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This post is about the long journey of a complaint I made at SIGCOMM HotNets 2020. It started with a biased review, was onion-routed through multiple committees, withstood several rounds of gaslighting, and finally ended in disappointment anyway. Some have seen my Twitter posts on this, but there is far more to the story.
Why am I writing a blog post on this? Two reasons. First, I had no idea about any of the steps when I embarked on this journey. This post could be useful for others who face issues in the future (to guide themselves or maybe to stop themselves). Second, based on my experiences during this process, I don’t know how the story will be distorted in the future. So I thought it was a good idea to write about the complete experience. I have email records for all statements in this post.
The HotNets Review
“Internet infrastructure is located close to Internet users, who live predominantly in developed countries in high latitudes. For the studied topic, this is the population that matters, not the overall world population.”
This problematic excerpt is from a review I obtained at HotNets 2020. First and foremost, this is factually incorrect since the majority of Internet users are in developing countries. But more importantly, the statement “this is the population that matters” about the developed world and other comments made by the reviewer are derogatory to large swaths of people. They reveal bias against the developing world.
Since I found it inappropriate, I posted it on Twitter along with some Internet user statistics. Several senior members of the community encouraged me to report this to the HotNets PC chairs. The events that followed expose much beyond the bias of the review. It revealed the bias and double standards in the community.
HotNets PC chairs
The PC chairs agreed that the comment was inappropriate, apologized for their oversight, and raised this issue with the reviewer. But the reviewer doubled down on their stance. The reviewer’s response completely ignored the facts that I presented and devolved into a rant on income inequality and communist states, a topic not of any relevance to my paper. At this point, the PC chairs gave up and declared the matter as closed, to which one of my co-authors agreed.
I found the response as inappropriate as the initial comment. Since the matter was declared closed, I didn’t argue further. But I posted a part of the response on Twitter again. After seeing this post, a senior member of the community complained to the PC chairs about the reviewer’s statements. In response, the PC chairs told me that it was inappropriate to share the reviewer’s comments with anyone. I refused to take the Twitter post down. However, I agreed to post a disclaimer as per their request. I was very adamant about not taking down my Twitter post because it would set a dangerous precedent as an infringement of a person’s rights.
I want to stress one point here. Anonymity does not imply confidentiality. My post did not contain any personal or proprietary information. I had made no attempts to deanonymize the reviewer or distort the response. I did not do anything illegal or unethical. I was highlighting a real problem. Moreover, they have no rights over my personal Twitter account. In the emails that followed, I twice pointed out to the chairs that the reviewer’s comments and response were inappropriate, which the PC chairs ignored.
SIGCOMM CARES
I found it unacceptable that the PC chairs tried to silence me by not addressing the problem I raised and asking me to take down the Twitter post instead. At the same time, the reviewer was allowed to get away with derogatory statements. So I consulted with multiple people and reported the issue to SIGCOMM CARES. I had hoped that CARES would treat this incident fairly. Unfortunately, their response was extremely disappointing. The rest of the interactions described here were with the SIGCOMM CARES Chairs and the SIGCOMM chair.
Within three days of sending my email, they reached out to multiple people at the highest levels of ACM to find out what rules I had violated by talking about this issue in public. They pointed me to the ACM website and said that I had broken confidentiality and copyright rules. However, on closer inspection, I found that ACM has confidentiality requirements only on the review process/the reviewers and not on the authors. Moreover, fair use allows sharing of parts of copyrighted material for criticism and commentary.
When I raised these arguments, they said that their understanding of ACM rules was formed after multiple iterations with the ACM Director of Publications, and the quotes sent to me were directly obtained from him. I was told that if I thought the interpretation of ACM publication rules by the ACM Director of Publications was incorrect, I should reach out to him directly. Apparently, these views were confirmed by one of the ACM Publications Board co-Chairs as well.
