DongleGate: The Online Harassment Campaign Against Adria Richards

and that is the saga of Adria Richards. And I know that you know a little bit about this story one of my favorite named topics on the internet, dongle gate, but you know, I only really know the surface level. So I'm really looking forward to hearing more about this from you and more about Adria as a person. Yeah, we're gonna be using the word dongle a lot in

this episode. Just two level set love that. One of the reasons I wanted to start with Adria Richards is because I think that she really represents an early situation where bad actors were able to completely hijack a sensitive, complicated situation in ways that they're still doing to this very day. And I think it's a really great early example of how when a black woman is being harassed and attacked online, people watching will essentially fit back and

say she probably deserved it. So let's get into it. That started the beginning. Who is Adrian Richards Well, Adrian Richards is a black woman who has been working as an engineer since about She first got her start in technology as a network administrator and started volunteering teaching tech skills in her spare time. And while she started working her way up in these like successful tech startups, she also kind of became this visible black woman in tech.

You know, she was doing a lot of media. She had a pretty big YouTube channel with a healthy number of subscribers. She celebrated ten thousand subscribers where she does these accessible tech tutorials mixed with kind of every day I guess lifestyle content like dating advice, And she does a lot of content where she is calling out examples of sexism in tech. Um, that's kind of I guess her brand or her thing is these explorations of gender

and technology and the way that they intersect. Like her personal website where she has her blog is called but You're a Girl dot com, so you can sort of get a sense of she's someone who is really interested in shaking up the status quo in technology. She travels to speak at these pretty big deal tech conferences where she often is talking about things like diversity in tech and inclusion in tech. Here's a little clip of her

speaking at one of those conferences. Any startup you're gonna work at, it's not going to be all one gender. If you're a woman, it's very unlikely. So you're gonna need to work with guys. So you should be going to events that have guys. And it's not that guys don't want to help, but we have to give them opportunities for them to be allies. So that was it, Just a quick little clip that I think speaks to um a little bit about what happened with her side.

Now somebody we would totally be friends with. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, no question. So what I was doing research for this episode, I really kind of enjoyed going back in time and looking at Adria's digital life before what went down went down, because honestly, she kind of just gives off vibes of a black woman who is killing it, like she's really

hit her stride. Watching her talk about technology, she comes off as really confident and happy and like she's in like really walking in her power and It was exciting to watch, but it kind of made me sad. Knowing a little bit about what happens next, you might be asking what happened to Adrea Richards. Adrea starts working as a developer evangelist, which is basically, if you don't know what that is, it's someone whose role is to work with developers, help them solve problems, help them level up

in their career. She gets the job as a developer evangelists for the email vendor sind Grid, and then she goes to Peicon, a conference for Python users, and while she's there, she is sitting in the main conference room during a keynote talk, and she turns around to have a conversation with some attendees behind her, having a normal talk about some of the presentations they've seen, when she overhears a pair of male attendees who are also developers,

making a crass joke while seated behind her. Now, the actual nature of the joke is somewhat in dispute. A little bit more on that later, but essentially, the crux of the joke is that they're talking about dongles because they work in tech, and the crux of the joke is that dongle is a funny sounding word that kind of sounds like dog, wow, brave such as just transferred me back to you know, the seventh grade cool cool, cool. Yeah.

I mean it's it's crass and it's immature, and it's like it's like, like I said, it's like very middle school. It is very middle school. It takes me back to a lot of text bases I've been in where that is the love that it just it is the level of humor that you kind of are asked to smile through and be like ha ha, this is one percent bridging. I actually don't know if you know that, like one of my first jobs out of college, I worked in tech for several years, and I don't think on microoff

Mike we've talked about this at all. But yeah, I definitely know exactly what you're talking about. In those In those scenes, especially when there's very few women around the the nature of the jokes can sometimes be a little bit off putting to say the least. Yes, exactly, and I think that's exactly where Adrian was at as well. So she didn't say anything in the moment, She didn't say that this bothered her, and she explains that choice

in her blog. She writes, I didn't want to be heckled or have my experience denied, which I also really, I'm sure you do. Having worked in tech, I know what she's talking about. I did it. She probably didn't want to have that vibe of, oh, she's crazy, she's over sensitive. You know you, you know you can you kind of have a sense of maybe it's not going to go that well if you take the route of saying, hey, guys, knock it off. Oh my god, she's so emotional, she's

in her feelings. Why can't we just can't we just be our souls? It's like, all right, exactly. So, rather than saying something to them in the moment, she takes out her phone, takes their picture, and tweets it, tweeting quote not cool jokes about forking repose in a sexual way and big dongles right behind me hashtag picon. She goes on to tweet, can someone talk to these guys

