(1) JACK KIRBY NAMED DISNEY LEGEND. The late Jack Kirby will be honored with the Disney Legend Award at this year’s D23 Expo in Anaheim.
JACK KIRBY first grabbed our attention in the spring of 1941 with Captain America, a character he created with Joe Simon. Kirby then followed this debut with a prolific output of comic books in the Western, Romance, and Monster genres–all a prelude to his defining work helping to create the foundations of the Marvel Universe. For the next decade, Kirby and co-creator Stan Lee would introduce a mind-boggling array of new characters and teams — including the Avengers, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, Ant-Man, Wasp, Black Panther, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Inhumans. Kirby was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame’s 1987 inaugural class and continued creating comics throughout the ‘90s before passing away in 1994.
Other honorees of this year’s Legends Award are Carrie Fisher, Clyde “Gerry” Geronimi, Manuel Gonzales, Mark Hamill, Stan Lee, Garry Marshall, Julie Taymor, and Oprah Winfrey.
(2) BILL FINGER AWARD WINNERS. Jack Kirby, along with Bill Messner-Loebs, is also a winner of the 2017 Bill Finger Award presented by Comic-Con International.
Bill Messner-Loebs and Jack Kirby have been selected to receive the 2017 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.
“As always, I asked on my blog for suggestions of worthy recipients,” Evanier explains. “Many were nominated and the committee chose Bill as the worthiest of those still alive and working, and Jack because although his artwork has always been justly hailed, his contribution as a writer has been too often minimized or overlooked. In fact, in the years we’ve been doing this award, Jack Kirby has received many more nominations than anyone else, but we held off honoring him until this year because it seemed appropriate to finally do it in the centennial of his birth, and because members of his family will be at Comic-Con to accept on his behalf.”
The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 at the instigation of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. “The premise of this award is to recognize writers for a body of work that has not received its rightful reward and/or recognition,” Evanier explains. “Even though the late Bill Finger now finally receives credit for his role in the creation of Batman, he’s still the industry poster boy for writers not receiving proper reward or recognition.”
Kirby’s history was covered in the first item. Here’s the citation for the second winner.
Bill Messner-Loebs has been a cartoonist and writer since the 1970s. He has worked for DC, Marvel, Comico, Power Comics, Texas Comics, Vertigo, Boom!, Image, IDW, and the U.S. State Department (for which he produced a comic about the perils of land mines). He has written Superman, Flash, Aquaman, Mr. Monster, Hawkman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Dr. Fate, Jonny Quest, Spider-Man, Thor, and the Batman newspaper strip. He wrote and drew Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire and Bliss Alley, and he co-created The Maxx and Epicurus the Sage. He has also delivered pizzas, done custom framing, been a library clerk, sold art supplies, and taught cartooning.
(3) TROLLS. Recent Facebook experiences led David Gerrold to post a thorough discussion of trolling.
There is no freedom of speech on Facebook — Facebook is a corporation, like a newspaper or a television station. They are not obligated to protect your rights. You waived specific rights when you agreed to the terms of service —
But those terms of service have to be a two-way street. They represent a contract between service provider and consumer. And there must be a responsibility on the part of the service provider to protect the consumers from the abusive behavior of those who violate the social contract of our nation.
The social contract, you say? I’ve heard people argue, “I never agreed to a social contract.”
Actually, you agreed to it when you accepted the responsibility of being a citizen — you agreed to abide not only by the laws of the nation, but by the underlying promise of this land, the promise of liberty and justice for all.
So, I do not regard trolls as simply an internet annoyance — I regard them as human failures — as individuals who have forgotten the promise on which this nation was founded. They are not much better than caged chimpanzees who are good at screeching at the bars and throwing feces at anyone who gets to close.
Because in the great grand scheme of things, every moment of our lives is a moment of choice. We can choose to dream of the stars, or we can choose to wallow in the mud. We can choose to create something of value for ourselves and our families and our friends — or we can choose to destroy the well-being of others.
(4) TOLKIEN BIOGRAPHER AIDS CROWDFUNDING EFFORT. John Garth, author of Tolkien and the Great War, has donated signed copies of his book to the fundraising campaign for Oxford University’s project to document the First World War.
I’ve donated five signed copies of Tolkien and the Great War to help raise money for this appeal. It’s only thanks to the personal letters and photographs preserved by various Great War veterans, by families and by museums that I was able to bring to life the experiences of Tolkien and his friends in the training camps and trenches of the war. If you can donate, please do. Whether you can or can’t, please share this announcement:–
Win over £1,000/$1,000 worth of Tolkien Books… and Help Oxford University Save Items from World War One
Oxford University is currently crowd-funding a project to run a mass-digitization initiative of publicly-held material from the First World War and as is well known the experiences J. R. R. Tolkien underwent in 1916 in the Battle of the Somme had a profound effect on him and his writing. To assist with our major crowd-funding appeal we have been generously supported by Tolkien scholars and publishers, allowing us to present a prize draw opportunity to win three major publications amounting to over £1,000. Our sincerest thanks go to John Garth, Wiley/Blackwells, and Routledge for their help.
To enter the prize draw go to: https://oxreach.hubbub.net/p/lestweforget/
If you sponsor us by pledging £1 or more (or equivalent) you will be entered into a draw to win one of five copies signed by John Garth of his ‘Tolkien and the Great War’ (pbk, HarperCollins, 2011 – RRP: £9.99; $12.00; ‚¬11.99).
