There Are No Girls on the Internet - DongleGate: The Online Harassment Campaign Against Adria Richards

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

Most people recall GamerGate, but fewer are familiar with DongleGate, the coordinated online harassment campaign against a Black woman tech worker named Adria Richards that happened in 2013. Bridget charts the story of Adria Richards and why it still matters today. The Hacker News post from the fired PlayHaven employee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 Amanda Blum's blog post about the fallout from DongleGate: https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is Bridget Todd, and you're listening to Internet Hate Machine. And I am here with my lovely producer, Sophie. Sophie, how are you? I'm doing well, Bridgett. you. I'm doing good and I am so excited for the first official episode of Internet Hey Machine because we're talking about a topic that I kind of think about a lot and that is the saga of Andrea Richards and I know that you know a little bit about this story. One of my favorite named topics on the internet, Donglegate, 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 Andrea as a person. Yeah, we're going to be using the word dongle a lot in this episode just to level set. Love that. One of the reasons I wanted to start with Andrea 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 are 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 sit back and say, she probably deserved it. So let's get into it. Let's start at the beginning. Who is Adrienne Richards? Well, Adrian Richards is a black woman who has been working as an engineer since about 1998. 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 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 10,000 subscribers in 2011, where she does these accessible tech tutorials mixed with kind of everyday, I guess, lifestyle content, like dating advice. And she does a lot of content where she is calling out examples of sexism in tech. 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.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 going to work at, it's not going to be all one gender. If you're a woman, it's very unlikely. So you're going to 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 just a quick little clip that I think speaks to a little bit about what happened with her. Side note, she's somebody we would totally be friends with. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. No question. So when I was doing research for this episode, I really kind of enjoyed going back in time and looking at Andrea'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 Andrea Richards? Andrea starts working as a developer evangelist, which is basically, if you don't know what that is, it's someone whose role it is to work with developers, help them solve problems, help them level up in their career.

She gets the job as a developer evangelist for the email vendor SendGrid. And in 2013, she goes to PyCon, 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 dong. Wow, brave. Such as just transported 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 a, 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 tech spaces I've been in where that is the love. It just, it is the level of humor that you kind of are asked to smile through and be like, ha ha, this isn't. 100%. I, Bridget, 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 mic or off mic, we've talked about this at all. But yeah, I definitely know exactly what you're talking about. in those scenes, especially when there's very few women around 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 Adriya 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 And I'm sure you do, having worked in tech, I know what she's talking about.

I didn't, she probably didn't want to have that vibe of, oh, she's crazy. She's oversensitive. Yeah. You know, 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. Yeah. Oh my God. She's so emotional.

She's in her feelings. Oh, why can't we just, why can't we just be ourselves? It's like, all right, dudes. 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 PaiCon. She goes on to tweet, can someone talk to these guys about their conduct? I'm in lightning

talks, top right, near stage, TANRoseback, hashtag Picon. And then she tweets the code of conduct for the conference, which in part says, quote, offensive jokes are not. appropriate for PyCon. So initially, Adri had said that she was wanted to ignore this, but in her blog, but I'm a girl, Adrienne explained what triggered her to send that tweet. She writes, I was going to let it go. It had been a long week, a long month. I've been on the road since mid-February attending and speaking at conferences.

Pycan 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 in every situation. But sometimes I want to go to a conference and be a geek. But like Popeye, I couldn't stand 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 flustered. And she writes, then it happened, the trigger. She's watching somebody on the main stage.

And he's talking about this young coders workshop that Adriya volunteered at. He was mentioning that the pie ladies auction had raised $10,000 in a single night for funds that were going to be used to support this young coders workshop initiative. I saw a photo on the main stage of a little girl who had been in the young coders workshop. I realized I had to do something because she would never have the chance to learn and love programming

because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so. So I remember reading this when the whole situation was going down and I was very moved by what she had written. I think it's fair. If you're listening to this and thinking, that seems a little overdone. Fine, sure. But I guess I'm saying that I understand where she's sort of coming from when she wrote that.

