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How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

nytimes.com

461–470 of 596 posts

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

#461
post #410

French guy here. This article only speak about employees in american company getting fired about some data shared on the web. But I would be curious to know what happened to people who faced the same situation working in continental european companies. It would be surprising if people would lost their jobs so easily. Either because I think it's culturally better accepted for private people (I mean not public figures)…

French guy here as well, and this was exactly my reaction. It seemed very exotic, this notion that an employer was allowed to fire you just because a bunch of people on the Internet have started disliking you in a vocal way because of something you said (as an individual, not reflecting your employer's opinion, not illegal). This feels like the main issue here. Barring substantial improvements in everyone's maturity,…

you're wrong, this happened in France too, and it happened a lot last year : http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2014/01/02/quenelle-nabil-perd-em...

just one example...

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

#462
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's hyperbole, as the victim doesn't actually die. But there are certainly similarities. They were able to get Sacco fired. They were able to mobilize someone to take her picture right after her plane landed. And she had to leave Cape Town because "no one could guarantee her safety". So, it could have easily escalated into a real lynch mob. How about people getting "swatted" by internet vigilantes? So the "not dying…

It's happened already: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/online-trolls-w...

(posting from a throwaway because I resolved to stop commenting here, but couldn't help myself here)

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

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for one to suggest that there is no legitimate argument against gay marriage, you'd have to rationalize what it is that we in the west know better than those living in less-wealthy, less-industrialized societies outside our corner of the globe. Most of those other societies incorporate substantial religious influence in their legislative and/or judicial processes. It doesn't require "rationalization" to demo…

As an atheist, I agree, but asserting that the rationale behind prohibiting gay marriage is mostly religious isn't supported by evidence. More than a quarter of the world's population lives in countries that are majority-atheist without being any more supportive of gay marriage than those of us in western, more-religious countries.

I'm not aware of any countries that are majority-atheist (maybe Norway?) Any references for that?

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

#464
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He acknowledges that in the replies, but this particular "idiocy" is not one of tone, behavior, or offense. It is about bad technical policy in the pursuit of ego, which is something that Linus has done several times since. (And he's a brilliant enough kernel hacker that he can work around his own bad policy and still come up with a system that works well, but that doesn't mean it's not bad technical policy. I feel b…

It's funny you should mention that, as that episode from nearly 20 years ago (!!) has come up much more in the last year than it did in the two decades prior. Of course, the reason is not an accident; it's a direct result of those who vehemently disagree with my handling of the Noordhuis pronoun incident. Anyway, your request is entirely fair, and let me be clear that I (obviously?) regret the have-you-ever-kissed-a-…

Incidentally, I don't think you should have to apologize for what you said 20 years ago, because it was 20 years ago and that's ridiculous. But I do think you were an ass for escalating the Noordhuis incident the way you did, not because of your opinion on pronouns. And I voted you up because downvoting because of petty disagreement _is_ getting ridiculous around here.

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

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an atheist, I agree, but asserting that the rationale behind prohibiting gay marriage is mostly religious isn't supported by evidence. More than a quarter of the world's population lives in countries that are majority-atheist without being any more supportive of gay marriage than those of us in western, more-religious countries.

I'm not aware of any countries that are majority-atheist (maybe Norway?) Any references for that?

The classic, easy, example is China.

EDIT: Apparently that's a little contentious -- only 47% self-declared atheist (http://redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/RED-C-pres...), but given that 9% of those surveyed did not respond to the question, the majority of respondents to this specific survey question did self-proclaim themselves as atheists.

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

#466
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He acknowledges that in the replies, but this particular "idiocy" is not one of tone, behavior, or offense. It is about bad technical policy in the pursuit of ego, which is something that Linus has done several times since. (And he's a brilliant enough kernel hacker that he can work around his own bad policy and still come up with a system that works well, but that doesn't mean it's not bad technical policy. I feel b…

It's funny you should mention that, as that episode from nearly 20 years ago (!!) has come up much more in the last year than it did in the two decades prior. Of course, the reason is not an accident; it's a direct result of those who vehemently disagree with my handling of the Noordhuis pronoun incident. Anyway, your request is entirely fair, and let me be clear that I (obviously?) regret the have-you-ever-kissed-a-…

Its fruitful to reflect on such past behavior both professional and personal. I have my share of regrets as well. None of us are without fault, just some of us have our mistakes more amplified than others. It important to learn from such things.

