Google may have deleted their tweet supporting #Gamergate, but it still stings

Just when you thought that the nastiness surrounding #Gamergate, last year’s online movement that attacked women in the video game industry, was over, it rears its ugly head again.

Last night, a tweet from the official Google Cloud Twitter account grabbed Internet attention with its positive spin on a movement that’s been widely criticized for harassing and threatening women online. The tweet went up at 8:15pm EST and read “The future of gaming is in our hands #GamerGate.” Accompanying the text was a photo of two hands on a gaming console, the right one coded as a masculine hand, the left one coded as a feminine one, adorned with nail polish and a bracelet.

Though the tweet was quickly deleted, the International Business Times caught a screengrab of it before it went down. The account then followed the tweet with another one, apologizing:

It’s good that Google retracted their statement, but it’s deeply disturbing to think that an online behemoth like Google could be on the side of the toxic misogyny that GamerGate spread. In case you need a refresher, that included driving several prominent women in the gaming industry (like developer Zoe Quinn and critic Anita Sarkeesian) out of their homes with repeated threats, and shutting down an event at a university with the threat of a mass shooting. It was truly disturbing, awful stuff.

Google is a huge company, and who knows who sent out that tweet. It could well have been a hacker. But it’s time for online companies everywhere to take a strong stand against the cyberbullying that GamerGate has fostered. The war for women’s rights online is just beginning.

(Image via Daily Dot)