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How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

nytimes.com

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Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#151

Post by lmm »

logicalmind wrote: post #20
kefka wrote: post #2

So far, what I see is: "Don't use Twitter." And on the smaller side is "Don't upload shit to social media."

This type of mass shaming existed before twitter. The Steve Bartman incident[0] comes to mind. The difference appears to be that it used to only be possible for such things to snowball when the media or a celebrity pushed the issue into the spotlight. Nowadays, twitter allows for quick and easy mass shaming by anyone and everyone. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bartman_incident

It's worth saying that this does seem to be something distinct to twitter (maybe tumblr has some elements of it). It doesn't seem to happen in the same way on facebook or less social-oriented web fora.

(That's my impression anyway; I don't have statistics)

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#152

Post by taylorwc »

theorique wrote: post #124
taylorwc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if one were to give her the benefit of the doubt on whether or not her tweets express racist sentiment, there's still a stupendous lack of judgment on her part. She's saying things publicly, associated with her name. Anyone who expresses something in that fashion should be fully prepared to deal with backlash. She should have the right to express her views, even if they are unpopular--and she should be willing t…

Perhaps, but in this case, the consequences were really disproportionate to the "crime". Here's what "should" have happened: : : Hey, that's really racist. : Oh, I didn't mean it that way - I'm making fun of American insularity. : OK, I still don't like it, but I get what you meant now.

I agree with you that there was an overreaction. But that's a risk each of us runs when we publish something via a public medium. Any time I want to publish something, whether it's a private SMS, a tweet, a comment on HN, or something else, I'm obliged to consider its content, and make a judgment call on whether it's appropriate. If I'm wrong, I have to deal with it.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#153

Post by Kenji »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #136
Kenji wrote: post #132

Stuff like that is analogous to threatening or killing cartoonists who mock Muhammad (that is, insanely extreme reactions to relatively innocuous actions). We just happen to agree with these cartoons, therefore we take the side of the cartoonists. The mindset described in this article (social justice bullying) is as much a hinderance to free speech as islamic extremism. But we are blind to it.

I find it difficult to believe you actually think that – it's not really a self-consistent viewpoint, given that what you describe as 'social justice bullying' is absolutely free speech.

What is a hinderance to freedom of speech is not the bullying itself, but the mindset behind it. If you can't make a foolish joke without having your entire life ruined and getting fired, then yes that is the very definition of lack of freedom of speech. Getting fired for a joke, come on? Action and reaction are completely disproportionate. But worry not, I will absorb the downvotes like a sponge for I know that my common sense has not gone missing yet.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#154

Post by chris_wot »

geofft wrote: post #148
chris_wot wrote: post #108

When I was on Wikipedia as an admin, someone modified their signature to point to a user who didn't exist. I was pretty pissed off about this, and so I went to the admins noticeboard I'd setup not really that long ago to ask someone to resolve the issue. This is where I did something particularly dumb. I created the account to the non-existent user and posted a few comments on it - then quickly switched back to my Ta…

I just want to say, I remember the account name "Ta bu shi da yu" from when I was active on Wikipedia (it's been about 10 years) and you seemed cool. I missed whatever drama this was, but my only association with that name is that it was someone who was active on Wikipedia and doing useful things. Regarding Bryan Cantrill, never forget this post (a one-line reply at the bottom): http://cryptnet.net/mirrors/texts/kiss…

I was never cool, which is why I was so active on Wikipedia :-) thanks for your kind words!

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#155

Post by j_horvat »

taylorwc wrote: post #62

I think they article would more aptly have been titled, "How One Thoughtless Public Expression of Justine Sacco's Lack of Judgment and Racism Had Consequences." Really hard to feel sympathy for her.

Really? No sympathy? Did you read the article? Obviously what she said was inappropriate but there are very few people that should be dragged through the mud as roughly as she was. Especially over less than 140 characters.

Should she have lost her job? Yeah probably being in such a high profile position. But should she be reviled as an truly awful person when her only crime was an ill-conceived tweet? I don't think so personally, and it scares me that we are willing to judge and condemn people for so little.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#156

Post by tomp »

paganel wrote: post #80
karangoeluw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offending people who might have lost a close family member to AIDS you mean?

There's no use in trying to explain. I'm being downvoted to hell for trying to explain why racist jokes are not ok, with replies like "this is just an off-color joke" or "do you know what racism means?" . I'm pretty dissapointed in this community, been here for lots of years and thought that generally speaking people in here would be more open-minded. But the minute you start to explain why making jokes about one's r…

In all honesty, you did a really poor job explaining why racist jokes are bad. You're being downvoted because (1) you assume that her joke was racist, and (2) you assume that racist jokes are bad (without showing understanding or "open-mindedness" about people who think otherwise).

