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The Internet Of Garbage
Sarah Jeong, a journalist trained as a lawyer at Harvard Law School, discusses the problem of “online harassment,” with various accounts of harassment that have made their way into mainstream media, as well as lesser-known ones. The Internet of Garbageconsiders why and how to recalibrate this ongoing project of garbage-removal from content platforms and social media networks. It’s not as simple as policing offensive material and hitting the delete button online: Jeong tackles precarious issues like free speech, behavior vs. content, doxing and SPAM.
She writes, “Content platforms and social media networks do not have the power to restrain stalkers, end intimate partner violence, eliminate child abuse, or stop street harassment. But they can cultivate better interactions and better discourse, through thoughtful architecture, active moderation and community management.”
So how do we filter content from garbage? Read on.Sarah Jeong writes about technology, policy and law with bylines at Forbes, The Verge, The Guardian, Slate and WIRED.
She writes, “Content platforms and social media networks do not have the power to restrain stalkers, end intimate partner violence, eliminate child abuse, or stop street harassment. But they can cultivate better interactions and better discourse, through thoughtful architecture, active moderation and community management.”
So how do we filter content from garbage? Read on.Sarah Jeong writes about technology, policy and law with bylines at Forbes, The Verge, The Guardian, Slate and WIRED.
Kindle Edition
First published July 15, 2015
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About the author
Sarah Jeong
3 books28 followersSarah Jeong is a journalist who was trained as a lawyer. She is a contributing editor at Vice Motherboard who writes about technology, policy, and law. She is the author of The Internet of Garbage, and has bylines at The Verge, Forbes, The Guardian, Slate, and WIRED. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2014. As a law student, she edited the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, and worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She is a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale for 2016, and also currently a fellow at the Internet Law & Policy Foundry.
In 2015, she covered the Silk Road trial for Forbes.
(from http://sarahjeong.net/about/)
In 2015, she covered the Silk Road trial for Forbes.
(from http://sarahjeong.net/about/)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
April 18, 2017
Huh, wow. I was kind of bracing for this to be some remedial Twitter Harassment 098 material, but it's definitely not that.
Jeong is reaching toward a grand unified theory of Unwanted Content, of which harassment is only one aspect. I don't think she's there yet. But she's the only person I've seen even start that project, so shout-out for that. Also, there was a lot of interesting history and case law in here that I wasn't aware of.
Jeong is reaching toward a grand unified theory of Unwanted Content, of which harassment is only one aspect. I don't think she's there yet. But she's the only person I've seen even start that project, so shout-out for that. Also, there was a lot of interesting history and case law in here that I wasn't aware of.
non-fiction-to-read
October 30, 2015$6.42 for a 91-page essay is a little excessive, I think
January 17, 2021
a short book about an important topic!
my key takeaways:
1) two kinds of garbage: spam and harassment. business spam used to be as much of a free speech concern as harassment is today!
2) harassment is more about behavior as it is about content. this framing also shapes how anti-harassment tools can be built (esp when so much discussion is about algorithms missing context or cultural nuances in "hate speech")
3) there are technical ways to discourage harassing behavior, such as adding friction to mass-mailing, doxxing, and other common behaviors.
4) garbage makes the internet unusable and blocks healthy speech. free speech is important, and content moderation done carefully, but there's no way to truly enable all speech.
i did have some disagreements with jeong. for example, i dislike framing tech giants as public utilities, because they remain unaccountable and non-transparent. rather than trying to regulate them as utilities, i'm more interested in modes for incentivizing competition. she says social networks remain a natural monopoly, but i'm not sure (e.g. signal vs. whatsapp vs. wechat vs. line).
but i'm trying to rate books more in context of how additive they are to my existing frameworks/understanding, and i really appreciated it in the context of recent deplatforming debates.
my key takeaways:
1) two kinds of garbage: spam and harassment. business spam used to be as much of a free speech concern as harassment is today!
2) harassment is more about behavior as it is about content. this framing also shapes how anti-harassment tools can be built (esp when so much discussion is about algorithms missing context or cultural nuances in "hate speech")
3) there are technical ways to discourage harassing behavior, such as adding friction to mass-mailing, doxxing, and other common behaviors.
4) garbage makes the internet unusable and blocks healthy speech. free speech is important, and content moderation done carefully, but there's no way to truly enable all speech.
i did have some disagreements with jeong. for example, i dislike framing tech giants as public utilities, because they remain unaccountable and non-transparent. rather than trying to regulate them as utilities, i'm more interested in modes for incentivizing competition. she says social networks remain a natural monopoly, but i'm not sure (e.g. signal vs. whatsapp vs. wechat vs. line).
but i'm trying to rate books more in context of how additive they are to my existing frameworks/understanding, and i really appreciated it in the context of recent deplatforming debates.
September 5, 2018
1/5 - Reads like a bad Wikipedia entry.
What essentially is a 10page lesson on how the internet works and 60 page cry about online harassment is the summation of Sarah Jeong's 2015 book 'The internet of garbage' (the name is suppossed to be a joke/play on the name 'The Internet of Things', which inself is a joke amongst the tech literate for being a seriously dumb down name for what it truely intales - clearly Sarah didnt pick up on this irony).
The main criticism i have towards this work, is the misrepresentation (purposefully) of the harassment online being a constant pressence on the interet ; which in truth, it only became a reality when people like Sarah started using the internet to write their opinion peices on why "white people should just all die" "and #cancelwhitepeople" - just to take a small exerpt from the drudge of extreme racist views found on her twitter page, which people started bombrading with so called "online harassment".
This book is far from genuine, its a subversion of reality made to convince you of her ill made points and identity politics
DONT READ THIS GARBAGE expecting a good non-fiction read, this is as coherent as any of Sarah's old tweets (which she for some reason either deleted or doesnt refference to anymore)
What essentially is a 10page lesson on how the internet works and 60 page cry about online harassment is the summation of Sarah Jeong's 2015 book 'The internet of garbage' (the name is suppossed to be a joke/play on the name 'The Internet of Things', which inself is a joke amongst the tech literate for being a seriously dumb down name for what it truely intales - clearly Sarah didnt pick up on this irony).
The main criticism i have towards this work, is the misrepresentation (purposefully) of the harassment online being a constant pressence on the interet ; which in truth, it only became a reality when people like Sarah started using the internet to write their opinion peices on why "white people should just all die" "and #cancelwhitepeople" - just to take a small exerpt from the drudge of extreme racist views found on her twitter page, which people started bombrading with so called "online harassment".
This book is far from genuine, its a subversion of reality made to convince you of her ill made points and identity politics
DONT READ THIS GARBAGE expecting a good non-fiction read, this is as coherent as any of Sarah's old tweets (which she for some reason either deleted or doesnt refference to anymore)
October 14, 2019
I wrote the book with a tone of optimism I did not feel even at the time, hoping that by reaching the well-meaning policy teams across Silicon Valley, I might be able to spark change for the better.
Required reading if you work in (or with) a policy team.
November 8, 2017
Long form essay that looks at the history of online abuse and possible ways to counter it. The take away for me was that while it very quickly became necessary to do something about spam/mass mailings during the internet's early development, the fact that most programmers weren't the target of harassment meant they never considered the problem and so efforts to do something about harassment now lag far behind and always seem inadequate because they're not built into the system.
December 28, 2015
This is a short read, and a lot of it will not be new to people who have been following the issues around online harassment. But it's a good thorough summary of the issues for anyone who wants to catch up, and I thought there were two particular elements of the book that I thought were particularly valuable:
* First, Jeong makes the excellent point that harassing activity on the internet has two components: content and behavior. Most of our attempts to control harassment currently focus on content - deleting or blocking objectionable posts - but to really effectively combat harassment, we need to also focus on behavior. The author provides some excellent examples of how the online game League of Legends has effectively addressed harassing behavior.