I believe that these actions were intended to silence me. It was really intimidating. I didn’t know any ACM procedures, let alone these boards and their Directors/Chairs. I was expecting SIGCOMM leadership to guide me through the process and take fair actions. Instead, they tried to throw me under the bus. I wasn’t expecting that their first response would be to reach out to people at the topmost levels at ACM to find rules that could be used to silence me. Well, I got the great honor of careful scrutiny under all possible rules and policies for mere Twitter posts in a SIG that sent only a warning message for repeated instances of sexual harassment. Interestingly, when it came to the reviewer, their stance had always been that they were not targeting people; they only wanted to improve processes. They were clearly trying to silence me and not just improving processes at the beginning.
After they raised several rule violations, I had to contest their misinterpretation of ACM rules. So I read the rules carefully and reached out to the ACM Director of Publications, claiming that I had not violated any rules based on my understanding. Fortunately, interactions with the ACM office were straightforward. The Director confirmed that the SIGCOMM chair had reached out to him, asked me for more details including my Twitter links, and the Board reviewed the issue within a week. ACM Publications Board ruled that I had not violated any policies and no action would be taken against me.
At this point, it is also worth mentioning the utter disappointment I felt with the leadership of SIGCOMM. I had trusted these people to make fair decisions and not try to infringe on my personal freedom. My initial complaint was also centered around attempts to silence me. But they turned around and did exactly the same thing that I was complaining about, and they did it more strongly. Even after the ACM decision and my repeated insistence that it was my right to express my opinion in a manner that I deemed appropriate, they continued to criticize my Twitter posts. Every time I brought up the original issue, it was deflected using references to my social media behavior. It took them less than 72 hours to contact multiple people across ACM and find all possibilities of rule violations I had committed. Once I established that I had not broken any rules, they spent two months giving me the runaround.
When it became evident to me that their goal was to silence me and brush the issue under the rug, I found out about the ACM Ethics Committee (COPE) on my own. When I wanted to report to COPE, they asked me to wait. In this instance and a couple of times before that, they said they were conducting an “investigation” and were committed to taking appropriate actions. Eventually, it turned out that CARES did not have any powers to take action. After I insisted on going to COPE, they admitted that they could only provide advice and not take any action.
In mid-November, CARES sent me a statement with their recommendations. This statement again criticized my Twitter posts in spite of me pushing back multiple times, where I have cited a range of rules from ACM policies to laws in the US and India that grant me freedom of speech. Despite having a clear written record for everything, my statements on this issue were repeatedly ignored/trivialized in a concerted attempt to show the reviewer making inappropriate comments in a good light. After I wrote a strong response, they finally apologized and removed the criticism of my Twitter posts from the statement.
In mid-December, after I had reported the incident to COPE and stopped interacting with SIGCOMM CARES for nearly a month, they sent me a modified statement, in which, for the first time, they explicitly said in the statement that the reviewer’s comments were biased. It was also the first time that CARES acknowledged that I had the right to discuss the issue in public. I was actually surprised because they had been flat out gaslighting me for the entire two months I was in touch with them, repeatedly ignoring my assertions that it was my right, even after ACM cleared me! But later, it occurred to me that they created a more balanced statement only because of inquiry from COPE.
ACM COPE
Given the amount of trouble I had to deal with until this point, I was very adamant about reporting this incident to ACM. People at SIGCOMM, who had multiple interactions with ACM Directors and Chairs to find out what rules I had violated, told me that I had all the proof to go to COPE. That was all the help I got from CARES, the committee apparently designed to guide people through the ACM process.
By this stage, SIGCOMM had transformed me from a naive idiot who expected people to do the right thing to an expert complainant who knew how to protect myself first. As a first step, I thoroughly read the COPE policy for dealing with complaints and checked with COPE chairs about their confidentiality rules. They required intermediate proceedings to be confidential, but there were no restrictions on the initial complaint or the final decision. Having clarified that, I sent my complaint to ACM COPE. Their policy stated that the complainant and the subject would be notified when a decision was made.