If you sponsor us by pledging £5 or more (or equivalent) you will also be entered into a draw to win one of three copies of ‘A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien’ (hbk, Wiley/Blackwells, 2014) signed by the editor (RRP: £125; $140; ‚¬150).
Finally, if you sponsor us by pledging £10 or more (or equivalent) you will also be entered into a draw to a full set set of ‘J. R. R. Tolkien: Critical Assessments of Major Writers’ (4 volumes, hbk, Routledge, 2017) signed by the editor (RRP: £900; $1,180; ‚¬930)
In addition to these chances of winning, you will also be helping to save and preserve important objects from the First World War which are in danger of being lost on a daily basis.
Here’s the home site of the preservation project: ‘Lest we forget’ – a national initiative to save the memories of 1914-1918
We are raising £80,000 to train local communities across the UK to run digital collection days to record and save objects and stories of the generation who lived through World War One. Every item collected will then be published on November 11th 2018 through a free-to-use online database for schools, scholars, and the wider public.
But we cannot achieve this alone so please help by donating to support the training days, outreach activities, and the equipment we need.
saving the past for the future – world war one
2018 will mark the centennial anniversary of the end of World War One. Few families in Britain were unaffected by the conflict, and in thousands of attics across the country there are photographs, diaries, letters, and mementos that tell the story of a generation at war, of the loved ones who fought in the conflict, served on the home front, or lost fathers and mothers. Help us launch this national effort to digitally capture, safeguard, and share these important personal items and reminiscences from the men and women of 1914-1918. Help us support local digitisation events across village halls, community centres, schools, and libraries.
(5) THE FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Josephine Livingstone reviews The Tale of Beren and Lúthien for New Republic in “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Love Story”.
And The Tale of Beren and Lúthien is more like a scholarly volume than a storybook. There are versions of the tale in verse, and versions in prose. There are versions where the villain is an enormous, evil cat, and versions where the villain is a wolf. Names change frequently. But instead of taking the “best text” route, where the editor chooses a single manuscript to bear witness to the lost story, Christopher Tolkien has offered up what remains and allowed the reader to choose. It’s a generous editorial act, and a fitting tribute in memoriam to his parents’ romance.
(6) MEDICAL UPDATE. Fanartist Steve Stiles sent this news about his diagnosis and treatment plans.
I just found out, via the lung specialist I saw the week before last, that I’m *NOT* having lung surgery at Sinai on the 20th, but rather a consultation re my “options” (would that be chemo vs. surgery? ), followed by *another* appointment to have a tube inserted down into my lung, which sounds like a whole bunch of fun. *THEN* I go in for surgery or whatever.
Looks like July is pretty well shot as far as having the two weekend cookouts with friends who we traditionally have over. It’s a drag, but considering the alternative….
(7) DALMAS OBIT. Author John Dalmas (1926-2017) has died reports Steve Fahnestalk:
With great sadness I learn that John Dalmas has died, either last night or early this morning; I understand he was in the hospital with pneumonia. Author of “The Yngling” and many other books, he was a good friend to MosCon and PESFA. You will be missed, Onkel !
Dalmas’ The Yngling, his first published sf, was serialized in Analog in 1969 and made especially memorable by Kelly Freas’ cover art.
(8) TRIVIAL TRIVIA
Ray Bradbury and Ralph Waldo Emerson are descendents of Mary Perkins Bradbury, who was sentenced to be hanged in 1692 in the Salem Witch trials, but managed to escape before her execution could take place.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- June 16, 1954 —Them! premiere in New York City.
- June 16, 1978 — Jaws 2 swims into theaters.
(10) THAT THING YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED. The Golden Snitch Harry Potter Fidget Spinners are selling like hotcakes. Who knows if there will be any left by the time you read this? (I’m kidding — they’re all over the internet.)
(11) AWESOMECON. The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna, in “Over Awesome Con weekend, D.C. will prove its geek-to-wonk ratio”, previews Awesomecon, the Washington, D.C. comicon taking place this weekend. He talks about the celebrities who are coming, including Chris Hadfield, Edgar Wright, David Tennant, and Stan Lee, still hustling at 94. A sidebar has short items of some of the panels, including “CosLove Presents: #I Can Be A Hero, where cosplayers talk about the good deeds they do, like volunteering at hospitals. Finally, Manor Hill Brewing (which is at manorhillbrewing.com) has the official Awesomecon beer, Atomic Smash, which has a robot and an A-bomb!
So could King, who worked overseas with the agency’s counterterrorism unit after 9/11, ever see the Caped Crusader making it as a CIA agent?
“I can see Batman doing the job,” King says, but it is “harder to see him filling out the paperwork. And without good paperwork skills, you’ll never even make GS-12 in this town.”
This town, where sometimes the political wonk and comics geek are the same person.
(12) GIFT CULTURE VS. WAGE CULTURE. At Anime Feminist, Amelia Cook triggers a collision between fandom’s gift culture and those running megacons who expect on skilled people to work for free — “The Big Problem Behind Unpaid Interpreters: Why anime fans should value their skills”. [Hat tip to Petréa Mitchell.]
This week Anime Expo, the biggest anime convention in the English speaking world, put a call out for volunteer interpreters. Anime Expo is far from a new event, and had over 100,000 attendees last year. How did they fail to account for the cost of professional interpreters when budgeting? If they can’t afford to pay interpreters, what hope do any of the smaller cons have?
Let’s be real: they didn’t fail to account for it, and they can afford it. AX is a big enough event in the fandom calendar that they could have bumped ticket prices up by under a dollar each to bring in the necessary funds. If for some reason that wasn’t an option, they’re a big enough name that they could even have crowdfunded it. There’s no good reason not to pay every single interpreter for their work. There are, however, a couple of bad ones.
The most generous reading of their actions is that not a single person on the entire AX staff understands what interpreting involves. More likely is that they considered it an unnecessary cost, knowing they could get enthusiastic amateurs to work for free without putting a value on their time. Ours is a culture of scanlators and fansubbers working for the love of it, right? Why not give these lucky worker bees a chance to meet some cool people and see behind the scenes of a big event?
….When I first saw the tweet from AX, it made me viscerally angry. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, to the point that I’ve written this post. What possible justification is there for this decision? What on earth made them think it would be acceptable? Were interpreters even discussed at the budgeting stage (and if not, why not)? Will they get their stable of unpaid amateur interpreters anyway, or will the outcry their tweet sparked make capable people steer clear? If they don’t get enough sufficiently capable volunteers, will they fork out for professionals or settle for people with a lower level of Japanese? What are their priorities in this situation? What were their priorities when they drew up this year’s budget?
(13) BATLIGHT. Here’s what it looked like when they flashed the Bat Signal on LA City Hall.
(14) SHARKES ON DUTY. The Shadow Clarke Jury’s latest reviews include coverage of two Hugo novel finalists (if you count that the Fifth Season one also covers the Obelisk Gate a bit.)
I wanted to begin this piece by noting that I put The Fifth Season at the top of my ballot for the Hugo last year — although this is somewhat undermined by the fact that I can no longer remember for sure if I actually voted. One time when I did actually vote was at the 2005 Glasgow Worldcon, where all that was required was posting a paper form into a ballot box in the dealers’ room. That year there was an all British shortlist suggesting perhaps that the domestic audience dominated the nomination process but also the then high international standing of British SFF. I voted for Iain M Banks’s The Algebraist, which was only on the ballot paper because Terry Pratchett had withdrawn Going Postal. The Hugo was won by Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I had read, loved, and placed last on my ballot because it was fantasy. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the result because J. K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman had won recently and, in any case, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was probably the most substantial novel on that ballot. The only virtue I can now see in the decision I made at the time is that it served to reduce the difficulty of making a choice.
While an increasing number of writers have made strenuous and laudable efforts to confront the “boys’ own adventure’ stereotypes of core genre archetypes“ the most famous recent example being Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy — progressive experimentation and stylistic complexity in terms of the text itself is much, much rarer and receives scant notice. When Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit turned up on this year’s Clarke Award shortlist, of the three books I’d not read already it was definitely the one I was most excited about. My encounters with Lee’s short fiction had left me with an impression of complex ideas nestled within a prose that was dense and highly coloured and often abstruse — pluses for me on all three counts. Would Ninefox Gambit prove to be my space opera holy grail: a thrilling adventure in terms of prose as well as high-concept, widescreen FX? I was eager to find out.
It’s space opera, you know?
One of last year’s most famous, most advertised, most-clearly-recognized-as-science-fiction novels, on a shortlist almost entirely of famous, advertised novels–especially in relation to the rest of the 86-title submissions list–the inclusion of Ninefox Gambit on the Clarke shortlist was inevitable. Its reputation as a challenging narrative, its loyalty to standard genre form, and the requisite spaceship on the cover have established its place in the science fiction book award Goldilocks zone. If things go as they did last year and in 2014, it’s also a likely winner.
Although I’ve already made it clear this is not the kind of book I would normally value or enjoy, the placement of Ninefox Gambit on the Clarke shortlist is something I asked for last year, though not in such direct terms:
(15) NUMBER OF THE FOX. Elsewhere, Terence Blake responded to Jonathan McCalmont’s earlier review of Ninefox with some interesting points: “NINEFOX GAMBIT (2): power-fantasy or philo-fiction?”
I agree with everything that McCalmont says about the novel’s structural flaws, and in particular the problematic subordination of Yoon Ha Lee’s speculative inventivity and complexity to the fascistic, bellicose form of military science fiction. However, I don’t fully recognize the novel from McCalmont’s description.
1) The novel reads like both science fiction and fantasy, but there are many ways to blur or to undercut the distinction. In the case of NINEFOX GAMBIT I think that the “fantasy” aspect is only superficial. It is derived from the fact that the “hard” science underlying the story is not physics but mathematics. It has this structural feature in common with Neal Stephenson’s ANATHEM, which nonetheless is a very different sort of novel….
(16) FROM TOP TO, ER, BOTTOM. For your fund of general knowledge — “Every British swear word has been officially ranked in order of offensiveness”.
The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, interviewed more than 200 people across the UK on how offensive they find a vast array of rude and offensive words and insults.
People were asked their opinion on 150 words in total. These included general swear words, words linked to race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, body parts and health conditions, religious insults and sexual references, as well as certain hand gestures.
(17) MARVEL LEGACY 1. Sounds like Marvel is about to push the “reset” button.
An Asgardian titan. A Wakandan warrior bred to be a king. The very first Sorcerer Supreme.
Since its inception, Marvel has been delivering groundbreaking heroes and explosive stories. Now, prepare to return to the dawn of time, as Marvel introduces you to the first Avengers from 1,000,000 BC — when iconic torch-bearers such as Odin, Iron Fist, Star Brand, Ghost Rider, Phoenix, Agamotto, and Black Panther come together for the startling origin of the Marvel Universe, in MARVEL LEGACY #1!
