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People who get caught doing this need to be prosecuted, and if convicted, labeled as sexual criminals and placed on a register. Employers should be able to see

• senorprogrammer 12y ago
  Too many people seem to misunderstand that 'freedom of speech' does not mean 'freedom from repercussions'. Pretty glad to read jobs had been lost as a result of this.
  • DownvoteMeToWin 12y ago
    Too many people seem to think they are the moral authority on what reprocussions are appropriate.
    • xorcist 12y ago
      Not at all. Should you not be free to hire and fire your employees depending on who you want to represent your company? Or are you advocating some sort of affirmative action for asshats?
      • mikegioia 12y ago
        You're totally right. If I managed a team of employees and I saw this in the news the next day, there's no way I would keep that person employed. On an unrelated note, I think you win the best username award :P
      • DownvoteMeToWin 12y ago
        You made pixels, therefore, you lose your job. Stalin called. He wants his regime back.
  • benihana 12y ago
    Too many people seem to justify their lynch ochlocratic actions on the internet by saying "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from repercussions."
    • chris_wot 12y ago
      Too many people seem to justify their disgusting and mysogynistic comments by saying "I have a right to free speech".
    • sanoli 12y ago
      There's a difference between "freedom from legal repercussions", and "if you tweet this people all over will think you're a scumbag and maybe even a creep, and in the real world this has repercussions that don't have to involve the justice system".
  • japhyr 12y ago
    Also, I believe a person's freedom of speech ends when speech creates a real threat to another person's safety. These kinds of tweets definitely create a threat to the recipient's safety.
  • pulmo 12y ago
    In that case the boundaries of freedom are not defined by the constitution any more, but by private parties. Therefore any constitutional stipulation of 'freedom of speech' is practically worthless. Freedom can not only be measured by the existence of a constitutional construct.
    • jschwartzi 12y ago
      When it's between two private parties, you're damn right that the boundaries of freedom are defined by those two parties. Freedom of Speech only applies to the government and to government use of force. I'm sure the guys who penned the constitution would agree that it wasn't about giving you the freedom to act like a jackass without repercussions.
• crazypyro 12y ago
  Behavior is obviously not right, but is it really harming someone else's rights? I'm having a hard time jumping from sexual innuendos to sexual predators... I think it would be a massive mistake to try to make into a crime. Although many of these tweets clearly cross the line of tastelessness, how many sexual jokes/innuendos are less obvious and more controversial about whether they are tasteless? We don't need to criminalize this. Nobody's rights are being violated, in my opinion. We shouldn't be using the criminal system unless there is a clear threat of violence, not just some internet trolls trying to get a reaction out of a celebrity....
  • japhyr 12y ago
    These are not innuendos, these are threats.
    • crazypyro 12y ago
      Oh give me a break... the most offensive/threatening one that was posted by Kurt on his blog was: "Teach me your knuckleball technique so I can fist your daughter" You really think this is a creditable threat of violence and not someone trying to make a very, very, very poor taste joke? There are very few tweets I would even consider threats, most were just scumbags trying to get some twitter fame by making terrible baseball sexual innuendos. There are other ones like "Kurt bleeds more from his sock than gaby does when shes on her period" that in no way could even be construed as a threat, but I feel they are getting lumped into the same category, simply because they are distasteful.
      • phpnode 12y ago
        This is the same kind of deluded apologism that the gamer gate crowd uses and it is dangerous. How can anyone judge the credibility of a threat made by a stranger on the internet? A threat is a threat.
        • foogoespop 12y ago
          I haven't read through the tweets but what crazypyro posted aren't threats, they would be considered bullying though. Didn't the gamergate lady have actual threats on her life? I know her information was doxxed and people actually put her house in their threats.
• mbrutsch 12y ago
  Schilling is just being a crybaby, and you are flat insane. Man up, for Christ's sake, and stop being little babies!
  • dsjoerg 12y ago
    The people who lost their jobs over making some offensive tweets are the crybabies. Get another job! Man up!
    • mbrutsch 12y ago
      That's what I did, and it worked for me. If ViolentAcrez can get another job, these mooks can, too. I have no patience for crybabies.
• pulmo 12y ago
  Yes lets ruin people's life for a tweet written in 20 seconds of mental derangement. Insane.
  • javajosh 12y ago
    That's not what happened. If you read the original blog post, you'll see a sustained, violent screed directed at him and his daughter. It wasn't one tweet, it was a series of tweets over a period of many days. Did this ruin anyone's life? Doubtful. Losing your job is not the end of the world. And you know what? These are young kids. My hope is that this is a serious wake-up call for them to take adult responsibility for themselves.
• appleflaxen 12y ago
  Sexual criminals? really? for words on twitter? There is no question that this kind of behavior is repugnant, but should it really be illegal? The tweets I read are abhorrent, but hardly credible threats. To me, the best kind of sanction for this is exactly what's happening: social shaming and exclusion. But it falls quite a bit short of something that requires legal involvement.
  • mikegioia 12y ago
    I totally agree, the right course of action here is just good ol' fashioned public shaming. There's really no reason to bring the judicial system into this as it would be very taxing on that system to prosecute this type of behavior. A good deterrent to making these kind of public comments is the social pressure of others around you knowing that you in fact act/think this horrible way.
  • eveningcoffee 12y ago
    Yes, for words on twitter. We should not live in the world where any kind of rape threat is tolerable. Period. This, or threat of murder or serious injury should be not acceptable in any form.
• benihana 12y ago
  >People who get caught doing this need to be prosecuted, and if convicted, labeled as sexual criminals and placed on a register. Ridiculous. Maybe we should prosecute people who talk about overthrowing the government on twitter with treason - they're threats! And safety is important! These threats on the internet aren't acceptable, but neither is your reaction to them. There is a vast difference between threatening someone and actually doing something, and the way our criminal justice system treats sexual crimes borders on cruel and unusual. You're saying that someone should have the rest of their life ruined because they made a lewd threat on the internet? We've all heard the story of the kid who went streaking on a dare but happened to be near a playground so now he's labeled a sexual predator for the rest of his life. Do you really think that is a good response to this kind of thing? >As a father myself, this kind of behaviour makes me sick and I cannot understand people who feel they need to defend these kinds of sick comments. Punishing someone won't ease the anxiety you feel about the safety of your kids; there will always be something else waiting to ruin their innocence. You probably confuse people saying your reaction to these comments is extreme with people defending the comments. Regardless, you want to label someone a sexual predator so that you can feel better about the fact that you're scared for your kids. That is disgusting and scarier to me than anonymous threats to my family on the internet.
  • intortus 12y ago
    I think you're engaging in the common fallacy of dismissing things that happen on the internet as "not real." It's long past time we, as a society, grew out of such childish thinking.
    • gk1 12y ago
      As parent pointed out, these things occur in "real life" and are no less extreme. Streaking, being underage and sexting, having consensual relationships with someone slightly younger but under the age of consent, etc.
  • je_bailey 12y ago
    You read his statement different then I did. He's not saying that people who makes these statements be labelled as sex offenders. He's saying that people who make these statements be brought to task. If a law has been violated, then charged, and if the court determines there is reason to label them as a sex offender, then so be it.
• lukasm 12y ago
  I'm afraid the result will be the same as file sharing. There was Napster which was killed by labels, then Kazza which was 10x harder to kill, then torrents which are 100x harder to kill. If they manage to kill it something new will be there. The solution is quite simple: if you're not willing to ignore trolls, don't use this kind of social network. You should NOT drag your family into the business, not even if PR person will tell you that it increases your brand equity.
• eloff 12y ago
  I'm surprised people are defending these guys. Maybe we're just so used to internet trolls, but the medium doesn't change the fact that we have laws against hate speech and threats. This kind of behavior is just not acceptable, it's a stain on the human race. It's these kinds of trolls that make life really difficult for women online. I'm glad they're learning there's consequences.
• pjc50 12y ago
  You know, there are kinds of law enforcement response between "ignore it entirely" and "destroy someone's life forever".
  • analog31 12y ago
    Agreed. I think a reasonable compromise would be to create a unique distinction such as "online harassment" and "online sexual harassment" at misdemeanor and felony levels depending on the severity of the offense.
• junto 12y ago
  I can't edit my comment above anymore so I'll add my addendum here. I am saddened by the responses I have seen below from HNers. The story relates to sexual threats of violence and rape of a minor. I stated that the offenders should be prosecuted and IF CONVICTED dealt with strictly under the applicable laws. Our society is slipping into a nasty place where people feel that it is quite appropriate and acceptable to threaten and harass others online. I think that it is a practice that needs to be stamped out, regardless of whether the threats are by men against women or vice versa; racial, homophobic or religious. It shouldn't be tolerated by the mainstream, which when you look on twitter, often appears to be the case.