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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

#251

Post by mercurial »

foehp wrote: post #175
jerf wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is deceptive to characterize an online lynch mob as not a "receptive audience". Read the article again... some of the lynch mobs weren't even factually correct about what they mobilized for. The attempt to implicitly pull in the "well, they sorta deserved it defense" fails on the grounds that you're leaving the determination of who deserved it up to a mob . Hi, I'm one of your friendly neighborhood HN libertarians…

It is deceptive to characterize angry comments posted online as a "lynch mob".

Cyber-bullying is a thing, with real consequences (depression or suicide).

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

#252

Post by ForHackernews »

cheald wrote: post #206
ForHackernews wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fourth I suspect you're misinterpreting as "Tech managers don't want to hire women", when I think it's more "Tech managers don't care about the gender of their developers" You're giving that the most contorted, charitable reading possible. In your reading, the reference to a "unicorn" is nonsensical. I would argue the accurate reading is: "Tech managers don't spend time worrying about hiring talented women beca…

If you take that tweet in isolation and read it as a comparison of female developers to unicorns, then sure, I can see how you arrive at that conclusion. I think it's a faulty conclusion, and I think that its faultiness is further illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers. My reading of it is based on what I know of him, which does not consist sol…

> illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers.

I mean, obviously he's going to say that. I'm not sure how much stock you want to put into after-the-fact PR damage control. I think actions speak louder than words, and I'd reserve judgment before hearing from some of the women developers who he's hired (he has hired women, right?) about how he was to work under, what he was like as a boss (not as a co-founder).

You accuse me of "exemplifying the worst of the Twitter lynchmob problem" but I'm trying hard to be as neutral and generous as possible. I listed three possible implications of that tweet, only one of which is explicitly negative, and you claim I've "decided that the author is a racist, sexist psychopath". If anyone is guilty of twitter-like hyperbole in this conversation, it's you.

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

#253

Post by tmuir »

jgalt212 wrote: post #34
logicalmind wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, as a sometimes Cubs fan, I have to say Steve deserved what he got.

As a fellow Cubs fan, you're dead wrong.

The play Bartman disrupted didn't advance any runners. It was a foul ball. Cubs were up 3-0, with one out. Had Moises Alou caught the ball, there would have been two outs. The Marlins proceeded to score 4 runs before the second out occurred, and another 4 before the third.

Bartman didn't throw a wild pitch, or commit a fielding error, or give up 5 hits and eight runs. The Cubs did.

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

#254

Post by gear54rus »

protomyth wrote: post #236
gear54rus wrote: post #221

That may sound hateful or angry or whatever, but here goes... > I was among the first people to alert social media. (This was because Gill always gave my television documentaries bad reviews, so I tended to keep a vigilant eye on things he could be got for.) Within minutes, it was everywhere. Is this really what we've come to? We have all this technological progress so you could stalk someone you're butthurt over and…

"justice were being democratized" = mob rule same as it ever was, now with a lot less effort from the mob

I'd say for a mob it may even be understandable (if you decided to roll with us, you're in for a full trip), we are talking about deeds after all, not empty words.

Here, it's just ridiculous.

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

#255

Post by coldpie »

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

> The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against him and he was forced to quit.

Hahahahahahaha no. Eich paid money to political campaigns to ensure that some of his own employees and fellow citizens would not have basic human rights. Then, he refused to apologize for it and dodged the question when asked if he would do it again. That's not "expressing an opinion," that's nearly sociopathic. He was clearly working against his employees' best interest. Even ignoring his employees' feelings, he was bad for the company. Many productive employees threatened to quit because they didn't want to be represented by a person who explicitly expressed hatred towards them or their friends.

That kind of person does not belong in a position of power, full stop. Expressing homophobia in 2015 is going to close doors, the same way expressing racism or sexism does and should. There was no "bullying campaign" except the one supported and perpetrated by Eich.

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

#256

Post by mercurial »

sharkweek wrote: post #90

I wonder about this a lot - in 15-20 years, political candidates / public figures will have hundreds of things they have said online embarrassing their campaigns/images. Do we all just become more accepting of sarcasm, racism, bad jokes, etc? Is it a step backwards or is it a step forward? I can tell you for a fact I'm sure things on my Twitter account could likely be taken out of context as I can sometimes be a bit…

Public figures can afford "online reputation management" firms.

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

#257

Post by timr »

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

Twitter, in particular, is awful. There's no context and very little thought possible in 140 characters. So you either get marketing from corporations, jokes/memes, or full-frontal assaults by the pitchfork-weilding mob, with no effective defense possible in the medium.

At least on Facebook you can elucidate your thoughts, defend your opinions, and otherwise make an effort too look like a person who appreciates nuance, rather than someone whose entire intellectual capacity is captured in 140 characters.

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

#258

Post by TeMPOraL »

Joeboy wrote: post #230
ElComradio wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It merely illustrates the absolutely craven nature of companies. Her employer is basically a coward.

I have some sympathy for a company whose Senior Director of Corporate Communications instigates a massive PR disaster by joking about Africans having AIDS on Twitter.

This makes me wonder if PR is actually effective, and not a massive money sink. Would that company really lose any noticeable amount of customers over that Twitter shitstorm? If so, how come that no one apparently got hurt over ACTA/SOPA and Snowdengate? I don't see companies losing significant business over trying to destroy the Internet itself.

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

#260

Post by ryguytilidie »

paulhauggis wrote: post #219

This is the reality of social media. If you offend the wrong person, you will most likely get fired from your job and or get unwanted attention in other parts of your life..all for just expressing an opinion. It's essentially online bullying by people that want to silence you for having an opinion that is different than their own. The ex-Mozilla CEO knows this well. An online bullying campaign was launched against hi…

I have some pretty serious objections to summing up people making a campaign to remove a bigot from his role leading an open source, community friendly company as "an online bullying campaign"...
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