about their conduct? I'm in lightning talks top right near stage, Tin roseback hashtag picon, and then she tweets the code of conduct for the conference, which in part says, quote offensive jokes are not appropriate for Peicon. So initially, Adrian said that she was wanted to ignore this, but in her blog but I'm a Girl, Adria explained what triggered her to send that tweet. She writes, I was gonna let it go. It has been a long week, a long month. I've been on the road since mid February

attending and speaking at conferences. Icon was my fifth and final conference before heading home. I know it's important to pick my battles and I don't have to be a hero and in every situation, but sometimes I want to go to a conference and be a geek. But like Popeye, I couldn't stands it no more because of what happened. She talks about how her company was a sponsor for this event and when she heard them talking about dongles, she felt blustered. Then, she writes, then it happened the trigger.

She's watching somebody on the main stage and he's talking about this young Hooder's workshop that Adrian volunteered at. He was mentioning that the Pie Ladies auction had raised ten thousand dollars in a single night for funds that we're going to be used to support this young Coder's Workshop initiative. I saw a photo on the main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coder's Workshop.

I realized I had to do something because she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ask clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so. So I I remember reading this when the whole situation was going down, and I was very moved by what she had written. Um, I think it's if you're if you're listening to this and thinking that seems a little overdone. Fine, sure, but I guess I'm saying that I understand what where she sort of

coming from when she wrote that. Yeah, I mean like, I definitely have empathy for for the way that she's feeling here. I feel like that happens to a lot of people in the business world, and specifically within the tech space, where you're in a situation where you're like, well, I could say nothing, but you know that would be very disappointing to child me, or to my niece, to my nephew, to my daughter, to my son, the inner child in me where where I'm like, okay, you know,

I couldn't. While this might seem small to some who's to say that many small things. If you let it go this time, you might let it go the next ten times, and then it's just a habit, and then it's a pattern, and then you're enabling. So that's exactly what she says. In her blog, she writes about how this incident was actually not the first time that she

had heard a sexualizing joke at that particular conference. She describes how earlier during that event, in a hallway, a guy had made a crass joke about looking under the skirt of the table and you know, make he made some crass long and about it, not like so it doesn't have pubic hair, just like I like it. But because this happened in a way, I know, really not great.

She says that because this happened in a hallway and not like at a seated, you know, main stage event while somebody's on stage talking, she actually did feel comfortable speaking up to whoever made that joke. And I think it's exactly what you were saying, Sophie. It sounds like this was death by a thousand cuts for her, where it was laugh it off, laugh it off, say something,

say something, and eventually she just couldn't anymore. Like I've been there where you just hit your limit of ship that you are willing to smile through or giggle through or brush off to the point where you just can't anymore. The conference staff talk to the guys who end up being developers who made the joke. For their part, it sounds like these guys handled it very well. Ticon put

out a state meant saying quote. An incident occurred involving some inappropriate comments made during a crowded plenary session her the state of guidelines for the attendees and staff. The issue was reported to PIKE staff and resolved privately. Both parties were met with in private. The comments that were made were in poor taste, and the individuals involved agreed, apologized, and no further action were taken by the staff of Pike.

No individuals were removed from a conference, no sanctions were levied, and so honestly, it sounds like it truly could have ended there. You know, these developers who were making this crass joke, they they seem like they legitimately felt bad. They apologized. Picon staff it sounds like they acted quickly and it was resolved. It truly could have been there, and honestly, throughout the entire situation, Adrian is clear both in her writing and in her actions that she does

not want these men fired. You know, she is not calling for any consequences were them beyond just being talked to about appropriate conduct by the Picon staff, which they were, So this truly could have just been the end of it. Yeah, it sounds like all she really wanted to do was come on, guys, not a time or place, do better? Does it? It's easy for me to have a lot of empathy for all of the individuals involved in the situation, Like those guys shouldn't have been making that joke. It

does sound like it was crass and stupid. It does sound like it was against the rules of what happened. It's easy for me to just because I'm someone who says things without thinking a lot, it's easy for me to put myself in their shoes of like, oh, yes, certainly I've said things where it comes out of my mouth and boy I wish it hadn't. You know? For sure somebody who's on a lot of podcasts can relate,

can relate. Yeah, I'm not saying that these guys are like the worst guys ever, and they handled it very well. Both men worked for a company called play Haven, which was a sponsor for picon the event, and this incident led to one, but not both of the men being fired.

Play Haven CEO Andy Yang acknowledge the firing, writing quote, play Haven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at picon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a throw investigation. The results of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go.

