Another interesting article about online shaming: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw... The things is that we often forget that there are actual human beings behind the tweets - sometimes with poor judgment skills, but often more misguided than malevolent.
Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
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Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#22[deleted]
Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#23I remember when this incident happened. I can't remember what my reaction was at the time (probably a combination of "let's not alienate women in tech further" and "sexual jokes are OK in the right context, and a conf is propably not it") but reading this excerpt - particularly reading about Adria's continued anger(?) at Hank - really shocked me.
Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#24One interesting aspect that seems to be completely left out of that discussion is the issue of labour protection laws. Firing someone in Europe for some minor issue like that would probably be a major legal issue here.
Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#25I remember when this incident happened. I can't remember what my reaction was at the time (probably a combination of "let's not alienate women in tech further" and "sexual jokes are OK in the right context, and a conf is propably not it") but reading this excerpt - particularly reading about Adria's continued anger(?) at Hank - really shocked me.
Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#26I remember when this story happened and after reading it all again, I still think that what makes it so terrible is the fact both sides were fired. One of them because he was behaving immaturely at a conference and another because her employer was getting ddosed. Is it just me or are those both terrible overreactions from the companies' sides? The whole sexism discussion is perfectly valid and very important, we need…
No it's not just you, the responses from the companies were, as far as I'm concerned, illegal; the guy was fired for something he said (freedom of speech?), and she was fired through 4chan blackmailing her employer (as far as I could tell).
Of course, I don't know what kind of employee protection people have; IIRC the IT business isn't unionised yet, so there's little to fall back on. Well, besides the internets, which is what caused kind of a giant backlash.
Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#27> He noticed ruefully that a few days earlier the woman – her name was Adria Richards – had herself tweeted a stupid penis joke. She’d suggested to a friend that he put socks down his pants to bewilder TSA agents at the airport. Lot of hypocrisy here! Neither person deserved to lose their job, the whole situation seems to have gotten completely out of hand. Funny how even the smallest hint of acknowledgement or respo…
Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#28Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#29This paragraph really gave me chills... A lot of insight about her thought process, and a bit terrifying in my opinion.
Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life
#30> He noticed ruefully that a few days earlier the woman – her name was Adria Richards – had herself tweeted a stupid penis joke. She’d suggested to a friend that he put socks down his pants to bewilder TSA agents at the airport. Lot of hypocrisy here! Neither person deserved to lose their job, the whole situation seems to have gotten completely out of hand. Funny how even the smallest hint of acknowledgement or respo…
This guy is doing a great job promoting his book. I guess the discussion here won't be real different than this recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085680 It will certainly be interesting to watch the mechanics of internet mobs evolve as people get a better idea of the potential consequences of them.