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This article is ludicrous. The protection of freedom of speech is fundamental, and one that Reddit is standing by. The usage of that freedom of speech is a pe

This article is ludicrous. The protection of freedom of speech is fundamental, and one that Reddit is standing by. The usage of that freedom of speech is a personal responsibility. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable. Reddit the organization is entirely in the right here. To say otherwise would be to misplace responsibility and fundamentally change the idea of free speech that the US—and surely the internet—has enjoyed for many years. The author of the article, however, sure thinks he's got some moral high groung alright. I implore him to get off his high horse.

raganwald 14y ago
I think that both of our horses share the same sire. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable. A reasonable position. Let me grant you that. So here's an oblique question, one that does not argue with your perfectly understandable feelings about Freedom of Speech. What's with this man being fired from his job for exercising his Freedom of Speech during his own personal time? Obviously there's freedom of people to boycott his employer if they don't like them employing him, and his employer has freedom to fire him if they don't want to deal with any such consequences, but all that being said... Isn't there something deeply disturbing about people holding his employer responsible for his freedom to speak when it's wholly unconnected with their business, but not holding Reddit accountable for his freedom to speak, when it's their business to allow him to speak? Why aren't these two things the same?
- cousin_it 14y ago
  It seems to me that dissenters in the internet age will ultimately need a new, expanded "freedom of speech". I hold quite a few controversial opinions, and in the last year or two I increasingly feel unsafe when expressing them on the internet. I do not fear governments, but I do fear witch hunts, and I fear automatic indexing/flagging of my speech by corporations. The recent doxxing scandals are not helping my peace of mind, and neither do the firings of people who get "exposed". The original version of "freedom of speech" only said that the government should not persecute people for speech. That was certainly a great idea, when the government was the only entity that could realistically persecute you. Today we additionally have huge corporations and online hiveminds that can and will punish you for what you say. Other "human rights" that have sprung up in the last century acknowledge the new reality, e.g. people get protected from discrimination by private companies, not just by the government. Freedom of speech is lagging behind: a company cannot fire you for being black, but can fire you for your online conversations outside of work.
  - adgar2 14y ago
    You originally wrote: > Freedom of speech is lagging behind: a company cannot fire you for being black, but can fire you for saying "vile" things online under a pseudonym. You changed that, likely because you realized that companies have always fired people for saying "vile" things publicly outside of work. Which is why pseudonyms have always existed. Nothing's changed about freedom of speech. It's just that it's not so easy to hide the vile things you say online as it was, say, 10 years ago.
    - pnathan 14y ago
      > You changed that, likely because you realized that companies have always fired people for saying "vile" things publicly outside of work. Which is why pseudonyms have always existed. Sometimes the definition of vile has meant, "Argued for democracy", or, "Came out as gay", or, "said my religion was false", or, "suggested reforming the government". Freedom of speech must in many ways mean the freedom to be a despicable scuzz, because freedom means divergence. And divergence frequently (to the horror of the mainstream) includes divergence from morality. I am profoundly impressed with the need for anonymity, pseudonymity, and free speech for all of us, because otherwise we are simply limiting truth telling, the capability for reform and improving our collective lot.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
quaunaut 14y ago
There are a few things wrong with your line of thinking: * Reddit is not the government, so yes, we cannot have them arrested. And no one wants them arrested- literally zero people. But yes, they can be held financially responsible and be made into the pariah of the civilized world. * Even barring that, your freedom of speech only extends so far until it begins harming the safety of others. Creepshots, specifically, was showing easily identifiable women in compromising positions and actively encouraging that subreddit's community to create more of this kind of content. Without the knowledge of their victims, they trample over their right to a reasonable expectation of safety and privacy. I've been a member of Reddit for 6 years- just 1 year shy of their entire existence. It's still, by far, my most visited site every day. My favorite subreddits all tend to be niche these days, like /r/ainbow, /r/python, and /r/kpop. Most of the 'defaults' I'm not even subscribed to, because of a way of thinking that honestly reeks of people who have never been under legitimate threat in their lives, yet feel entitled to expose others to it. Well, that and crappy reposts. Once again: No one wants Reddit arrested. That's what the freedom of speech is about. However, the freedom of speech does not, by any measure, mean that you should not be exposed to the consequences of your speech. You should.