We believe in the importance of discussing sensitive topics such as gender and conduct, and we hope to move forward with a civil dialogue based on the facts, which unfortunately does not happen. But you know, and you might be asking yourself, Well, HbF photographed and pointed out two men who worked at play Haven who were having this inappropriate conversation, So you might be asking why was only one man

fired and not the other. Play Haven went on to say in their statement that they would not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways with the one developer, So it's totally clear, you know what is actually happening if the decision was entirely about what happened at picon, or if something else contributed to it, Right, this could have been a a noted behavior from this

person or some other reason. Yeah, that's interesting and and kind of um, I would say, CEO and Yang actually taking action is kind of rare, I would say, especially at that time. So that's that's interesting to know here as well. But yeah, I totally see what you're saying, Like there could have been other things there that we just don't know and we'll never know. But yeah, what happened, Oh, I know what I good to what happened. I'm bombed.

It's not great. And honestly, like I I mean, I don't know, I don't have any kind of special insight, but I would be willing to bet just from what I know about how tech companies work that play Haven that there was some sort of information that maybe we're not privy to that play Haven like maybe this was a pattern, maybe there were other factors at play, and play Haven was like, well, you know, let's just part ways with this person and this is just another just

just one more reason why we should take that action. So after Adria's tweet, everyone kind of starts responding to what happened. Now. I absolutely do not think that Adria thought that this was going to blow up the way that it did, with so many people beyond the tech conference weighing in. You know, some people are supportive of Adria, others are supportive of the developers. And I have to say, this is to be really clear, not all the people who were not on adria side are men. There were.

I saw a lot of women weighing in and saying that they felt like Adria was making it harder for them as women in tech by being so are sensitive or not just talking directly to the men, right, So it's not it's certainly not a clear cut men on one side, women on the other side issue. When people were just sort of talking about it, expressing their their take on it. The fire developer posted on Hacker News, and I have to say his post, which is still up,

it's actually pretty civil. Uh. In my opinion, I do not think that the fired developer was interested or intended to whip up a hate mob around Adrian. I think that that was not a consequence that he was expecting or was welcoming in any way. He apologized, saying, quote, first, I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone, and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel she had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position,

which I think is like pretty recent. Yeah. He also clarified her characterization of part of his comments. He says, while I did make big dongle joke about a fictional piece of hardware that identified as a male, no sexual jokes were made about working. My friends and I had decided that forking someone's repo is a new form of flattery, and we were excited about one of the presenter's projects.

A friend said I would fork that guy's repo. The sexual context was applied by Adria, not us, and I, you know, I wasn't there, so I can't speak to whether or not the forking part of that joke was sextual or not. I will say that with jokes, oftentimes, you know there's nuance and context between friends that maybe can be easily missed when you're overhearing it. I have no idea. I don't know. I whether I don't know

what he says. I can't read into what he's saying. Sure, yeah, what do you think I'm like forking dongle if the shoe fits um? But but sure, sir. Yeah, It's like it's hard. It's hard. And what's what's funny is that after what I'm sure it was like a well intentioned clarification. Of course, people on the internet ran with that and they were like, totally Andrea lied about what he said.

And it's like, well, I could even if even if he is correct and she misrepresented or like misunderstood it, it's not really a lie like that nuance is completely stripped from the conversation when bad actors on the internet get involved. Absolutely, I mean, we're out here analyzing somebody's really bad middle school joke about gongles. Yeah, and it's like I know what happens next, and it's like, don't

just like, don't defend your bad joke. I don't know, like if you meant it that way or not putting the blame on Adria. Just I don't think that was cool. Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not thrilled with that. So this is something that I do have to take issue with. In his post on Hacker News, he kind of implies that Adria personally taking his photo and tweeting it is the reason why he got fired. He it's Adria has an audience and is a successful person of

the media. Just check out her web page linked in her Twitter account or hard work and social activism speaks for itself. With that great power and reach comes responsibility. As a result of the picture she took, I was let go from my job today, which sucks because I have three kids and I really liked that job. She gave me no warning. She smiled while she snapped my picture and sealed my fate. Let this serve as a message to everyone. Our actions and words, big or small,

can have serious impact. I have a question. Sure, I looked up Adria again on Twitter before we started doing this episode, and I'm sure it's changed since then. But you know, at the time, do we know what her bio was, Do we know how many followers she had? Anything like that? Just as like a side note, Yeah, I don't. It's not super clear. I think that when he said media, I don't think that he was saying and it does actually relate. I was gonna put this in,