The acclaimed team of writer Jason Aaron (Mighty Thor) and artist Esad Ribic (Secret Wars) reunite for an all-new 50-page blockbuster one-shot that will take you through time to the current Marvel Universe, showing you how it’s truly “all connected.” A true homage to Marvel’s groundbreaking stories, MARVEL LEGACY brings your favorite characters together for exciting and epic new stories that will culminate in returning to original series numbering for long-running titles.
“MARVEL LEGACY #1 isn’t simply a history lesson,” says SVP and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort. “Rather, it’s the starting gun to a bevy of mysteries and secrets and revelations that will reverberate across the Marvel Universe in the weeks and months to come! No character, no franchise will be untouched by the game-changing events that play out across its pages. Jason and Esad pulled out all the stops to fat-pack this colossal issue with as much intrigue, action, surprise, mystery, shock and adventure as possible!€
“MARVEL LEGACY #1 will present all fans — new readers and current readers — the very best jumping on point in the history of comics,” says Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso. “What Jason and Esad have crafted is more grand and more gargantuan than anything we have ever seen before and introduces concepts and characters the Marvel Universe has never encountered. Fans are going to witness an all-new look at the Marvel Universe starting at one of the earliest moments in time carried all the way into present day. Not only will this be the catalyst for Marvel evolving and moving forward, but expect it to be the spark that will ignite the industry as a whole.”
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Steve Stiles, and Mark-kitteh for some of these stories, and a hat tip to Petréa Mitchell. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayne.]
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(17) hmmmmmmm
(7) RIP. I’ve enjoyed the stories by him that I’ve read.
(1,2) Kirby should get All The Awards — I’m sorry he didn’t get more recognition while he was alive. I met him shortly before he died and gosh! KIRBY!
(3) Right on.
(6) F. cancer. Fingers still crossed for a good outcome.
(8) Well that was lucky for the rest of us!
(12) I agree with this. And for once the comments are also good.
(16) Ooh, I guessed the worst one correctly!
Clickity
File as thou wilt, shall be the scroll of the Law.
(17) Actually I am sort of at a loss for the point of this event. There is a fair amount of backlash about how Marvel has been handling most of it’s heroes for the last few years and a call to get back to basics. So this might be a way to show the classic heroes without actually changing anything. However this seems like something that will please no one. Since apparently their new readers do not want the old heroes and the old readers know a stunt when they see one so this is just throwing gas on a fire for them.
@14: which I had read, loved, and placed last on my ballot because it was fantasy. So has Nick Hubble learned to read the rules since 2005?
3) So Facebook continuously claims they’re unable to deal with vile hate speech and besides, they believe in freedom of speech even for vile people. And then they ban David Gerrold based on a couple of complaints, while Neonazis are allowed to post freely. Looks like they’re showing their true colours here.
6) Best wishes for a full recovery to Steven Stiles.
12) I have done interpretation on occasion, though I’m mainly a translator. Interpreting is a highly skilled and draining job. There’s a reason that interpreters at the UN or the EU have very short shifts. Interpreting is also well paid. Interpreting during business negotiations nets me 45 to 50 EUR per hour, while interpreting at court nets you 70 to 75 EUR per hour (though a few big translation agencies have divided the court interpretation market amongst themselves, so the actual interpreter get paid less). Of course, I’ve also worked for lower rates (I always like interpreting during weddings, even though it pays less) or even for free, e.g. when accompanying a refugee to the doctor. Even the main task of the interpreters at Anime Expo is just showing guests around, I’ve done that, too (gone shopping with foreign business people and the like, I’ve even had people ask me where to find prostitutes) and I got paid for it.
Now we all known that fandom and cons run on volunteer work. However, unless I’m mistaken, Anime Expo is a for profit convention. And if they’re for profit, they should damn well pay their interpreters. Yes, they probably won’t be able to pay court or business interpretation rates. But expecting people to do for free is wrong.
BTW, non-profits have a really bad reputation among translators and interpreters and many of us don’t want to work for them, because getting paid is always a hassle. A lot of these organisation are so used to relying on volunteer work that they don’t want to pay for anything. Others simply don’t have the money to pay you.
13) This is a fabulous tribute to Adam West.
(17) I’m inclined to reject out-of-hand any kind of giant Marvel reboot/history/roundup/whatever that doesn’t include the Fantastic Four.
13) Speaking of Adam West, NBC today released the unaired series finale for Powerless: “Win, Luthor, Draw”, which featured Adam West as the chairman of the board of Wayne Industries:
It’s a great episode (probably the best of the series), both in how they used Adam West and the writing for the episode overall.
If they’d all been this good, this episode probably wouldn’t have been the series finale.
On the Wyoming/South Dakota border. No visible Tingles in Billings…
(14) So he couldn’t read the rules back in 2005, but apparently reading the rules has made it too difficult for him to go to a web page and click a few times since then, after he’s done all that reading and deciding? Why should I care about this guy’s opinion or take him seriously as a critic?
@John Lorentz: thanks for the link. I liked the show, even the weaker episodes.
I’ve got two ancestors, Alice Lake and a guy whose name I can’t remember who *were* killed for witchcraft. Alice was hung because she saw her recently dead baby’s face everywhere she looked, a neighbor reported. The guy hung because a neighbor of his dead mom said that the dead mom said in a dream that mom came to her and told her that her son pushed her into a fireplace. That ‘spectral evidence’ convicted him.