- manys 14y ago
  There is no "right to a reasonable expectation of safety and privacy," in public, though.
  - deong 14y ago
    That's a pretty dramatic overstatement in the context of this discussion. There's no "reasonable expectation" of privacy in the sense of preventing people from seeing you and monitoring your publicly visible travels. That word "reasonable" is important. You do have a reasonable expectation that there won't be peephole cameras in dressing rooms and hidden mirrors on the floor everywhere you turn. And safety is also a bit odd to bring up here. There certainly is a reasonable expectation of safety in public in the legal sense. In what situation is there ever a lack of the expectation of safety to such a degree that it could be used as a defense by someone harming you?
pbz 14y ago
Exactly, as long ad it's legal, everything should go. Imagine HN banning posts about some topic because it rubs the majority's sensibility the wrong way. Without freedom of speech the Internet as we know it wouldn't exist. That's far more important than sheltering someone from what they may find offensive or objectionable.
- rmc 14y ago
  as long ad it's legal, everything should go That is not how Reddit works. There is some entirely legal things you could print in the USA that are against Reddit's rules. They do not allow publishing of personal information. They have already said "This is legal speech, but we don't want it here"
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    >They do not allow publishing of personal information. Because it can directly kill the community off - it's a self preservation measure.
    - rmc 14y ago
      Maybe that's the point? After all, isn't the response to "someone is publishing material I disagree with" usually "well thanks to free speech rights, you can disagree with them publicly, and if you have a good point, people will agree with you"? Do creepy, sexually harassing people deserve to be free of the consequences of their free speech? No. Free speech means the government can't ban it, it doesn't mean you are immune to the social consequences. If free speech protects you when you post sexy photos of minors, then surely it should protect the free speech of someone who names you.
      - Karunamon 14y ago
        >..then surely it should protect the free speech of someone who names you. There is another good reason for a sitewide ban on personal info, that being that if the internet is good at one thing, it's generating outrage. Outrage + Large amount of anonymous people = witch hunts. And I don't care if the guy's a serial rapist (which he isn't, not that you could tell with the acid-dipped keyboards in play) witch hunts are never a good thing. Accusations are thrown and innocent people's lives are impacted based on the flimsiest of evidence sometimes. Best to ban that outright and let people organize their raids elsewhere. I also assume it would put them (the site owners) on shaky legal ground. Reddit bans four things that I know of. Personal info, illegal pictures of minors, exploits targeting the users, and spam. There are very good justifications for every one of those.
hessenwolf 14y ago
Why is it axiomatic that the protection of freedom of speech is always a good thing? It is in the American constitution, sure, but how many others have it? Is it really a good idea? Do we not also have to protect weaker members of our society from charlatans and manipulators? Just saying.
- riffraff 14y ago
  > It is in the American constitution, sure, but how many others have it? FYI, it's in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in most countries legislative corpus. A better way to frame the question would be "what is the speech that is free", which is much more nuanced and interesting (e.g. is hate speech ok? religious blasphemy? stuff putting personal or national security at risk? Gossip? Holocaust denial? Lese majeste?). But, in every case I can think of, freedom of speech is a right except for cases explicitly forbidden by some law. So if reddit's defense is "we permit everything unless it's illegal" the case would be the same in most democratic countries and some non democratic ones, just shifting whhere the legal bar is set. For the curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
- papsosouid 14y ago
  >Why is it axiomatic that the protection of freedom of speech is always a good thing? Why are you making that assumption? Nothing was said about the goodness of it. The fact was simply stated that reddit considers it important, so they uphold it. You don't have to agree with reddit, nobody is saying everyone has to uphold free speech everywhere.
- makomk 14y ago
  Why? Because there's basically no-one that can be trusted to decide which kinds of speech can be outlawed. In particular, I'm deeply familiar with the main group that's trying to get /r/CreepShots shut down and their views on how speech should be cracked down on, and they're pretty much identical to the ones that lead to the BoingBoing fiasco described here: http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/09/frankly-i-dont-care-how-due-process-makes-you-feel/ http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/09/frankly-i-dont-care-how-du... In fact, their main subreddit at r/ShitRedditSays has a policy of doing this to anyone that points out when posts are outright lying through their teeth to get people riled up.