Personally, I disagree on both counts. I like offensive jokes of all kinds (I mean, if they're actually funny). Coming from a very homogeneous Central European country, I have never been on either side of oppression (other than being bullied in school for being weak, small, smart geek), so I definitely don't have your experience of being "hurt" by jokes, but your experience doesn't translate into a universally-applicable moral/rational argument that racist jokes are bad. However, even if I agreed with you and would personally dislike racist jokes, I would still strongly oppose restrictions or censorship on racist/offensive jokes, to avoid situations like the recent Charlie Hebdo attack.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#157

Post by kefs »

knodi123 wrote: post #117
deong wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least logged into my Google account, if I type "Justine", it suggests "Sacco" as the top completion. It's not all that hyperbolic to say "ruined your life" when your first name is literally a global URI to the (perceived) worst thing you've ever done.

I once created a server-side app that would monitor where certain search terms showed up in google rankings, so you could monitor change over time. The biggest challenge we faced was that google dramatically changes your search results based on who you are, and where you are. My point is - Justine Sacco isn't even on the first page of Justines for me. Maybe google just thinks Sacco is the best Justine for you, but it…

If you add pws=0 to your querystring, it'll search without personalization. Actually, there are other factors at play too [1], but that alone should work well enough.

1: http://moz.com/blog/face-off-4-ways-to-de-personalize-google

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#158

Post by geofft »

golemotron wrote: post #137

I think that public shaming can be laid directly at the feet of Social Justice. It would be great if people who want to make things better for minorities chose a different tactic - private communication rather than public ostracism.

SJW here. Private communication works well if the problem is specific people behaving badly in private, and public ostracism is, in fact, inappropriate. But usually the goal is to establish a changed social norm, and to combat an existing one, which needs to be done in public; ostracizing an individual is not the goal (and, to be clear, isn't a good thing!).

Someone brought up the example of Ben Noordhuis and node.js elsewhere in this thread. Assuming for the sake of argument that Ben's behavior was something that you didn't want in the world, it's not enough to message him in private and say "Hey, this was wrong for these reasons." That gets you change within the node community (well, provided it's Ben acting), but not anywhere else. Meanwhile, if you object in public and write a blog post about it... do you think io.js is going to risk rejecting a pull request about gendered pronouns now? Or any other equally large, somewhat-overlapping language community?

I would definitely agree with the criticism that the blog post should have tried harder not to look like an attack on Ben as a person. But it reads to me like it wasn't the intention; it was an attack on anyone who acts in the same way.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#159

Post by giarc »

jim_greco wrote: post #105

1) It's an offensive tweet. Whether you intend something to be offensive or not doesn't make it any less offensive. 2) It's very easy to pass off casual racism as a joke or a misunderstanding of the medium after it blows up in your face.

I totally agree. I was also surprised to see the author of the article defend the tweet as well.

>But after thinking about her tweet for a few seconds more, I began to suspect that it wasn’t racist but a reflexive critique of white privilege — on our tendency to naïvely imagine ourselves immune from life’s horrors.

Her comments that followed seemed to agree with your second point.

Re: How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

#160

Post by vertex-four »

mcphage wrote: post #134
vertex-four wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a thought experiment, imagine Person X said something deemed offensive and society responded in a uniform manner - by constant public humiliation, refusing to do business with them, refusing to even speak to them, etc. I will note that until relatively recently, those who we consider "conservatives" today did exactly that towards "progressives". You try and dare being publicly against segregation and the mistrea…

> I will note that until relatively recently, those who we consider "conservatives" today did exactly that towards "progressives". And we agree that's bad, right? I thought we had all agreed that was bad. 'Cause it really seems like here you're advocating "well they did it to us, so it's okay if we do it to them."

> And we agree that's bad, right?

Sometimes. It's less clear-cut in some cases - specifically, when a statement or action is more directly against some group's human rights, or otherwise directly dehumanises people. However, what I'm suggesting that it's not going to stop - all sides are going to keep doing it, and always have done.

It used to be that if you learned that something was OK, it'd be OK for the rest of your life (more-or-less, ignoring major political events). Now, that's not so much the case as the progressives have more power and visibility, and so it's more visible when someone says something that might've been accepted 10 years ago and isn't now, vs someone saying something that is generally not accepted now but might be in 10 years.

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