SXSW has apologized for cancelling two panels designated to address GamerGate, and has also announced a new day-long summit to address online harassment amidst backlash from media corporations and social media.
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Earlier this week, Buzzfeed and Vox Media informed SXSW they would withdraw from the organization’s annual festival in March 2016 if SXSW did not reverse its decision to cancel two panels related to the GamerGate controversy.
SXSW said that the Saturday March 12 “Online Harassment Summit” could feature participants from the two previously planned panels, including Katherine Cross and Caroline Sinders from the session “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games”.
“Earlier this week we made a mistake”, SXSW wrote in a blog post. “Given the nature of online harassment, we will continue to work closely with the authorities and safety experts while planning for SXSW 2016”. It is clear that online harassment is a problem that requires more than two panel discussions to address. It’s not clear how this will translate into the larger summit, and developer Randi Harper – one of the anti-harassment panelists – expressed frustration with the decision to fold it into the day-long event instead of simply re-adding it separately. What followed then were violent threats made against women who were especially vocal against harassing behavior.
It’s unclear how the online harassment panelists and the Gamergate panelists will interact. And Clark, the congresswoman, sent a letter to conference director Hugh Forrest, encouraging him to “stand behind” victims of online violence by reinstating the anti-harassment session. “It is a menace that has often resulted in real-world violence, the spread of discrimination, increased mental health issues, and self-inflicted physical harm”. I am grateful to the thousands of people who spoke out against this ill-advised decision.
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The panels were dropped thanks to Gamergate, an online movement that officially promotes ethics in video-game journalism but is better-known for its vicious online trolling and harassment of its opponents.
