Is it? I don't know that I can get behind people based on who they choose to go after. I've always had trouble to find a mob that goes after people I dislike any less scary than any other.

And for the record, again, I do agree with the underlying sentiment and have no particular empathy towards payment services, of all things. I just find it very hard to see "gamers" rallying to do the whole online disruption thing and cheer rather than picture the very real instances of attacking individuals in the exact same way.

It's just kinda creepy, honestly. More so if the only line we have for this is how much we like the targets at any given point. I'm gonna spend a long time thinking about this one. So far a bad faith letter campaign and an online disruption campaign are both having an outsized influence on something that probably shouldn't be swayed so easily in any direction beyond official government regulations. Even if this ultimately falls on the side I agree with it's... not a good look and I come out of it more concerned than I was. And I was concerned about this scenario already.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That's the same sort of idiotic logic that leads to "both-sides"-ism.

Back in objective reality, the validity of an attack actually does depend strongly on whether the target actually deserves it.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 6 days ago

In no way is that the same as arguing that both sides are right or have a point. For one thing I'm actively agreeing with one side.

For another, who decides the "deserves it" part? Is it just you? Is it a popularity contest? Lots of the gamergate morons thought their targets deserved it, too, for a lot of the exact same reasons being provided here. Is being an acceptable target just a popularity contest? Are we all meant to be targeted at all times to just see who has more support? I mean, I'm assuming the religious prudes that used the same techniques to get those games banned in the first place thought they deserved it, too.

A bunch of leftists and feminists, particularly in Europe, are intensely anti-porn, to the point where they call themselves "abolitionists" and are proposing legislation with similar effects to this thing. I don't agree with them, like I don't agree with this instance, but I'm not ready to make my personality about starting a grassroots online sabotage movement towards them.

The "ends justify the means" argument is honestly chilling, because I realize in this context that yes, absolutely, that is how we operate. That's what's behind the "made a bad tweet, got in a plane, found out they were the main character on the Internet five hours later" stuff. If you get enough people to think you're a valid target that "deserves it" all bets are off.

Historically this has been particularly bad around gaming, where a lot of the audience is tech-savvy and heavily connected. And frankly, I think that space sucks and in many corners of the Internet gaming commentary revolves solely around half-understood outrage.

Look, there are downsides to doing things this way, is all I'm saying. I'm not particularly concerned about this instance, because clearly the thing that happened was wrong and in bad faith already and it's actually a good thing that the monopolistic impact of payment processors gets highlighted, because that's objectively worse. But seeing the process divorced from the moral outrage or disagreement still demonstrates some things about the Internet that I find profoundly problematic.