but I didn't know how to say it. I think that he was saying not that she is a member of the media, which god, we know members of the media are always attacked in the line. I think that he was saying that she is a successful person of the media, like she gets glowing media attention, because at the time that was kind of her thing. I think that basically, I guess, if I'm gonna keep it real,

this is just my opinion. I think he was trying to sort of imply that she is someone who is good at using the media and good at getting her perspective and her name in the media for her causes. And I think that he was kind of trying to imply that in tweeting about his joke at this conference, that she was perhaps intending to get media on her side because she has a uh skilled that using media. She's you know, she's a YouTuber. She's someone who like

has a name for herself and it's very visible. So I think that he's making a nod toward her visibility, which is sort of incumbent on media and her ability to to be a person in media. That's what I think. This is my opinion. Yeah, it just comes off as like weird, weird, jealous vibes. It's just the phrasing and what he said, it just comes off very well, she's fake news, and um, why would you believe her when she knows, like clearly she knows what she's doing here.

It just reads very Oh god, it just reads witch hunt. I hate it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I really struggled with how to deal with this nuance in the episode because I do genuinely think the Spire developer is trying to his best to be civil through a tough situation. But I also think that he is using a couple of key phrases that the audience definitely picked up on as Oh, she was trying to like use him and what he said to bolster her own career and to

boost her own profile. And the conversation around how Adrian Richards handled this was very much steeped in. She was really calculated, and she was doing this because she thought it was going to, you know, empower her and boost her own profile, and it was very like self motivated. I honestly think she just tweeted it and didn't think much of it and it blew up on her face. If I'm being honest, just my perspective. But the way that he writes his statement, people, what you're calling out

people definitely picked up on and ran with it. That she is untrustworthy, that she is calculating and conniving, and that she did this in a calculated, intentional move to to cloud Chase and they're going to punish her for it. How did she respond to his post? So that is a great question. So she writes to his post on Hackernew, she replies, I'm sorry to hear your employer decided not to work with you on this, and I hope they reconsider bring you back and deal with it constructively. So again,

she wasn't calling for him to be fired. If she was, she could have easily, you know, said like this was on you. You did this, you agree that you did it, you should be fired. She didn't say any of that. She was like, oh, sorry to hear, not what I had in mind. I hope they reconsider. That's not that. In my book, those are not the words of somebody who is gleefully watching the takedown of somebody they're hoping

to clout build by tearing down, not at all. And I think this is one of those as part of the nuance of the conversation, because I think you could argue that the men should not have been making these kinds of jokes at the conference. And I also think that it's within the realm of possibility that you could take issue with the fact that Adria took a picture of these guys and tweeted it. I'm I am a big I think that taking pictures of people unless they're

committing an act of violence against you. I think taking and tweeting pictures of people without their consent is like a no no in my book. Just personally, I think you could argue that she shouldn't have done that. Side note. After the incident, ICON updated its attendee procedure for handling harassment to encourage conference attendees to report behavior privately and not to tweet about them publicly like Adria did, and so their new procedures say public shaming can be counterproductive

to building a strong community. ICON does not condone nor participate in such actions out of respect. I mean, I think the word public shaming is such a loaded term, and it is interesting to me that that is the language that they chose to update their procedures. They said, we don't want bad pr so let's keep these things quiet. They didn't say they didn't. What they didn't say is I mean, like I guess they said it prior where

they're like, we don't condone this type of thing. But they made a public policy change that points the finger again at Adria. She's consistently getting the finger pointed at her. Yeah. Public And dare I say public shaming by POCON Maybe a little bit, I mean I want to get into that, but absolutely. And it's it's so funny that you bring up this idea of how people attending a conference should handle conflict. I am a longtime political organizer. I go

to a lot of like lefty progressive political conferences. At the conferences that I go to, they will call your ass out. Almost every single time I go to a conference, like a net Roots or something, there is some elected official who's being booed or bird dogged or tweeted at. You know, I think Biden spoke there a couple of years ago, and everybody was tweeting at the conference and using the conference hashtag like oh why don't you go?

The ports of people are like like, like I came up in a conference scene where it was expect I totally expected that you were going to handle whatever conflicts you had entirely publicly. So it is a little telling to me that they're like, oh, no, part of our quote of conduct is if you have a problem with somebody, keep it on the hush hush, because it's like, well, I don't know, I guess I feel like it shouldn't be up to the conference to decide how I feel

it's best to handle my conflict. Like, I feel like that's almost like a personal choice. That's it's a weird micromanagement by the conference. I don't know. Yeah, you've definitely are are somebody who spends more time at conferences than I do. But unfortunately I was like, I was like, I follow you on social media, um, and if you don't follow Bridge of Fall Bridger, But yeah, that's weird. It's anytime somebody's like, let's do this behind closed doors,

I'm like, oh, red flag. Yeah. I just feel like having that as a rule that you have to agree to in the code of conduct. Just in general, I am not a big fan of a power structure telling me that I can't be public about something that i've experienced.

I guess, let's put it that way totally. And so even if you think that Adria should not have taken the picture of these guys and tweeted it, Adria Richards does not handle hr decisions at play Haven, right, and they are the ones who decided to part ways with this developer. Again, I have no evidence for this, but I suspect that there might have been other reasons why this developer was let go, particularly because that they only fired the one developer and not the other, even when

two men were photographed. And it is really interesting to meet how play Haven just allowed Adria to become this very public scapegoat or their hiring and firing decisions. They didn't speak up and say, hey, Adria doesn't work at play Haven and had no you know, did not force our hand. We made this decision. It is interesting to me how they didn't take the flak publicly. This visible black woman in technology was the one who got all

of the negative attention for their decision. And I guess I think you know, companies just back then certainly did not and I would argue still do not know how to handle it when there is a big public outcry happening around one of their employees. Had play Haven said we're aware of the issue and we're taking the appropriate action. Blah blah blah. You know, release some statement that's just like, we know what's going on and we're gonna handle it.

None of this would have happened. You know, if people are mad that this developer was fired, they should be mad at play Haven, not Adria. But Adria as a black woman, she's very visible and she represents all of the different trigger points that make people mad. She's black, she's outspoken, she's a woman, and she's very actively trying to shake up the status quo in technology as being

this white male bros. Club, all of which makes her an easy target when the actual decision makers are play Haven. And it seems like people were not just angry about the firing of this one developer, but they were angry about is Age R. Richards and what she represents in technology. She represents technology and technology spaces becoming more accommodating to

women and marginalized people. She represents women and marginalized people having meaningful power in those spaces and feeling like they can actually take up space in those spaces and with that comes all the people who currently had power in those spaces feeling threatened, feeling like the order that they are used to where there on the top and have the power, might actually be upset, and that they might actually have to make room for people who traditionally have

not had a lot of institutional power in technology spaces. That's what she represents. A good example of what I mean is the fact that when this all was going down, three redditors launched what they called the Feminist Defense Fund, where they took donations in bitcoin for the fire developer, and in their plea for donations, they write, feminism has call us some serious changes to our culture, to our society, into our lives. We focus on some that are effected

more than others, and we give back. Our goal is to encourage men to speak out, to be men, to not fear oppression, and enjoy their freedom of speech. Unfortunately, in today's climate, being a man has become a financial liability. Say the wrong thing in the wrong place, and you can find your entire life ruined, destroyed. Feminists fought for equality, but now they're out for our rights. They're destroying us financially. They're trying to tear apart our families. We're saying that

enough is enough. No longer should men fear masculinity, No longer should speaking up risk that man a job, a career, or a family. It is time to rise up against the tyranny. It is time to tell men it is okay to speak up. We're here for you. This is the Feminist Victims Fund. So it's so obvious, like what they're pissed about. Oh god, crime, crime, crime, Oh god,

that was great. Man, read the room, my guy. Yeah, it is like, it's so clear that they are using this as a proxy to fight these larger kind of culture wars issue. They don't care about this developer. They don't care that even he agrees that joke that he made was stupid and inappropriate for the setting. That's not what they care about. They care about women, and in this case, specifically a black woman shaking up the status quo and technology and threatening what they see as the

way that the world in society should work. Let's get into the fallout of what happened with all of this. So, speaking of companies being really cowardly and caving to a mob, that is pretty much what happened to Adria Richards. So after the developer gets fired, the internet, or more specifically, fortune, really turned on Adria and her employer sent Grid. Adria, I have to say, is horribly, horribly harassed her website.

It gets a d O s attacked, which is, if you don't know what that is, it's a denial of service attack where essentially attackers blood a website with more traffic than it can handle to shut it down. What happened to Adria wasn't just people tweeting that they disagreed with her, Nor was it just a few mean tweets or mean comments online, which side note, Funnily enough, a lot of the garden variety mean tweets directed at Adria

are still up as we speak. You know, tweets like quote, horror cost two men their jobs in this economy, you just made two families poor. I hope you feel good, hypocritical bitch, or little did they know they were sitting behind some count, or good job at being a picture book feminist bitch? Or why are you such a count? You know? So definitely not nice stuff. But those are not even the tweets and messages and comments that I'm talking about the harassment that Adria Richard Scott was heinous

and worse, it was coordinated. I personally witnessed many, many, many death and rape threats that she got some of the worst people on the internet. We're telling her in mass that she deserved to die by suicide. They docked and publicized her home address and phone number to the point where she had to flee from her own home for her own safety. Oh cool, they're dosing her. Yeah, that's really scary. Fortune circulates a change dot org petition

calling for Adrian to be fired from sin grid. Meanwhile, a pastebind document claims that anonymous has sin Grid's client list and that they're harassing their customers and will continue to do so if they don't fire her. Um here's

a bit from that post. They say ad R Richards engaged in malicious conduct to destroy another individual's professional career due to what she perceived as an affront to her own extremist views from a comment that was not directed at her, not meant for her to hear, and certainly not for her to provide unwarranted input on. As such, she should have her professional career destroyed just like her victim, and ordered for justice to be rendered and for balance

to be restored in the universe. The Hive Minds judgment is final. There is no appeal, no forgiveness, no forgetting. Remember, real life harassment is an escalation that comes into play based on how long the situation is allowed to play out. It is not affected by the effectiveness of previous forms of harassment. Even if your customers and financial backers are dropping like flies, this will still happen if Anonymous maintains

an interest in the situation. Boxing is a term used to define the discovery and dissemination of all personal information, included, but not limited to, home address, phone numbers, credit card numbers, your medical records, what brand of toothpaste you buy, etcetera. If some of the more talented members of Anonymous take interest into this, every employee of sent grid becomes a target, starting at the top. For your reference. This is already

happening to miss Richards as per standard protocol. So basically that's like a clear threat, like this is you know whether this is legit or not. This is someone basically trying to scare this this major tech company. So the attacks on send grid worsen um sin Grid acknowledge that they had suffered a denial of service attack, and so you know, this is a major company and their website traffic is essentially shut down. They're not able to have have people go to their website, which is a pretty

big deal. And so I guess I feel like if I was running a big company, I would not cave to a mob that is outright threatening me. But that's exactly what sin Grid did. Sin Grid eventually cave to this mob and fired Adria, and they fired her publicly. Cowards fucking coward ship. It's so cowardly, and so they write on Facebook. Effective immediately, sin Grid has terminated the

employment of Adria Richards. While we are generally sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature, and we have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of sin Grid, its employees, and our customers. A few hours later, sent Grid CEO Jim Franklin expanded on the company's reasons for firing Adria, writing, sin Grid supports the right to report and appropriate behavior whenever and wherever it occurs. What we

do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments cross the line. Publicly shaming the offenders and bystanders was not the appropriate way to handle the situation. And the aftermath of all of this was

that Adria had to literally go into hiding. And she was someone who had this big voice online and this big online footprint, and she essentially stopped tweeting and stopped making videos and stopped putting our perspective out into the

world after this happened. And so, you know, I feel like so many people, for example, the men's rights activists who were raising money for the fired engineer, we'll talk so much about things like free speech, free speech, but they almost never talked about the fact that somebody like Adria, who was someone who really did a lot of putting her voice out into the world, was effectively silenced when this harassment campaign against her began. So she she wasn't

continuing to, you know, speak up. And so when we talk about whose free speech is being threatened, it's almost never the marginalized people who have to stop speaking and our silence when they become the targets of harassment campaigns like Adria was. So that's basically what happened with Advia Richards. And so there are so many takeaways here and so many things I think that we can learn from this situation.

One is that I believe that Adrivia Richards situation really ushered in this new understanding of situations that are complicated and involve being real people being treated like tit for tat, you know, these culture wars and identity wars, point scoring where our guy got fired, so their guy has to get fired, or this happened, so that happened. You know, they made a black aerial in The Little Mermaid, so now they need to make a Malcolm X movie where

Malcolm X is white. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, bro, try that one. Go ahead. Yeah. It's a completely reductive and unhelpful thing that I think that dongle Gate really ushered in. You know, the big rallying cry in dongle Gate was that because the play Haven developer was fired, that Adrian needed to be fired just like he was. You know, as that poster put it, she should have to have her professional career destroyed just like her victim in order for justice to be rendered and for balance

to be restored to the universe. But in the real world of complexity and nuance and adults. It's really just not help to have these situations be viewed through this incredibly simple, black and white binary lens. And when you do, you are creating the conditions that are prime for bad actors to exploit. And that brings me to my next takeaway,

which is bad actors. Those fuckers ruin everything. And I feel like the situation is a great example because even though dongle gate was obviously very gendered, I don't want to give the impression that it was that all of the men who did not agree with Adria taking a picture of these guys. It's not like all of them had joined in on this harassment campaign against Adria. And there were certainly women in tech who did not agree

with Adria's actions. One of them Amanda Blum, who was a developer who worked with Adria I r L when she invited Adria to speak at a conference that she organized. Um she writes in her blog post about how she did not have a great interaction with Adria. She was like, Oh, I don't really like her, but that doesn't mean that

this kind of harassment campaign against her is good. You know, her her piece, which will link to in the show notes, is this very measured piece about what went down, and basically pointed out that she felt like everyone lost here. It was just a loss for everyone, And so I think that reasonable people could agree or disagree with what Adria did, and they did agree or disagree. There was a lot of substantive conversation online about what it means to be a woman in tech, how men can be

allies to women in tech? Are men going to be, you know, afraid of making whatever joke or speaking up that they're working with women? How can women and men and everybody all work together in these spaces. There was a lot of really meaty, meaningful conversation that I think was sparked from dongle Gate. But what people remember was not the meaningful conversation or people like Amanda writing measured takes about the situation. They remember the hateful mob, right,

They don't remember any of that meaningful conversation. So I believe that the kind of behavior like these coordinated attacks that we saw from Fortune actually drown out debate and discourse. They don't make us more thoughtful, They don't push us forward on all of the issues that we need to make progress on They keep us all polarized and enraged and frankly stuck having these silly circular debates about well he got fired, so she should get fired. That don't

help our serve anybody. You know, an online mob like Fortune getting involved in this situation didn't make it more clear. It just inflamed it and polarized it. And these situations already exist at tension points between things like race and gender and conversations around inclusion in tech that we know are kind of heated. You know, it's predated that Google employee who kind of became an right murder after he

wrote that memo blasting diversity in tech. You know, so like, these are conversations that are hot, that are that are hense and you know, as someone who works in combating miss and disinformation, this is a textbook tactic of bad actors to purposely inflame conversations that are rooted in these things that are legitimate tension and pressure points, and to hijack those conversations and to weaponize them so that pretty much it ensures we can never get anywhere on them.

And I think the sad part about all of this is that it sounds like from all public accounts that Adrian and the Fire Developer seems like people who were being used as proxies in a larger kind of identity culture war fight. In that hacker news back and forth that they had, they seemed like two people who were genuinely interested in coming to some kind of a conclusion with one another. But that is simply not possible when bad actors with an ax to grind hijack conversations and

are really invested in making those conversations as polarized as possible. Yeah, I was gonna say the comments section definitely wasn't looking to find a solution here. They were just looking to cause more chaos and uh, make things worse for everybody. In the Fire Developers post, there are people who are like, when he apologizes for his comments, don't apologize? How is that helpful if somebody has taken a look inward at their own behavior and feels the need to apologize. And

this goes for pretty much all conversations. If a celebrity is saying something on the Internet, there's always and they apologize for something, It's always going to be that one stand in the comments who's like Queen don't apologize like we love you, you you know what I mean, I certainly do. Another takeaway from this is that companies and institutions just didn't know how to deal with mobs back then, and frankly,

I don't think they've gotten much better today. You know, as fucked up as four Chune ship heads were here, my real beef is actually with play Haven and sent Grid. This was happening back in teen and maybe none of us, and by extension, the people who run companies didn't know how to handle it when a mob swarmed around one of their employees. You know, play Haven was ultimately the decider when deciding to fire that developer that Adria photographed.

They didn't have to do that, and they certainly did not have to let Adria take the fall for what

was entirely their decision and no one else's. And to that point, they didn't even if this was somebody that that deserved to be fired for reasons we don't know about, they didn't need to make it public and therefore point that mob towards Adria and then just sit back and say nothing as this mob pour her apart and she had to flee her home and locked down her entire online presence that she had been building forever, you know, totally completely Yeah, and looking at sin Grid, I'm sure

that sin Grid, as a big tech company, loved having a visible black woman in tech when Adrian was making their company look very inclusive and forward looking. But when that same employee was facing racialized harassment, they did not support her. And this is sort of a side note,

pet peeve of mine. People are so fond of saying things like, oh, support black women, champion black women, you know, support their leadership, without acknowledging that part of supporting the leadership of black women is also being honest about the climate that a lot of black women will be coming into. You know, if you're a visible black woman coming into a pretty white, pretty male field, you might have a

little bit of a tougher time. And ignoring it and pretending that is not the case is not actually supporting black women. And so I always say, don't just support black women, also work to create the conditions where black women can actually have an equal playing field and and thrive in the work that you want to support them in.

