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Comment by task_queue | Hacker News Reader

You are in essence saying there shouldn't be social consequences for speech.

The internet has created a weird environment where repercussions for socially unacceptable speech (even if taken completely out of context) can be dramatically more severe than any harm that was caused by the original speaker. In general, a distasteful tweet or Facebook post shouldn't cost someone their job, make them a target for anonymous threats or make them fear interacting with society at large any more than it would have if the message had just been spoken. There was a good piece on NPR recently that explored a number of examples:

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...

There has always been repercussions for socially unacceptable speech. What the internet has affected is who can hear or read your speech.

If I go into a supermarket and shout, "I hate black people and they shouldn't even be in America!" I am going to suffer the consequences, but probably only from the people who heard me. Everyone else will have heard it second-hand and may due to social circle pressure decide to sever ties with me. The only way I'll actually suffer long-term (other than being beat up by a mob) is if I was famous since people like it when famous people do things.

The problem is, people continue to think that "The Internet" is just some kind of throwaway void where they can spout whatever they want. Justine Sacco probably isn't a racist, and was probably making a joke about "white privilege" or "white bubble". But she showed poor judgement in assuming that writing that in a public space would be benign. Even with her lack of followers. Text is not a good way to facilitate a joke that requires context. Her joke about AIDS and Africa and white people not being affected is based on some context no one but herself had.

If _I_ am at the supermarket and I hear some old cranky dude yell that out. It's a story I'll probably tell my friends about. They in turn may decide to use that as an inside joke/catchphrase of our circle of friends. But there is no way I'll repeat that to someone else outside of the group of friends that know what the context is. I definitely won't post it on Twitter, not without at least having posted the story about the crazy old man in the supermarket.

So I kinda laugh when people say they can't say anything that's not "PC" anymore. That to me just means they want to really spout some really offensive opinions to a public audience without paying the consequences of doing so. Then of course when there is kickback, they blame it on people being too "PC"

You're acting like the networks we use are just neutral conduits through which we engage conversationally exactly how we do in person, and that's just not true. They change how we interact. For one thing, these networks make it so that you can reach out and help mob somebody from the safety of your home, which is completely asymmetric compared to how such interactions would work in person.

Part of the problem that I see, is that in modern America, everyone is a victim. Anything can be considered offensive. And when that happens, we find it acceptable to utterly destroy people's lives over 140 characters...in the name of "social justice". It's ok to call Justine Sacco a fucking bitch and wish brutal rape upon her, so long as you do so in defense of social justice, right? It's ok to shame her, cause her to lose her job and go into hiding, so long as you're part of the "progressive" and "forward thinking" mob, right? In fact, one may even consider it comedic, right?

That is what you call justice?

We have effectively returned to the days of witch hunting and public hangings, but this time our medium isn't the town square. It's the Internet.

Justine Sacco's tweet was a joke. And she even subscribed to the very "liberal" thought that was shaming her. Her joke was tongue-in-cheek. But her shamers weren't liberals. They didn't care about actual reason and discourse and open-mindedness. They weren't the liberals that we think of today; the ones that were always on the right side of history. The ones that marched alongside MLK. The ones that stood up for women's rights. No, they were "progressives". Pseudo-liberals that fight for the oppressed by oppressing others. The open-minded, forward thinking, altruistic group that wants everyone to be heard...until they disagree with their views. Then they must return to the mob-mentality of the stone ages, in the name of "progress".

These people don't care about progress. They don't care about social justice. They care about the entertainment of destroying someone's life, the feeling of dehumanizing another human being, and the gratifying thought that in doing so, they were being a model human...an enlightened individual...better than the rest. But they aren't. They are the most simple, selfish, uncompassionate, and closed-minded beings of our generation.

And we support them. We encourage them.

We have no idea how stressful and oppressive of a world we are creating for ourselves. And all in the name of pseudo "anti-oppression". We must remember the importance of true freedom of speech. The importance of unpopular thoughts and discussions. The importance of open discourse without the threat of condemnation. Where everyone can be heard and we can build a better world together. Where the enlightened truly care about helping the unenlightened to see things differently. Where true progress is bred.

I agree there is a lot of mob mentality going on. But I feel like you are only viewing this when you perceive it to be started by the "left". Mob mentality is not a left or right problem. "Progressives" are not the one's doing this. Mob mentality is a human thing.

Is your reasoning that only people attacking Justine Sacco were "progressives" and "liberals?" Does that mean everybody, to put for a lack of a better term, "on the right" understood the context of Justine Sacco's tweet and did not join in and pile on?