Yeah, I mean, like, I definitely have empathy 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 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 I'm like, okay, you know, 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 10 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 a table and, you know, he made some crass long and about it not, like, oh, it doesn't have pubic hair, just like I like it. But because this happened in a hallway, I know, that joke is really not great. But 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 shit that you are willing to smile through or giggle through or brush off to the point where you just can't anymore. So the conference staff talked to the guys who end up being developers who made the joke. For their part, it sounds like these guys handled it very well.

Pi-Con put out a statement saying, quote, an incident occurred involving some inappropriate comments made during a crowded plenary session. Per the state of guidelines for the attendees and staff, the issue was reported to PaiCon 2013 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 Pekon 2013.

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 seem like they legitimately felt bad. They apologized. Highcon staff. It sounds like they acted quickly and it was resolved. It truly could have been there.

And honestly, throughout the entire situation, Atria 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 for them beyond just being talked to about appropriate conduct by the PaiCon 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 the time replace. Do better. That's 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 yeah, certainly I've said things where it comes out of my mouth and boy, I wish it hadn't, you know? For sure, as somebody who's on a lot of podcasts, can relate. Can relate. Yeah, so 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 Playhaven, which was a sponsor for PyCon the event. And this incident led to one, but not both of the men being fired. Playhaven CEO Andy Yang acknowledged the firing, writing, quote, Playhaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at Pycon. And as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior,

we conducted a thorough investigation. The result 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 did not happen. But, you know, and you might be asking yourself, well, Adriya photographed and pointed out two men who worked at Playhaven who were having this inappropriate conversation. So you might be asking, why was only one man fired and not the other?

Playhaven went on to say in their statement that they would not comment on the all the factors that contributed to our parting ways with the one developer. So it's not totally clear, you know, what is actually happening if the decision was entirely about what happened at PaiCon or if something else contributed to it. Right. This could have been a noted behavior from this person or some other reason. Yeah, that's interesting. And kind of, I would say CEO Andy Yang actually taking out.

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 happened. What happened? I'm bummed. Yeah. It's not great. And honestly, like, 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 one more reason why we should take that action. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite, unhumor me with Robert Smygle and friends. and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel,

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So after Adriya's tweet, everyone kind of starts responding to what happened. Now, I absolutely do not think that Adriya 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, just to be really clear, not all the people who were not on Adria side are men. I saw a lot of women weighing in and saying that they felt like Andrea was making it harder for them as women in tech by being so oversensitive or not just talking directly to the men. Right?

So 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 and expressing their take on it. The fired developer posted on Hacker News, and I have to say his post, which is still up, is actually pretty civil. In my opinion, I do not think that the fired developer was interested or intended to whip up a hate mob around Adriette. 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 Adriya feel. She had every right to report me to staff and I defend her position, which I think is like pretty gracious. That's decent. Yeah. He also clarified her characterization of part of his comments. He says, while I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece of hardware that identified as a male, no sexual jokes were made about forking. 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 presenters' projects. A friend said, I would fork that guy's repo. The sexual context was applied by Andrea, 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 sexual or not. I will say that with jokes oftentimes, you know, 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 if whether, I don't know what he's, I can't read into what he's saying. Sure. Yeah, what do you think? I'm like, forking dongle if the shoe fits. But, but sure, sir. Yeah, it's like, it's hard. It's hard. And what's funny is that after what I'm

sure was like a well-intentioned clarification. Of course, people on the internet ran with that and they were like, Andrea lied about what he said. And it's like, well, I could, even if, even if he is correct and she misrepresented or 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 dongles. 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 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 writes, Adria has an audience and is a successful person of the media. Just check out her webpage, linked in her Twitter account. Her 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. Well, sure. I looked up Andrea 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 going to 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 and malign.

For sure. 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 going to 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. 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, she's skilled at using

media. She's a, you know, she's a YouTuber. She's someone who, like, has a name for herself and is 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 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 in what he said, it just comes off very, well, she's fake news and 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 this fired 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. oh, she was trying to use him and what he said to bolster her own career and to boost her own profile. And the conversation around how Adrienne Richards handled this was very much steeped in. She was really calculated. And she was doing this because she thought it was going to empower her and boost her own profile.

