The Jezebel website is plagued by images depicting an act that leaves the lives of many women in tatters for most, if not the rest, of their days and the women's interest blog says parent company, Gawker Media, isn't doing anything to protect the blog's staff and patrons from the regular barrage of rape GIFs.
Jezebel has called on Gawker Media to begin tracking Internet Protocol addresses to block any associated accounts with the offensive GIFs. So far, Jezebel says, Gawker refuses to consider IP tracking and blocking. Every computer has a special serial number, an IP number, used to identify it, a unique identifying number like a car license plate.
"[Even] in the midst of seemingly constant overhaul, Gawker has always been a place that would really go to the mat for its writers, a place that offered unmatched freedom to smart people with something to say," Jezebel says in a statement. "It's time that Gawker Media applied that principle to promoting our freedom to write without being bombarded with porn and gore. We're real, we're here, and we matter."
For several months now, the offender has posted the offensive material to Kinja, the discussion platform for Jezebel, using one or more burner accounts, Jezebel stated. The use of burner accounts requires no identify information, except a screen name.
A Jezebel staff member has to manually ban the commenter and remove each image individually -- the graphic images have been posted in batches. But banning the commenter doesn't stop the individual from establishing another burner account.
Gawker, according to Jezebel, has rationalized the continued use of untraceable burner accounts because they offer a means for anonymous tipsters to share sensitive information with the blog's editorial staff.
As reports indicate the images may represent potential workplace harassment and such harassing behavior represents a new form of molestation that's unique to the digital age.
"This practice is profoundly upsetting to our commenters, who have the misfortune of starting their day with some excessively violent images, to casual readers who drop by to skim Jezebel with their morning coffee only to see hard core pornography at the bottom of a post about Michelle Obama, and especially to the staff, who are the only ones capable of removing the comments and are thus, by default, now required to view and interact with violent pornography and gore as part of our jobs. None of us are paid enough to deal with this on a daily basis," says Jezebel.