* Second, the comparison of efforts to fight spam with efforts to fight harassment were interesting in terms of looking at how the internet currently handles two different types of "garbage" content. It's particularly interesting to recall that many of the same types of "free speech" worries that we see raised about anti-harassment efforts now were raised about attempts to control spam in the past. (And, the free speech concerns aren't entirely unwarranted - one of the problems with spam control is how hard it can make it to receive bulk communications that you actually want to receive.)
I also really appreciated that the Kindle (and I presume other e-book editions) are chock full of hyperlinks to relevant content on the internet. In a book about the internet, it's great to have instant access to so much of the primary source material, and I really appreciate that the author and the publisher went to the effort to include that.
* First, Jeong makes the excellent point that harassing activity on the internet has two components: content and behavior. Most of our attempts to control harassment currently focus on content - deleting or blocking objectionable posts - but to really effectively combat harassment, we need to also focus on behavior. The author provides some excellent examples of how the online game League of Legends has effectively addressed harassing behavior.
* Second, the comparison of efforts to fight spam with efforts to fight harassment were interesting in terms of looking at how the internet currently handles two different types of "garbage" content. It's particularly interesting to recall that many of the same types of "free speech" worries that we see raised about anti-harassment efforts now were raised about attempts to control spam in the past. (And, the free speech concerns aren't entirely unwarranted - one of the problems with spam control is how hard it can make it to receive bulk communications that you actually want to receive.)
I also really appreciated that the Kindle (and I presume other e-book editions) are chock full of hyperlinks to relevant content on the internet. In a book about the internet, it's great to have instant access to so much of the primary source material, and I really appreciate that the author and the publisher went to the effort to include that.
March 3, 2016
EVERYBODY NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK. ITS 90 PAGES JUST DO IT OK
November 25, 2020
If you're looking for a short excerpt (the book was 92 pages on a Kindle) that provides insight on the history of harassment moderation in consumer technology products, you'll definitely enjoy this. Loved the way that Jeong used the Cindy Garcia case to narrate the thesis of the piece.
December 3, 2016
Vital reading whether you're in tech, or a user of the internet. This book outlines the stakes, the context, and some ideas of where to go regarding harassment and other garbage on the internet. Super great, and manages to stay engaging and clear despite delving into complex legal issues. Loved this book.
July 21, 2015
Concise and persuasive. None of this will be news to anyone who follows the conversation about women in tech, but Jeong's framework for addressing garbage, and especially harassment, online is illuminating.
August 22, 2015
A very good introduction to the subject of online harassment, and what to do about it.
July 19, 2020
2018 book is getting dated
It is a good treatise, but it is overdue for a second edition, especially in light of Facebook and Twitter taking on false political statements in 2020.
It is a good treatise, but it is overdue for a second edition, especially in light of Facebook and Twitter taking on false political statements in 2020.
September 22, 2018
I was drawn to this short book after the whole fiasco of Sarah Jeong's addition to the New York Times.
This book identifies what is more or less termed as Garbage on the Internet. Garbage is more or less defined here as SPAM, trolling, hate speech, doxing and harassment among other related actions. From this identification, there are real world examples presented of how such actions have been applied to individuals, mostly women, and how those actions were handled. The handling of such being very poor from the platforms that were being used as vehicles to relay the actions, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.
A takeaway I have from this is how the author assesses possibly the best way to handle this garbage which is essentially how Riot Games did it with League of Legends. Rather than engaging contractors and outsource a ticketing system to call centres in the Philippines is a more detached stance on the issue, which reflects in the apparent lack of seriousness these platforms seems to take with this issue. Riot, in contrast, engaged professionals to analyze these behaviours and work with developers to better handle the in-game issues. An example, making the chat function opt-in as well as various other "architecture tweaks and a user-run system of user accountability, designed by a dedicated team." I completely agree with the author as this being the best way to handle these serious issues.
