The South By Southwest Interactive Festival announced today a daylong slate of programming devoted to online anti-harassment, stepping away from its controversial decision to cancel two panels amid threats of violence.
In lieu of two panels, SXSW will convene a summit during the festival that will include several panels dedicated to online harassment.
The decision was announced in a post on SXSW’s website written by Hugh Forrest, the Director of the SXSW Interactive Festival. In his his post, Forrest cited a desire to bring “a diverse range of voices together to facilitate meaningful dialogue” as a factor motivating the change.
Earlier this week we made a mistake. By canceling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry.
The festival’s initial decision to cancel the panels was met with opposition from BuzzFeed and The Verge, which separately announced they would not attend the festival unless the panels were reinstated. BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, Publisher Dao Nguyen and BuzzFeed Motion Pictures President Ze Frank penned an open letter to Forrest protesting the decision:
Digital harassment — of activists of all political stripes,journalists, and women in those fields or participating in virtually any other form of digital speech — has emerged as an urgent challenge for the tech companies for whom your conference is an important forum. Those targets of harassment, who include our journalists, do important work in spite of these threats.
One of the events included panelists that had previously been harassed by self-identified members of Gamergate, a loosely associated movement that has prompted a groundswell of support for reforming gaming journalism but garnered criticism for misogyny and harassment.