In interest of personal edification (since you seem to be open to feedback) the one criticism I have about the Noordhuis incident is that in my opinion if you felt as strongly as you did about publicly chastising Noordhuis it should have been done from your personal blog and not from the Joyent blog. I feel this was slight abuse of power and influence of the Joyent brand, specifically because you mention the intent on terminating his employment if it was within your power. I don't think that belongs there as permanent public record. That said, I think your desire was to make it clear to the community that gender biases were not going to be tolerated and to me that intent (for the most part) came through.

I do think its plausible that Noordhuis wasn't quite represented properly and that he had strong opinions about process and how commits are merged but those strong opinions were interpreted as an intent to have gender bias. But I don't have enough information to know for sure, that's just how it looks to me.

In the end regret is an entirely personal thing and we all get to decide what kind of person we are going to be. I would also like to suggest that regret isn't black and white there are always ways we can conduct or communicate more effectively and perhaps this could be a take away for you. Could there have been a way to achieve your goals equally/more effectively with less of a direct expense to Ben??

As someone who has worked directly under (and along side) you I have a deep respect for the way you conduct yourself professionally. I see you as someone with integrity, which is probably why you feel comfortable bringing up incidences you have been criticized for (this something far too rare). I offer my perspective as a friend so take it for what its worth to you.

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

#467
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, what is the connection here? And how are you so sure that status wars did not happen as much, if only in different forms, during the days of "enforced monogamy"?

My mistake, I should have been more clear. The current "political correctness" paradigm along with all of its associated hate mobs is a ferocious status competition as a result of the unmet sexual and pair-bonding needs of singles. Single males and females are different, in that females hold out for the absolute highest status man for as long as possible, whereas males try to poach any female who meets their minimum…

I did find your original comment interesting, but wasn't sure about its relevance to this article. This comment is more clarifying, thanks.

I agree with your evopsych explanation. Political correctness is to do with status, as noted by Kristian at http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correc... but even he doesn't go so far as to connect it to sexual competition. Sexual competition, especially without enforced 1-on-1 pairings (e.g.: marriage of the past), does lead to conflict. Cases like that of Elliot Rodgers come to my mind.

However I'm not convinced that enforced monogamy has seen less conflict than modern times. Can you back this argument with statistics? For example, did crime rate increase? My feeling is that even in the good old days where 1-on-1 marriage was the norm, high-status males still surreptitiously poached females paired with lower-status males. Per certain writers even the Victorian Era was not immune to it.

Pinker suggests that violence has in fact declined over time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature

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

#468
post #362

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. It's kind of weird to think that Brendan Eich is still active in the web standards community, even though he's been forced to leave Mozilla. A man without a company.

It would be a sad world if you needed commercial endorsement to be relevant about anything.

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

#469
post #452
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As dislikable as the tweet's content is Did you read the article? By thinking for a few seconds, the point of the tweet is obviously not racist. Not a smart tweet, in retrospect, but. Here's her explanation from the article: > I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal. (...) Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was ma…

This is the saddest thing. It's so trendy to have offended narcissistic egos today that people don't even recognize when someone is on YOUR side, defending YOUR cause with sarcasm!

See how they've even turned against Banksy for his so-called "anti-immigrant" piece, which was meant to satirize anti-immigration ideas.

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

#470
post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you read the article? By thinking for a few seconds, the point of the tweet is obviously not racist. Honestly, does it even matter? Say it was a racist tweet, and she was a racist. Does that mean she deserved what happened to her? Definitely not.

It matters because making an offhand joke parodying a stupid person is something that we've all done. This example shows that if you make a little parody joke like that in the wrong medium, your life could permanently pivot 180 degrees for the worst.

> This example shows that if you make a little parody joke like that in the wrong medium, your life could permanently pivot 180 degrees for the worst.

Definitely. But my point was, whether it was racist or not, her life pivoted for the worse—and whether it was racist or not, she didn't deserve what happened to her.

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