Overall, I found this short book to be very well presented and the topic adequately discussed with very good insights. The writing style is journalistic and given that this is what the author is, a journalist, I can say it is very much on point.
I would recommend this as required reading to anyone who wants to learn more about issues of spam, harassment and various other "garbage" issues that can happen to you while engaging on the Internet.
This book identifies what is more or less termed as Garbage on the Internet. Garbage is more or less defined here as SPAM, trolling, hate speech, doxing and harassment among other related actions. From this identification, there are real world examples presented of how such actions have been applied to individuals, mostly women, and how those actions were handled. The handling of such being very poor from the platforms that were being used as vehicles to relay the actions, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.
A takeaway I have from this is how the author assesses possibly the best way to handle this garbage which is essentially how Riot Games did it with League of Legends. Rather than engaging contractors and outsource a ticketing system to call centres in the Philippines is a more detached stance on the issue, which reflects in the apparent lack of seriousness these platforms seems to take with this issue. Riot, in contrast, engaged professionals to analyze these behaviours and work with developers to better handle the in-game issues. An example, making the chat function opt-in as well as various other "architecture tweaks and a user-run system of user accountability, designed by a dedicated team." I completely agree with the author as this being the best way to handle these serious issues.
Overall, I found this short book to be very well presented and the topic adequately discussed with very good insights. The writing style is journalistic and given that this is what the author is, a journalist, I can say it is very much on point.
I would recommend this as required reading to anyone who wants to learn more about issues of spam, harassment and various other "garbage" issues that can happen to you while engaging on the Internet.
September 16, 2018
Great look at how the internet is largely "garbage" - unwanted content. Like how the stock market is 99% quants doing sub-millisecond trades, the internet is mostly garbage - spam, misinformation, trolling, harassment. Jeong focuses mostly on harassment because in 2015 it was the most relevant and least discussed kind of garbage (she'd be writing about misinformation if she revised it now).
Really good study of harassment online. She treats it as a content problem. Examines the history of anti-spam, and how it won technological battles (spam filtering) and ideological battles (anti-spam used to be considered a violation of free speech). Draws analogies between spam and harassment and looks at their differences.
Concludes that harassment is a platform issue in a similar way to spam, and it needs to be treated as such. Simple AI filters aren't enough (thanks Twitter), nor are underpaid staff working through mountains of tickets (thanks Facebook). Provides examples of thoughtful interventions you can use to reduce harassment (i.e. League of Legend's Tribunal system or Gawker blocking gifs in their whistleblower mailbox). Good read. Would be introductory material if I was teaching a course on Your Responsibilities As A Programmer.
It's also short and to-the-point. You could read it over an afternoon, and if you're designing a platform for thousands of users, you should.
Really good study of harassment online. She treats it as a content problem. Examines the history of anti-spam, and how it won technological battles (spam filtering) and ideological battles (anti-spam used to be considered a violation of free speech). Draws analogies between spam and harassment and looks at their differences.
Concludes that harassment is a platform issue in a similar way to spam, and it needs to be treated as such. Simple AI filters aren't enough (thanks Twitter), nor are underpaid staff working through mountains of tickets (thanks Facebook). Provides examples of thoughtful interventions you can use to reduce harassment (i.e. League of Legend's Tribunal system or Gawker blocking gifs in their whistleblower mailbox). Good read. Would be introductory material if I was teaching a course on Your Responsibilities As A Programmer.
It's also short and to-the-point. You could read it over an afternoon, and if you're designing a platform for thousands of users, you should.
December 24, 2018
Sarah Jeong is a knowledgeable journalist with a thorough grounding of the intersection of US law and the Internet. This book, then, is an unsurprisingly insightful look into harassment. Parts of it are likely to be familiar to most people who have been on the Internet a while; but important subtleties show up.
