"Part of that mob was the people that worked for him. We always have to remember that while we have free speech, everyone does. You cannot stop the reactions."

i am acutely aware that it is people exercising their own right to free speech that i am frightened of. I am not actually for regulation of the mob... i just wish the mob were more tempered. I have no solution, i'm just particularly frightened of the direction we seem to be going. I don't want to live in a society where the brendan eichs of the world can be forced out because they put money behind an unpopular opinion... that they are engaged in the legislative process the way we always say we want every good voter to. I don't want people to muzzle themselves on the internet from making jokes with friends or trying to be funny.

Sacco had like 500 followers max, it was basically people familiar with her and presumably familiar with her style of humor. Apparently the journalist who first propogated her tweet, was himself castigated and roasted a year later for making a tweet "making light" of bullying. He told a shitty joke, and they crucified him for it.

The speed of social media, combined with the radical shift to political correctness that we seem to have come across spells the death of humor and criticism. I don't want to live in that world, but i'm afraid it's the world we're in.

I agree that people shouldn't make that threats, like threats threats, against others on the internet. It's in poor taste. What i disagree with is taking as seriously as all that, and the appropriate response.

also,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02... ... it got bad enough she ran away from the english-speaking world for a year.

on your last sentence...
apparently a while back dan savage got in trouble for using the word "tranny" while in the midst of a discussion of why he considered it no longer okay to use the word "tranny." which, apparently makes sense to someone somewhere.

The Left is eating its own, and no amount of PC can cover you these days if someone is on the prowl looking to be offended.

My point overall is, we live in the kind of environment where the public reaction is in some circumstances worse by an order of magnitude than what a judge would deem appropriate, and i really really wish it were different.

i think the exceptions for incitement to imminent violence and you know threatennig speech are enough restraints. I was speaking generally, in this particular circumstance, i'd say the "credible threat" test would need to be met. How credible are these threats to his daughter? are they local, are they classmates? are they just dicks being dicks? If i threaten to harm someone from 1000 miles away, my alibi is, i was 1000 miles away.

My examples were brendan eich, losing his job over 1000 dollars to a political campaign, and justine sacco losing her job, and probably 3-4 years of her life over 1 tweet. It wasn't the employer, it was the mob that forced their hand.

The problem with taking threats seriously on the internet, is that probably a fraction of a percent could possibly be credible. I really do mean I believe .005 of them are actually credible. The rest are just people venting/mini-trolling, everybody gets the impulse once or twice in their life to really just mess with someone that's taking something too seriously. You've gotta cross off the trolls, the people who are all just talk, the people that can't track you down, and adolescents... what are you left with?

I'd be more afraid of someone on the internet that threatened to steal my hypothetical daughter's identity than someone who threatened to rape her... one involves literally tracking her down, the other can be done from anywhere.

what i got, is that
http://www.unwatch.org/cms.asp...

from what i understand, they've been condemning israel for like, 2 decades with very little to show for it, and their human rights council is partially composed of hypocrisy. ... they had a moment of silence for kim jong-il after his passing... wtf?

as someone else said above... the phone you brought with you, on this trip, that's charged and you were fiddling with like... 30 seconds ago, that phone. you forgot your password to that phone in the span of, like an hour. yes, that seems very likely and not at all like you're the boldest liar in the history of lying.

yes, because it's in something the UN puts out, it's obviously legal and enforced in all member nations. The UN is not feckless at all.

who decides proper manners? a century ago it probably wasn't "proper manners" for a woman to you know... speak. or wear pants. but that's off-topic.

i'm a bit more liberal than the average american, but i'm of the firm belief that all speech, all expression no matter how offensive should be protected from and by the law. It scares me that if i speak the wrong words, i might ruin my life, that if i contribute to the wrong political philosophy or campaign, i could ruin my life. I could ruin my life with a single tweet.

And the thing ruining my life is the judgmental, vicious and gleeful masses.

I like to think that i try to be excellent to others... but that in some very small part entails being excellent to those that are not excellent to me.

just use decades, decades are nice and safe. century's less so,

millenium is fine, it's an absurd enough scaling up that it's still humorous. turn of the century is scary because it has been long enough to just barely be applicable as a phrase... which is terrifying.

:) wasn't commenting on your stance, which is reasonable. just commenting that generally that it seems that the same group of people that are saying "fuck them" are the same that say about our prison system, "give them a second chance." we've all said stuff we don't mean, an ill-judged joke, culturally acceptable but locally insensitive comments etc.

it's a strange new world we live in, where all it takes is a single comment to ruin one's life... because social media is bloodthirsty, unfeeling, uncompromising and gleefully malicious.

I'm a bleeding heart liberal, and i'm friggin shocked at how quickly the left is eating its own. I've moved to the center by standing still apparently.

yes. obviously they should die for words they speak. you are a wise and just person.

:) i think he's suggesting we turn people who talk a big game, into people who have no choice but to live a big game.

yes lets turn these people into those with no other choice but crime.

... come on now... think about that for a second.

... aren't some of their job prospects basically nil at this point? if that's not permanent damage, i don't know what is.

Also, as i've stated above somewhere, i trust my mob justice, it's the rest of you mooks i don't trust.

and do you really want to depend on the judgement of an aggrieved and protective parent to be fair and considered toward an aggressor?

and i'm dreading the day the troll exposed really is an adolescent boy that's thereafter exposed to the aggregate punishment of a nation. It will happen; apparently schilling held back names, what happens when the next guy doesn't?

will they still feel righteous then? brendan eich was fired for a thousand dollar political contribution... is it really so far fetched?

...

please, for the love of all that's holy... don't refer to it as the turn of the century.

if it's not a crime, it should be.

dear lord, i fell down the rabbit hole.... wtf is a micro-aggression? have they honestly criminalized the minor friction of diversity? god, being teasingly offensive is like the spice of life.

i can honestly say, i'm a liberal, but the left has left me. dear lord.