Fucking nosey bastard neighbors.
In an odd coincidence, a week or two back I was in an odd Facebook thread* with the credited writer of Win, Luthor, Draw. I asked if he’d been the one to give it that title, which without any knowledge of the episode’s content I found to be inspired. Alas, he replied that when he turned the script in, it had the title as the ever popular “TBD”.
*The thread was about the imaginary Canadian tv show Bearly Legal, starring the two lawyer characters and partners in a law firm Becky and Randall, with Randall being a bear (in the animal sense, not the term used for a certain male physiotype) and Becky being human. Many episode plots were exchanged, most focused on Randall’s ursine nature.
(16) Hee. “Bottom.”
/minion
(1) I don’t understand why so many people are upset with Facebook over this. It seems to me that their system operated as intended. Specifically, they reacted quickly to user complaints (the trolls), and then they re-adjusted when further information (the anti-trolls) was made available to them. Blame the trolls for this, not FB. Yes, it was annoying that Gerrold had to go through this just because trolls decided to abuse the system, but that’s what trolls do.
[godstalk]
(7) Oh my, that cover is certainly memorable.
Meredith Moment: Until June 21 all ebooks from ChiZine Publications (including my collection Irregular Verbs and Other Stories) are $1.99: http://chizinepub.com/blog/2017/06/14/massive-1-99-ebook-sale-on-now/
(7) DALMAS OBIT.
Yngling, as it says on the cover, is swedish for “young person”. Oh, and “dalmas” is swedish for someone who comes from the county of dalarna.
@Contrarius: Possibly because it’s an unwelcome reminder of the fact that David Gerrold would’ve stayed booted had he not had enough friends with friends enough to counteract the troll effect through numbers – whereas most people attacked by organized trolls do not have the means to stop them (as I think Meredith mentioned, for example, that her complaints about racist attacks routinely go ignored.)
@Jayn —
But if Gerrold had said something truly objectionable, you would have WANTED FB’s system to work the way that it did — multiple complaints resulting in a ban.
FB is a huge system. Given that size, their initial level of protection just about has to be automated — so anything that generates a large number of complaints is likely to result in action, whether that action objectively seems justified or not. Is it FB’s fault that they don’t pay salaries for people to personally read each and every post or each and every complaint? I don’t think so. The fact is that they DO pay salaries for people to act as a second layer of defense, adjusting the automated responses when those turn out to have been the wrong response in a given situation. I don’t even like FB much, but I try not to lay unreasonable blame on people or organizations just because things don’t always work out to my personal liking.
If you think a post is objectionable or a complaint is unjustified, then take action — and recruit your friends to take action as well. That’s exactly what the trolls did, and it got results. And our counteraction got results as well.
So if you’re a person without a huge number of friends who happens to draw the attention of a group of organized trolls, you’re SOL and that’s okay?
@jayn —
No, it’s not okay — but it isn’t FB’s fault, either.
Isn’t it? Why isn’t it? I’d say allowing mob rule to decide who gets shouted down in order to maximize their profits, without the least human regard to deciding what each particular mob is doing (racist hate speech or otherwise) as long as they happen to outnumber who they’re shouting at, is a formula for encouraging the domination of vicious bullies in your medium. Since the Facebook heads have decided that they can’t possibly cut into their profits to hire human moderators and that they are fine with whatever hateful attack the bullies are conveying as long as the profitable bullies outnumber who they are attacking at any given moment, yes, I DO blame them for the toxic atmosphere that results. As Jenora Feuer mentioned in the thread dedicated specifically to David Gerrold’s case:
@jayn —
Refer back to my earlier post — FB is a huge system. Given that size, their initial level of protection just about has to be automated — so anything that generates a large number of complaints is likely to result in action, whether that action objectively seems justified or not. Is it FB’s fault that they don’t pay salaries for people to personally read each and every post or each and every complaint? I don’t think so. The fact is that they DO pay salaries for people to act as a second layer of defense, adjusting the automated responses when those turn out to have been the wrong response in a given situation. I don’t even like FB much, but I try not to lay unreasonable blame on people or organizations just because things don’t always work out to my personal liking.
Straw man.
You are assuming that FB’s automated response system is the ONLY system FB has — but that is an incorrect assumption. As we’ve seen in Gerrold’s case, “incorrect” automated responses can be fixed by a second line of real-person defense.
You are also disregarding all the real offenders that FB’s automated system no doubt catches.
You also seem to be denigrating the entire concept of majority rule. Are you sure you want to do that?
Here’s an idea: instead of slinging blame around, why not tell us what constructive, realistic solutions you can come up with? Remember: this is a free service that FB provides. You don’t pay them anything to use it. And it’s a huge system with billions of users and many billions of messages to police. So how would you go about policing it, and how would you pay for your chosen system?
My problem is less that Facebook reacted to complaints and banned David Gerrold, but that they were quick to ban Gerrold, but that people who fling all sorts of vile racist hate speech still have Facebook accounts in spite of complaints and Facebook doesn’t give a fig. This is a huge problem in Germany, because the xenophobic Pegida movement, the far right party AfD and their supporters mainly spread their hate via Facebook.
Take the case of this young man from Syria who took a selfie with Angela Merkel when she visited the refugee shelter where he was living at the time. The photo was subsequently used by xenophobes to spread their vile lies. The young man sued Facebook who supposedly couldn’t do anything about that. But David Gerrold is supposedly a problem.