For example, one thing that many people worry about "harassment mobs" involves large crowds of people who briefly amplify attacks (often in very short lived but intense bursts, as illustrated in Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed). Trying to deal with this raises fundamental issues of free speech and computer system architecture; but Jeong points out that people could focus on those that *launch* the mob. These will often be conducting long-running organized stalking campaigns against an individual; this sort of behavior can be considered alongside the content of harassment.
I felt the book sagged a little in the middle, but this is a short book (I think my copy, currently available for free on the Verge, is 110 pages or so). I think everybody who is involved with discussion about online content and communities on the Internet would benefit from looking this over (even as there are things that I think I disagree with her about).
For example, one thing that many people worry about "harassment mobs" involves large crowds of people who briefly amplify attacks (often in very short lived but intense bursts, as illustrated in Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed). Trying to deal with this raises fundamental issues of free speech and computer system architecture; but Jeong points out that people could focus on those that *launch* the mob. These will often be conducting long-running organized stalking campaigns against an individual; this sort of behavior can be considered alongside the content of harassment.
I felt the book sagged a little in the middle, but this is a short book (I think my copy, currently available for free on the Verge, is 110 pages or so). I think everybody who is involved with discussion about online content and communities on the Internet would benefit from looking this over (even as there are things that I think I disagree with her about).
September 8, 2018
This was an easy read, with relatively complex ideas explained simply. It’s about online harassment and the way big (and small) internet companies deal with it. There are examples of actual cases and the impact of harassment on the individuals concerned. The reasons why harassment of women is more common than that of men is also discussed in detail.
As with any writing about the web, it feels slightly out of date already (a fact that author acknowledges in the foreword) but the content is interesting and often still relevant. The author discusses the success that companies have had tackling spam and copyright infringement, contrasting this against their apparent failure to tackle harassment.
It’s definitely an interesting read, but I couldn’t help feeling that the argument (convincing as it is) could have been made more succinctly. Whilst it isn’t a long book by any means, it is perhaps longer than it needs to be.
As with any writing about the web, it feels slightly out of date already (a fact that author acknowledges in the foreword) but the content is interesting and often still relevant. The author discusses the success that companies have had tackling spam and copyright infringement, contrasting this against their apparent failure to tackle harassment.
It’s definitely an interesting read, but I couldn’t help feeling that the argument (convincing as it is) could have been made more succinctly. Whilst it isn’t a long book by any means, it is perhaps longer than it needs to be.
March 7, 2020
A very quick but informative read, with lots of practical understanding of the climate of the contemporary internet and suggestions for how to deal with it. Jeong keys in on some of the major issues of our day in terms of harassment and content moderation, and what dealing with those problems means for the internet, for our nations, and for people as a whole. At the center of Jeong's assessment is the law, sure, but also a real hope in people as agents of change and a developing force in the future and impact of the internet. That this narrative exists in spite of or in opposition to the stories of hate and defamation that she details at the story's start is a testament to her belief in the power of human beings to overcome their worst tendencies. I'm not sure I agree, but it's nice to have someone share some hope every once in a while.
August 31, 2018
Note: This ebook is available for free at theverge.com.
The Internet is basically filled with content you don't want. Spam, shitposts, off topic posts.... Industries and armies of content teams have sprung up to deal with this. One of the most pressing of all garbage is harassment and hate speech, and which is given prominent depth in this book. Jeong, with her academic and professional credentials, knows what she's talking about and discusses such a heavy topic with ease of word and understandable content. This book will help you understand the dark side to our hyperconnected world, and our dark future lead by god-emperor tech giants.
Must read for anyone who wants to understand how the Internet filters out - or fails to - the crap it has.
The Internet is basically filled with content you don't want. Spam, shitposts, off topic posts.... Industries and armies of content teams have sprung up to deal with this. One of the most pressing of all garbage is harassment and hate speech, and which is given prominent depth in this book. Jeong, with her academic and professional credentials, knows what she's talking about and discusses such a heavy topic with ease of word and understandable content. This book will help you understand the dark side to our hyperconnected world, and our dark future lead by god-emperor tech giants.