I mean in the context of just those tweets, what she said was pretty racist and offensive. So the implication that only liberals attacked her means that either conservatives didn't attack her because they already understood what she meant by those tweets (hard to imagine anyone could in that moment since one of the biggest things about it was that she was on a plane and couldn't defend herself) or they didn't believe those tweets were racist (which they were when taken without context).

Dividing people by framing this as a left/right issue is not the way to go if you really want to stop the internet mob.

What it should and should not do is a matter of opinion. The fact is, putting something in writing is permanent. Writing casually/carelessly can haunt you, like it always has. The confusion comes when regarding things like Twitter as 'speech' and calling the authors 'speakers'.

But it is speech in the legal sense. It's a usage that's been with the language for quite some time. If we mean literally "spoken," we should be clear about it.

Generally it shouldn't, sometimes though it certainly should.

I didn't get that at all from the post. I read that GP is sad that the 'social consequences' for speech have created an environment where people are afraid of voicing benign, unpopular opinions.

The kind of people who are oversensitive to speech don't care about what's being said; they care about how it's being said. I don't think there should be social consequences for saying something that isn't PC. And I think OP falls into the same category. This is far from something so general as "consequences for speech" which would include things as abstract as judging the level of education of the speaker. I don't make this point lightly either. It is a phenomenon I've observed too many times in my life. There are people that are actually willing to listen to others, that actually try to get the context of who this person is that they're speaking with. But most people are not willing to listen to someone else within the context of who that person is, and are more than willing to run with their early assumptions of that person. Why is it that the people who are oversensitive always fall into the latter category? Being sensitive to political correctness is a way of being ignorant and pretentious to the world, to the billions of people who are not like yourself.

Big Think - People Will Misjudge You Unless You Manipulate Them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX83nf6t6Vg

Its all about context. With your bro's after the game, sure. But in Twitter, where the whole world (anybody who cares to look anyway) can see it? Its expected to have a different voice there. Folks who get all chummy on Twitter are forgetting where they are.

"Its expected to have a different voice there."

Expected by who? The "expectation" you think everyone has, everyone does not have. In this discussion we're referring to this expectation as "PC" or "political correctness".

Normal social conventions. You don't hum in church. You don't yell "Theatre!" in a crowded firehouse. Etc.

The consequences for speech should resemble an asymptote, always approaching zero.

Consequences of speech are people's thoughts or reactions to speech.

Where does someone's right to say what they want without consequence end and my right to have a thought or reaction to what I heard begin?

Your right to speak your opinion coexists with people's right to have a reaction. This might be socially inconvenient, but that has always been the reality. Nothing has changed because the avenue expression is online, just the audience and availability of your speech.

You are in essence saying that ad hominem is a valid debating technique.

Go on

Expressing a dissenting opinion against the mainstream shouldn't have to the extent of threatening ones livelihood because it suppresses honest discussion. That is the point 0x49 is trying to make. You are inferring with your comment that dissenting from mainstream opinion should be allowed to have the equivalent social consequences of e.g. advocating genocide. But with that line of reasoning you are allowing people with unpopular opinions to argued by the character of the people making them.

Everything isn't to be treated as a debate in good faith. It is very, very rare for a person to be making inflammatory comments in an earnest attempt to start a debate in good faith. I agree, if the platform is a debate-like context, it would be bad form to do that.

But if you walk into a bar or post on Twitter talking about how much you dislike ___, don't be surprised if someone has a reaction. I certainly won't be inclined to start a Socratic dialogue exploring why you dislike ___ in an attempt to persuade you.

You wouldn't spout a racist manifesto on a talk show, don't expect to be able to do it on a medium that everyone can see and think nothing will come of it. You need to be acutely aware of your audience and reach when you speak.

In this context, do not be surprised if people cannot separate their judgment of the comment from the person making it. Especially when the context is "I just read this awful comment on my screen by a person I don't know and already dislike."

>You need to be acutely aware of your audience and reach when you speak.

The problem 0x49 referred to is the polarization of discussions, where any attempt of moderation and nuance of the arguments is punished immediately with personal attacks and accusations of siding with the enemy. So it isn't just audience and reach that you should be acutely aware, it is also if you should speak on some matters at all. If you step in and say something in a polarized issue that doesn't fit someone's sensibilities in the extremes it makes you a target.

Is there a difference between social consequences for speech and harassment? I'm reminded of the old freedom fighter vs. terrorist debate.

Yes. The first can simply be a reaction someone has to speech and the other is a criminal offense.

Online harassment is almost always a reaction to speech. If ten thousand people send hateful messages to someone because they tweeted something they found offensive, is that harassment or social consequence?

How about some concrete examples: did Justine Sacco suffer social consequences for speech, or was she harassed by an online mob? How about Anita Sarkeesian?

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