Or take this case where an artist exposed Facebook’s hypocracy by posing with a sign bearing a racist slogan and a topless woman. Facebook deleted the picture – because of the topless woman. You can see it here BTW. Warning for those at work, there is a naked woman and a racist sign.
American news outlets reporting about the case cropped the photo to cut the lady’s breasts and left the racist slogan in, thus doubly proving the artist’s point.
Boingboing also reported about the case in English – with nipples.
Until Facebook is as quick to delete racist and xenophobic posts as they are to delete wayward nipples, I won’t accept that cases like David Gerrold’s can just happen.
Is it a straw man? You just told me that if you have been victimized by a group of people on Facebook your singular complaint will not come to any human attention, and even if you can muster up support from friends, you STILL will not come to human attention unless you can outnumber the people who attack you. How am I misrepresenting Facebook when I call that mob rule?
Perhaps I didn’t make it clear that I am aware that you CAN eventually get the attention of a human moderator on Facebook if you have enough voices shouting along with you. But I do think there might be more active moderation, rather than the current absolute insensitivity to bullying behavior unless the bullied can muster enough support to gain a moderator’s attention. As any victim of bullies in high school can tell you, that’s precisely the problem. How Facebook can do it cost-effectively? Well, I’m no programmer, but surely there are programs that can winnow complaints for more human moderators, rather than the current “if you haven’t got enough friends to protest your racist/misogynist/harassing mistreatment, fuck you,” policy.
Also, I’d suggest this discussion be moved to the thread discussing Gerrold, where it’s more pertinent.
@Cora —
First, that picture and its sharing happened two years ago. I think it’s reasonable to assume that FB has upgraded its responses since then.
Second, it’s a different sort of problem than illustrated by Gerrold’s post. The Syrian man is complaining about misuse of an otherwise non-offensive photo; we’ve been talking about reliance on community reporting of supposedly offensive individual posts.
Apples and oranges.
Do you not believe that political speech should be protected? Are you sure you want to take that stance?
@jayn —
I never said any such thing. Please stop misrepresenting my statements.
Okay — good start. What sort of “active moderation” would you institute? How many employees would be required? How would you pay for those employees? How much would it cost?
Remember — I just read an old bit of data that, even back in 2012, FB was seeing 4.75 BILLION postings every day. So it’s got to be well over 5 billion these days. How many employees would it take to moderate each and every one of those postings?
I’m not going to discuss the Gerrold case in particular– folks who want to can do so in its thread.
I am, however, going to take issue with Contrarius’s attempts to make Facebook a passive, blameless entity, though:
“Remember — I just read an old bit of data that, even back in 2012, FB was seeing 4.75 BILLION postings every day. So it’s got to be well over 5 billion these days. How many employees would it take to moderate each and every one of those postings?”
If you’re going to complain about straw men, don’t make them yourself. No one has proposed that Facebook staff moderate “each and every one” of 4.75 billion posts. Some have said that they should more actively moderate those *which have been flagged for attention*.
Lots of other sites do that, including this one. Facebook could also do it with their site if they wanted to. It was Facebook’s choice to get as big as they have, and it was also their choice to hire and manage the moderating staff as they have. They have enough revenue to improve the moderation if they want to. So I have no problem with faulting them if they haven’t.
If they don’t want to use any of the $10 billion they earned in profits in 2016 to hire more or better moderators, their other choice is to put the brakes on growth, so moderation isn’t as overwhelming a task. I actually wouldn’t mind that myself– I don’t think it’s healthy for any one private company to control as much of the space people use for online communication as Facebook does. With a wider variety of widely used public forums, companies can moderate as they see fit, and users who don’t like one company’s moderation still have a variety of other forums that will work as well for them as any they don’t like. (And of course they can still complain about the forums they’ve left. That’s free speech too.)
12) A few years ago, Houston hosted the NCAA Final Four. I had exactly the same incensed reaction when I saw an ad to the effect that they were looking for 3,000 volunteers to help with the event. Excuse me, this is not a struggling non-profit group that barely manages to pay its bills! If you need help for the event, forghodsake PAY THEM! Even minimum wage is better than nothing.
OTOH, I will forever treasure the story I heard after the one and only CreationCon I ever went to. It was in the summer of 1986, in Chattanooga, and they’d gotten the enthusiastic assistance of many local fen by promising various perks for volunteers… all of which somehow failed to materialize at the con itself. Needless to say, the volunteers were pissed. But then it went around the grapevine that one of the volunteers had overheard a couple of the CC bigwigs talking about how great it was to have all this local help, and how they would be equally useful at the upcoming M*A*S*H convention — which was to be held over Labor Day weekend. And there was much snickering.
(The 1986 Worldcon was ConFederation, in Atlanta, on Labor Day weekend. Atlanta is about a 2-hour drive from Chattanooga. There wasn’t going to be a fan in town that weekend.)
@ lurkertype: Yes, there are some excellent comments there. One of the better ones (that isn’t actually adding information to the discussion) is this: “This trend is a plague everywhere. At this rate 20 years from now the only occupations in the world will be CEO and unpaid internships.”
@ Cora: It was much more than “a couple of complaints”. Gerrold has more than once drawn the attention of organized troll groups who flood the banbot with spurious reports. What FB lacks is any way for the bot to bounce it up a level, to a human who would actually look at the post and determine if it contained bannable material or not. (This is something that should be done any time a post gets a sudden flood of reports, for exactly this reason.) However, their steadfast refusal to take down genuine hate speech and material threats even after they have been reported over and over again is an entirely different issue.
