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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#471
post #420
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Social media should not allow the broadcasting of unproven allegations that individuals have committed crimes, just as conventional media is barred from doing so until the cases have been heard in court. - Utility-like services should not be allowed to refuse service to individuals without clear reason.

#1 seems practically impossible to do, considering that the definition of what a crime is tends to vary between jurisdictions. It may work if on a closed internet and social media that is segregated by jurisdiction. #2 is already true in some cases, but as usual, the real answer is something like "it depends."

> #1 seems practically impossible to do, considering that the definition of what a crime is tends to vary between jurisdictions.

Alleging that someone has done something that happens to be a crime aren't a problem, the problem is wilfully alleging crimes outside the court system. The overwhelming majority of the posts that cause these problems either explicitly claim that someone has committed a crime, or explicitly claim that someone has committed an act that is well known to be a crime.

> #2 is already true in some cases

Not really in the US AFAICS? Certain narrowly defined groups are protected against being denied service by private businesses, but there's no broad general protection.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#472
post #451
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, for every victim, there are at least 10 people willing to fake victimhood for the attention alone.

This is absolutely not true. You are so far from correct that you do not seem to be operating in good faith. If you are operating in good faith, please go do some basic research.

I meant "on Twitter", but that's also an exaggeration.

Certainly not in the real world. I was very angry yesterday, I wish I could delete that comment

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#474
post #253
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strengthening our libel laws This nearly always advantages businesses and the wealthy, especially in false or ambiguous situations, and whistleblowers of all kinds. Litigation is incredibly expensive and slow. Do people really want to spend a house worth and several years on this kind of fight? (This is why the US felt it necessary to pass laws against UK libel judgements being enforced, it was infringing on US sta…

Truth is always an absolute defense to libel. If you can back up what you’re saying, libel isn’t a concern. And if you can't prove what you're saying is true, then why are you saying it?

Truth is not an absolute defense for other legal cases in the US. The legal system is statistically successful at getting innocent people to take plea deals and legally does not require the penalties for a losing party.

I think we need to move away from the American Rule for litigation fees to the English Rule. So we incentive people for telling the truth when pursuing legal action.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to a friend of mine recently. Some woman posted their conversation to an instagram story, saying all my friend wanted was sex and implying that people should stay away from him. It seemed like she thought she was doing something courageous, when in reality she's kind of a monster. The dude did nothing more than unfollow her on insta after she strongly hinted that there would be no possibility for romanc…

He should have sent vocals which cannot be screenshot

Screen record.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#477
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's realistic. The level of opsec required to actually do that, is realistically not going to happen for the majority of people.

I agree it's not realistic. The backwards arrow, however (i.e. you can get the real name from the handle easily, but you can't get the handle from the real name, or at least not easily) isn't hard to achieve and affords most of the protection. If you're not going to be awful online, nobody will try to figure out who you are from a pseudonymous handle. But your employer/potential employer will certainly google your na…

Depends who you are protecting against - I think both directions require more opsec than the average internet user is going to manage.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#478
I don't have any insight into this specific situation, but there's one element of the post I wanted to comment on: that Scott Adams "canned apology."

Is there any sequence of events in which that tweet is useful? I see two basic paths here. One: you want to apologize in order to get people to stop yelling at you. Two: you want to sincerely apologize because you think you've done something wrong.

In either case, you can't use the Adams apology, because... it's obviously pre-canned. It's not sincere.

But worse, what if you didn't know about the Adams apology and you come up with something similar? Same problems apply and you didn't even know you were setting yourself up for it!

This feels like an instance of the insincerity/shitposting problem. It's fun to be snarky. You can get a lot of laughs being snarky. In some cases, it's even useful to be snarky, because it tends to muddy the waters. But I think it's also usually corrosive to be snarky.

I wish Adams hadn't done that.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#479
post #400
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth is always an absolute defense to libel. If you can back up what you’re saying, libel isn’t a concern. And if you can't prove what you're saying is true, then why are you saying it?

> If you can back up what you’re saying, libel isn’t a concern How are you going to pay to back this up in court? Evidencing these things is tricky. As you've spotted, it doesn't matter whether what you say is true, only whether you can back it up. Oh, and you may need to lodge a bond with court in case you lose. Best re-mortgage your house. The UK has extremely strong libel law and yet people libel each other all th…

Except Libel isn't on the same criminal level as rape and sexual assault. Libel is a mostly civil affair and should be dealt with as a civil offense, not criminal, and since its mostly civil, it can have a higher requirement of proof, as weird as it sounds.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#480
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal system goes to great lengths to prevent it being everyone just voting who is guilty. Democracy is not for individual cases. Jury selection throws out 95% of people because there are so many biases that make democracy terrible for this kind of analysis.

So to allow any post through, twitter should have a process that randomly selects an unbiased jury of other twitter posters, and have them judge the post before it becomes public? And that process will be administered by democratically elected representatives who ultimately decide on the 5% that doesn't get thrown out? What if you are a person who just happens to hold strong preconceived opinions about a lot of thing…

I’m not sure what your point even is. Twitter should just not allow people to claim other people raped/robbed/etc without pointing to some actual conviction or ongoing trial.

No letting a pool of people decide guilt based on literally no evidence. That’s insane.

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