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BuzzFeed to boycott major US tech conference over cancelled GamerGate panels

NEW YORK — SXSW Interactive, the annual gathering of technology tastemakers and thought leaders in Austin, Texas, is facing a growing backlash over a decision to cancel two panels on video game culture, with two digital media organisations threatening to pull out of the event.

SXSW Interactive 2015. Photo: SXSW

SXSW Interactive 2015. Photo: SXSW

NEW YORK — SXSW Interactive, the annual gathering of technology tastemakers and thought leaders in Austin, Texas, is facing a growing backlash over a decision to cancel two panels on video game culture, with two digital media organisations threatening to pull out of the event.

BuzzFeed and Vox Media, the publisher of the Verge and other popular sites, both said yesterday (Oct 27) that their employees would not participate in the conference, which will take place in March, after the event’s organisers announced that threats of violence were forcing them to cancel the panels.

In response, SXSW said yesterday that it was working with law enforcement officials to assess the threats it had received regarding the panels and was evaluating “several programming solutions”, which it did not identify.

“We want the SXSW community to know that we hear and understand your frustrations and concerns about the recent cancellation of two SXSW gaming panels,” Mr Hugh Forrest, the director of SXSW Interactive, wrote in a blog post.

The two cancelled panels were expected to touch on GamerGate, a loosely connected online movement that coalesced to counteract criticism of sexism in video games and game culture. One discussion was to be dedicated to the issue of harassment in game culture, while members of the other panel were to be GamerGate supporters.

“By approving the panels in question, SXSW assumed responsibility for related controversies and security threats,” a statement by Vox Media said. “By cancelling the panels, they have cut off an opportunity to discuss a real and urgent problem in media and technology today.”

The moves by BuzzFeed and Vox echoed a growing outcry on social media over the conference’s decision.

The gathering has long aspired to be a forum for topical discussions about tech, rather than dry corporate speeches, and the two events that it cancelled were sure to stir up passions. For the past two years, harassment in gaming culture has become a high-profile topic, after several female game designers and critics were targeted for criticising sexism in games.

People hostile to their views rallied around the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate, accusing them and journalists who wrote sympathetically about them of being politically correct “social justice warriors”.

Some of the people who have been targeted by GamerGate supporters in the past applauded the moves by BuzzFeed and Vox to boycott SXSW. But they said the conference should reinstate only the online-harassment panel, not the other, which they viewed as a forum for GamerGate supporters.

“It’s great that media companies like BuzzFeed & Vox are taking a stand but SXSW should not give a platform to proponents of hate speech,” Ms Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist critic of video games, wrote on Twitter.

Mr Perry Jones, president of the Open Gaming Society, a group he founded to voice the concerns of GamerGate supporters, submitted the idea for the panel that Ms Sarkeesian and others criticised, and he disputed her characterisation of it as “fearmongering”.

“She’s dead wrong,” Jones said. “You look at the topics — they weren’t hateful.”

The topics of the panel included an assessment of the current social and political landscape of the gaming community and the importance of integrity in video game journalism.

An email from BuzzFeed’s senior leaders to Forrest of SXSW Interactive yesterday said the conference should reinstate both panels in the interest of open dialogue.

“We will feel compelled to withdraw them if the conference can’t find a way to do what those other targets of harassment do every day — to carry on important conversations in the face of harassment,” the BuzzFeed email said. “We hope you can support the principle of free speech and engage a vital issue facing us and other constituents on the event.” NEW YORK TIMES

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