cs492 - Spring 2017

Societal Implications with Computer Science

rpe07 -- The Fish and the Fisher

Background.

Gamergate is an online movement that has been responsible for a great deal of harassment, including trolling, doxxing and mobbing. In this scenario, you are moderators of a large online video game forum. Your forum already has rules against threats and doxxing, but heated arguments still break out, sometimes including personal insults and attacks. A group of women who use your forum have compiled evidence that the majority of these insults come from Gamergaters, who pile on to any user who makes any feminist critique of a video game. They say they feel unsafe on the forums and would like you to do more about the problem.

Team A. Saving the Fish.

You like diversity: the more diversity an ecology can sustain, the richer is the experience for all its inhabitants. You believe in freedom of speech as a way of maintaining diversity. The problem is that the gamergate faction want to destroy diversity, leaving behind a monoculture of gamergaters who will not be happy because there is nobody to troll. The gamergaters would then leave and the forum would die of inanition. You would like to find a solution that keeps the gamergaters in the forum, and in harmony with the other forum members.

Team B. Banning the Fishers

You like diversity: the more diversity an ecology can sustain, the richer is the experience for all its inhabitants. But providing a good experience for the others is impossible with the gamergaters present. The problem is that banning gamergaters might leave the remaining forum members looking over their shoulders, wondering if their thoughts are acceptable to the moderators. If so a surfeit of anodyne comments could kill the forum by inanition. You would like to find a way of banning the gamegaters without giving the impression of censureship.

Team C. Civilizing the Fishers

It's pretty obvious that this scenario is biased in favour of compromise: as they told me in kindergarten, "Little birds in their nest must agree." You see teams A and B engaging in prisoners' dilemma, and finding bad equilibria. You would like to find a way for the two factions to find mutually satisfying ways to interact. Can you find a solution that will succeed?

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