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Our nation's Constitution grants us legal protections for free speech. It does not grant us any social protections for what we might say. You're looking to con

Our nation's Constitution grants us legal protections for free speech. It does not grant us any social protections for what we might say. You're looking to conflate the two, and gain social protections from legal authorities, not social authorities. > Should you lose your job and have to go into hiding and start a new life because you make a joke in poor taste to your 50 twitter followers? Yes, if your joke or photo was in such poor taste that it caused all of these other people to exercise their right to freely not associate with you. > Should you lose your job and get death threats because you take a disrespectful photo at a grave site and share it with 5 friends on facebook? Again, the First Amendment grants freedom of association. The death threats aren't protected speech, and you can prosecute those who are threatening you. So you can engage legal protection for some of that, but not all.

graeme 11y ago
The tweet/50 followers reference was to Justine Sacco's case: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw... She made a fairly lame joke that, interpreted charitably, is skewering her own white privilege. But people got hold of it and interpreted it to me she was a horrifying racist. They generated a twitter mob and got her employer to fire her. Freedom of association doesn't enter into it. It was mob justice, and her employer caved. Social media has resurrected the mob. We as a society haven't figured out how to respond to it. Do you think that what happened to Justine Sacco was "good" or "fine". Maybe you do, in which case we simply differ on principle. But I want to make sure you think it's fine for twitter mobs to converge on a single human at random and single them out for extreme social consequences. (Granted, the Economist article doesn't really touch on this, but it's what the parent poster was referring to. Twitter mobs tend to impose harsh consequences over fairly inconsequential issues.)
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Freedom of association doesn't enter into it. It was mob justice, and her employer caved. Her employers freedom of association does enter into it. > Do you think that what happened to Justine Sacco was "good" or "fine". There are lots of exercises of people's freedom of speech and association that I don't find "fine" or "good". And, yes, in many cases that includes exercising freedom of speech to campaign for adverse employment consequences for someone on spurious grounds (whether based on speech or otherwise), or exercising freedom of association to accede to such demands. OTOH, the problem is not a simple free speech issue, even when the mob reaction is reaction to a speech act -- freedom of speech is involved on both sides.
- geofft 11y ago
  > The tweet/50 followers reference was to Justine Sacco ... she made a fairly lame joke Her job was literally director of corporate communications for IAC. If she doesn't know how to communicate clearly and without causing offense, what's she doing in that job? Plenty of people manage to be clear (and sometimes even genuinely funny on Twitter). Also, IAC is not a consumer-facing company. When have you or I ever cared who they employ? I have trouble believing that they caved to a consumer revolt about their director of corporate communications; they would not have lost business, because nobody in this "Twitter mob" was their customer anyway. Perhaps they just realized she was wildly unqualified for the job.
  - graeme 11y ago
    That's a good point. I hadn't realized Justine Sacco was director of communications. I can see how the controversy would have made less effective at her job even if she was otherwise good at it. Likewise it's probably true that a director of communications will need to know how not to ever say anything that could fuel such a mob. I still think it's a bad thing that a mob can elevate a comment not meant for public distribution to an out-of-context, unironic, public statement. This other comment on the thread clarifies what changed: comments can now be moved from private to public context far more easily than in the past https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9722990 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9722990 By the standards of twitters mobs, almost everyone I know has at one point said something at least as "bad" as what Justine Sacco said.
waterlesscloud 11y ago
"You're looking to conflate the two, and gain social protections from legal authorities, not social authorities." He specifically does not do this.

graeme 11y ago

The tweet/50 followers reference was to Justine Sacco's case: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw... She made a fairly lame joke that, interpreted charitably, is skewering her own white privilege. But people got hold of it and interpreted it to me she was a horrifying racist. They generated a twitter mob and got her employer to fire her. Freedom of association doesn't enter into it. It was mob justice, and her employer caved. Social media has resurrected the mob. We as a society haven't figured out how to respond to it. Do you think that what happened to Justine Sacco was "good" or "fine". Maybe you do, in which case we simply differ on principle. But I want to make sure you think it's fine for twitter mobs to converge on a single human at random and single them out for extreme social consequences. (Granted, the Economist article doesn't really touch on this, but it's what the parent poster was referring to. Twitter mobs tend to impose harsh consequences over fairly inconsequential issues.)

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Freedom of association doesn't enter into it. It was mob justice, and her employer caved. Her employers freedom of association does enter into it. > Do you think that what happened to Justine Sacco was "good" or "fine". There are lots of exercises of people's freedom of speech and association that I don't find "fine" or "good". And, yes, in many cases that includes exercising freedom of speech to campaign for adverse employment consequences for someone on spurious grounds (whether based on speech or otherwise), or exercising freedom of association to accede to such demands. OTOH, the problem is not a simple free speech issue, even when the mob reaction is reaction to a speech act -- freedom of speech is involved on both sides.
geofft 11y ago
> The tweet/50 followers reference was to Justine Sacco ... she made a fairly lame joke Her job was literally director of corporate communications for IAC. If she doesn't know how to communicate clearly and without causing offense, what's she doing in that job? Plenty of people manage to be clear (and sometimes even genuinely funny on Twitter). Also, IAC is not a consumer-facing company. When have you or I ever cared who they employ? I have trouble believing that they caved to a consumer revolt about their director of corporate communications; they would not have lost business, because nobody in this "Twitter mob" was their customer anyway. Perhaps they just realized she was wildly unqualified for the job.
- graeme 11y ago
  That's a good point. I hadn't realized Justine Sacco was director of communications. I can see how the controversy would have made less effective at her job even if she was otherwise good at it. Likewise it's probably true that a director of communications will need to know how not to ever say anything that could fuel such a mob. I still think it's a bad thing that a mob can elevate a comment not meant for public distribution to an out-of-context, unironic, public statement. This other comment on the thread clarifies what changed: comments can now be moved from private to public context far more easily than in the past https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9722990 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9722990 By the standards of twitters mobs, almost everyone I know has at one point said something at least as "bad" as what Justine Sacco said.

waterlesscloud 11y ago

"You're looking to conflate the two, and gain social protections from legal authorities, not social authorities." He specifically does not do this.