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Lets be explicit about what happened here. A) A journalist brought light to the comments made by a journalism professor. B) Said journalism professor's employ

by TOMDM 5y ago

Lets be explicit about what happened here. A) A journalist brought light to the comments made by a journalism professor. B) Said journalism professor's employer chose to fire her for those comments. Now, I think there is little room for taking issue with point A. If we're at the point where Journalists can't discuss the views of people in their own space, I have very little hope for a future environment of open and honest discourse. On point B, I think there are many views people can hold which justify firing someone. The only question is where you draw the line. If an employee was actively spreading hateful messaging concerning a coworker in their own time, away from work, I think most people would agree firing that person is an acceptable course of action (I understand that wasn't the case here). I also think there are a great number of people that believe pushing hateful discourse, even on your own time means that you are unfit for the workplace given that those views aren't conducive to a healthy work environment. In this case they were pushing some rather racist discourse. They said in response to an article about Muslims "Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them." Obviously the point where you draw the line on acceptable discourse is in degrees, with active harrassment/hate of coworkers on one end, active hate towards a general group in the middle, and some kinds of conspiracism on the other. Where you draw the line is open for discussion, but lets not pretend it's not acceptable to have a line at all. EDIT: Other people are pointing out that Joshua doxxed Francesca using priveleged information from their Disqus platform. While I think that's condemnable, I find it largely immaterial to how Francesca's employer chooses how to react.

