If you’re wondering what the #AreYouBlocked hashtag is about, click here to see the League of Gamers “Blocklist Checker” site.

What has happened? It’s simple: Crazy people do crazy things.

One thing crazy people do is to accuse others of “harassment.”

Randi Harper (@Freebsdgirl) decided to make herself the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) queen by creating a “blockbot” so that Twitter users could automatically block #GamerGate activists. Other SJWs have created a blockbot “that identifies Twitter’s ‘anti-feminist obsessives’ (they’re nominated for inclusion by a group of trusted, preapproved users), sorts them into categories of offensiveness ranging ‘tedious and obnoxious’ to ‘abusive bigot,’ and allows users to pick the level of vitriol they’d like to excise from their Twitter feeds.” (That Slate article was written by @AmandaHess who, of course, has me blocked on Twitter.)

Like many other feminists, Randi Harper suffers from mental illness and has discussed her prescriptions for Ativan (Lorzepam) and Trazodone, powerful drugs used to treat depression and anxiety disorders. The fact that someone under psychiatric care has appointed herself an arbiter of Twitter “harassment” should be a flashing yellow caution light about her project, for which she is using Patreon.com to raise money.

“Let’s give money to a crazy woman! What could possibly go wrong?”

Keep in mind that I have been harassed by some of the worst trolls in Internet history, including Neal Rauhauser and Bill Schmalfeldt. Unlike feminists, however, I am not an emotionally fragile basket case and, also unlike feminists, I don’t qualify as “marginalized”:

[O]nline harassment is a social problem (one that disproportionately affects the same folks who are marginalized offline, like minority groups, LGBT people, and women), and making the Internet a safe and equitable place to communicate requires a social solution.

Again, I’m quoting Amanda Hess, who has me blocked on Twitter, because I’m such a dangerous menace, you know.

Ken White describes blockbots thus:

Various cultural and political conflicts online have led some users to develop blockbots, which are lists to which you can subscribe (to oversimplify the process) to mass-block everyone on the list. Some lists are created by methodology (like automatically blocking people who follow certain Twitter users affiliated with “GamerGate”) and some, like BlockBot, are curated by individuals who choose who goes on the list and why.

Some folks don’t like how they are characterized by these lists. BlockBot targets complain of being characterized by mostly anonymous and unaccountable strangers as “racists” or “transphobes” or “rape apologists.”

Ken White says blockbots are not defamation, and I agree. However, we must consider the original dispute that gave rise to #GamerGate, i.e., the suspicion that undisclosed conflicts of interest were influencing journalism about the videogame industry.

The #GamerGate controversy subsequently involved a lot of other things, but originally it was about concerns that this multibillion-dollar industry was being corrupted by unethical practices. As I understand it, the basic allegation was that some writers were engaged in the videogame equivalent of “insider trading,” which had the effect of providing favorable publicity for certain game developers while stigmatizing other game developers. Biased journalism about politics is one thing, but biased journalism about an extremely lucrative industry? That’s something else, and potentially an illegal something else.

So, hypothetically: What if shady practitioners were using blockbots to prevent exposure of their shady practices? Wouldn’t this amount to aiding and abetting a potentially illegal activity? One might argue that it would and, while I don’t want people to become afraid of tweeting whatever they want to tweet and blocking whomever they want to block, maybe you wouldn’t want to assist a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.)

So you have a controversy involving claims of corruption in a lucrative industry and — deus ex machina — here comes an emotionally disturbed person raising money for a project that aims to silence (as “online abuse”) the people who say they are trying to expose the aforesaid corruption. Am I the only person who sees a basic problem with this?

@adambaldwin is on the ggAutoblocker’s blocklist.

@adambaldwin is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 2).

When actor Adam Baldwin called attention to the #GamerGate controversy, he became Public Enemy Number One for the SJW crowd, thus earning his spot on Randi Harper’s ggAutoblocker list.

@lizzyf620 is on the ggAutoblocker’s blocklist.

@lizzyf620 is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 2).

Wait a minute: What has videogame journalist Lizzy Finnegan done to deserve her inclusion on these lists? What does this mean?

@rsmccain is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 1).

Yeah, so what? This doesn’t bother me at all. It’s an honor.

@VABVOX is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 1).

Wait a minute: They’re blocking lesbian feminist Victoria Brownworth? Can you imagine what a weird worldview must be involved here, for both Brownworth and I to qualify as “Level 1” offenders? At one point, I’m told, the SJWs blocked Pope Francis for his alleged “transphobia.”

Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason magazine discusses the blockbot mentality. And, at Breitbart.com, Allum Bokhair explains:

The Block Bot . . . rose to prominence during the online trolling panic of 2013. It claims to be a one-stop shop for blocking trolls and abusers. In practice, the people added to its lists tended to be activists, academics, bloggers, and ordinary Twitter users who fell on the wrong side of political schisms within Atheism. Richard Dawkins, for example, was added to the list as a ‘rapeapologist’ and a ‘transphobe’, despite being neither of those things. Some have accused the Block Bot of engaging in defamation.

The GG Autoblocker is arguably even worse than the blockbot. Whereas the Block Bot decides who to block based on individual reports, GG Autoblocker uses guilt by association. The autoblocker maintains a list of several blacklisted users, including Breitbart London associate editor Milo Yiannopoulos, and at one point, the feminist academic Christina Hoff Sommers. If other Twitter users follow too many of these individuals, they will be automatically added to the autoblocker. You don’t have to do anything or even say anything to become a target. If you follow the wrong people, you’ll be blocked.

Twitter users targeted by the two blocklists have had enough, and are taking to the #AreYouBlocked hashtag in large numbers to demand that the company takes action. Urged on by academic Christina Hoff Sommers and game developer Mark Kern, both popular targets for autoblockers, users have caused the #AreYouBlocked hashtag to trend globally. Using the League for Gamers’ blockchecker as well as the Block Bot’s own search function, they have also uncovered an astonishing range of accounts targeted by the blocklists.

Whether or not this is illegal, we certainly see what feeble minds and cowardly souls must be behind this. SJWs are totalitarians who think they can “win” a debate by preventing debate.

The worst thing about the blockbot is that it creates an unofficial industry blacklist for political reasons. #AreYouBlocked — Sargon of Akkad (@Sargon_of_Akkad) April 10, 2015

Surprised to find that I was put on Block Bot list for this exchange with Shanley. #AreYouBlocked http://t.co/1vminLAvJ5 — Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) April 10, 2015

#AreYouBlocked apparently this question is so frightening that asking it gets you blocked pic.twitter.com/dxEJLOfZ6F — Vidya #4410 (@ninjagal54) April 10, 2015

Blocking @instapundit? That should help Randi Harper generate publicity. http://t.co/ISn3JDjwtc Not the good kind. #AreYouBlocked — Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 10, 2015

Please thank @League4Gamers, and support freedom!











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