Crash Override Network was a support group for victims of large scale online abuse, including revenge porn and

doxing Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...

History

Crash Override was founded by game developers

Zoë Quinn Zoë Tiberius Quinn (born 1987) is an American video game developer, programmer, and writer. Quinn developed the interactive fiction game '' Depression Quest'', which was released in 2013. In 2014, a defamatory blog post by their ex-boyfrien ...

and Alex Lifschitz, and was staffed exclusively by victims of online abuse whose identities were kept anonymous outside the group. Quinn and Lifschitz were subjected to online abuse during the

Gamergate harassment campaign Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" pri ...

, with both receiving death threats and being doxxed. Crash Override formed a partnership with

Feminist Frequency Anita Sarkeesian ( ; born 1983) is a Canadian-American feminist media critic and public speaker. She is the founder of '' Feminist Frequency'', a website that hosts videos and commentary analyzing portrayals of women in popular culture. She h ...

in March 2016, which served as its financial sponsor. From December 2016, Crash Override's hotline was closed. Some time in 2018, Crash Override closed fully, and "passed the torch to other organisations".

Mission

The founders of Crash Override consider it a conversation starter, a repository for addressing problems that others in and out of the gaming community "have long hoped would simply go away." The organisation's services are divided into three categories: ongoing assistance for victims, crisis centre support, and community outreach. They provide post-crisis counseling services, help seeking shelter, and access to experts in information security, white hat hacking, law enforcement, public relations and threat monitoring. The network tailors a unique plan of action for each victim and works with law enforcement, the media, and social media. They promise to help victims regardless of previous affiliations and ideology, including Gamergate supporters. The group has been credited with defusing a swatting attack by advising the target to preemptively contact the police. Quinn said the launch of Crash Override Network led to a renewed and heightened campaign of abuse, and the website underwent daily hack attempts. In May 2015, the organisation became an official

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

trusted safety resource.

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, Internet, Video games Human rights organizations based in the United States 2015 in video gaming Cyberbullying Women and video games Internet activism Sexual harassment 2018 disestablishments