This is a weird false dichotomy. Its possible to think someone should be more careful and still not think they deserve to die. If I saw someone texting while driving I'd tell them to be more careful but not think they deserved to die.
EDIT: as always, I’d love to hear from the downvoters. This seems like a pretty uncontroversial observation.
I don’t believe they are the same people but don’t have data to back that up.
"Be more careful if you decide to text and drive" makes sense
"Be more careful in getting this notorious troll off a blog site" really doesn't
In some scenarios, it's also effectively saying "make sure someone else is the one that gets raped/attacked/whatever tonight".
A smoker who gets lung cancer doesn't deserve the pain and suffering, but you can make a good argument they're at least partially at fault for it.
"People should dress conservatively so they don't get raped" doesn't say they deserved to get raped, but it does blame them to some extent for what happened by implying some of it is their fault.
If you get run down intentionally by someone in a car while biking, and the first thing I say is "well, you should've worn a helmet", you're going to correctly call me a douchebag.
Nobody is actually trying to tell the security expert in this story that he should be more careful - he's dead. People in this thread are pointing out how this story highlights the importance of safe internet usage practices - much akin to how one might point to a car collision as a reason to use a helmet. That is not blaming the victim, that's encouraging others to learn from and hopefully prevent similar situations.
This would normally be okay, if he was a blogger or opinion writer, but Adelstein portrays himself as an independent journalist.
I don't think criticising someone is comparable to texting and driving.
In fact, you could argue that the former is the healthy exercise of the protestors' freedom of speech, and the latter is the exercise of a corporation's freedom of speech.
"Freedom of speech" != other people helping you broadcast your message or letting it go unchallenged
There is no (and never has been) an unequivocal right to free speech in a private space.
Also, constraining the discussion of freedom of expression to government-conducted censorship is not disingenuous. It's the only context in which freedom of expression is guaranteed in the US.
While the First Amendment is one such implementation of the notion of free speech, it is not the philosophy of freedom of expression itself.
I'm only talking about implementation. Philosophical discussion of free speech is a much broader scope and not, to my understanding, what anyone else was talking about in this thread.
If they were talking about philosophy, then it wasn't clear to me and this became an argument of semantics.
2.) I agree that protests themselves are free speech and necessary part of functional society. Absolutely, people have right to loudly disagree with highly paid speakers and demagogues and pundits and politicians and what not.
3.) There are many people who don't believe 2. in particular when protesters are from opposite "side". Even if you see protest as something outside of free speech, murder is bigger threat.
4.) Murdering someone is large non-govermental threat to freedom. That point stands absolutely. "You are not careful enough if you criticise troll" is slimmy way to create situation in which you are totally for freedom, but also if they do exercise they are irresponsible and brought dead on themselves. Slimmy.
5.) I did not downvoted you.