rmc 14y ago
The protection of freedom of speech is fundamental, and one that Reddit is standing by. Ah, but the crux is how you define "freedom of speech". After all, in the USA (AFAIK), it's legal to publish the personal details of a reddit user (which is exactly what gawker did here). And yet that is not allowed on reddit. Reddit have already decided "some things are legal, but we won't allow them here". So you have to look at what sort of speech they protect (sexual photos of children, sexual photos of people without their consent) and what sort of speech they don't protect ("outing" people who take photos of people without their consent).
- Goronmon 14y ago
  So you have to look at what sort of speech they protect (sexual photos of children, sexual photos of people without their consent) and what sort of speech they don't protect ("outing" people who take photos of people without their consent). "Outing" people leads directly to harassment. It's happened plenty of times in the past to make a fair assumption that it will happen in the future as well. This is the reality of the situation. The reason you can't allow it at all is there is no good way to enforce that "outing" someone is appropriate or correct in any given instance or that the person being "outed" is the person attached to said Reddit identity at all. So that rule protects direct harm from being done on users of Reddit.
  - rmc 14y ago
    "Outing" people leads directly to harassment Agreed. But so does 'trying to take photos of a women's secondary sexual organs without her knowledge or consent' (creepshots). So shouldn't that be banned as well?
  - Goronmon 14y ago
    But so does 'trying to take photos of a women's secondary sexual organs without her knowledge or consent' (creepshots). Does it? If the person in question never visited the sub-reddit in question, would they even know the photo existed?
    - 14y ago
king_jester 14y ago
> The usage of that freedom of speech is a personal responsibility. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable. The issue here is not that others are finding freedom of speech objectionable. Rather, Reddit as a privately run website has created a system in which people committing (legal) violations of people's privacy and safety can find an outlet to encourage and promote those behaviors and actions. Creating a space for people who are acting unethically while profiting from user traffic and advertising is hugely unethical and Reddit staff should rightly be called out on it. Reddit as a whole promotes the viewpoints of the most privileged, which is why spaces like creepshots and jailbait found a home on Reddit in the first place. The flaws and pain that Reddit causes should be identified and proclaimed loudly such that other people can see just what Reddit is (hint: it's not a happy land of free speech and community).
- clavalle 14y ago
  "Creating a space for people who are acting unethically..." But where is the line? Is /r/atheism a space for acting unethically because they know certain people will be deeply offended? /r/trees for advocating, even glorifying, an illegal activity?
  - king_jester 14y ago
    Being an atheist or smoking weed is your own personal choice, stalking women so you can take suggestive pictures of them so that a community of fellow stalkers can oogle is a violation of another person's integrity. If you are suggesting that kind of behavior is equivalent to what is going on in r/atheism or r/trees, you might want to reexamine your views on stalking and sexism against women.
    - clavalle 14y ago
      /r/trees and /r/athiesm might not evoke the same rancor in you as /r/CreepyShots but I am sure it does to somebody. So, while I don't personally think they are equivalent on an offensiveness scale (I personally don't find /r/trees or /r/atheism offensive at all), somebody might. Should reddit censor those subreddits too? Maybe they should allow people to take a vote on controversial subreddits every week and remove the ones that don't make the cut? I don't know. I am not defending CreepyShots. I am trying to start a conversation that might lead to some answers that I simply don't have. How do we defend open expression of ideas while censoring things? Is it possible? How offensive does something have to be to reach the censorship threshold? Is there a better test (e.g. legality (doh! /r/trees) or potential danger to others (doh! /r/athiesm)?) Can we let the mob decide on a periodic basis? I know how I personally deal with it. I just don't subscribe to those subreddits.
danso 14y ago
I don't get what your concept of "be held responsible" means: If the local KKK chapter -- a completely legal entity and one that enjoys the protection of free speech -- holds happy hour at my bar, I can either let them stay or kick them out. Let's say I let them stay, as long as they pay for their beers and not cause any ruckus. Understandably, the non-KKK part of my clientele may feel uncomfortable. If the rest of the community decides to boycott my bar, are you saying that they, not I, am at a fault in regards to principles of freedom? The financial consequences of a boycott that my bar incurred is what I would consider, "being held responsible."