mikeyouse 5y ago
I'd argue that someone who talks like that needs to be fired from their position. She was a professor at a State owned college, there are certainly muslim students, professors and staff there. What kind of horrible hostile work environment would you be engendering if you let someone like that stay on staff?
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  She is a professor at a state college. The state is obligated to follow the law, including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, declaring that "Congress shall make now law... abridging the freedom of speech." Yes, this is incorporated against the states. Yes, it applies to state-run colleges. The firing MAY be legal if this speech is "disruptive" to the university or "subversive" of their goals; if so, the firing must satisfy a balancing test as to whether: • the employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern. • their free-speech interests outweigh their employer’s efficiency interests. The comments do seem to be on a matter of public concern, which is typically interpreted quite broadly. The criteria used to assess these efficiency interests include whether the speech: • Impairs discipline or harmony among co-workers. • Has a detrimental impact on close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary • Interferes with the normal operation of the employer’s business. Any litigation over this firing would focus on whether these are real factors that would disrupt teaching, or whether the university officials are just punishing her for her politics. The specific tweets are presumably not directed against any individuals who are at the college, and do not involve the college's normal operations. This does undermine the case somewhat.
  - carols10cents 5y ago
    Her lawsuit is against the Neiman Lab for defamation, not her employer for wrongful termination.
    - fennecfoxen 5y ago
      That's quite nice, but the parent comment insists her employer has a duty to do something about her conduct, while it's not at all clear it was even legal.
      - mikeyouse 5y ago
        Of course it was legal - this has been litigated many times, which is how you end up with public servants (e.g. Police officers) being fired for being racist on "personal time". You can't fire them for the speech - which is of course protected - but you can fire them because they can't possibly be qualified to hold their position while holding/espousing those views. Unless there's a specific state law protecting employees from off-duty conduct (Pennsylvania doesn't have one), employees can certainly be fired.
        Natsu 5y ago
        She specifically alleges that this comment about Muslims was not hers. I do not have any way to know if that's true or not--and I find the article's notion that she should know who did make an anonymous online comment incredibly thoughtless--but if that's true, your entire argument is wrongly premised. I would think that she would want to prove that statement falsely attributed first in a defamation suit before going after the university. The test above is correctly quoted, the only dispute is factual which none of us here has the evidence to resolve. She may be lying or telling the truth, but we can't make any grand pronouncements about whether the university was right or wrong on the basis of disputed factual claims that have yet to be resolved in court.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > In her suit, Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts. But she denied being behind the anti-Muslim screed. Most of the rest of it seems like bog-standard US political polarisation, and if she didn't write the bigoted stuff…
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Likely...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    I'm sure the muslim students would believe that the comment written by the account she controlled wasn't written by her.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Which depends on the philosophy behind the firing. Was it punitive, or to prevent ongoing harm?
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    So she wrote all of the borderline bad things under her unique account, but not the really bad things. Sure. Let's give her that benefit of the doubt.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      > under her unique account, It's Disqus; it doesn't work like that. Anyone can use any username. > So she wrote all of the borderline bad things I like them as much as you do (possibly less), but a large proportion of the US population has been radicalised in this way. It's not so cut and dry as I'd like these situations to be. (I'd delete that kind of thing if I were moderating, though; that's an obvious thing to do.)
- mc32 5y ago
  There was an activist professor at a university in Colorado [mr Churchill, I believe] who used to say some foul things about some people --but said it in sympathy to native Americans. He said the US deserved 9-11 and so on. This professor was protected by the university in spite of calls to have him fired because they said the university needs diverse voices, even if they are violent and they would protect his 1A rights... Things have changed...
  - chris11 5y ago
    I don't remember it that way. He did say the US deserved 9-11, and called people who worked in the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns". But his essay was kind of ignored until 2005. Then CU Boulder investigated him for academic misconduct and fired him. The committee concluded it wasn't serious enough to fire him, and he later successfully sued the university for firing him. Media was reporting on his firing as having major free speech implications. Academic misconduct should be punished. But to me it looks like one of the major motivations for his firing was his extremely offensive comments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill#Activism_on_Native_American_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill#Activism_on_Nat...
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    > Things have changed... Let me get this straight: someone who expressed hateful left-leaning political opinions was _not_ fired, and then later someone who expressed hateful right-leaning political opinions _was_ fired? What changed, exactly?
    - mc32 5y ago
      I think there was more willingness to defend these kinds opinions on principle based on the 1A and, importantly, defending someone on principle wasn't conflated with supporting that PoV. But now that is no longer the case. Now people claim that there are exceptions and also that while the 1A exists, it does not protect individuals from repercussions (job loss) even if state jobs. I think that is a significant shift (even if yes, we do see a free pass for the likes of Sarah Jeong[1] for example. [1]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534
spoonjim 5y ago
But he used his administrative privileges on Disqus to discover her identity. If you criticized Sundar Pichai from an anonymous Gmail account should it be OK for him to look up your IP logs and dox you? I’d hope not.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  That isn't remotely the same thing - he wasn't an admin at Disqus, he was an admin on the Disqus instance at their own website. She went to his website, commented horrible things under an anonymous account, and he exposed her as a person in a position of trust. That's not even close to approaching an abuse like the CEO of Google doxxing your gmail account.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
    She didn't comment horrible things on his website, only a critique of an article. He took offense to that, de-anonymized her by abusing the moderation system and looked for distasteful comments elsewhere. I won't speak to the legality of it because I'm not qualified, but it's morally reprehensible.
    - dubbel 5y ago
      That is not necessarily the order these things happened in. He could have 1. Taken offense to this comment/taken interest in what else this user comments (which you can do without any admin tools) 2. Seen the islamophobic/xenophobic comment 3. De-anonymized the user In this version the de-anonymization is related to the more repugnant comments, not the initial critique.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    How is it different? It’s a misuse of the information he had access to. He was within his rights to ban her but not to dox her (and Disqus should not have exposed email addresses to site admins).
    - 5y ago
adolph 5y ago
C). The journalist acknowledged and apologized for his error in judgement when performing A. https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/994303319907725312 https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/994303319907725312
zozbot234 5y ago
> In this case they were pushing some rather racist discourse. They said in response to an article about Muslims "Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them." That's better described as religious intolerance, not quite the same as racism per se. Not that this makes the attitude any less problematic, far from it. OP is ironically projecting her own attitude onto Muslims by saying that they all hate us for not sharing their religion.
- TOMDM 5y ago
  Yeah agreed.
- minsc__and__boo 5y ago
  Sure, but keep in mind that islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism are partially overlapping phenomena.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    That's a bit hard to square with the fact that so much religiously-motivated hate towards Muslims comes from other self-identified Muslims. If there's some of the overlap you mention, it must be quite limited indeed.
    - TOMDM 5y ago
      I'd bet there's a huge overlap amongst right wing americans. Probably the same for many Western right wing populations. If we're going to call that population limited, then yeah I'd agree
    - minsc__and__boo 5y ago
      Well in reference to the comment in the article about deporting muslims, the islamophobia is overlapping with xenophobia at the very least.
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  In all likely hood, she was talking about a subset of Muslims. Possibly the ones with terrorist tendencies. Seems like the full context needs to be examined to cast judgment.
amadeuspagel 5y ago
> Now, I think there is little room for taking issue with point A. If we're at the point where Journalists can't discuss the views of people in their own space, I have very little hope for a future environment of open and honest discourse. Really? There's very little hope for an environment of open and honest discourse without doxing people?
- TOMDM 5y ago
  Sorry, I misrepresented the situation due to ignorance. Doxxing people is condemnable, journalists discussing each others views alone is not.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    I think doxxing is a tool. It can be used in condemnable ways. It's also used in virtuous ways; for example, to determine whether what appears to be grassroots activism is astroturfing (https://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movements-2011-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-move...).
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  There is no open and honest discourse without knowing who you are talking to.
  - amadeuspagel 5y ago
    Strange that you say this on HN, a forum that allows pseudonymous accounts. Is the discourse here not open and honest? Less open and honest then on facebook? Regardless, if you think an open and honest discourse requires knowing who people are, you should have an explicit policy to that effect. You should not use private data entrusted to you to dox people.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      Perhaps I should've said good faith discourse, because yes, I do not believe continuous good faith political discourse is possible when people can hide behind pseudonymity. Most political discussions online devolve into bad faith because there are no consequences. Not having anonymity is the first step toward ensuring good faith.
zozbot234 5y ago
> Other people are pointing out that Joshua doxxed Francesca using priveleged information from their Disqus platform. He also seems to have done this in retaliation towards legitimate commentary and criticism of a Nieman Lab article. If there's anything that makes his behavior especially reprehensible, surely this must be it. And this also implies that her lawsuit might actually have some merit to it.
- afavour 5y ago
  > And this also implies that her lawsuit might actually have some merit. How so? It's a defamation suit so the criteria are pretty clear and as far as I'm aware whether it was revenge or not doesn't have any bearing.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    The only thing I can think of is that maybe she had some expected right to privacy that he violated on behalf of Neiman Labs? Either that or maybe she can demonstrate how his actions caused her harm without her harming him, but his actions were only possible as an employee of Neiman labs. I think what will most likely happen is he will be fired and she will get an undisclosed settlement.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    The defamation suit is claiming that his attempt to de-anonymize her false-positive-associated some reprehensible things said on another site with her, which she did not say. She isn't disputing that she said the things on the Disqus forum (or several other things on other sites). She's either telling the truth or she's gambling that he overplayed his hand, doesn't have hard evidence to link her to those comments, and (in the context of a civil suit, which is what defamation is) lacks the resources to prove his case with preponderance of evidence. In which case, he'll be liable for damages and have to pay to "make her whole" (which could be quite a bit if she can convince the court she lost her job because of the things she's alleged to have said in that one set of comments she's suing over).
lsh123 5y ago
I think the key here is that person A used admin access to a product to access user B information and then made it public. I would say that the company that owns the product should also be sued since I am pretty sure this data usage is not covered in their privacy policy/TOS.

by TOMDM 5y ago

mikeyouse 5y ago

I'd argue that someone who talks like that needs to be fired from their position. She was a professor at a State owned college, there are certainly muslim students, professors and staff there. What kind of horrible hostile work environment would you be engendering if you let someone like that stay on staff?

fennecfoxen 5y ago
She is a professor at a state college. The state is obligated to follow the law, including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, declaring that "Congress shall make now law... abridging the freedom of speech." Yes, this is incorporated against the states. Yes, it applies to state-run colleges. The firing MAY be legal if this speech is "disruptive" to the university or "subversive" of their goals; if so, the firing must satisfy a balancing test as to whether: • the employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern. • their free-speech interests outweigh their employer’s efficiency interests. The comments do seem to be on a matter of public concern, which is typically interpreted quite broadly. The criteria used to assess these efficiency interests include whether the speech: • Impairs discipline or harmony among co-workers. • Has a detrimental impact on close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary • Interferes with the normal operation of the employer’s business. Any litigation over this firing would focus on whether these are real factors that would disrupt teaching, or whether the university officials are just punishing her for her politics. The specific tweets are presumably not directed against any individuals who are at the college, and do not involve the college's normal operations. This does undermine the case somewhat.
- carols10cents 5y ago
  Her lawsuit is against the Neiman Lab for defamation, not her employer for wrongful termination.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    That's quite nice, but the parent comment insists her employer has a duty to do something about her conduct, while it's not at all clear it was even legal.
    - mikeyouse 5y ago
      Of course it was legal - this has been litigated many times, which is how you end up with public servants (e.g. Police officers) being fired for being racist on "personal time". You can't fire them for the speech - which is of course protected - but you can fire them because they can't possibly be qualified to hold their position while holding/espousing those views. Unless there's a specific state law protecting employees from off-duty conduct (Pennsylvania doesn't have one), employees can certainly be fired.
      - Natsu 5y ago
        She specifically alleges that this comment about Muslims was not hers. I do not have any way to know if that's true or not--and I find the article's notion that she should know who did make an anonymous online comment incredibly thoughtless--but if that's true, your entire argument is wrongly premised. I would think that she would want to prove that statement falsely attributed first in a defamation suit before going after the university. The test above is correctly quoted, the only dispute is factual which none of us here has the evidence to resolve. She may be lying or telling the truth, but we can't make any grand pronouncements about whether the university was right or wrong on the basis of disputed factual claims that have yet to be resolved in court.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
wizzwizz4 5y ago
> In her suit, Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts. But she denied being behind the anti-Muslim screed. Most of the rest of it seems like bog-standard US political polarisation, and if she didn't write the bigoted stuff…
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Likely...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  I'm sure the muslim students would believe that the comment written by the account she controlled wasn't written by her.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Which depends on the philosophy behind the firing. Was it punitive, or to prevent ongoing harm?
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  So she wrote all of the borderline bad things under her unique account, but not the really bad things. Sure. Let's give her that benefit of the doubt.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > under her unique account, It's Disqus; it doesn't work like that. Anyone can use any username. > So she wrote all of the borderline bad things I like them as much as you do (possibly less), but a large proportion of the US population has been radicalised in this way. It's not so cut and dry as I'd like these situations to be. (I'd delete that kind of thing if I were moderating, though; that's an obvious thing to do.)
mc32 5y ago
There was an activist professor at a university in Colorado [mr Churchill, I believe] who used to say some foul things about some people --but said it in sympathy to native Americans. He said the US deserved 9-11 and so on. This professor was protected by the university in spite of calls to have him fired because they said the university needs diverse voices, even if they are violent and they would protect his 1A rights... Things have changed...
- chris11 5y ago
  I don't remember it that way. He did say the US deserved 9-11, and called people who worked in the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns". But his essay was kind of ignored until 2005. Then CU Boulder investigated him for academic misconduct and fired him. The committee concluded it wasn't serious enough to fire him, and he later successfully sued the university for firing him. Media was reporting on his firing as having major free speech implications. Academic misconduct should be punished. But to me it looks like one of the major motivations for his firing was his extremely offensive comments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill#Activism_on_Native_American_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill#Activism_on_Nat...
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  > Things have changed... Let me get this straight: someone who expressed hateful left-leaning political opinions was _not_ fired, and then later someone who expressed hateful right-leaning political opinions _was_ fired? What changed, exactly?
  - mc32 5y ago
    I think there was more willingness to defend these kinds opinions on principle based on the 1A and, importantly, defending someone on principle wasn't conflated with supporting that PoV. But now that is no longer the case. Now people claim that there are exceptions and also that while the 1A exists, it does not protect individuals from repercussions (job loss) even if state jobs. I think that is a significant shift (even if yes, we do see a free pass for the likes of Sarah Jeong[1] for example. [1]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534

spoonjim 5y ago

But he used his administrative privileges on Disqus to discover her identity. If you criticized Sundar Pichai from an anonymous Gmail account should it be OK for him to look up your IP logs and dox you? I’d hope not.

mikeyouse 5y ago
That isn't remotely the same thing - he wasn't an admin at Disqus, he was an admin on the Disqus instance at their own website. She went to his website, commented horrible things under an anonymous account, and he exposed her as a person in a position of trust. That's not even close to approaching an abuse like the CEO of Google doxxing your gmail account.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  She didn't comment horrible things on his website, only a critique of an article. He took offense to that, de-anonymized her by abusing the moderation system and looked for distasteful comments elsewhere. I won't speak to the legality of it because I'm not qualified, but it's morally reprehensible.
  - dubbel 5y ago
    That is not necessarily the order these things happened in. He could have 1. Taken offense to this comment/taken interest in what else this user comments (which you can do without any admin tools) 2. Seen the islamophobic/xenophobic comment 3. De-anonymized the user In this version the de-anonymization is related to the more repugnant comments, not the initial critique.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  How is it different? It’s a misuse of the information he had access to. He was within his rights to ban her but not to dox her (and Disqus should not have exposed email addresses to site admins).
  - 5y ago

adolph 5y ago

C). The journalist acknowledged and apologized for his error in judgement when performing A. https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/994303319907725312 https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/994303319907725312

zozbot234 5y ago

> In this case they were pushing some rather racist discourse. They said in response to an article about Muslims "Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them." That's better described as religious intolerance, not quite the same as racism per se. Not that this makes the attitude any less problematic, far from it. OP is ironically projecting her own attitude onto Muslims by saying that they all hate us for not sharing their religion.

TOMDM 5y ago
Yeah agreed.
minsc__and__boo 5y ago
Sure, but keep in mind that islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism are partially overlapping phenomena.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  That's a bit hard to square with the fact that so much religiously-motivated hate towards Muslims comes from other self-identified Muslims. If there's some of the overlap you mention, it must be quite limited indeed.
  - TOMDM 5y ago
    I'd bet there's a huge overlap amongst right wing americans. Probably the same for many Western right wing populations. If we're going to call that population limited, then yeah I'd agree
  - minsc__and__boo 5y ago
    Well in reference to the comment in the article about deporting muslims, the islamophobia is overlapping with xenophobia at the very least.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
In all likely hood, she was talking about a subset of Muslims. Possibly the ones with terrorist tendencies. Seems like the full context needs to be examined to cast judgment.

amadeuspagel 5y ago

> Now, I think there is little room for taking issue with point A. If we're at the point where Journalists can't discuss the views of people in their own space, I have very little hope for a future environment of open and honest discourse. Really? There's very little hope for an environment of open and honest discourse without doxing people?

TOMDM 5y ago
Sorry, I misrepresented the situation due to ignorance. Doxxing people is condemnable, journalists discussing each others views alone is not.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  I think doxxing is a tool. It can be used in condemnable ways. It's also used in virtuous ways; for example, to determine whether what appears to be grassroots activism is astroturfing (https://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movements-2011-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-move...).
colinmhayes 5y ago
There is no open and honest discourse without knowing who you are talking to.
- amadeuspagel 5y ago
  Strange that you say this on HN, a forum that allows pseudonymous accounts. Is the discourse here not open and honest? Less open and honest then on facebook? Regardless, if you think an open and honest discourse requires knowing who people are, you should have an explicit policy to that effect. You should not use private data entrusted to you to dox people.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Perhaps I should've said good faith discourse, because yes, I do not believe continuous good faith political discourse is possible when people can hide behind pseudonymity. Most political discussions online devolve into bad faith because there are no consequences. Not having anonymity is the first step toward ensuring good faith.

zozbot234 5y ago

> Other people are pointing out that Joshua doxxed Francesca using priveleged information from their Disqus platform. He also seems to have done this in retaliation towards legitimate commentary and criticism of a Nieman Lab article. If there's anything that makes his behavior especially reprehensible, surely this must be it. And this also implies that her lawsuit might actually have some merit to it.

afavour 5y ago
> And this also implies that her lawsuit might actually have some merit. How so? It's a defamation suit so the criteria are pretty clear and as far as I'm aware whether it was revenge or not doesn't have any bearing.
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  The only thing I can think of is that maybe she had some expected right to privacy that he violated on behalf of Neiman Labs? Either that or maybe she can demonstrate how his actions caused her harm without her harming him, but his actions were only possible as an employee of Neiman labs. I think what will most likely happen is he will be fired and she will get an undisclosed settlement.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The defamation suit is claiming that his attempt to de-anonymize her false-positive-associated some reprehensible things said on another site with her, which she did not say. She isn't disputing that she said the things on the Disqus forum (or several other things on other sites). She's either telling the truth or she's gambling that he overplayed his hand, doesn't have hard evidence to link her to those comments, and (in the context of a civil suit, which is what defamation is) lacks the resources to prove his case with preponderance of evidence. In which case, he'll be liable for damages and have to pay to "make her whole" (which could be quite a bit if she can convince the court she lost her job because of the things she's alleged to have said in that one set of comments she's suing over).

lsh123 5y ago

I think the key here is that person A used admin access to a product to access user B information and then made it public. I would say that the company that owns the product should also be sued since I am pretty sure this data usage is not covered in their privacy policy/TOS.