Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats. The company made the call as a precaution against possible retribution after it announced a contentious change to its business model this week.
feel like a beefed up law enforcement presence for a couple weeks enough to stop that if it’s just one person dumb enough to stroll in the front door with a facetiming iPhone and a .45, this seems like an extreme reaction for something that was probably not even a literal death threat to begin with.
I strongly recommend looking in to how this has gone down for a lot of Influencers and the like (since coders and journalists tend to be a lot more quiet about it). For all his flaws, moistcritikal did a really good video on this a few years (?) back regarding one of the bigger female streamers. He, of course, ruined it by treating it like a cool ass event when the stalker got arrested but…
The reality is that cops don’t give a shit. You can provide the details of the death threats against you and they will just say to call them if something happens. And even then, they will do their best to not get involved even while someone is standing outside your door. This is why, every so often, you hear about something like Gavin Free and Meg Turney having their stalker break into their home with a loaded weapon and either dying by suicide or cop. They had reported it countless times before but it wasn’t until the guy was forcibly breaking into their home that the cops gave a shit.
And there are plenty more situations like that which don’t involve two of the most public people on the internet who work for a company that will farm clout out of anything.
Like, back during the height of Gamergate, a very good friend of mine literally had to go into hiding because he was targeted by the mob for the crime of… writing a few articles. He, his wife, and their newborn had reported the death and rape threats to the cops repeatedly and even had a different friend help track down the sources of some of the more credible ones (let’s not go into details on how…) and provide a paper trail. Nothing. He was literally on the phone with 911 begging for help when one of the stalkers was standing outside his home with an assault rifle. Dispatch only even sent a cop AFTER they heard the gunshots on the call as the monster unloaded on their home. And guess what? Cops didn’t give a shit after the fact either and it was up to him to take his family and go into hiding for a few months before taking a new, much lower profile, job writing press releases.
For what its worth? His former employers wanted to go public with that. He threatened to sue them to hell and back if they did because all he cared about was keeping his family alive. And that is not an isolated incident.
sorry tbh I’m sure this may have been a legit point but this was too long of a rant for me to fully read. can someone tldr this for me?
I dunno this feels like some truths were stretched, if you call the cops with a man standing outside your house with an assault rifle they would definitely dispatch someone in any state but maybe texas