mirror. How many people here live in segregated neighborhoods? Shop only at stores in “nice areas?” Mentally divide the world into “my tribe” and “the other?”
goblue72
I live in a racially diverse neighborhood in Oakland, California. Doesn’t mean there aren’t racists next door. In fact, I see their comments all the time on Nextdoor.com. And since Nextdoor requires use of real names verified by snail mail to an actual residential address, I know who they are. And they are almost all middle-aged and senior white people. Some old timers in the hood, some more recent gentrifiers. The gentrifiers use better language, the old timers are less annoying.
Brachiator
@burnspbesq:
This sounds like the nonsense in a post the other day about considering or eliminating criminal suspects based on “statistics.”
Who gets arrested, prosecuted, convicted, as opposed to who gets a nod, a warning, or other pass is heavily dependent on race and social status.
And here’s the nub:
Suspicious people is not even remotely the same thing as observing suspicious behavior.
C.V. Danes
@Brandon: No, you’re not the only one. I’ve felt for a while now that the only way we’ll reach 1984 level of totalitarianism is from the bottom up, from the masses. Seems to me lately that we’re well on the way there.
Darkrose
@Another Holocene Human:
Cliques of friends having discussions was pretty much the definition of fandom when I first got involved in the early ’90’s. Especially in the fan works side of things, where you had to know which dealers at a con had the slash zines under the table. Once you got past the “us against the mundanes” it was largely about eating our own: the fans who watch the shows sneer at the fic writers who look down on the porn writers who give slashers the side-eye, and everyone dumps on the furries. The difference between then and now is that before, it was all happening behind closed doors.
What LJ did was remove many of the barriers to access, and that was a good thing. Suddenly people realized that not everyone in fandom was a white, middle-class cis straight American. There will always be drama when groups of people congregate, but overall, I think expanding the scope of fandom has been a good thing. I’m glad that people are willing to point out that it’s not cool to bash female characters in service of your ship, or that it’s not considered okay to say “I don’t write about black characters because I just don’t find black people attractive”, or that people are willing to challenge tropes like falling in love with your rapist.
I’m definitely biased because thanks to LJ, I met a lot of people who are dear to me that I wouldn’t have otherwise met in fandom–most especially, my wife. She was in Sacramento; I was in Boston. She was primarily in Phantom Menace fandom; I was in Harry Potter fandom. We probably never would have had reason to interact had it not been for our mutal love of snark: we first met on Fandom Wank.
lethargytartare
@Another Holocene Human:
shit, bulletin boards with 4 phone lines had troll problems in 1988.
ruemara
@Betty Cracker: you should go to East Bay Express and read about nextdoor.com. this isn’t an app being simply misused, this is hi-tech racial profiling where once called on it, they double down. Even in self-described liberal areas, the prevailing mindset is black people are criminals. It’s quite wrong and it takes a lot of self reflection that it seems a certain segment cannot do. What’s it gonna take, calling the cops on kids play in their yard but this time you get captain hairtrigger who’s ready to put down those demonic black things?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@ZANDAR’S STALKER BOY: Hey, I could be considered an “IT professional” what with the degree, two decades of work experience, wall of certificates and all that crap, and in the last several years I’ve ended up where Zandar is: I don’t like information technology very much at all. It’s visibly robbing us of our humanity and giving nothing needed in return.
Matt McIrvin
@Mike J:
I believed this until recently, but apparently it’s not actually true. While the residents might well have tried to block a Georgetown Metro station on those grounds, there was never a plan for a station in the first place, for reasons of topography and the notion that Metro was primarily a commuter network:
http://www.welovedc.com/2009/10/13/dc-mythbusting-georgetown-metro-stop/
RSA
@different-church-lady:
In my computer science department, most students go on to be software engineers after they graduate; our curriculum includes a required ethics course.
But when almost anyone can develop a software product and put it in people’s hands, with no significant oversight being possible, I think we’re always going to see this sort of thing.
Matt McIrvin
Of course, the real reason the line has to go so deep under the Potomac River there is to go under the secret hangar for SHIELD’s Insight helicarriers.
C.V. Danes
@Another Holocene Human: Ever read “The Circle” by Dave Eggers?
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: I’m thinking… someone as smart as Zandar on the other end of the line if I need tech support? Big win!
Tyro
Techno-utopia is never going to happen, but I like being connected on social networks to people I don’t normally get a chance to see in person.
My humanity hasn’t been robbed, I have access to information I didn’t have before, and I was never expecting the Internet to serve as a “community” for me in the first place.
TerryC
@BR: Not sure, despite Sherry’s ideas, that it is technology making us less empathic so much as social technologies allowing the less empathic among us to nonetheless socially engage more.
Brandon
@different-church-lady: The problem is the ease with which the technology allows people to act in this manner. Before you probably had to have covert meetings, secret notes, short wave radio, pay phones, etc. to engage in these types of activities. What also bothers me is the rapid response times of police in affluent “white” areas to reports of “suspicious” black people. I am willing to bet if someone in Anacostia called 311 or 911 to report a “suspicious” black person it is likely that the police won’t show at all.
@C.V. Danes: I think you are right, it will come from the bottom up and I fear it already has I wish I could be more optimistic about the future, however events these days makes it very, very difficult.
Tone In DC
I have lived around here pretty much all my life. I stopped going to Georgetown years ago, when I saw there was nothing left that interested me (others have mentioned what is lacking these days). I have seen the business owner/merchants/tourists glaring at folks like me, waaaaay back when I was in college.
What is HE doing here? In that Raiders jacket? What a thug!
And those sunglasses! And that ballcap!
I was a sophomore walking home from my last lecture on such days. On several occasions that year, people crossed the street to avoid walking near me.
Nowadays, up here on Georgia Avenue, I mostly just get the wary looks.
I’m sure these same apps are being used in Tysons Corner, Pentagon City and wherever else.
goblue72
@ruemara: I live in Oakland and until recently had a Next-door account. The amount of racial profiling was upsetting. I called out several of my “neighbors” on it and the amount of willful blindness was just astounding. Even in liberal diverse place like Oakland, white people just cannot handle having their privilege questioned.
A guy
Two black males screaming at each other in an alley in a large city would cause me to move away quickly. I wouldn’t call the cops or us an app or alert anybody cause I don’t care what they do to each other. Same thing would happen if I saw two white males yelling at each other at the ballet holding wine glasses palms up.
WaterGirl
Cleanup in aisle 101.
Tyro
@TerryC: social technologies allowing the less empathic among us to nonetheless socially engage more.
Yes. Also the more socially anxious and isolated use the internet to engage more, and both of these groups colliding makes for a toxic stew. The person who is afraid of his own shadow or lacking in empathy finally find a community of like-minded people to reinforce their beliefs and attitudes, and they become normalized.
That’s the tradeoff of the connected world: you can connect with anyone who shares your niche beliefs and interests, but so can really messed up people.