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Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#111

Post by smolder »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #90
listless wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s true. If you visit a convicted rapist in prison when nobody else will do you condone rape? Or are you performing an act of kindness? I think the ironic and not obvious answer here is that we stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning. That reaction is what gives bad ideas power. People are complicated. You can’t boil them down to a true nature that is “good…

Visiting a criminal in prison does not condone their crime. Associating with someone that commits crimes, while turning a blind eye to their criminal behavior, does condone their crimes. What do you mean by "stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning"? Do you have a social group in mind that does not enforce its own social norms?

Everyone enforces norms some way or another, but their statement implies an unwillingness to forgive transgressions, which isn't a given. Nowadays people's mistakes quite easily become viral memes that are their legacy. Huge mobs of shallowly interested detractors are unforgiving and can cause disproportionate harm.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#112

Post by lostlogin »

wil421 wrote: post #33
anaerobicover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagreeing. Which of us has not privately cursed their job at some point in frustration? The consequences for letting fly some profanity privately as an expression of human emotion cannot be so high in any reasonable civilization.

How’s it any different from writing a letter to 25 coworkers saying F** my employer? If one of the 25 recipients showed the letter to my employer I’d be fired. How’s a private snap any different than a private letter?

> How’s a private snap any different than a private letter?

I thought that letters had a copyright? The recipient has ownership but cannot publish. If they do copy and distribute (as a screenshot of a Snapchat message) does this not break copyright?

Edit: In New Zealand (where I am), an employer screenshooting and distributed an employee’s Facebook messages breached privacy laws. https://privacy.org.nz/tools/knowledge-base/view/366

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#113

Post by axaxs »

newacct583 wrote: post #107
axaxs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist. I don't see a problem with extending such protections to include more free speech. The problem is, where does one draw the line? If one is against abortion and protests that, seems different than say if one is a full fledged neonazi spewing rhetoric. The way it si…

> There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist. That's not "basic protections", it's existing case law about a conflict within the constitution. Freedom of religion and freedom of association are both protected, but where they conflict we generally find that whichever side is providing some kind of good to the public (be it p…

Sure, but it's worth considering whether we should care about stepping on the right-holder's toes. That's what got us into corporate controlled speech, doxing, and twitter mobs in the first place. Read, people wouldn't do it if it weren't effective.

It probably wouldn't be -as- bad if in the US healthcare wasn't tied to employment. As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#114

Post by joemi »

rbanffy wrote: post #42

As I'm not American, this whole cheerleading thing feels very weird to me. It's weird to see the role of boys to play sports while the girls cheer doing elaborate choreographies. Does anyone else feels it weird from a different cultural framing?

I'm an American and I've always found it very weird.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#115

Post by i_haz_rabies »

dqpb wrote: post #101
i_haz_rabies wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. Scenario 1) someone who has bullied you in the past calls classmate a racist term. you stay silent for reasonable fear of reprisals. Scenario 2) your boss says something overtly sexist. you know he is fairly temperamental, so stay silent because you want to keep your job so as to continue paying your bills. Scenario 3) the government is jailing a certain ideological group you happen to somewhat agree wi…

I wasn't declaring that silence is violence. I was providing it as an example for the OP's enumeration. Hence the quotes.

noted, thanks for clarifying.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#116

Post by newacct583 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #5

I stopped reading the article when I realized the student was 14 at the time of the post. Anything posted by someone at that age, especially on a temporary medium such as snapchat, should have an implicit "for entertainment purposes only" label on it along with a EULA that says that unless it might cause immediate danger to someone else that it should be treated as satire.

But the case is about a school punishing her for it. I mean, sure, YOU can choose to ignore this 14 year old as irrelevant satire, but the school can't. Taking kids' communication seriously and teaching them how to interact with the broader world in a civil way is literally what schools are for.

And that includes incentives like punishing them when they act like an asshole. The question is whether this mandate schools have (which we all agree they have!) extends outside school grounds, and how far.

Now, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't (I for one am a little conflicted here and don't have a clear opinion). But whether it does or not has nothing to do with whether we should take student speech "seriously".

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#117

Post by kube-system »

tantalor wrote: post #110
kube-system wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's irrelevant whether it's voluntary or not, it matters whether it's an establishment of the state.

No. Schools are obviously allowed to limit speech inside the classroom. The question is whether that right extends outside.

I was responding to the above assertion that the voluntary nature of the program is relevant, in regards to the situation in the parent comment. I wasn't referring to the case in the top-level post.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#118

Post by newacct583 »

axaxs wrote: post #113
newacct583 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist. That's not "basic protections", it's existing case law about a conflict within the constitution. Freedom of religion and freedom of association are both protected, but where they conflict we generally find that whichever side is providing some kind of good to the public (be it p…

Sure, but it's worth considering whether we should care about stepping on the right-holder's toes. That's what got us into corporate controlled speech, doxing, and twitter mobs in the first place. Read, people wouldn't do it if it weren't effective. It probably wouldn't be -as- bad if in the US healthcare wasn't tied to employment. As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen…

> As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

Ridiculous hyperbole. First, because it imagines that people get killed for tweets, and second because it hilariously invokes the idea that this is a new thing. You genuinely don't think people have been persecuted for opinions in the past? Let me get my dead buddy Galileo to drop a few rocks on your head.

Likewise McCarthyism, etc... Objectively free expression of inconvenient conservative ideas in the US has never been cheaper, freer, easier or more pervasive than it is RIGHT NOW. Good grief, just look at your own posts. You don't look like someone afraid of being killed by a mob.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#119

Post by ecshafer »

tantalor wrote: post #108
FalconSensei wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Isn't that the whole point of free-speech?

"Free speech" does not mean free of consequences.

Free Speech precisely means freedom from consequences. That phrase is perhaps the most insidious phrase that is often repeated on the internet. To believe that free speech should be met with "consequences" if it crosses some line is illiberal, and immoral. The principle of free speech is one we all ought to attempt to live up to, and that principle goes far beyond what the first amendment may protect.

Take that phrase to its logical extent. Should certain speech mean imprisonment? Should it mean execution by the government? Alienation and banishment from society? Attacked and lynched by a mob? What about political affiliation? Philosphical or religious beliefs? Those are all consequences that have, and are used against people who exercise their natural rights. Those are the natural outcomes of limiting free speech. Limiting free speech is the end of a free, liberal society.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#120

Post by xenadu02 »

chmod775 wrote: post #55

Why the fuck did anyone at that school even care what a 14 year old said? That is not normal behavior for adults. At that age I could've exclaimed something along those lines to my teacher's face and they'd just have laughed at me and asked me to calm down. If I pulled that at work I'd be asked whether everything is alright. Apparently nowadays the appropriate response to a child throwing a tantrum or having a mental…

Clearly you haven't dealt with many schools. Only when the stakes are so low can people afford to be so petty.

Some school faculty and administration are incredibly petty and vindictive. Certainly not all but a lot. Grown adults absolutely pick favorites, bully students, talk down to them, and carry out petty beefs for any reason or no reason at all. Sometimes they hurt the children to get back at parents they don't like. Sometimes they (for whatever reason) seek validation from students and will participate in bullying of unpopular students. These can be trivial things, like accepting late work from some students but no others or grading one student's work more harshly. Other times they believe they are doing a student good by "teaching them a lesson" or expressing their disapproval of the student or family's lifestyle.

I have absolutely no problem believing the school administration and coach were offended and rather than discussing it with the 14 year old they decided to prove who was boss by punishing her.

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