Related: Twitter has the same problem, and this is why.
@John Mark Ockerbloom —
Another straw man.
I haven’t said a single thing about FB being passive. In fact, it’s quite clear that they already have multiple layers of active protection in place.
And also note that I’ve never said that FB’s protections couldn’t be improved on. In fact, I have asked more than once for suggestions on how those improvements might be made.
Again — I’ve asked more than once for suggestions on improved moderation. So far, those have not been forthcoming.
That isn’t actually quite what jayn suggested, but let’s run with this.
You want FB to be responsive to complaints about messages. Great so far. But that’s exactly what happened in the Gerrold case — FB received multiple complaints about his message, and FB responded to those complaints. That’s what you want, right? Responses to complaints?
And then, even better — when it became clear that FB’s original response was the wrong response to make, FB reversed their initial decision. Again, they were responsive. Again, isn’t that what you want?
It seems to me that the case of Gerrold’s post proves that FB is already doing it.
How would you improve on FB’s system? Please be specific.
That’s a bold claim. Please back it up with some numbers.
What system would you put in place? How many employees would it take? How much would it cost?
You want FB to take more responsibility, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But responsibility goes two ways. If you don’t like FB’s system, why not set up your own system instead? Why is FB responsible for your satisfaction? Remember again — this is a free service. You don’t pay FB anything for using it.
So, again — why not set up your own system?
As I said earlier, I don’t even much like FB. It tends to make me crazy when I use it, so I usually avoid it. But I do have pretty extensive past experience with moderating and running lists and groups and boards from “back in the day”, and there’s one absolute truth to such an endeavor: you can NEVER make everyone happy. And a failure to please everyone is not at all the same thing as a failure to actually do a good job of moderation.
Contrarius:
Yes, Facebook is huge, but that also means their ad revenue is huge. The economics of users, ad revenue, and required moderation staff is not worse for Facebook than it would have been for a smaller site with similar functionality. If anything, Facebook’s large size means they can effectively automate lot’s of other processes and have more money left for the things that cannot be handled well with automation.
The problem is that it seems this second layer isn’t engaged until a relatively large number of people complains about a decision. Which makes it useless for anyone who’s not a celebrity. Which IMO makes it useless period.
Hampus:
The Ynglings is also the oldest known Scandinavian dynasty. Ynglingesaga is the first chapter of Heimskringla, telling (Snsorri’s version of) their history, leading up to Harald Fairhair who according to Snorri was descended from them.
@Johan P —
But isn’t that exactly what people are complaining about right now? The fact that FB’s first line of defense is automated?
Here’s the operative term in your statement above: “it seems”. Do we know that this is the truth, or is this only an assumption based on the fact that FB does not always do what we want it to do?
I’m not religious, but there’s a great old quip I once heard somewhere or other: God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is no.
That same principle might be applied here. FB isn’t necessarily ignoring people just because they often answer requests for moderation with a no.
And as Cora points out, their hair trigger response to nipples contrasts sharply with their lackadaisical response to Nazis. If Facebook has the money and manpower to marshal such a swift response to nudity, any protest that they can’t possibly do anything about individual reports of harassment and hate speech begins to ring hollow. Presumably the programs that can flag nipples can as easily be trained to flag swastikas and nooses (for example) for extra human attention. The fact that Facebook has chosen to set their priorities the way they have IS a choice and not a necessity on their part. And what Johan P said – yes, their playground is bigger than other social media, but so are their profits,. I think we can’t necessarily assume that they ARE doing everything that they can affordably do to moderate, without evidence.
@Contrarius: “How would you improve on FB’s system? Please be specific.”
Fuck that, and fuck you for saying it.
Facebook pays people to improve its service. Why should I give them my ideas for free? No, it’s enough that I – and the others disputing you here – say “the system is not working as it should” without also being expected to do their engineers’ work for them. We report the bug; the onus of finding a fix rests with the service.
When I pointed out that under current FB, a single person with only a small number of friends will be ignored if attacked by an organized group of trollls, regardless of the content of the attack, you responded with, “No, it’s not okay – but it isn’t Facebook’s fault either.” IMO, that does seem to endorse and condone a passive response to individuals attacked by groups on FB’s part – as well as an unexamined and Panglossian assumption on your part that FB’s response to such attacks must ALREADY be The Best Of All Possible Moderations.
This may be a Meredith moment. The Kindle edition of R.A. MacAvoy’s The Book of Kells is available for $1.99.
I don’t know about the OP, but there are checks on “majority rule” in lots of systems for the precise reason that if you’ve got majority assholes or a majority satisfied with their privilege, you end up with something other than justice.
@Jayn —
As I asked earlier: do you not believe that political speech should be protected?
I’m literally a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Obviously, I have strong opinions about civil liberties. And guess what — nobody is truly free to espouse their chosen beliefs unless EVERYONE is free to do the same. And yes, that includes people that I hate with a fiery passion.
Again — it’s entirely possible that their answer is simply “no” — that they are simply unwilling to censor a particular political view. I’m not talking about specifics here, because I don’t know what specific instances you may have in mind, but I would be on FB’s side if they are simply refusing to censor someone’s political speech.
Absolutely true. And the reverse is just as obvious — we shouldn’t assume that they are FAILING to do everything they affordably can do. Which was pretty much my original objection to people attacking FB in the first place.
Actually, it doesn’t.