Must read for anyone who wants to understand how the Internet filters out - or fails to - the crap it has.
May 29, 2019
A worthwhile primer on harassment on the internet and the failings of the big players to do something useful about it.
I appreciate that she doesn't offer magical solutions that would just fix it, but (and this is perhaps because I've been vaguely attentive to the problem space) I would have liked more in depth discussion of possible solutions. Maybe case studies of online communities that have successfully navigated this issue. (Though I fear, that might simply not exist)
I think for folks who are thinking about harassment and more generally the suck factor of social media this is required 101 reading.
I appreciate that she doesn't offer magical solutions that would just fix it, but (and this is perhaps because I've been vaguely attentive to the problem space) I would have liked more in depth discussion of possible solutions. Maybe case studies of online communities that have successfully navigated this issue. (Though I fear, that might simply not exist)
I think for folks who are thinking about harassment and more generally the suck factor of social media this is required 101 reading.
September 13, 2018
A fascinating and important read for our interconnected world.
A must read for anyone working in tech or digital industries. The Internet of Garbage outlines many of the problems that run rampant in our digital spaces and gives a clear framework for understanding the different types of abuse and unwanted content present on the web and how we can work towards a more equitable web for all of us.
A must read for anyone working in tech or digital industries. The Internet of Garbage outlines many of the problems that run rampant in our digital spaces and gives a clear framework for understanding the different types of abuse and unwanted content present on the web and how we can work towards a more equitable web for all of us.
December 13, 2018
While slightly outdated for today, this book provides a good retrospective of the internet and harrassment up until around 2015. While it doesn't take into account political discourse as much as it should, it does a great job of highlighting personal attacks that have happened, specifically those targeted at women. At some point towards the end it does feel slightly repetitive and the overall style means it does have a tone akin to a college paper or thesis.
December 5, 2018
The taxonomy of harassment is great and seems like it could really help refine moderation policies. The points equating harassment to spam are also well made. However, I question the author's willingness to rely of crowd sourced moderation techniques, which can and have been gamed by large scale harassment campaigns, and the focus on harassment of women lacked intersectional nuance at times; but perhaps these are thing the author plans to update in the upcoming new version.
November 12, 2018
I mean, I'm not sure this needs a rating; it's more longform journalism than book. But it's well worth the time if you care about what using the Internet is like.
And FWIW, three years later, things haven't gotten better. They've gotten worse. I'm off Twitter, and am seriously considering jettisoning FB.
And FWIW, three years later, things haven't gotten better. They've gotten worse. I'm off Twitter, and am seriously considering jettisoning FB.
April 2, 2019
This is a really good book about the web that could be if we were willing to invest in making it welcome for all, and holding bad actors accountable.
This is a really good book about the web that could be if we were willing to invest in making it welcome for all, and holding bad actors accountable.
This is a really good book about the web that could be if we were willing to invest in making it welcome for all, and holding bad actors accountable.
August 15, 2020
A sad discourse about the desire for power of some small time bureaucrat. Somehow the Internet is garbage unless God the Government can control who speaks what at a certain time. And of course, the concept of "if it's so dangerous why are you going in" makes no sense for those hungry of power over others.
October 1, 2018
(Did NOT read "kindle edition"; read epub of 2018 edition provied by Verge) Interesting, with lots of good points, mainly that there are structural ways to minimize the junk portion of the internet--and a real need to.
November 14, 2018
The book is a little dated, which the author acknowledges in the forward to the new edition, but Jeong's book still includes a lot of important, relevant points as well as key historical facts about harassment on the internet.
October 23, 2017
i would happily have read a full-length book on this subject, expanding on the analysis of case law and the cited research, as well as more in depth discussion of the potential technical solutions.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews