mozilla and firefox careen into a ditch

So Mozilla’s The Open Standard published a pro-GamerGate op-ed on Tuesday and has been on a “gamergate is a legit issue with facts on both sides” rampage on Twitter.

Of course, the very idea that there are “facts” on the GamerGate side other than having been set up to harass and force women out of gaming and tech is laughable. As those of us with sanity keep pointing out, we have the goddamn chat logs, this is proven.

But then they went reaching out to the stalker ex-boyfriend with a restraining order to write for them, causing the GamerGate misogynist crowd to come cheering in en masse.

Now, I’d been in this already, but bringing in the stalker ex-boyfriend with a restraining order?! Really?! So I threw that in their collective face, and apparently, that was a little too embarrassing or inconvenient or something:

But despite that, they’re sticking to their facts-on-both-sides legitimisation of the whole misogynist movement, talking about encouraging “active participation.” The official Firefox account was spending a lot of time on it in particular. (Here’s an image if the tweet doesn’t load.)

so, hey, @firefox officially thanked each of these Gamergaters for their "active participation" in GG earlier today! pic.twitter.com/1wrW9d9mSt

— Aja Romano (@ajaromano) November 5, 2014

So yeah, that’s awesome, by which I mean horrible. Given the degree of Brogrammer Rampage I’ve been hearing secondhand out of Mozilla dev offices lately – from guys, I might add – I can’t say I’m entirely shocked. Disappointed that it’s so official, yes, but not shocked.

Still, it’s a bit of a kick to the face. Guess I’ll be adding “delete Firefox from Lair computers” to my todo list today.

---

eta: Oh look, here’s a writeup of previous Mozilla tacit support of GamerGate.

ps: It was a pretty quick explosion, I have to say. Blogosphere events last a few days; Tumblr ones do, too. Twitter, though – this was up and down in a few hours. I went up to double-digit interaction updates per refresh in about 10 minutes, sat there for a while just trying to keep up, then back down to a more normal one or two an hour by evening. Very strange to see happening. I’ve had stuff go viral before on Tumblr – far larger than this – but this felt really ephemeral in ways those didn’t. Interesting.

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4chan Strangler Last Believed to be in Portland, Oregon

The 4chan Strangler who murdered a woman and posted pictures (and participated in discussion) on 4chan after the killing is still on the loose. THIS IS A REAL STORY, NOT A JOKE. It is believed the suspect's name is David Kalac. The car he is believed to have stolen was last seen in Portland, Oregon.

BE WARNED THAT IN RESPONSE TO MOD DELETIONS, 4CHANNERS ARE REPOSTING THE PHOTOS ON OTHER SITES. Some of these sites are linked in the 4chan reddit. Repost sites include imgur (multiple times), imcute.yt, and others. So far, they are not on large sites like tumblr or twitter, tho' there have been attempted reposts on reddit which got people banned.

There have also been reposts of the entire thread. This thread is violently misogynistic in both visual and text content. If you take any extra steps in the event of 4chan misogynist upsurges (blocking images, etc), take them now.