And it was very self-motivated. I honestly think she just tweeted it and didn't think much of it. and it blew up on her base, if I'm being honest, is 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 clout 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 Hacker News, 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 agreed 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 the, 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. No, 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 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, PaiCon updated its attendee procedure for handling harassment to encourage conference attendees to report behavior privately and not to tweet about them publicly like Andrea did. And so their new procedures say public shaming can be countered. to building a strong community. PyCon does not condone nor participate in such actions out of respect. I mean, I feel like 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, 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 Adriah. She's consistently getting the finger pointed at her. Yeah, and dare I say public shaming by PyCon maybe a little bit? I mean, I want to get into that, but absolutely. And it's so funny that you bring up this idea of how people attending a conference should handle conflict. I am a long-time political organizer.

I go to a lot of 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. 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 deport some people? 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 code 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 as 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 definitely are somebody who spends more time at conferences than I do. Unfortunately.

I was like, I was like, I follow you on social media. And if you don't follow Bridget, fall, Bridget. But yeah, that's weird. Anytime somebody's like, let's do this behind closed doors, I'm like, oh, Red Flagland. 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 Andrea should not have taken the picture of these guys and tweeted it, Adrian 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 me how Playhaven just allowed Andrea to become this very public scapegoat for their hiring and firing decisions. They didn't speak up and say, hey, Andrea doesn't work at Playhaven and had no, you know, did not. force our hand, we made this decision. It's just interesting to me how they didn't take the flack 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 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 Playhaven 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 going to handle it. None of this would have happened. You know, if people are mad that this developer was fired, they should be mad at Playhaven, not Adriya.

But Andrea is 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 Playhaven. And it seems like people were not just angry about the firing of this one developer. What they were angry about is A. Javier 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 they are 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 caused some serious changes to our culture, to our society, and to our lives. We focus on some that are affected more than others, and we give back.

Our goal is to encourage men to speak out, to be men, to not fear oppression, and to 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. It's so obvious like what they're pissed about. Oh, God.

Cry, cry, cry. Oh, God, that was great. Man, read the room, my guy. Yeah, and it's 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 and society should work. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

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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 Adrienne Richards. So after the developer gets fired, the internet, or more specifically, Fortune, really turned on Adriya and her employer, SendGrid. Andrea, I have to say, is horribly, horribly harassed. Her website gets a DOS attack, which is, if you don't know what that is, it's a denial of service attack where essentially attackers flood a website with more traffic than it can handle to shut it down. What happened to Andrea wasn't just people tweeting that they disagreed with her, nor was it just a few mean tweets or mean comments on, line, which side note, funnily enough, a lot of the garden variety mean tweets directed at Andrea are still up as we speak. You know, tweets like, quote, horror costs 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 cunt. Or good job at being a picture book feminist bitch. Or why are you such a cunt? 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 Andrea Richards got 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 were telling her in mass that she deserved to die by suicide. They doxed 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 doxing her.

That's a... Yeah. Jesus Christ. That's so scary stuff. That's so scary. Yeah, it's terrifying. Foshan circulates a change.org petition calling for Adriya to be fired from Singrid. Meanwhile, a paceman document claims that Anonymous has SinGrid's client list and that they're harassing their customers and will continue to do so if they don't fire her. Here's a bit from that post.

They say, Adrire Richards engaged in malicious conduct to destroy another individual's professional career due to what she perceived as an affront to her. 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 mind's 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, doxing 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, etc. If some of the more talented members of Anonymous take interest into this, every employee of SendGrid 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 major tech company. So the attacks on SendGrid worsen. Sendgrid acknowledged 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 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 Sendgrid did. Singrid eventually caved to this mob and fired Adria. And they fired her publicly. Cowards. Fucking coward shit. It's so cowardly. And so they write it on Facebook, effective immediately, Singrid has terminated the employment of Adrian 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 Singrid, its employees and our customers. A few hours later, Sengrid CEO Jim Franklin expanded on the company's reasons for firing Andrea, writing, Syngrid supports the right to report an 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 crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders and bystanders was not the appropriate way to handle this situation. And the aftermath of all of this was that Adriya 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-induced.

engineer will talk so much about things like free speech, free speech. But they almost never talk about the fact that somebody like Adriah, 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 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 are silenced when they become the targets of harassment campaigns like Adriya was. So that's basically what happened with Adrienne 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 Adrian Richards's situation really ushered in this new understanding of situations that are complicated and involving 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, bro. Try that one. See it. Go ahead. Yeah. It's a completely reductive and unhelpful thing that I think that, Donglegate really ushered in. You know, the big rallying cry in Donglegate was that because the Playhaven developer was fired,

that Adriette 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 helpful 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 this situation is a great example because even though Donglegate 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 Adrienne's actions. One of them, Amanda Blum, who was a developer who worked with Andrea IRL when she invited Andrea to speak at a conference that she organized. She writes in her blog post about how she did not have a great interaction with Adriya. She's 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 piece, which we'll 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 Andrea 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 if 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 Donglegate. 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 4chan, 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 or serve anybody. You know, an online mob like Fortuna 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 and tech that we know are kind of heated. You know, it's predated that Google employee who kind of became an alt-right martyr after he wrote that memo blasting, diversity, in tech, you know? So, like, these are conversations that are hot, that are, that are tense. And, you know, as someone who works in combating myths 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 same, sad part about all of this is that it sounds like from all public accounts that Adria 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 conclusion with one another. But that is simply not possible when bad actors,

with an axe to grind, hijack conversations and are really invested in making those conversations as polarized as possible. Yeah, I was going to say the comments section definitely wasn't looking to find a solution here. They were just looking to cause more chaos and 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 of If a celebrity is saying something on the internet,

and they apologize for something, there's always going to be that one stand in the comments who's like, Queen, don't apologize. Like, we love 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 Fortune shith. were here, my real beef is actually with Playhaven and SendGrid. This was happening back in 2013 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, Playhaven was ultimately the decider in deciding to fire that developer that Andrea photographed.

They didn't have to do that. And they certainly did not have to let Andrea take the fall for what was entirely their decision and no one else's. And to that point, 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 Andrea. And then just sit back and say nothing as this mob tore her apart as she had to flee her home and lock down her entire online presence that she had been building forever, you know? Totally, completely. Yeah. And looking at Syngrid, I'm sure that Syngrid, as a big tech company, loved having a visible black woman in tech when Adriya 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. 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 thrive in the work that you want to support them in. Sendgrid also did not have to cave to these coordinated 4chan mob attacks that were threatening their business via harassment and denial of service attacks. You know, Sengrid, if I had been running Syngrid, 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 Andrea deserved to be reprimanded, I think it's a lot of. pretty rich that in their statement, public statement on Facebook about her firing, that they say that, oh, we're against public shaming and Adriya 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 Gamergate, 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 Gamergate,

video games. I would argue that if we had done some real collective analysis after Danglegate, we might not then have allowed bad actors to basically do the exact same thing a year later with Gamergate. 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 the writings of the accused attacker online, it was Gamergate that, you know, for lack of a better word, radicalized him and that he described Gamergate as the turning point in his own trajectory, politically. Now, I have a ton to say about this,

we're going to do a whole other episode later this week all about this. But I'll just say right now that GamerGate provided this connection between the cultural and the political. You know, you're angry about women taking up space in 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 Adrian 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 Gamergate tactics 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 LGBTQ or, you know, they suspect. of teaching something that they don't like in schools, which happened to a Georgia schoolteacher 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 Donglegate and Gamergate 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 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 Jankowitz, who was the former head of the Biden administration's disinformation governance 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 or 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 flood of angry emails or tweets to give the impression that there is a broad consensus where really there is none. And I'm certainly not going to act like I don't find it cathartic when I'm seeing a video of a racist in public lose their jobs. I fucking love that shit. Who does it? Right? I'm not going to say that 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 in 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. When more podcasts from CoolZone Media, check out our website, coolzonemedia.com, or find us on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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