{"id":6552,"date":"2022-07-12T15:47:43","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T20:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=6552"},"modified":"2022-07-19T17:39:28","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T22:39:28","slug":"choosing-a-new-comment-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=6552","title":{"rendered":"Choosing a new comment policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Update (July 13):<\/mark><\/strong> I was honored to read this post<\/a> by my friend Boaz Barak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update (July 14):<\/mark><\/strong> By now, comments on this post allegedly from four CS professors \u2014 namely, Josh Alman, Aloni Cohen, Rana Hanocka, and Anna Farzindar \u2014 as well as from the graduate student “BA,” have been unmasked as from impersonator(s)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been the target of a motivated attack-troll (or multiple trolls, but I now believe just one) who knows about the CS community. This might be the single weirdest thing that\u2019s happened to me in 17 years of blogging, surpassing even the legendary Ricoh printer episode<\/a> of 2007. It obviously underscores the need for a new, stricter comment policy, which is what this whole post was about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yesterday and today, both my work and my enjoyment of the James Webb images were interrupted by an anonymous troll, who used the Shtetl-Optimized<\/em> comment section to heap libelous abuse<\/a> on me—derailing an anodyne quantum computing discussion to opine at length about how I’m a disgusting creep who surely, probably, maybe has lewd thoughts about his female students. Unwisely or not, I allowed it all to appear, and replied to all of it. I had a few reasons: I wanted to prove that I’m now strong enough to withstand bullying that might once have driven me to suicide. I wanted, frankly, many readers to come to my defense (thanks to those who did!). I at least wanted readers to see<\/em> firsthand what I now regularly deal with: the emotional price of maintaining this blog. Most of all, I wanted my feminist, social-justice-supporting readers to either explicitly endorse or (hopefully) explicitly repudiate the unambiguous harassment that was now being gleefully committed in their name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, though, the same commenter upped the ante further, by heaping misogynistic abuse on my wife Dana<\/a>—while still<\/em>, ludicrously and incongruously, cloaking themselves in the rhetoric of social justice. Yes: apparently the woke, feminist thing to do is now to rate female computer scientists on their looks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me be blunt: I cannot continue to write Shtetl-Optimized<\/em> while dealing with regular harassment of me and my family. At the same time, I’m also determined not to “surrender to the terrorists.” So, I’m weighing the following options:<\/p>\n\n\n\n