raganwald 14y ago

I think that both of our horses share the same sire. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable. A reasonable position. Let me grant you that. So here's an oblique question, one that does not argue with your perfectly understandable feelings about Freedom of Speech. What's with this man being fired from his job for exercising his Freedom of Speech during his own personal time? Obviously there's freedom of people to boycott his employer if they don't like them employing him, and his employer has freedom to fire him if they don't want to deal with any such consequences, but all that being said... Isn't there something deeply disturbing about people holding his employer responsible for his freedom to speak when it's wholly unconnected with their business, but not holding Reddit accountable for his freedom to speak, when it's their business to allow him to speak? Why aren't these two things the same?

cousin_it 14y ago
It seems to me that dissenters in the internet age will ultimately need a new, expanded "freedom of speech". I hold quite a few controversial opinions, and in the last year or two I increasingly feel unsafe when expressing them on the internet. I do not fear governments, but I do fear witch hunts, and I fear automatic indexing/flagging of my speech by corporations. The recent doxxing scandals are not helping my peace of mind, and neither do the firings of people who get "exposed". The original version of "freedom of speech" only said that the government should not persecute people for speech. That was certainly a great idea, when the government was the only entity that could realistically persecute you. Today we additionally have huge corporations and online hiveminds that can and will punish you for what you say. Other "human rights" that have sprung up in the last century acknowledge the new reality, e.g. people get protected from discrimination by private companies, not just by the government. Freedom of speech is lagging behind: a company cannot fire you for being black, but can fire you for your online conversations outside of work.
- adgar2 14y ago
  You originally wrote: > Freedom of speech is lagging behind: a company cannot fire you for being black, but can fire you for saying "vile" things online under a pseudonym. You changed that, likely because you realized that companies have always fired people for saying "vile" things publicly outside of work. Which is why pseudonyms have always existed. Nothing's changed about freedom of speech. It's just that it's not so easy to hide the vile things you say online as it was, say, 10 years ago.
  - pnathan 14y ago
    > You changed that, likely because you realized that companies have always fired people for saying "vile" things publicly outside of work. Which is why pseudonyms have always existed. Sometimes the definition of vile has meant, "Argued for democracy", or, "Came out as gay", or, "said my religion was false", or, "suggested reforming the government". Freedom of speech must in many ways mean the freedom to be a despicable scuzz, because freedom means divergence. And divergence frequently (to the horror of the mainstream) includes divergence from morality. I am profoundly impressed with the need for anonymity, pseudonymity, and free speech for all of us, because otherwise we are simply limiting truth telling, the capability for reform and improving our collective lot.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]

quaunaut 14y ago

There are a few things wrong with your line of thinking: * Reddit is not the government, so yes, we cannot have them arrested. And no one wants them arrested- literally zero people. But yes, they can be held financially responsible and be made into the pariah of the civilized world. * Even barring that, your freedom of speech only extends so far until it begins harming the safety of others. Creepshots, specifically, was showing easily identifiable women in compromising positions and actively encouraging that subreddit's community to create more of this kind of content. Without the knowledge of their victims, they trample over their right to a reasonable expectation of safety and privacy. I've been a member of Reddit for 6 years- just 1 year shy of their entire existence. It's still, by far, my most visited site every day. My favorite subreddits all tend to be niche these days, like /r/ainbow, /r/python, and /r/kpop. Most of the 'defaults' I'm not even subscribed to, because of a way of thinking that honestly reeks of people who have never been under legitimate threat in their lives, yet feel entitled to expose others to it. Well, that and crappy reposts. Once again: No one wants Reddit arrested. That's what the freedom of speech is about. However, the freedom of speech does not, by any measure, mean that you should not be exposed to the consequences of your speech. You should.

manys 14y ago
There is no "right to a reasonable expectation of safety and privacy," in public, though.
- deong 14y ago
  That's a pretty dramatic overstatement in the context of this discussion. There's no "reasonable expectation" of privacy in the sense of preventing people from seeing you and monitoring your publicly visible travels. That word "reasonable" is important. You do have a reasonable expectation that there won't be peephole cameras in dressing rooms and hidden mirrors on the floor everywhere you turn. And safety is also a bit odd to bring up here. There certainly is a reasonable expectation of safety in public in the legal sense. In what situation is there ever a lack of the expectation of safety to such a degree that it could be used as a defense by someone harming you?

pbz 14y ago

Exactly, as long ad it's legal, everything should go. Imagine HN banning posts about some topic because it rubs the majority's sensibility the wrong way. Without freedom of speech the Internet as we know it wouldn't exist. That's far more important than sheltering someone from what they may find offensive or objectionable.

rmc 14y ago
as long ad it's legal, everything should go That is not how Reddit works. There is some entirely legal things you could print in the USA that are against Reddit's rules. They do not allow publishing of personal information. They have already said "This is legal speech, but we don't want it here"
- Karunamon 14y ago
  >They do not allow publishing of personal information. Because it can directly kill the community off - it's a self preservation measure.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Maybe that's the point? After all, isn't the response to "someone is publishing material I disagree with" usually "well thanks to free speech rights, you can disagree with them publicly, and if you have a good point, people will agree with you"? Do creepy, sexually harassing people deserve to be free of the consequences of their free speech? No. Free speech means the government can't ban it, it doesn't mean you are immune to the social consequences. If free speech protects you when you post sexy photos of minors, then surely it should protect the free speech of someone who names you.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      >..then surely it should protect the free speech of someone who names you. There is another good reason for a sitewide ban on personal info, that being that if the internet is good at one thing, it's generating outrage. Outrage + Large amount of anonymous people = witch hunts. And I don't care if the guy's a serial rapist (which he isn't, not that you could tell with the acid-dipped keyboards in play) witch hunts are never a good thing. Accusations are thrown and innocent people's lives are impacted based on the flimsiest of evidence sometimes. Best to ban that outright and let people organize their raids elsewhere. I also assume it would put them (the site owners) on shaky legal ground. Reddit bans four things that I know of. Personal info, illegal pictures of minors, exploits targeting the users, and spam. There are very good justifications for every one of those.

hessenwolf 14y ago

Why is it axiomatic that the protection of freedom of speech is always a good thing? It is in the American constitution, sure, but how many others have it? Is it really a good idea? Do we not also have to protect weaker members of our society from charlatans and manipulators? Just saying.

riffraff 14y ago
> It is in the American constitution, sure, but how many others have it? FYI, it's in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in most countries legislative corpus. A better way to frame the question would be "what is the speech that is free", which is much more nuanced and interesting (e.g. is hate speech ok? religious blasphemy? stuff putting personal or national security at risk? Gossip? Holocaust denial? Lese majeste?). But, in every case I can think of, freedom of speech is a right except for cases explicitly forbidden by some law. So if reddit's defense is "we permit everything unless it's illegal" the case would be the same in most democratic countries and some non democratic ones, just shifting whhere the legal bar is set. For the curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
papsosouid 14y ago
>Why is it axiomatic that the protection of freedom of speech is always a good thing? Why are you making that assumption? Nothing was said about the goodness of it. The fact was simply stated that reddit considers it important, so they uphold it. You don't have to agree with reddit, nobody is saying everyone has to uphold free speech everywhere.
makomk 14y ago
Why? Because there's basically no-one that can be trusted to decide which kinds of speech can be outlawed. In particular, I'm deeply familiar with the main group that's trying to get /r/CreepShots shut down and their views on how speech should be cracked down on, and they're pretty much identical to the ones that lead to the BoingBoing fiasco described here: http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/09/frankly-i-dont-care-how-due-process-makes-you-feel/ http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/09/frankly-i-dont-care-how-du... In fact, their main subreddit at r/ShitRedditSays has a policy of doing this to anyone that points out when posts are outright lying through their teeth to get people riled up.

rmc 14y ago

The protection of freedom of speech is fundamental, and one that Reddit is standing by. Ah, but the crux is how you define "freedom of speech". After all, in the USA (AFAIK), it's legal to publish the personal details of a reddit user (which is exactly what gawker did here). And yet that is not allowed on reddit. Reddit have already decided "some things are legal, but we won't allow them here". So you have to look at what sort of speech they protect (sexual photos of children, sexual photos of people without their consent) and what sort of speech they don't protect ("outing" people who take photos of people without their consent).

Goronmon 14y ago
So you have to look at what sort of speech they protect (sexual photos of children, sexual photos of people without their consent) and what sort of speech they don't protect ("outing" people who take photos of people without their consent). "Outing" people leads directly to harassment. It's happened plenty of times in the past to make a fair assumption that it will happen in the future as well. This is the reality of the situation. The reason you can't allow it at all is there is no good way to enforce that "outing" someone is appropriate or correct in any given instance or that the person being "outed" is the person attached to said Reddit identity at all. So that rule protects direct harm from being done on users of Reddit.
- rmc 14y ago
  "Outing" people leads directly to harassment Agreed. But so does 'trying to take photos of a women's secondary sexual organs without her knowledge or consent' (creepshots). So shouldn't that be banned as well?
- Goronmon 14y ago
  But so does 'trying to take photos of a women's secondary sexual organs without her knowledge or consent' (creepshots). Does it? If the person in question never visited the sub-reddit in question, would they even know the photo existed?
  - 14y ago

king_jester 14y ago

> The usage of that freedom of speech is a personal responsibility. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable. The issue here is not that others are finding freedom of speech objectionable. Rather, Reddit as a privately run website has created a system in which people committing (legal) violations of people's privacy and safety can find an outlet to encourage and promote those behaviors and actions. Creating a space for people who are acting unethically while profiting from user traffic and advertising is hugely unethical and Reddit staff should rightly be called out on it. Reddit as a whole promotes the viewpoints of the most privileged, which is why spaces like creepshots and jailbait found a home on Reddit in the first place. The flaws and pain that Reddit causes should be identified and proclaimed loudly such that other people can see just what Reddit is (hint: it's not a happy land of free speech and community).

clavalle 14y ago
"Creating a space for people who are acting unethically..." But where is the line? Is /r/atheism a space for acting unethically because they know certain people will be deeply offended? /r/trees for advocating, even glorifying, an illegal activity?
- king_jester 14y ago
  Being an atheist or smoking weed is your own personal choice, stalking women so you can take suggestive pictures of them so that a community of fellow stalkers can oogle is a violation of another person's integrity. If you are suggesting that kind of behavior is equivalent to what is going on in r/atheism or r/trees, you might want to reexamine your views on stalking and sexism against women.
  - clavalle 14y ago
    /r/trees and /r/athiesm might not evoke the same rancor in you as /r/CreepyShots but I am sure it does to somebody. So, while I don't personally think they are equivalent on an offensiveness scale (I personally don't find /r/trees or /r/atheism offensive at all), somebody might. Should reddit censor those subreddits too? Maybe they should allow people to take a vote on controversial subreddits every week and remove the ones that don't make the cut? I don't know. I am not defending CreepyShots. I am trying to start a conversation that might lead to some answers that I simply don't have. How do we defend open expression of ideas while censoring things? Is it possible? How offensive does something have to be to reach the censorship threshold? Is there a better test (e.g. legality (doh! /r/trees) or potential danger to others (doh! /r/athiesm)?) Can we let the mob decide on a periodic basis? I know how I personally deal with it. I just don't subscribe to those subreddits.

danso 14y ago

I don't get what your concept of "be held responsible" means: If the local KKK chapter -- a completely legal entity and one that enjoys the protection of free speech -- holds happy hour at my bar, I can either let them stay or kick them out. Let's say I let them stay, as long as they pay for their beers and not cause any ruckus. Understandably, the non-KKK part of my clientele may feel uncomfortable. If the rest of the community decides to boycott my bar, are you saying that they, not I, am at a fault in regards to principles of freedom? The financial consequences of a boycott that my bar incurred is what I would consider, "being held responsible."