In your earlier post, you didn’t make a claim of fact — you asked a question.
I answered no, it’s not okay, and no, it’s not FB’s fault.
I could have expanded my answer further, but I didn’t. If I had, that expansion might have said something like “And btw, we don’t even know that such a person would be SOL anyway. First, I don’t know all of the protections that FB has in place, and I doubt you do either. It may or may not be true that such a person would necessarily be ignored by FB. And second, even if FB would categorically deny protection to a person who had only one vote (no immediate friends/family to help them complain), that’s one of the great things about social media — it allows us to gather support when we need it. So such a person would always have the option of gathering a crowd of supporters to help them complain, much like Kickstarter helps to gather financial support.”
Another straw man. Remember, I’ve already asked multiple times for suggestions on how to improve FB’s existing system.
@Rev. Bob — sorry, Rev, but I’m having an interesting and civil discussion right now. I don’t feel any need at the moment to respond to personal attacks or invective. Try me some other day, though, and I might be in the mood for a nice flame war. You never know!
@Kurt Busiek —
Absolutely true. And in the case of Gerrold’s post, those checks worked just fine. The majority/mob originally ruled that his post was objectionable, but their original vote was overruled by the second line of defense — the human moderators.
The system of checks and balances worked.
Hoorah for mob versus mob. Praise it to the skies.
@Kurt Busiek —
Heh.
You don’t know that mob/mob is what actually happened in this case. First, you don’t know the relative numbers of trolls and anti-trolls involved. And second, you don’t know if Gerrold’s reinstatement was made because of anti-troll action or because of moderator review independent of the anti-trolls.
But think of how US laws work. A law gets passed by a majority of that jurisdiction’s legislators — city, county, state, or federal, depending on the specific law. That’s the legislative “mob”. They get their way unless somebody complains. In fact, enough people have to complain — and complain in an organized-enough manner — to inspire a legal challenge. That legal challenge must then work its way through the court system (our legal moderators) to determine its merit. And if the court (the legal moderators) decides that the law (the intial vote of the legislative mob) is against the Constitution (the TOS or some other guiding principle), then the law gets struck down.
Is that not in essence exactly what happened in the case of Gerrold’s post? The initial batch of citizen legislators (the trolls) voted. The second batch of citizen legislators (the anti-trolls) then complained. The case worked its way through the moderators, and they decided to reject the results of the initial vote.
Again — the system worked.
Again — the system worked.
For a value of “worked” which should not have required a large number of people appealing on Gerrold’s behalf.
Think about what happens when it’s someone with less influence and fewer friends and acquaintances to make that appeal, instead of trying to justify FB’s action to us.
@P J Evans —
And again — you don’t actually know what did or did not get Gerrold reinstated. And he *did* get reinstated.
I’m not justifying FB’s actions — I’m pointing out holes in the claims being made against it. Not quite the same thing.
Again — this whole thing seems to have worked pretty much the way our US legislative system works with its checks and balances. So I still don’t understand why people are directing so much vitriol against FB, especially given that the trolls were vanquished. Save your anger for the trolls.
The system worked! Abusive assholes got their jollies AND it wasn’t permanent, and that’s all that matters! All praise!
Perhaps Gerrold was reinstated because he is a famous writer. Does the system work so well for regular old joes and janes up against a mob? [Doubting it.]
Contrarius, at this point you’re sea-lioning. Remember the First Rule of Holes.
If it’s someone with less influence and fewer friends, they’re much less likely to trigger an organized attack! (Because why bother.)
I don’t know whether to blame FB or not, because I don’t know the details of what happened–and I suspect the same is true for the rest of us. If they blocked him over a few complaints, then yeah, their system is broken. But if they blocked him because of an overwhelming number of complaints (a “slate”, if you will), then blocking him till they had time to get a human to investigate further seems like a reasonable thing to do. As does restoring his posting privileges once they’d investigated.
Honestly, I don’t think losing your privileges for a day is a horrible thing. And, while people seem to be assuming that it was the outpouring of protest which resulted in the restoring of his privileges, we don’t know that. Correlation is not causation. It’s possible his privileges would have been restored once a human investigated anyway.
So, I refuse to assume that FB is to blame or that they’re blameless. Taking either position would be arguing in advance of the facts–including facts we may never receive.
@Contrarius: “I don’t feel any need at the moment to respond to personal attacks or invective.”
Or, it appears, inconvenient arguments.
Did you think nobody would notice how you conveniently skipped right over how I called you out for demanding that we average users do for free the work that Facebook pays its coders good money to fail at, and that if we weren’t prepared to do so, we should STFU about the problem? Is Facebook paying you to act as its apologist?
Polite words do not equate to civil discourse.
Are you perhaps from someplace outside the U.S.? I ask because the notion of “elections,” by which the populace puts those legislators into (and removes the, from) office, seems completely foreign to you. Certainly you make no mention of it in your talk of a “legislative ‘mob'” that “get[s] their way unless somebody complains.”
Or are you claiming that Facebook users can vote its moderators and board members out of the company for incompetence? If so, by all means, show me the mechanism. I’d like to see that.
The fuck you’re not. You have engaged in some of the most tortured “logic” and worst analogies in Facebook’s defense that I’ve seen in quite some time, and I’ve argued Scripture with fundamentalists. I mean, seriously – trying to paint a corporate hierarchy as being the same thing as an elected government, and just as fair and open to input from Joe Average? That’s fucked up, whether you like the four-letter word or not.