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Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

nytimes.com

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Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#101

Post by ashtonkem »

jhgb wrote: post #97
ashtonkem wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Political speech, in particular, is supposed to be protected from this kind of treatment. No, it is not. It is supposed to be protected from the government punishing you over it, any other requirements are purely made up. > There's also an intermingling of private and public sphere, and firing someone for private legal behavior because some internet hive mind started a smear campaign also should not be lawful So yo…

> any other requirements are purely made up. Protection from the government punishing you over political speech is "purely made up" as well. All laws in all countries are "purely made up", humans made them so.

It’s fairly obvious from the context that we’re talking about the American tradition of free speech, and the jurisprudence around it. So in this case “made up” means “there is no case law to support your assertion about how the principle of free speech should work in American law”. I find an attempt to assert that all laws are made up kind of lazy side stepping of bother the issue at hand and kind of annoying.

Furthermore, even if one just decides to YOLO a few centuries of American jurisprudence on the matter, one will quickly find oneself either advocating for authoritarianism, or recreating our existing speech system from scratch. Those are the only two logical outcomes that can come from an assertion that one parties speech should be suppressed in order to “protect” (promote, imho) the speech of another group.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#102

Post by hackinthebochs »

ceejayoz wrote: post #91
Udik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which actions exactly should be illegal? Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob. You are of course free to boycott whoever you want- but my impression is that those threatened boycotts won't really cause much damage to companies. People keep saying that firings are meant to "limit damage" but I have yet to see proof of this. To me it is mostly virtue signalling on the part of the…

> Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob. So, all I have to do is hire a few Twitter bots once in a while and I’m permanently unfireable?

You can still be fired for cause. But the company will have to do work to document that to demonstrate it wasn't for past statements.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#103

Post by mongol »

hooande wrote: post #98
JackMorgan wrote: post #51

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime. If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice". That said, I think it's going to take…

Imagine you start a company and one of your employees says or does something reprehensible. Investors fear a boycott and threaten to pull out of a fundraising round. You either fire that one person, or the whole company goes under and everyone that works for you could lose their job (including you). If you make it illegal to fire that person, then any one employee could do considerable damage to dozens of other peopl…

But if it is illegal, then all the people working for cancelling the employee will know it is hopeless.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#104

Post by monkeydreams »

rolandog wrote: post #96
monkeydreams wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Will it be illegal at the point of expressing an opinion online? Will it be illegal at the point of agreeing or liking an opinion expressed online? Will it be illegal at the point where one is purchasing a product or service and determines where their money will go based on an opinion they hold? People are allowed to…

Well, I recently was permanently suspended on Reddit, but I've been unable to determine why (also, no previous announcement). I haven't been permanently banned from any subreddit (no message in my 14 year old history indicated this)... but I've been unable to get any human to tell me what exactly I did was against the Reddit Content Policy. The curious thing for me was that my alt account (the one I use to try to hav…

> Well, I recently was permanently suspended on Reddit, but I've been unable to determine why (also, no previous announcement).

> The curious thing for me was that my alt account (the one I use to try to have some semblance of free speech) was also permanently suspended.

That sucks, especially as there are few ways to appeal these bans.

Perhaps you were banned for upvoting your own content from another account? This will result in a ban for both accounts. If not, it could be a number of other reasons that have nothing to do with cancellation or governmental criticism.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#105

Post by galtwho »

hooande wrote: post #98
JackMorgan wrote: post #51

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime. If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice". That said, I think it's going to take…

Imagine you start a company and one of your employees says or does something reprehensible. Investors fear a boycott and threaten to pull out of a fundraising round. You either fire that one person, or the whole company goes under and everyone that works for you could lose their job (including you). If you make it illegal to fire that person, then any one employee could do considerable damage to dozens of other peopl…

> If you make it illegal to fire that person, then any one employee could do considerable damage to dozens of other people and you'll have no recourse.

well then the investors can't ask for the firing, they have to demand something else.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#106

Post by ghusbands »

rolandog wrote: post #96
monkeydreams wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Will it be illegal at the point of expressing an opinion online? Will it be illegal at the point of agreeing or liking an opinion expressed online? Will it be illegal at the point where one is purchasing a product or service and determines where their money will go based on an opinion they hold? People are allowed to…

Well, I recently was permanently suspended on Reddit, but I've been unable to determine why (also, no previous announcement). I haven't been permanently banned from any subreddit (no message in my 14 year old history indicated this)... but I've been unable to get any human to tell me what exactly I did was against the Reddit Content Policy. The curious thing for me was that my alt account (the one I use to try to hav…

From what you're saying, it's likely that you did/said something 'questionable' on your alt account and Reddit banned all of your accounts that they could identify. Having an alt account doesn't prevent you as a person being held responsible for what you do/say.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#107

Post by jhgb »

ashtonkem wrote: post #101
jhgb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any other requirements are purely made up. Protection from the government punishing you over political speech is "purely made up" as well. All laws in all countries are "purely made up", humans made them so.

It’s fairly obvious from the context that we’re talking about the American tradition of free speech, and the jurisprudence around it. So in this case “made up” means “there is no case law to support your assertion about how the principle of free speech should work in American law”. I find an attempt to assert that all laws are made up kind of lazy side stepping of bother the issue at hand and kind of annoying. Furthe…

> It’s fairly obvious

But why? Do people from other countries deserve to have their digital pasts weaponized? That was absolutely not obvious to me.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#108

Post by jimmydorry »

matwood wrote: post #75
bumbada wrote: post #18

The NYT is extremely sectarian. They have been doing exactly what they now critizice for people in their right for a long time. And it is impressive what we are seeing today with corona and Wuhan lab, all those media were basically calling lunatics to those that believed in the Wuhan lab hypothesis,licking the boots of their Chinese masters, now suddenly it is ok to believe that. It is a huge problem for them, when l…

How the lab leak theory was handled by the media was definitely botched, but at the time the full theory that I saw thrown around was more than an accidental leak. It also included items like purposely engineered to attack the west, and even included purposely releasing in order to attack Trump which afaik there has been zero evidence.

You shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water though. The existence of outlandish claims should not render all unsupported claims invalid. Even if those outlandish claims manage to garner the support of the masses.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#109

Post by Udik »

bigbillheck wrote: post #100
Udik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which actions exactly should be illegal? Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob. You are of course free to boycott whoever you want- but my impression is that those threatened boycotts won't really cause much damage to companies. People keep saying that firings are meant to "limit damage" but I have yet to see proof of this. To me it is mostly virtue signalling on the part of the…

> Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob Weird way to end 'right to work' laws, but any port in a storm I guess.

I don't understand what you mean, can you elaborate?

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#110

Post by [deleted] »

ghusbands wrote: post #106
rolandog wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I recently was permanently suspended on Reddit, but I've been unable to determine why (also, no previous announcement). I haven't been permanently banned from any subreddit (no message in my 14 year old history indicated this)... but I've been unable to get any human to tell me what exactly I did was against the Reddit Content Policy. The curious thing for me was that my alt account (the one I use to try to hav…

From what you're saying, it's likely that you did/said something 'questionable' on your alt account and Reddit banned all of your accounts that they could identify. Having an alt account doesn't prevent you as a person being held responsible for what you do/say.

[deleted]
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