Crenshaw's Books & Decks

The Internet of Garbage is a personal reading for me because many of the issues discussed in the book have affected me personally, directly, in my online life, and too often to consider them isolated incidents. Herewith just three examples of a long list of personal examples of vilification due, mostly, to me being a woman.

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Long ago I was in Flicker. My nick didn't show my gender. A contact used to praise my photos to the heavens. That was until he called me "man" and I told him that I was a woman. He started visiting my photo stream to abuse me, not my photos. From great photo to you are mentally disabled by making this photo, from a comment on my photo, you are an idiot. I ended blocking him because his vilification seemed to have no stop. In real life he seemed to be a normal guy, newly-married, happy, very social. That was his mask. With me he showed his real self. The abusive sexist prick he really is.

Long ago, I visited one of the Whirlpool forums to comment on an online company's misleading info about one of the products I had purchased from them. There was a representative of the company in the thread. He was the only person who treated me with respect and didn't bully me for just posting a post that wasn't offensive. I ignored the pricks. Yet, when I left, the bullying was in crescendo for no reason. My nick was female.

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The Internet of Garbage is a short book, (or rather booklet) on different issues related to the garbage invading the Internet. The book is a very honest in-depth approach to the Internet on areas like gender harassment and vilification, doxing, SWATing, trolling, moderation, free speech and spam from a person who knows, inside out, how social networks and online platforms work and their legal and technical intricacies.

What is garbage? What does constitute spam? What does spam and harassment have in common? How does garbage present itself online? What we do with it? What should we do with it? Are the procedures to control online garbage working or not, and why? Moderation or blocking? Free speech or banning? Which groups are more likely to be harassed? Which groups are more likely to take the case to the Police and Court? Is harassment gendered or coloured? Why is online harassment so scary? Does harassment occur because the Internet is too big or too small? These are some of the questions that Jeong tackles and replies to in this book.

What I like the most about this book is not the focus on issues that are of great interest to me, or the knowledge on the area Jeong has, but the fact that she has a natural tendency to balance her own discourse, to see the pros and cons of anything she says, and to analyse any given aspect from different sides, never in a monolithic way. You have to praise that sort of old-school savoir fair because it is a rara avis nowadays.

Jeong offers a deep analysis that is missing from many books on the Internet, which can pinpoint and whine about the flaws of the system but aren't able to propose solutions to tackle situations for very difficult online issues. Some of the stuff Jeong discusses is very technical, with legal implications, but it is presented in an approachable language.

Jeong makes terrific points about how to deal with the crap on the Internet. She is convinced that the architecture of the Internet and the focus on behaviour (and not content) in my site's  conduct codes and policies are the key to curb down the volume and nastiness of online garbage. You cannot solve the problem of harassment, threats and abuse on the Internet by focusing just on the content posted, but by focusing on and addressing the behaviour that generates it. You can remove all the nasty comments manually but you aren't really creating a well-behaved online community that promotes healthy behaviour and excludes the usual mob of sociopathic misogynists and those who befriend them. She shows how functional platforms can be built and structured to promote a flow of  information, code of conduct and self-regulatory rules that promote healthy behaviour and naturally shred the garbage. Banning, blocking, filtering are just small tools that won't solve the problem, just give relief to the victims. Code is never neutral, the architecture of the Internet matters enormously.

 I find this very important, personally. I was recently insulted for a review that has 3.5 stars and the troll thought it was too low. He didn't uttered a swear word, but insulted me upfront, obvious to anybody who can read. I contacted the moderation team, as this troll is not a regular reviewer, and every time he comes to the site is to annoy me. The moderator told me that, unless the comment is explicitly racist or contains profanity (something very subjective as it varies from culture to culture, religion to religion), they cannot erase his comments. I deleted them myself. His activity in the the site is being tracked by the moderation team.  Even if he is eventually banned, he could reappear using another email address and nick and nothing would be solved. That is so because bad behaviour is not tackled by the moderation policies of the site. I  mentioned this book to the lovely guy who attended my complaint. Oh, Yes!

Although Jeong focus a good deal on well-known cases of female harassment (Caroline Criado Pérez, Anita Sarkeesian, Amanda Hess, Zoe Quinn, and Kathy Sierra), she calls the attention on the fact that not only women are targeted. independent male thinkers also are. And, of course, Afro-Americans, Latinos, gays, immigrants, and any 'minority' who are not in the media often because, at least in the States, they think it twice before going to the Police to complain about any issue, not just about online harassment.

I love Jeong's analysis on how online sites deal with spam detection, deletion and control, ad extracts positive conclusions that could be applied to the fight against online harassment. Also inspired is her discourse on the relation between discourses of free speech on the internet, banning and the USA's First Amendment to the Constitution. 

Jeong is also great at showing how the inadequacy and inefficiency of the system lead people who suffer from severe harassment, doxing, SWATing and physical attacks included, to retort to intricate legal  openings, like Copyright Laws, to find a way to deal with their issue (García v. Google).

Despite this being a great book, the language used is dry, clinical and a bit uninspired for the general public. It is jargon-free, that is great, but also a bit aseptic. I understand that, for a lawyer, the definition of what a word means is utterly important, that matters in Court, as much as the punctuation or tone of a given text. Yet, unless you are in Court or writing and targeting a specific group of readers, you don't need to define what spam is or what garbage is. My opinion.

A typo correction. Please, write Spanish surnames with their proper accent, Pérez and García are not accented throughout the book.

The title doesn't make any favour to the book as it is misleading. It seems to imply that all Internet is crap, while, in fact, the book focus on how much garbage the Internet has, and the need to clean it up and how to do this. One day Internet and garbage might be synonyms but, they are not so as yet.  

The Internet of Garbage is a great reading, a very thought-provoking book with a babble-free crappola-free discourse. This is also a great book to quote when we deal with moderation teams that adduce obsolete codes of conduct that focus on content not on behaviour to leave trolls and pathological misogynists camp at will in our space.