It is one of the reasons why I am so intellectually against tools like Randi Harper's blockbot, which assures, among many other things, that her opponents become even *more* entrenched in their own views than otherwise.
Let's just pretend it hasn't made twitter useable for a lot of people, that it instantly killed 95% of the worst harrassment when I started using it. We could also pretend you didn't actually think you should be able to sue these bots for slandering you.
Block bots are blunt instruments, but they are effective, as for some people there's simply no alternative available.
We don't need to pretend I thought we should be able to sue bots for slander, because that's both silly and I never stated it. Not only sueing bots is ridiculous, I never advocated sueing either the Atheism plus blockbot nor Randi's nor, as it were, their creators. I did watch the kerfuffle with attention because it would affect twitter's usage future. I am also guilty of enjoying a schadenfreude moment with the closing shop of Troloon's bot.
Yes, blockbots are blunt instruments that curtail the experience of many people (according to Randi, more than 95% are false positives), because a few can't be bothered to use the block button themselves. They are also bully tools that these people have in their arsenal to intimidate them, isolate them. But that's not even my major point or gripe. Randi's tool was inevitable in a sense, given how Twitter and their APIs work. I've never agreed with the idea that a block should force an unfollow and punish those blocked by turning your account invisible to them. It should merely be a block of contact (if they block you, you can't retweet them, you can't contact them, they won't see your tweets even if RTd by others).
I didn't know Taurip Moosa was a white affluent hipster. Or Alexander. Or Katherine Cross. Do you actually believe journalism is that lucrative an endeavor for these people? Many of the posts that draw so much attention have been written for literally no money. You will not make very much doing what they do. It's not something you do for creature comforts.
Do you actually believe 3000 dollars a month on patreon is a lot of money? As much as a third of it never gets collected. Can you multiply numbers times 12? And we haven't even mentioned the different cost of living. The only person who has actually gotten a nice hunk of cash off patreon while expressing any sort of sympathy to representational issues in our areas of interest has been Jim ****ing Sterling, son.
By contrast, how much does Paul Elam make a year to rant about feminists?
I never said journalism is a lucrative endeavour. I made a remark on the kind of culture and affluence of the *people* involved. Curiously, we do know that the current state of journalism also comes from the fact that it is so poorly paid. Game journalism is an entire joke, "professionalism" is just a luxury these sites cannot apparently afford. They have shown themselves to merely be glorified blogs.
Regarding 3000 dollars a month for doing nothing not being "a lot of money", I could only say
"See, I rest my case", for I do live in a world where people with families to feed are lucky to earn a thousand dollars for working hard 8, 10, 12 hours a day. But I guess when you live in a world where people go to twitter to complain that at some point of their lives they were so broke they even "had to work", this affluence thing just flies over your face.
Regarding Paul Elam, do I look like Paul Elam? Why are you asking me this? Have I ever defended Paul Elam's work anywhere? Have I ever defended him anywhere at all? You could contrast with anyone else in the world for all I care.