When I had not heard from them for nearly three months, I inquired about their decision. COPE had already contacted CARES and the reviewer. COPE chairs said that the reviewer’s comments were inappropriate, “but nothing more,” and they did not violate the ACM Code. Also, the situation “escalated to” the reviewer making inappropriate comments because communication was in writing. If it were spoken communication, the disagreements would have been settled. I think it is a bit ridiculous to imply that things got heated in a written exchange while a spoken exchange would have settled things. If anything, people have more time to think and choose their words while writing, whereas spoken responses are often far more spontaneous and prone to inadvertent statements. The reviewer was given an opportunity for clarification in this issue, which they utilized to ignore the presented data and make further derogatory statements.
COPE also shared the CARES committee’s recommendations from the December statement. I suspect that CARES wrote a more balanced statement after the COPE inquiry. COPE also did not notify me of their decision without explicitly asking for it, but they had notified others. Overall, I guess the only difference at COPE was the nature of gaslighting. The response was very similar to that of CARES.
That is the end of the story. I am immensely grateful to my friends and CARES members from other SIGs who supported me through various stages of this journey! Several grad students had written to me with words of support. These seemingly small gestures made a huge difference to me during this harrowing experience.
Now there is a SIGCOMM CARES statement that promises to add a line against bias to CFPs, and encourages PC chairs, reviewers, etc., to do better. Given my experience until now, I believe this is just eyewash. People who behave inappropriately will continue to do so with impunity, and the senior members in power will bend over backward to protect them. But I have learned a lot from this experience.
[Update (Feb 27, 2021): SIGCOMM CARES released their December 2020 statement at the end of February 2021, after I published this blog post. There is an interesting update in the statement. In the last week of Feb 2021, they found out that the ACM Publications Board has a Committee on Ethics and Plagiarism which could handle this issue. Recall that they had multiple chats with this same board in Sep 2020 to figure out what rules I had violated by tweeting. It seems like they never checked with them about the actual issue then! It took so much effort on my end and a huge backlash on Twitter.]
[Update (Jul 8, 2021): I came to know from external members that ACM had questioned SIGCOMM CARES about the handling of this issue, and the excuse SIGCOMM gave was “miscommunication.” (it was not! It was blatant abuse of power) Since the full version of the paper under question has now been accepted to a conference, I am happy to share all the data on this issue—the original submission, the complete review, and a copy of all communication with SIGCOMM which was solely through emails—to anyone considering approaching SIGCOMM CARES/leadership. To the best of my knowledge, there are no laws in the US or rules in the ACM policy that prevent such sharing. Considering how SIGCOMM covered up the behavior of its leadership, I would strongly encourage you to take a look at these records before approaching them.]
Some Takeaways:
- This is a system with the primary goal of preserving itself. The extent of double standards in applying rules is appalling. People who flout rules are protected by those in power. When someone points it out, they are subjected to thorough scrutiny in every possible manner, and even non-existent rules are created on-the-fly to silence them.
- Be extra careful when attending in-person events. This issue was luckily nothing personal. If something terrible happens, there is literally no one to go to. I don’t have any hope of being treated fairly here.
- The rules are designed in such a way as to take minimal actions and also disclose actions being taken to the minimum extent possible. If you are harassed in an environment like this, I believe the best option would be to react on the spot. The slow and secretive nature of the system will only help perpetrators more than victims.
- I have been meticulous about documenting everything. This has been critical for withstanding a tremendous amount of gaslighting. If you find yourself in any issue, keep all documents sorted and record videos whenever possible. It is not fun being the person without any power, not knowing the rules/loopholes, and having your statements constantly trivialized/ignored.
- Will I do this again? I will definitely talk about issues in public. I will never let anyone silence me and will fight back fiercely if someone attempts to do that. But reporting to SIGCOMM CARES or COPE? No! At least not unless something is really at stake. The whole system is just rotten. I got into this issue without knowing what would ensue, figuring out the next step as the previous one failed. Also, I absolutely detest being bullied and silenced, which kept me fighting. Knowing how everything works now, I will never sign up for this complaining route unless it is absolutely essential. If I have to do it, I will be far more assertive right from the beginning.
(Crossposted to Medium)
– Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi
