How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

Imagine this: Someone says something unfortunate or offensive at a crowded street corner. Another person hears it and launches into a righteous indignation frenzy. I'll call him the Lead Bully. He stirrs up others. Very soon this turns into a physical attack and the speaker ends up in the hospital with serious injuries.

In this case anyone would easily conclude that the Lead Bully and a number of others should be brought to justice and suffer financial damage for their transgressions.

Well, a lot of these online attacks are not far from my hypothetical scenario. They are launched and stoked by a Lead Bully and stoked by them and perhaps a small group of friends and followers. These attacks result in serious and significant damage spanning from physical and emotional to financial.

According to the article, in Justine Sacco's case the Lead Bully was Sam Biddle, editor of Valleywag. This person single-handedly unleashed the hordes on Sacco. Given his position and following it is impossible to imagine he did not understand the potential consequences of his actions. He ruined this woman's life and quite possibly scarred her for a long time, if not for life.

Much like the street corner beating scenario, he ought to be liable for his decision to affect someone's life. He had at least two choices in front of him. He took the one he knew would stirr-up a hornet's nest.

The case of the guys at the tech conference is similar. Adria Richards decided to be the Lead Bully and, as a consequence, cost a father of three kids his job and caused much pain. I happen to also have three kids. If you are single you have no idea what that man felt at that moment. You can guess, but you can't know. It's horrible.

Did these people say stupid things? Probably. The way to deal with them isn't to ruin their lives. In most cases at a street corner they would be ignored.

When I was younger a mentor said something to me that stuck. He said: Having freedom and being free does not mean having freadom or being free from the responsibility for your actions or what you say.

This cuts both ways. The person who utters or tweets a potentially insensitive remark deserves to be responsible for what they said IN PROPORTION to the nature, degree and context of the statements. The people choosing to eviscerate them using social media ought to also be responsible in proportion to the consequences of their actions. That would be just and fair all around.

Think before you act.

Ahah, not about to name names - the trouble with openly naming people who are opposed to MRAs/anti-SJWs is that the demographic is also very, very adept at launching internet lynch mobs.

Sadly the events of the past half-year or so have succeeded in silencing some people who would otherwise speak, for fear of being doxxed, swatted, or otherwise harassed (where harassment goes above and beyond receiving angry messages of disapproval).

If the people who have left HN because of the toxicity want to make themselves known, they should do that. It's not my place to direct the people they want to avoid straight to their doorstep.

A good place to start would be the top posters list and seeing who's still around. Many of these folks still read HN but no longer participate in comments. Many read HN and have their commentary elsewhere. I know some of them, I certainly don't know all of them.

> "you'd probably lose some value for actual tech and, particularly, tech issues discussions."

Yeah, this is where idealism and values run head-first into the brick wall of reality, and no one really knows how to fix it.

We like freedom of speech, we dislike heavy-handed moderation especially when it comes to things that inform our views. At the same time we have real instances of abuse, and we have even more instances where extremists in one camp can simply shout down any dissent (extremists, for some reason, have a lot more time to comment on the internet than the rest of us).

I don't think anyone really knows the right answer to this. We want to preserve intelligent discussion, but at the same time give minority views held in good faith a fair shake. The solution thus far has been for people to abandon communities with toxic demographics, but that hasn't really solved the core problem - it's just hit the reset button until the new community itself attracts the wrong crowd.

I think it's much more likely that people revel in seeing someone go down; the article clearly alluded to this sadistic aspect I think. As soon as there is enough critical mass for a public shaming, people will jump on the bandwagon.

What needs to change is that this kind of public shaming on the internet should be looked down upon in the future, just at is now in real life. The first step is for employers not to be so spineless to immediately fire an employee that is talked about.

Not only is it easier to publish things, it is also easier to attack people. The only thing needed to begin a shaming, is a large list of followers and the ability to tell a narrative.