James Damore, the fired author of Google’s anti-diversity manifesto, believes that “some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences.”
We’ll have to wait to see what Damore’s former colleagues thought about this assertion. A town-hall style meeting for all Google employees, organized for the express purpose of discussing Damore’s screed and Google’s response, has been canceled.
According to Google CEO Sudar Pichai’s memo, as reported by Buzzfeed, the event was canceled in response to employees’ fears of online attacks. Sadly, those fears were well-founded.
Websites associated with white nationalist rhetoric threatened to dox outspoken Google employees. The 4chan /pol/ message board, famous for its hard-right slant, began publishing the names and Twitter handles of Google employees suspected of disagreeing with Damore’s document.
Arch-troll Milo Yiannopoulos got in on the action, too. He published a post, now taken down, identifying at least eight Google employees, along with the comment, “Looking at who works for Google, it all makes sense now…”
Several employees reportedly contacted Pichai, stating they were afraid to comment in public, as that might make them a target of online harassment.
“In recognition of Googlers’ concerns, we need to step back and create a better set of conditions for us to have the discussion,” Pichai wrote in his memo. “So in the coming
Presumably, those details will not be open to the public. Transparency is a luxury that the alt-right will not allow. However, the practice of organized shaming campaigns, long favored by the rogue’s gallery of men’s rights activists, white supremacists, and Cultists of Kek that haunt the dark corners of the internet (and, for now, the White House), is not going unchecked.
The 4chan /pol/ message board operates a Twitter account, which they were using to identify Google employees. In a tweet dated Aug. 8, the account administrators wrote, “Here’s a collection of Google’s most vocal employees. All of their insanity starts making sense when you see who works there.”
However, the tweet is no longer accessible, neither to prying journalists or malicious
Twitter has not commented on the reason for account’s suspension, and there’s no word on whether it will come back again. But it seems safe to assume that the doxing behavior violated Twitter’s rules, and got the account banned, at least temporarily.
Expect angry young white men on the internet to denounce the “