NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
SXSW announces day-long online harassment summit in response to cancelled gaming sessions
After receiving numerous threats of on-site violence, annual multimedia festival South by Southwest (SXSW) announced that it would be cancelling two video game related sessions, one on fighting online harassment and one led by supporters of the controversial GamerGate movement. The cancellation sparked an intensely negative reaction on social media, with many people accusing SXSW of giving in to bullying. Now the festival organizers have admitted that they may have been too hasty.
“Earlier this week we made a mistake,” SXSW Interactive Director Hugh Forrest wrote in a statement. “By cancelling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry.”
“It is clear that online harassment is a problem that requires more than two panel discussions to address,” he continued. “To that end, we’ve added a day-long summit to examine this topic. Scheduled on Saturday, March 12, the Online Harassment Summit will take place at SXSW 2016, and we plan to live-stream the content free for the public throughout the day.”
The details of the summit do not seem to be fully ironed out, however, as at least one “confirmed speaker” has stated that she has not yet agreed to participate.
“At this time, Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Gaming is not confirmed to be speaking at SXSW’s online harassment summit,” panelist Randi Harper said in a statement to Eurogamer. Level Up was one of the two gaming sessions cancelled by SXSW, which sparked the recent controversy.
“We worked closely with SXSW over the past few days, but we were very surprised to find SXSW making GamerGate a part of the discussion about online harassment,” Harper continued. “While we fully support GamerGate being a part of SXSW Gaming, adding them to the summit creates a safety concern for many of the people who are currently scheduled to be participating. It is unfortunate that SXSW still lacks an understanding of online harassment, and I have no confidence in their ability to run this summit while keeping panelists safe and providing for a productive conversation.”
Harper’s fellow Level Up panelist Caroline Sinders made a similar statement on Twitter, saying that she had not been informed that members of the cancelled session led by GamerGate supporters would also be part of the summit.
“This seems like further proof that SXSW does not understand harassment or how to produce a safe, inclusive and tolerant space for speakers and attendees,” Sinders wrote.
Photo by Eric David | SiliconANGLE
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