Real insight into onine abuse and one that certainly makes you squirm and uncomfortable and it is something that needs to be out there for all to see.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

I'm sorry to say I won't be reviewing this book after all. I've lost interest in reading it. Thank you for the opportunity.

Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof get the title of their book Half the Sky from the Chinese saying, "Women hold up half the Sky." This is true in the real world as well as online. Yet, the online environment makes it extremely difficult for women to have a role. In Bailey Poland's Haters, she documents the many ways Cyber sexists harass, intimidate, and drive women off the internet.

Poland documents the innumerable techniques cyber sexists use to derail and deter women online. Doxxing, Swatting, sending offensive images, fake accounts, interrupting conversations, sealioning, the list goes on and on. There is a never ending list of threats and often very little social media companies or even the police are willing to do about it. Keep in mind, they both can do something about it, but they choose not to do anything.

The internet is no longer a space one can walk away from. Lost connections, lost business are the result of disconnecting.

What are the solutions? They are slim. Educating the population (the men to not be sexist, not just women to protect themselves). There are services that can block for you. It can block a person and block their associates. Poland does a masterful job summarizing the online world for women.



Haters

The perception of cybersexism as an ultimately meaningless activity that shouldn't be taken seriously helps disguise its effects on women and throwup a smokescreen around its causes. The deliberate nature of the decision to specifically target women with abusive online communications isintended to establish men as dominant and keep women’s participation in online spaces low, invisible, or nonexistent. Tactics used by cybersexists—such as derailing (an attempt to disrupt a conversation and refocus it in a waymore comfortable to a male participant or a man who has interrupted the conversation for that purpose), mansplaining (a tongue-in-cheek termfor a man condescendingly explaining something to a woman that sheunderstands better than he does), gendered harassment, abuse, and
threats,which will be discussed in depth in chapter 2—are all aimed at re-creating aspects of the onine world in online spaces. The goal of cybersexism is to build places in which women must either be silent or invisible, reinforce the sexist attitudes that see women’s proper role as silent and objectified, and develop an Internet where men are not challenged on their use of stereotypes or violence against women. P18

Many cybersexists add to the sense of security provided by anonymity, using multiple “burner” or “sockpuppet” accounts to harass women and engage in intimidation and abuse, then quickly shutting them down. ispractice allows them to engage in harassment without having to deal withthe effects of engaging in those behaviors onine or under their real name. Although anonymity is more difficult on websites that require identification, such as Facebook, it’s still possible for people to set up multiple fake accounts for their own use. P34

As Whitney Phillips has pointed out in an interview about online harassment, cyber-sexist abusers often use the concept of trolling “as a way of repudiating responsibilities for their own actions” by framing violent misogyny and other behaviors as nonserious or conducted in jest.52 p35

Even men who insist that they are not trolling will engage in activities that are associated with cybersexism, such as mansplaining, acting dominant in some way, and resorting to sexist stereotypes to position themselvesas the authority within the conversation. However, these conversational strategies are not the only tactics used by cybersexists to attempt to retake control of the Internet and drive women away. Threats, doxxing, hacking, and mob harassment are all strategies used by cybersexists to reinforce the unequal nature of the Internet, damage women personally and professionally, and attempt to intimidate women and minimize their presence online. P45
What “don’t feed the trolls” misses is that, for these online cybersexist abusers, it doesn’t matter whether or not a woman responds to their abuse. The payoff for these types of “trolls,” as mentioned earlier, is the ability to say horrendous things to women and never face real consequences fordoing so.P78

In the 1990s people could simply walkaway from online life if they had to; today that is no longer an option. More and more people work online, we hang out with friends online, meet loved ones, and play, write, create, and interact with individuals around the world. Most people carry an instant connection to the Internet in theirpocket. The boundaries between online life and offline life are increasingly blurred, and what happens in one space has effects in the other.Seeing abuse online doesn’t mean that the abuse has no power to a effect someone online, and merely walking away does nothing to prevent the abuse or stop it from continuing. The Internet is what we make it, and anenvironment where abuse is tolerated can no longer be acceptable. P87

Additionally, women who are small business owners are likely to be disproportionately affected by cybersexist attacks and harassment. Coordinated attacks by groups of people who leave fake negative reviews on websites such as Yelp can result in an immediate loss of business, and onlinehacking and other attacks can take down a small business website, causing lost ranking in search engines and customer dissatisfaction. Women whose careers depend on online exposure and connections are at a significant risk for losing their livelihoods over cybersexist harassment. Women who start online businesses are also much less likely to receive funding (only 15percent of companies receiving venture capital funding between 2011 and2013 had a woman on their executive team). Whether financialsupport comes from venture capital groups or from government programs aimed at minority-owned businesses, women receive less money than men do and less support for the continuation of their businesses, and they have a higher level of turnover as a result. Women begin their onlinecareers at a disadvantage, and cybersexist harassment can be the nal nail in theco n for women’s online businesses.P113

Forcing women into a perpetually reactive stance where onlineabuse is concerned gives cybersexist harassers much of the power in the interaction and places a burden on women to constantly monitor their profiles,comments, and notifications. Starting the day off by blocking harassers that appeared overnight is not an uncommon experience. Thedrawbacks of telling women to “just block” their harassers were addressed previously be sure to keep that information in mind when considering that blocking is still one of the only marginally empowering methods womenhave for dealing with abuse online.
173

Research often shows that poor representation of marginalizedgroups enhances stereotypes; increasing representation is met with resistance at first but, eventually, acceptance of parity p222


A site that rarely opens its comments and heavily moderates them when it does is much less likely to have moderators who are regularly and repeatedly exposed to abusive content, and readers coming to the site can comfortably engage with the piece without fearing they will have to read or engage with abusive or hostile voices in the comment section. P184

This was a very informative and important book. The author gives a lot of research, examples, and context to understand how bad online abuse of women is and suggestions for how this can be changed. It is a depressing read and a necessary one, especially if people are just telling you, "don't feed the trolls."