Um sen Grid also did not have to cave to these coordinated four chan mob attacks that were threatening their business via harassment and denial of service attacks, you know, fin Grid. If I had been running sin Grid, I would have said, you know, hey, people who are angry, we hear you, but our personnel decisions are our private business and we will handle this privately, even if they

felt like Adria deserved to be reprimanded. I think it's pretty rich that in their statement public statement on Facebook about her firing, that they say that, oh, we're against public shaming, and Adria publicly shamed these men and then said nothing as Adria was harassed publicly with rape and death threats and racial slurs, and then fire her in public, completely inflaming the very public shaming that she was going through.

It's just cowardly. And these are the exact same kind of tactics that would go on to fuel gamer Gate, you know, coordinating on message boards like Fortune to avenge some perceived grievance around women and feminists and marginalized people

claiming power in a tech space. You know, in the case of gamer Gate video games, I would argue that if we had done some real collective analysis after dongle Gate, we might not then have allowed bad actors have basically do the exact same thing a year later with gaybor Gate. I think things would have gone very differently had we had some kind of public accounting for what actually happened, who were the major players, and what decisions allowed those

tactics to be weaponized in that way. And I feel like today, you know, the targets may have changed, but the tactics are pretty much the same. You know, we still see the same kind of thing play out. A small handful of bad actors have pretty much used this playbook to get their way, and I think they're going

to continue doing it until we do something. For example, by now, I think that most folks listening know that just this last week, there was a violent attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, who was attacked with a hammer to the head while he was sleeping by an assailant who claimed that he wanted to break Nancy Pelosi's knees to send a message of fear to other Democrats, and per of the writings of the accused attacker online, it was gamer Gate that, you know, for lack of

a better word, radicalized him, and that he described gamer Gate as the turning point in his own trajectory politically. Now. I have a ton to say about this. We're gonna do a whole other episode later this week all about this, but I'll just say right now that gamer Gate provided this connection between the cultural and the political. You know, you're angry about women taking up space and technology and gaming, so you use these tactics to harass and attack them

and take away their power. And it really created a blueprint for how those same tactics could be weaponized politically as well, which I think is exactly what we're seeing

right now. And maybe if when all of this was happening with Adria Richards, if the takeaway hadn't been to just blame her for her own harassment and to think a little bit more clearly about how these same tactics might be perfected and abused and weaponized on larger and larger scales, targeting more and more people, maybe these gamer Gate tact would not be happening as part and parcel

of our current political and social landscape now. You know, things like people coordinating on Facebook pages to flood schools with calls about teachers who they suspect of being lgbt Q, or you know, they suspect of teaching something that they don't like in schools, which happened to a Georgia school teacher, Cecilia Lewis, who will talk about in a later episode

of this podcast. You know, that's definitely a tactic that I see that was really refined in dongle Gate and gamer Gate, and rather than taking some kind of action to have that not be a tactic that is so easily weaponized against people who are marginalized, now it's just a tactic that we all have to live with, whether you're marginalized or not. Now it's a Now, it's just part of our political and social landscape that unfortunately, I worry is not going to go away. In fact, is

going to become worse. It also happened recently to a woman named Nina janko Witz, who was the former head of the Biden administration's Disinformation When It's board, who eventually had to resign and go into hiding after a right wing smear campaign against her. You know, I think it doesn't take that many people to really disrupt and shut down institutions if those institutions do not know how to handle it when one of their employees is being attacked

in this coordinated way like these women have been. And it also is one of the reasons why, and I know this is perhaps a bit of an unpopular opinion why I think that it's not great when the internet rallies together to like call someone's boss to get them fired, even if I ostensibly agree with like, that person needs to be fired, right, I definitely have seen situations on the Internet where I'm like, oh, well, that person should

not hold the office that they hold. But I just don't think that the tactic of coordinating people to call someone's an employer or to disrupt their work for their life is a good one because companies are cowardly and we know that they will cave to mobs, and I just think it turns into an easily gamified numbers game that I know, the worst people on the Internet can definitely coordinate to get a blood of angry emails or tweets to give the impression that there is a broad

consensus where really there is none, you know, And I'm certainly not going to act like I don't find it cathartic when I'm being a video of a racist in public lose their jobs. I fucking love that ship. Who doesn't. Right, I'm not gonna say that, I I it's a good time. It's a good time. I'm not going to say that

I'm like above that. But I just know that that tactic is so easily weaponized by bad actors coordinating for bad and so I just think it's something that as good stewards of the Internet, we have to really be careful when we traffic and tactics like that, because it is a tactic that is well worn by bad actors, and I don't think it's getting us to a place that is better on the Internet. Internet Hate Machine is

a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, check out our website cool zone media dot com, or find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.