She publicly shamed the wrong guy! How is what she did ok?
It seems to me that public shaming can be used for good. If a speaker at a conference says something racist, and from the audience you immediately call it out, causing that speaker to feel shameful, apologize, and carry on, then that seems like a good use of shaming. If a speaker should make overt and blatant lies in order to use the public stage in order to defame someone else's character, then surely a massive outcry of booing is morally justifiable, and the speaker should not be able to use "I was shamed" as a justifiable way to retaliate against those who booed.
The PyCon procedures even say that the organizers may cut a presentation short and throw the speaker out, should that person's presentation be against the Code of Conduct. If public shaming is prohibited, and if the speaker feels shamed by the staff response, then can't the speaker rightly exclaim "you are shaming me in public and you must stop!"? Why should the staff be allowed to shame someone in public?
However, you seem to think that any form of public shaming should be prohibited. What are your opinions about the scenarios I listed above? Can you describe the moral reasoning you used to help decide which forms of public shaming are appropriate and which are inappropriate?
Otherwise, I don't see how saying that "She publicly shamed the wrong guy!" is, by itself, enough information to tell if what she did was okay or not. Also, under the US law that applies to workplaces (PyCon is not a workplace), all honestly made statements concerning possible civil rights violations are given protected status. If PyCon were a workplace, then this public complaint would be completely okay, and both legally and morally justifiable.
Because I cannot come up with a good moral reasoning ("don't do things that cause others to feel bad" is not a good moral reasoning) for saying that this is anything other than ok, I conclude that it was ok.
Do you have any context as to what is going on here?
The guy in the middle of the picture that's smiling at the camera is not the perp. Most people who just saw the picture, without reading everything that everyone else wrote, think that he is the perp.
Where did I write that I disagree with all forms of public shaming, and that they all need to be prohibited? However, posting up pictures of many men, with one of them clearly staring at the camera, and saying "he jokes about dongles" is wrong when the guy that is at the center of the photo and is staring at the camera is not the guy that joked about dongles. That's defamation. Case closed.
The tweet said "right behind me", which is the right guy according to you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434005 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464
Edit: I added "according to you" and link to comment since it was pointed out below that this might also be the wrong guy, which would make the comment even worse of course.
http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/20/identity-of-dongle-micro-aggre...
This source, much like the rest of the Internet, initially blamed Alex Reid, the man in the middle of the picture. Then this source decided that the guy to be blamed is the guy in the grey shirt. I made my comment following this source.
Then someone else, somewhere (no clue what the original source of that statement is anymore, but you are right, there are certainly comments to that extent floating around, and your post had that comment as well until it was deleted), stated that the reason why the guy at fault was fired from PlayHaven was because he was wearing his company's t-shirt, and thus was publicly representing the company, which in some way makes sense. The only guy in that shirt that was wearing a PlayHaven t-shirt and not the guy in the middle is sitting way far out, and not "right behind her" by any definition of that phrase.
My point is that someone who just saw that photo, without reading the extensive commentary around it, still thinks it's the man grinning at the camera - "right behind me" or not. Who is the right guy? I really thought it was the guy in the grey shirt, but even that is now under doubt.
Are the statements of this source more or less defamatory than the original source? That is, in the original image+text it was (and remains) ambiguous about who made the sexual jokes. While this source specifically named one person, and then named another.
If defamation is a relevant concept to this discussion, then you should be complaining most strongly about the defamation done by this source, no?
I still think arguments which use the term "public shaming" are uselessly vague. If you mean defamation, then just say defamation.
Defamation has a reasonably well-defined meaning in law and ethics, though the details vary widely depending on the jurisdiction. As this took place in the US, I do not see how there's a valid legal claim for defamation under US/California law.
I suspect though that you're talking about morals and ethics, and not just the law. The neat thing I've learned about the law is that it provides useful insights for how at least judges think about the ethics and morality behind the law, and those views can help understand the issue.
For example, SMITH v. MALDONADO is a California court case which addressed "Can a defamatory innuendo be created by the act of "highlighting" or visibly emphasizing certain selected passages in a concededly truthful and accurate newspaper article? May an action for defamation lie against persons who copy and disseminate such a truthful newspaper article, after having themselves highlighted one portion of the article that mentions other individuals in a context or manner that inferentially associates those individuals with alleged criminal activity? The issue is apparently one of first impression."
I think the concept of "first impression" is quite appropriate to this context, even if the details are different. The court decided that "first impression" could not be used as the basis for defamation, saying:
"Any other result would have a deleterious impact on all forms of written and oral speech. If we were to accept appellants' contention, the unavoidable effect would be to discourage the dissemination of accurate news reports. This result would raise obvious First Amendment concerns. We need not confine our consideration to the republication of newspaper articles, moreover. Writers and public speakers in general would have to take care they did not place the "wrong" emphasis on truthful, accurate statements of fact. The resulting chilling effect on the free flow of ideas and information would be substantial."
"Moreover, if a plaintiff could plead defamation based on an alleged innuendo derived solely from highlighting a true statement of fact, the door would be open to all kinds of subjective considerations of what does or does not constitute undue emphasis. Thus, in any defamation case the court would be forced to consider the particular type of emphasis used, and its effect on the person or persons to whom the material was published. Courts in libel cases would have to consider the distinctive effects of underlining, italicization, typeface, and the size, style or color of print used; courts in slander cases would be compelled to analyze the effects of variations in vocal tone, inflection, timbre, volume and pitch. If highlighting or emphasis alone could be found to create a defamatory innuendo as a matter of law, courts would also have to analyze the subjective intent of the person doing the highlighting. Otherwise, the highlighter could be liable if a person to whom the highlighted material was published misinterpreted it by giving the highlighting a falsely defamatory meaning, even if the highlighter had no such defamatory intent. What was he or she trying to communicate by highlighting or emphasizing and then publishing the material? If the added emphasis simply communicates "importance," how or why was the emphasized material "important"? The substantive and procedural difficulties posed to courts and litigants by such subjective analysis would be daunting. Even without considering the manifest constitutional ramifications of expanding the tort of defamation to include emphasis or highlighting of otherwise truthful material, strong considerations of public policy would preclude such an outcome."
While that case was about someone redistributing text from a newspaper, with parts they highlighted themselves, I think you can see how the underlying concept of "first impression" applies to image composition of a tweet.
I agree with the court's view here. If this incident is viewed as "defamation", then "the door would be open to all kinds of subjective considerations of what does or does not constitute undue emphasis." Which is exactly what's happened. And that's why the discussions have gone nowhere.
Morally and ethically speaking, I believe that saying this photograph+text is defamation is a bad idea, as doing so puts a "substantial" "chilling effect on the free flow of ideas and information".
She apologized and expressed remorse for the fact that he was fired. That's why I concluded that she wasn't trying to screw the guy over but rather wanted to draw attention to the general practice:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047
"I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively."