EasyJet refuses to let columnist on board for sending critical tweet | Hacker News Reader

EasyJet refuses to let columnist on board for sending critical tweet

thedrum.com

201 pointsr0h1n145 comments

Freedom of speech is about stopping the government from interfering with your speech. AFAIK there's no law which prohibits a company doing business with you because you made a negative comment about them.

In this case it's slightly more grey because the passenger had already bought a ticket and it's not clear if the terms of the sale would allow easyjet to revoke the sale on that basis.

I really don't think it is grey. As you say, he has bought a ticket. It's like if I sold you something on Ebay, you paid for it but made a comment on Twitter about how you didn't like my haircut, and I refused to send you the item.

Think that would hold up legally?

Assuming you refunded the money I imagine it might hold up.

No, it was within the EU which has strict law about airlines denying people boarding. They can't just refund your money and that be the end of it.

Looking at their Terms and Conditions it is not obvious to me that any of them would apply:

http://www.easyjet.com/terms-and-conditions#a19

I don't think what he tweeted would count as "threatening, abusive or insulting words".

Edit: Having said that, "Get right into em!" is probably not the best phrase to use - although in context it is clearly harmless.

That argument sounds like it would work well if he were looking to purchase a ticket, and they would deny it because they feel like denying it.

But I'm sure the ticket was already paid for, which changes the situation. EasyJet almost refused to provide the service for which has been paid. I don't know if they have a clause in their terms of service that says something like "if you say something we don't like, we reserve the right to refuse to let you board" but if it did, I wouldn't be too sure that clause is actually legal anyway.

a) This is not in the US, so the US concept of free speech does not apply (the law is much more complex in common-law based jurisdictions)

b) I doubt anyone would claim EasyJet can't do this - just that it is a STUPID idea, and is almost guaranteed to backfire.

This is not in the US, so the US concept of free speech does not apply (the law is much more complex in common-law based jurisdictions)

Yes the US "free speech above all else" interpretation of "right to free speech" doesn't apply in many countries, but the US is also (mostly) a common law system. It's the particular judical interpreation of "right to free speech" in USA and other countries, not the common-law-ness, that's the main difference.

The contract you agree to when you buy an airline ticket normally contains a clause allowing the airline to deny boarding for any reason or no reason at all, with the only compensation to you being a refund of the ticket price. They usually don't exercise these clauses, but they are certainly free to do so at will. Had they denied him boarding, perhaps it would have been a bad business/PR decision, but there almost certainly wouldn't have been any legal liability for the airline.

Not necessarily, because clauses can be ruled invalid if they go against the law.

From the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, which implements the EC Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts (the Unfair Contract Terms Directive):

  Excessive rights for the supplier. Cancellation of a contract by the supplier
  can leave the consumer facing inconvenience at least, if not costs or other
  problems. Where that is so, a unilateral right for the supplier to cancel
  without any liability to do more than return prepayments is likely to be
  considered unfair (see Group 6(b), on terms which exclude even that
  liability).

That's one layer of regulation, but the problem with airlines is that there's yet another higher layer of regulations agreed at an international level to specifically govern and regulate air travel. It wouldn't at all surprise me if there's an international treaty governing the terms and conditions airlines can impose that trumps even EC Directives.

Unlikely. EasyJet is a UK/Europe based airline, and they mainly travel within Europe. I think they have tried to ignore a few EU directives before and got stung by the European courts, esp around compensation.

I've travelled EasyJet a couple of time, it's a cheap low cost airline. Just don't expect any customer service whatsoever if something goes wrong, it's like talking to a bunch of incompetent monkeys.

Those terms are unfair. If they tried that in Australia, the clause would be struck down.

>Had they denied him boarding, perhaps it would have been a bad business/PR decision,

That's exactly what they did and that's exactly what happened.

>but there almost certainly wouldn't have been any legal liability for the airline.

Legal liability is the least of their worries today. It's a PR nightmare. People all over the world think they're thin-skinned bullies.

> Legal liability is the least of their worries today. It's a PR nightmare. People all over the world think they're thin-skinned bullies.

I wish it actually amounted to something. They probably won't get any drop in ticket sales, because in cheap airline market you pretty much don't have many (if any) alternatives. People are still going to fly with them because they're the cheapest / only ones flying to the destination they want.

Stop wishing. If you have a problem with easyJet, don't buy their product. If that means you can't afford to fly, stay home.

The problem is that beneath the feigned outrage, everyone can see that this is just a stupid bully of middle manager making a stupid decision. Nobody really cares enough about it to actually change real-world plans.

I agree with your first point totally. I usually prefer to pay a little more and go with BA.

The second point though. This must have come from higher up. I mean, I doubt that manager was actively watching Twitter so this must have been identified by some automated system and trickled to the manager as a notification...

Said middle manager would be higher up. There is no "middle" to manage at the gate. It's probably a bored jobsworth in the operations center that was keeping an eye on the @easyJet feed. Maybe he discussed it with a colleague or two and they stirred up a frenzy. Maybe someone had just been at sensitivity sensibility training and used his newfound knowledge to identify the tweet as threatening.

Many scenarios are possible, and we can't expect easyJet to air their dirty laundry, so we probably won't know exactly what. What is completely inconceivable is that there is a company-wide policy that came into effect (and was subsequently immediately withdrawn this morning) to hunt down and deny boarding to passengers that criticizes easyJet on Twitter.

I hope not, I just wouldn't put anything past easyJet (I've had bad customer experience with them so I am bias)

This incident occurred within the EU, which has strict laws about airlines denying boarding, and the level of compensation they have to give if you are refused. "we don't have to give a reason and only have to give you your money back", would not be legal in the EU.

A lot of people don't know this because they're used to blindly agreeing to terms and accepting them as "the truth," but clauses which are not legal cannot be enforced. If they deny boarding for just any random reason they choose, the airline accepts that they may be subject to legal penalties.

Denying boarding is more than merely refusing a private service. It's effectively revoking freedom to travel. It can also be more than simply an inconvenience to miss a flight. Even when merely overbooking passengers through no malice at all, European airlines are required to pay significant fees to customers who must miss flights. This is true in the U.S. as well due to the precedent set after Nader v. Allegheny Airlines, 426 U.S. 290 (1976). Airlines attempt to offer vouchers, but you are entitled to cash payouts.

I once made an actual profit from a trip to Europe because Lufthansa overbooked us and paid more per ticket in fees than the cost of my flights and hotels.

>Freedom of speech is about stopping the government from interfering with your speech

No it's not. It's about stopping anyone, especially - but not limited to - large and powerful organizations.

Nobody has been stopped from speaking their minds.

The subject of the criticism has just decided it no longer wants to facilitate this criticism and they should be free to the extent outlined in the contract.

they should be free to the extent outlined in the contract.

Only if the contract is valid. I don't think you can sign away your right to speak your mind about an airline in order to be allowed on a flight. That would be unlikely to stand up in court in the UK.

Err, no, that's a very narrow First Amendment negative style of freedom of speech.

Contrary to every American Internet debater, Britain is not actually governed by the US Constitution. The applicable law you are looking for is the European Convention on Human Rights, and the 1998 Human Rights Act, specifically Article 10, which starts with the rather bold statement "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression". This is a positive right that the Convention guarantees (subject to the limitations in Article 10 §2) rather than just being a negative limitation on government.

It's a lot more grey than you think. This is very dodgy because most airlines are legally common carriers. The reasons for which they can refuse service are rather more limited than most other businesses. Pubs and bars, for instance, can refuse service on almost any grounds (other than equality legislation: you can't not serve someone because they are, say, black or gay or a woman). But if you hold a valid ticket, have a valid passport/ID and get through security etc., there aren't many grounds on which an airline can decline you from boarding a plane.

Standard IANAL disclaimer applies. The actual law is often rather different from what Internet libertarians believe it ought to be.

The second sentence of Article 10 of the HRA explicitly reads "without interference by public authority" (i.e it's a limitation on government).

The full quote does not support your position. The limitation on public authority is included in the right, but it is not the limit of the right.

Article 10 – Freedom of expression

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Article 10 has never been used successfully against a private company or individual for preventing free speech. The general interpretation seems to be that it only covers public bodies (for example Wikipedia describes it as such and it's the stance taken by many anti-discrimination and non-profit groups).

Unless you know of evidence to the contrary ?

It is generally used as an appeal against a lower court decision, so the case is held against the decision of the lower court, which represents the government. However the initial case does not have to be to do with government interfering with speech and can be to do with the actions of a company.

"In 2001 a journalist at the Financial Times (FT) received a copy of a leaked document about a possible company takeover by Interbrew. The FT published the document and three other newspapers (The Times, The Independent and The Guardian) and the news agency Reuters, also reported on the issue and referred to the leaked document. Interbrew brought proceedings against the news groups seeking to identify who leaked the document to the FT. The UK Court of Appeal ordered the FT’s journalistic source to be disclosed to Interbrew, using a common law principle (the Norwich Pharmacal principle) and the Contempt of Court Act.

The newspapers and news agency applied to the European Court of Human Rights, relying on the Article 10 right to freedom of expression. The Court held that the disclosure order interfered with the right to freedom of expression. The Court emphasised the chilling effect of journalists being seen to assist in the identification of anonymous sources. It found that Interbrew’s interests in finding the source of the leak did not outweigh the public interest in the protection of journalistic sources."

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/human-ri...

Freedom of speech was restricted in that case by a legal decision, as in the law was used to restrict free speech.

That's completely different from a company freely refusing to serve a customer because of opinions they expressed.

The customer would have no basis to challenge under the HRA, because there's no law or legal decision governing the refusal.

No, you would start with suing the company using the extensive freedom of expression protections in UK common law, then if the UK court didn't rule in your favour, but you felt it was in the wrong to do so, you then appeal against the court using the human rights act.

What's the common law basis you think you can bring the initial suit based on ?

YOu know what? What is right and wrong is right and wrong, regardless of what a bunch of EU bureaucrats say.

To the extent easyJey is a government bureau, they have no right to do anything. To the extent they are actually a company, they have every right to withhold service as much as they please.

Of course, yes, everyone is always in complete agreement about what is right and wrong, because humans are always absolutely objective when it comes to moral decisions.

Does a bar have a right to refuse service to a gay couple? Does a restaurant have a right to refuse service to an Asian man? Does an airline have a right to refuse service to a black person?

There are sometimes quite compelling reasons to require private companies to provide services aimed at the public without discrimination.

That is true , but it's still arguably concerning especially in cases like airlines where there are just a few big players who dominate.

It would be a little like google blocking your use of their search engine or deranking your websites if you posted something critical of them.

Not really

"Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, as with libel, slander, obscenity, sedition (including, for example inciting ethnic hatred), copyright violation, revelation of information that is classified or otherwise."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

IMHO This isn't about the law so much as it is about catastrophic social media screw ups. It's the second Internet / social media storm about an airline in 24 hours.

Because it is legal doesn't make it right (I have no idea whether it is or not). Hopefully a lot of people will read that news and decide to boycott them.

A company should not be able to refuse service for stating a true fact. Or even opinion about them. Especially when they have common carrier protections.

This really isn't a freedom of speech issue. This is a customer service issue. Would you rather do business with a company that stops doing business with customers that complain, or with a business that listens to customers complaints and fixes the issue?

Being a twatcompany is rarely good business though.

so, if the government listens to your phone calls and emails and prevents you from saying certain things, that's bad, but if the phone company/ISP does the same thing, that's good.

"It wasn’t until I asked him if he’d heard of free speech that the tone changed. He asked me if I was a lawyer and I told him I taught law at Strathclyde.

"He quickly had a word with his staff and then told me I’d better get on the flight because they were waiting for me."

What? So if you are a lawyer things change?

I would have sued the company and the manager personally (not sure this is allowed, still).

Edit: apparently the Social Media team was active during the incident and agreeing with the passenger, not with the manager.

Free speech applies to government restrictions on speech. It hasn't much to do with rules and terms of private service. For example, you can't use claims of "free speech" to get HN to reverse a ban on you should that happen.

I don't agree with what a couple of easyJet employees seem to have done without easyJet's approval, but right of a private company or person to refuse service would seem to trump this? It's not like they are refusing service because of a protected category (like discrimination based on race, etc).

Although this isn't even happening in America, so I don't even understand what laws apply. Freedom of speech as Americans understand it do not really even apply in some European countries to the extent it does in the US because of ridiculous slander laws and the ability to be thrown in jail for telling lies (about the Holocaust for example, which is a pretty awful thing to lie about).

As you note, the concept of free speech in Europe is somewhat different than in the U.S., but this includes your first sentence not applying in Europe to the same extent. In at least some European countries, the conception of free speech is more of a positive right to speak, subject as you note to limitations (such as an exclusion of racial incitement from the ambit of protected speech). But that may mean that non-governmental entities are also prohibited from interfering with or retaliating for the speech, in at least some circumstances. The most common is that employers are sometimes limited in whether they can fire people for protected speech. Another case is public accommodations, e.g. using political affiliation to refuse service in a hotel or restaurant. I don't know much about transportation law, but it's not inconceivable that there would be some common-carrier rules there.

(The above written with "some" and "may" qualifiers because European laws differ considerably between countries, and sometimes within countries.)

> But that may mean that non-governmental entities are also prohibited from interfering with or retaliating for the speech, in at least some circumstances.

Especially for public accommodations, which an airline servicing a public airport might well be.

AFAIK, even the US put restrictions on what businesses can and can not do when they qualify as public accommodations (CRA, ADA, state-level anti-discrimination laws and state-level breastfeeding protection laws for instance).

Some Google-Books perusal suggests that airlines in the U.S., if they sell tickets to the public (rather than operating as private carriers) have an even stronger obligation than public accommodations, as common carriers who are required to provide service to the general public at the stated rates without discrimination, like phone companies, railroad companies, telegraph companies, ferry boats, etc. Whereas public accommodations like hotels are only prohibited from certain enumerated kinds of discrimination (race, religion, etc.). Seems to be a concept in 18th-century English law that crossed over to the early US, and stayed around in limited contexts (transportation and communications).

Admittedly, not specifically related to freedom of speech in that case.

> even stronger obligation than public accommodations, as common carriers

Ah yes, I knew there was something beyond public accommodation but could not remember the concept of common/public carrier. Thank you.

the ability to be thrown in jail for telling lies (about the Holocaust for example, which is a pretty awful thing to lie about).

(a) Holocaust denial is illegal in some European countries (not the UK), but it's illegal because it's been specifically made illegal, not a general "it's illegal to tell lies" law.

(b) USA has criminal slander laws as well.

Yup, you can treat this incident as evidence that being a lawyer (or claiming to be a lawyer), with the implicit threat of legal hassle, can give you a strong advantage in arguments vs bigcorp midde management.

Going to the level of suing them seems over the top to me as he didn't have any damages or loss of pay / opportunity as he was allowed to board. That said the employees and staff of the airline should be educated on what their rights for refusal actually are.

Not to say this isn't something that should be taking seriously but peoples tendency to jump to trying to sue someone for anything and everything is getting ridiculous.

What? So if you are a lawyer things change?

Yes, if you convince the obstinate staffer that "This shit could get very real", they will adjust how they treat you.

Can anyone corroborate this story?

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that gate staff of a delayed flight are monitoring Twitter and comparing it to their passenger manifests in realtime. A more likely scenario in my mind is that the dude was hostile and abusive towards the staff, they perhaps told him that he couldn't say something like that and be expected to board, and he chose to interpret that as with respect to his tweet.

I don't know, I wasn't there. However, before sentencing EasyJet, it would be nice to have a corroboration of the facts.

Agreed, something just doesn't seem right about the story.

Suppose you are an expert in creating a buzz. One day you want to create a buzz around you. You tweet a bit, discuss it with some people until they say that they're not happy with your tweet. You actually get on the plane fine. But still you fabricate most of the story to get the buzz you were looking for. Far fetched?

not far fetched at all

Copy-pasting the same comment more than once in a post == not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6444903

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6444838

The string of tweets in the link imply that he was pulled out of line as a direct consequence of the initial tweet about the active duty soldier being inconvenienced.

Also, because the columnist holds a law degree and is working on his PhD in law, the implication is that he would (should!) be more careful about what he says in writing and may understand the consequences (or lack thereof) of his actions at a better 'instinctual' level than others.

Based on these two weak lines of reasoning, I'm more inclined to lean towards events playing out as he outlined. I agree that it would be better for EasyJet to corroborate the sequence of events.

>Frankly, I find it hard to believe that gate staff of a delayed flight are monitoring Twitter and comparing it to their passenger manifests in realtime.

If we believe the columnist's story, this is the weird thing. How did EasyJet respond so quickly to the tweet?

That's quite a feat of coordination, since usually social media PR agencies are contracted to monitor consumer sentiment and feed summarized reports back to the brand marketing or in-house PR teams.

In this instance, there would have had to have been the following sequence of events for this to have happened:

* Something (person or process) monitoring the EasyJet brand on all social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, media property comment sections, etc.)

* Sending/alerting the appropriate backoffice and frontline teams

* Cross-referencing the identity of the tweeter with EasyJet logistics (i.e. which plane was delayed, tweeter profile picture)

That chain is impressive. Presumably, a frontline employee (i.e. gate personnel) took over at this point.

If we believe the rest of this story and tweets, the frontline employee looked at the twitter profile, presumed that he was a lawyer, told their manager, and tried to deny the columnist the ability to board citing that because he was a lawyer he should "know better".

For his defense, EasyJet staff is the worse, by far. I can't figure out why they are so unbearable.

EasyJet is akin to Tesco Value - its shit but you generally know what you are getting. Ryanair on the other hand is like dumpster diving - you COULD get a cheap meal but if you aren't careful you'll get food poisoning.

Who cares about the legality of them trying to deny the passenger a flight. Whether they were within their rights or not, this was just plain idiocy on the part of the airline's staff. I hope more stuff like this happens. It's called accountability and we all are subject to it.

I think it's great, and the company shouldn't have backed down.

It's juvenile to expect an airline to pay for something they didn't cause. We don't know if they caused the delay or not, but it seems likely that they didn't.

If I were running a service and someone spitefully insulted that service on blatantly irrational grounds, I'd refuse them service, too.

And if that's illegal in the EU---well, that's why I'd never run a business in the EU.

Sounds like a sure-fire plan, for failure. Turning away money from a customer because you don't like something they said on twitter is not only juvenile in itself, but also a terrible way to run a business. A better way is to address the customer's complaint in a respectable fashion. So it's either be right, win an argument, and don't get the money or take it on the chin and get the money. Seems pretty straight forward. Otherwise, why are you even in business?

I can imagine a company not dealing with particular individuals - say, due to an ongoing litigation or some personal conflict, like a restaurant owner telling a rude/disruptive customer "we won't serve you ever again". And that probably would be both legal and morally okay.

However, for airlines that should (must?) be limited to not selling tickets - if they have sold a ticket, then they must fulfill their end of the bargain.

I'd go one step further, as air lines are providers of critical infrastructure, they should have damn good reasons to ban me from buying tickets at their airline.

Domestic flights in the UK aren't critical infrastructure, they're luxury. We have trains.

Granted. I'd be fine with a "you-are-just-allowed-to-fly-overseas" policy, if that solved a pain point for the airline :)

Trains tend to be more expensive than equivalent domestic flights, so perhaps it's the trains that are the luxury.

Not really. Advance fares on most UK train lines are cheaper than advance fares on most planes IMX. The mistake most people make is comparing walk-up-and-go train fares with advance plane tickets.

Return, Glasgow to London, 1/10/13-8/10/13 Cheapest tickets.

Train: £126.70

Easyjet: £72.98

You may be right though - I didn't spend much time researching this at all; I just did a couple of web searches: easyjet and trainline.

> Domestic flights in the UK aren't critical infrastructure, they're luxury. We have trains.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK.

There are ferries.

Good point!

And cars and busses. And, most importantly in this case, multiple airlines in fierce competition.

I run an online community and have had to ban abusive or just plain annoying users in the past. A few times those people will get in touch saying "OMGZ! You don't believe in free speech!"

Am I obliged to provide access to the platform i've built and paid for so that they can be disruptive and annoying? No. Do I support their right to go somewhere else and talk their crap? Sure! Absolutely! Go crazy! Just don't expect me to pay for it in money (hosting costs, etc.) and time (cleaning up the mess afterwards).

So you would ban users if they complained about your services on some other forum?

This is infantile, I don't want to see this type of content here.

A low level company manager making a stupid decision, an entitled journalist trying to drum up controversy using his position and the squawks of Twitter responding have no place in 'hacker news' or 'news' in general.

well said!

>> "This is infantile, I don't want to see this type of content here."

Flag it.

What's the problem? His original tweet encourages his followers to "Get right into em!". Oh sorry, you want to whip up an online frenzy about a company AND use their services?

Somehow I doubt the story. Boarding personal has better things to do than to check twitter against the list of people baording.

Seeing as he mentioned @easyjet in the tweet, I'm guessing someone manning the social media saw it and a power-mad manager decided to call thru to the boarding staff.

Probably he got a call from HQ where some "big data" geek is inordinately proud of his 10-line script for mashing up Twitter with the passenger manifest.

Ground crew are 1 out of about 20 people that can make a go no go decision. The computer can say no, security can say no, flight crew and cabin crew can also say no, and in a pinch say yes.

I think this will hurt easyJet. If it had been Ryanair people would just shrug and say, what did you expect? But easyJet's schtick has always been cheap and cheerful, better value for money than stuffy old BA but good service where it matters. And anecdotally having flown often with all three, neither Ryanair nor BA's typical passengers really care about social media, the former because they just want cheap (or there is no other airline doing that route), and the latter because they get their brand messages via other channels. But easyJet's do.

I agree 100% never had a problem with easyJet , let's not talk about Ryanair , i dont even know how these guys are allowed to fly.But that's a stupid move from easyJet on the contrary , they should have give that guy the best flying experience they could give him instead of doing that.

Except easyjet really isn't that cheap any more.

Compared to when? What about comparing their current prices to before low cost flights were popular.

I'm flying to Western Europe, with baggage and an extra legroom seat for £120 return. I think that's superb value for money.

They launched as a budget airline. Now they're either same price as BA or slightly cheaper (unless you're lucky enough to get their first few cheap seats).

Yes, because competition from easyJet forced BA to lower their prices.

That as well.

I have some serious doubts about this story. Strathclyde Law School does not have Mark Leiser listed as a law lecturer. Searching for "Mark Leiser Strathclyde" produced a page that seems to indicate that he's a PhD student.

If he's not being truthful about this, then I for one would think that he might not be telling the entire truth. Easyjet have replied to this indicating that he might have been disruptive.

Reading this guy's twitter feed also is eye-opening, he comes across as a self-important prick.

From his academic page,

"I am a PhD Student in Cyber-Law at the University of Strathclyde. I am researching the effects, limits and the legitimacy of regulation and law in cyberspace. I am currently researching what “activates” the active dot in the active/pathetic dot matrix within the context of cyber-legitimacy. My interests are governance -Internet and Corporate, copyright, trademarks, social media and Internet Regulation. I lecture part of Internet Law and am a tutor for Internet Law, Commercial Law, Business Law, Legal methods, and Voluntary Obligations."

Emphasis mine. He is a graduate student who also teaches.

Sorry to be pedantic about this (I'm an academic), but the fact that he tutors and lectures doesn't make him a lecturer. A law lecturer is someone who has been hired and holds that title. I taught a lot while doing my PhD, and I wouldn't have dared to call myself anything other than a PhD student. If anything, my level of suspicion has gone up.

I would not have called myself a lecturer, either - I also have a PhD, and taught while I was doing it. But I also don't know what the customs are in the UK regarding titles, both official and unofficial.

I also think it's worth noting that I think he does have a law degree. He says "was enrolled," but I can't tell if he also means it was awarded. (I also had to look up LLB and LLM, and I admit I'm still confused on if those are equivalent to the JD that is granted in law schools in the US.)

The UK academic titles are very specific: Lecturer (Assistant Professor), Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor), Reader (short of US tenure), Professor. I can't call myself a lecturer unless I have been appointed to that title.

Law degrees are different as well, there's no direct equivalence. The levels are LLB (minor), practice diploma (sort of JD), LLM (masters), and Phd (graduate school). It's possible to write a PhD in law without having received a law degree, although it is common for law PhDs to at least have finished an LLM.

Holy cow, this is why I quit all the mainstream social media and never even got on Twitter in the first place... because people treat it WAY too seriously

It can be pretty serious. Especially as a tool for consumers to voice their concerns or disapproval of corporations. That can do some damage.

Its still just people talking about stuff. Things coming from an official corporate account are different matter, but people should be able to say something sucks without having to fear repercussions.

Barbara Streisand effect is already kicking in.

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what. - A quote by Stephen Fry

Free speech is one thing, but abuse of free speech is another. When you perform an action that negatively affects the sales of a company and if you expect to benefit from it, in return for which the company doesn't allow you, I think it's fair.

You can't say Mc Donald's sucks and eat a burger from them (that would be hypocrisy). Well, whether Mc Donald's should let you buy a burger from them AFTER you just said that is solely their choice. I'm sure it must be buried in some TOC bs of theirs somewhere. But you can't be a hypocrite and expect sympathy for it, either. In all fairness, if his money wasn't refunded, then it's probably fair that he fights with them. Otherwise, if he had been refunded already, it's just hypocrisy at best.

And being a hypocrite and being offended doesn't give you any special rights either. Just saying.

Stop thinking of the airlines as someone else and imagine if it was YOUR company. Imagine if you ran a cloud services company and this guy wrote a blogpost about why your company sucks (which negatively affects your sales) and then bought a dozen cloud servers from you (secretly, because you're his only option). I would have no problem in refunding his money and revoking his service with a polite smile and a "Sorry", if it was my company.

You can't say Mc Donald's sucks and eat a burger from them (that would be hypocrisy).

You can't? Who's going to stop you.

A complaint tweet is one thing - if that was the end of it, no one would have heard of this incident. Barring a person for a complaint tweet has made it a much bigger media issue.

I think McDonalds is gross but when I'm in a hurry I stop for breakfast once in awhile.

If you are going to hinge your argument on hypocrisy, then Stephen Fry might not have been the best example http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/25/stephen_fry_not_upse...

> Free speech is one thing, but abuse of free speech is another. When you perform an action that negatively affects the sales of a company and if you expect to benefit from it, in return for which the company doesn't allow you, I think it's fair.

EasyJet is not a charity; it is a business I.E. Company.

When services were not rendered as expected when the soldier mentioned in the article couldn't be on time, this gentlemen publically stated (the Tweet) that the company was derelict in its obligation to the customer. Now he was at his queue expecting to see the completion of services he has already paid for.

If I'm at McDonalds and the service sucks, I will voice as such and since I've already paid, I still expect my hamburger to be delivered to my satisfaction. Or a refund. That analogy actually doesn't apply in this case, since the service is transportation, not fast food. If people's appointments cannot be kept and connections not completed, that is well within the realm of legitimate criticism, pending services be damned.

If free speech doesn't apply when critiquing company service by customers (prior to, during and post rendition of services), then sites like Yelp should be shut down.

You may note, they aren't being shut down.

> hen services were not rendered as expected when the soldier mentioned in the article couldn't be on time...

Granted they weren't on time but EasyJet's T&Cs do say that they don't guarantee their schedule at all:

15.1.1 Without prejudice to any applicable passenger rights pursuant to any international or domestic laws, times shown in timetables, schedules or elsewhere are not guaranteed and form no part of the contract of carriage.

  but EasyJet's T&Cs do say that they don't guarantee their schedule at all

Easy Jet's T & C do not override EU regulation. If they don't get you there,reasonably timely, they owe you compensation; period.

> Easy Jet's T & C do not override EU regulation. If they don't get you there,reasonably timely, they owe you compensation; period.

Clearly :)

He already bought the ticket. he was in the boarding queue.

Your analogy should be changed to: 'whether McDonalds should let you eat a burger AFTER you buy it from them'.

This is simply Easyjet breaking a contract - as long as he's not broken the terms himself. which would be surprising in this case.

Agree that there are two parts - whether they'd have to sell him a ticket in the future and what happens with the current flight but there may be something in the small print that would allow them to prevent him boarding (though almost certainly subject to suitable compensation).

This took place in the EU, so there are legal limitations on how and when an airline can deny you boarding.

Having now read their small print there's actually nothing in there that would allow it.

> You can't say Mc Donald's sucks and eat a burger from them (that would be hypocrisy).

Would it? I would have thought that saying "nobody should ever eat at mcdonald's" and then eating there would be, but what's wrong with acknowledging that something sucks and doing it anyway, presumably because it's the least bad option at the time?

That's not really capturing the nuance of the situation.

It's not like he said "Easyjet sucks", he said, referring to a nearby passenger, "Flight delayed 90min. Soldier going to miss last connection & @easyjet refusing to help pay for him to get to Portsmouth. Get right into em!"

That's just commentary. He'd already bought the ticket; he was already at the airport; he wasn't being hypocritical.

He's a lecturer in Internet law and has a couple of thousand followers on twitter. This is more like the earlier story about the hearing impaired Delta passenger who happened to be a social media consultant than it is Steven Fry's comments.

In fact, you've taken Steven Fry's comments completely out of context too. Leiser wasn't tweeting because he was offended.

In fact, when Fry made this comment in 2006 it was in the context of religion and blasphemy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnSByCb8lqY

If you are cleared for check in and then the airline denies boarding, you have a set of rights and the airline is required to inform you of those rights. [0]

There is very heavy regulation regarding flight, and thankfully so.

Recently my girlfriend was in a similar situation (minus the tweets) with easyjet, and she's currently pursuing compensation through the EU [1].

If anything like this happens to you: know your rights!

[0] http://www.airpassengerrights.eu/en/denied-boarding.html

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/passengers/air/doc/comp...

Airports within the EU have loads of posters saying this. They are very clear on it.

Well, whether Mc Donald's should let you buy a burger from them AFTER you just said that is solely their choice.

That's a different situation. Once you've bought a ticket, then you have already entered into a contract with the airline, and have certain contractual and statutory [1] rights. In the EU at least, being denied boarding means at the minimum a refund, cash compensation for the inconvenience, and assistance with/while procuring alternate transportation.

Furthermore, EasyJet's terms and conditions [2] only allow them to deny you boarding where this is "justified by circumstances beyond our control or for reasons of safety". While these criteria can be stretched a bit, it is very doubtful that either would cover being criticized on Twitter.

And being a hypocrite and being offended doesn't give you any special rights either.

Aside from the fact that you may not be a hypocrite (I've flown with more than one airline I wasn't particular fond of because I didn't have a choice), even being a hypocrite doesn't mean that you lose your statutory rights.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_261/2004

[2] http://www.easyjet.com/terms-and-conditions

You should do customer support. For my competitor.

It requires context... Is this a real complaint or a "Look at me and treat me better because I'm a high Klout score quasi-journalist" situation?

That should determine the level of outrage more than the legalistics.

Apparently EasyJet DID treat him better because he was a journalist (well actually because he taught law) Apparently if he was just a lay person they wouldn't have let him on the flight. So you decide if it was a real complaint or not.

>It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what. - A quote by Stephen Fry

Well, as a quote it's quite uninsightful.

Would you say the same thing to a woman that said she was offended by you creepily staring at her at a conference or making sexist jokes in her presense? Would you say the "n" word to an African American and not care if he would be offended? It's just a word after all.

Offending people can be a real problem, not just some imaginary whine. That's because feelings are real too -- not just actions ("sticks and stones", etc).

>Free speech is one thing, but abuse of free speech is another. When you perform an action that negatively affects the sales of a company and if you expect to benefit from it, in return for which the company doesn't allow you, I think it's fair.

What exactly is fair about it?

Have you thought this through? If you live in a rural area where only AT&T has coverage, albeit spotty, and you tweet that "their coverage is dreadful here" should they cut you off from their service altogether?

What you basically say is that companies should be allowed to punish people (even paying customers), for speaking out about them?

>You can't say Mc Donald's sucks and eat a burger from them (that would be hypocrisy).

No, hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing another. In this case, saying "I would never eat McDonalds" and then eating.

Saying they sucks and then eating it, it's perfectly normal. Heck, I think they suck, and I've eaten several times from them. Lots of reasons.

For one, I was in a country were I ocassionally needed home delivery and McDonalds was the only chain that offered.

Second, sometimes it's the nearest fast food restaurant, or the only one in some small town.

Third, their food might suck, but you find the prices great, compared to the alternatives (or vice versa).

>Well, whether Mc Donald's should let you buy a burger from them AFTER you just said that is solely their choice.

No, they should serve someone who criticizes the same as any other customer. You might not be able to shout it inside their restaurants (that's their business), but they should have no right at all to refuse you based on what you say to your twitter or blog or whatever.

>And being a hypocrite and being offended doesn't give you any special rights either. Just saying.

You keep using that word, "hypocrite". I don't think it means what you think it means.

There was nothing hypocritical about what he did. The guy was scheduled to flight with EasyJet, noticed some bad thing happening a few days before related to the company and twitted about it.

Being critical of a service doesn't mean you are a hypocrite of using it. That's the silliest notion I've heard all day.

New Yorkers are critical of the status of their subway service all the time, but they still use it. And people are critical and complain about the products they bought ALL the time. That I find a fault with iPhone 4 and tweet about it, shouldn't mean Apple shouldn't sell me iPhone 5.

That is what moves a market forward.

What you're saying essentially amounts to people not being able to critisize products and services they use, for fear of being denied them by the company.

It's completely bollocks.

>Stop thinking of the airlines as someone else and imagine if it was YOUR company. Imagine if you ran a cloud services company and this guy wrote a blogpost about why your company sucks (which negatively affects your sales) and then bought a dozen cloud servers from you. I would have no problem in refunding his money and revoking his service with a polite smile and a "Sorry", if it was my company.

Are you kidding me? People talk about Linode and Heroku and AWS all the time, posting the problems they find using them, how this or that sucks, etc.

If that's your idea of running a company, throwing out customers who complain publicly instead of fixing the issues, then I wouldn't want to be your customer.

>If that's your idea of running a company, throwing out customers who complain publicly instead of fixing the issues, then I wouldn't want to be your customer.

You misinterpreted my reasoning and took it somewhere else :)

>No, they should serve someone who criticizes the same as any other customer. You might not be able to shout it inside their restaurants (that's their business), but they should have no right at all to refuse you based on what you say to your twitter or blog or whatever.

If you do something that negatively affects my company, without giving my company a fair chance/benefit of doubt, but ironically try to benefit from it, then I would have no problem revoking you of my services. Even If I'm the only available option to you. Of course I am welcome to constructive criticism and bashing me on your blog is totally fine. I will try to fix my mistakes. But it is different if you mis-inform your readers that I'm a bad company and if you use my company's services behind the scenes because it's one of the best options for you, then that is hypocrisy and the day when I find out it's basically game over for you. Because what you essentially did was:

1) Abuse of power. (You had hundreds of followers on your blog and negatively marketed my company to them on purpose)

2) Absolutely zero journalistic integrity. (for the same reason as 1)

>Third, their food might suck, but you find the prices great, compared to the alternatives (or vice versa).

3) Backstabbing and hypocrisy. (You betrayed your readers, my company and tried to benefit in the process).

At the end of the day, every company needs to profit. If you seem to be in it's way, I don't think it's wrong to get you out of it's way. And companies don't need such customers either. It would be shooting in their foot, literally.

>Saying they sucks and then eating it, it's perfectly normal.

Seriously? If that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what else is.

> then that is hypocrisy and the day when I find out it's basically game over for you

Hypocrisy is not illegal (nor should it be). Not honoring contracts, on the other hand, is (and it should be).

First off, strawmen really don't cut it when trying to refute another persons points.

Yes, anyone should be able to refuse you service if your actively denigrating their work except where prohibited by law.

If you tell me my service sucks, I will correct it if I think the criticism is warranted. I am under no obligation to consider it valid until I have researched the issue at hand. Pretty much it comes down to this, if you don't like the service then don't use it, however don't expect me to render service knowing your predisposition to label it as inferior or worse.

> Free speech is one thing, but abuse of free speech is another.

You can't have it both ways, it's a logical contradiction.

Furthermore, the idea that by entering a contract with a company for providing you a service to you implies any loss of free speech rights on your part is inane.

In the great scheme of things, we are just witnessing the birth if the Internet. I have noticed a horrible trend wherein, month after month, more consequences become apparent for expressing your opinion freely -- even between friends on some social network. At the same time, the majority of human communication is converging to the net. Can't you connect the dots and realize we might be heading to hell?

Another notch on the belt for anonymous speech online.

You can't say Mc Donald's sucks and eat a burger from them (that would be hypocrisy).

Of course you can. You may not enjoy it because it sucks, but you might be really hungry. Easyjet sucks massively, however sometimes you just need to get on a plane at a certain time, or someone else might be paying and you get little choice.

As far as your point about negatively impacting sales, criticism from a continued customer doesn't hurt sales nearly as much as banning people from buying from you for being critical. That isn't business, that is just being immature.

Wow, at first I was with you until it became clear that you think the journalist was acting offended, not the company. You got it completely backwards! It must be possible for people to criticize big companies, and I believe the companies do at least have to take it (ideally they'd listen to the feedback as well). It should not be legal for a huge service company to refuse said service because they feel offended. Companies, especially huge ones, can't act like people whenever they feel like it. It seems they're switching roles whenever it suits them.

> Free speech is one thing, but abuse of free speech is another.

Is it abuse of free speech to report factually on what you see? Seems to me like this is what Mr Leiser did, and IMHO it is not an abuse at all. Quite the opposite, it is a good use of free speech.

Just because EasyJet don't like what he said does not make it abuse. I cannot emphasise this strongly enough. If I say "I just saw neya step on a puppy" it is not abuse of free speech, even neya does not like me saying this, even it if is objectively detrimental to neya. It is not abuse of free speech unless it is not true.

I know that we have only Mr Leiser's word so far; if EasyJet want to dispute the facts of the matter that would be different. However, if I was their PR department I'd really prefer to leave well enough alone and not attract further press attention; unless they can prove that something utterly different was what actually happened.

You're a brave soul for standing up against the "take offense-industrial complex"

The EasyJet T&Cs are publicly available http://www.easyjet.com/terms-and-conditions and outline the circumstances under which they can refuse carriage.

The applicable section would be: 19.2 Right to refuse carriage and the closest there is to any reason would seem to be:

"19.2.7 You have used threatening, abusive or insulting words to, or have behaved in a threatening, abusive or insulting manner towards, a member of easyJet staff, crew or Airport Staff or a fellow passenger;"

Even that seems to be a major push.

If they'd wanted to be petty they could probably get away with a detailed check of his documentation or whatever that might make him miss the flight but to do that they'd probably have needed to not say anything about it being linked to the tweet.

In order to stop replies like this, I've stopped using the word "offensive" or "offended". Instead, I use phrases like "you belittled me", "you're trying to marginalise me" etc. "offended" puts the 'blame' on the person who being offended, must better to say that the problem is with the person doing the margalisation.

I can't stress how much I disagree with your comment, in my humble opinion, you have it all wrong.

> 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what. - A quote by Stephen Fry

In my viewing, it's the airline that got "offended" and is acting about, so that quote would apply more to the airline than to the reporter, as a company, you have to expect criticism, specially in this days.

You can't abuse free speech, there are some things that are not guaranteed by free speech (you yell bomb on a plane, you can't accuse free speech afterwards), that said, I think this has little to do with free speech, that would be if there is a legal consequence but that is out of the question. Of course you know that your words can have consequences, but that in any way justifies the company's reaction, more on that next.

> You can't say Mcdonald's sucks and eat a burger from them (that would be hypocrisy).

How come not?? I don't like the service later, IMO the quality has gone down and I know that it is quite unhealthy, even so, every now and then, I want a burger from them, hypocrite would be to say I will never touch and mcdonalds again, boast about it and secretly eat it once a week.

> Stop thinking of the airlines as someone else and imagine if it was YOUR company. Imagine if you ran a cloud services company and this guy wrote a blogpost about why your company sucks (which negatively affects your sales) and then bought a dozen cloud servers from you. I would have no problem in refunding his money and revoking his service with a polite smile and a "Sorry", if it was my company.

So, that's you advice? Whenever you get criticized, you react by pushing back and "attacking" your (potential) customer and possible leader of opinion? Does this also apply when the criticism is true??

You are a public company, you are going to be criticized, probably the worst thing you can do is start fighting them back, if you screwed something up, you apologize and you try to make up for it, if it's unfunded criticism, the you try to explain that this is not the case, whatever you do, you do not confront and be aggressive.

>Imagine if you ran a cloud services company and this guy wrote a blogpost about why your company sucks (which negatively affects your sales) and then bought a dozen cloud servers from you.

I would try to give him so go and service that he would eventually write good things about me if he has any intellectual honesty, or to at least stop writing bad things about me, I can't see how childishly fighting back to help to achieve any of this?

Note: This comment may sound a little pedant, but it was not the intention, cordial discussion was the intended tone.

> It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase.

With an attitude like that, how can anyone explain racism, sexism or _any kind_ of offensive behavior to you? I mean, you've basically declared the word "offensive" means nothing to you. So if someone said they were offended by something you did, you wouldn't even consider their point of view; nor would you have any empathy observing such a situation as 3rd party witness or as a reader of an article describing such a situation between 2 parties. Do you see anything wrong with this?

Being 'offended' runs a whole spectrum from legitimate outrage of a betrayal of vital social norms through to mildly inconvenienced that not everyone agrees with my personal world view. The problem is many people use 'offense' in the latter sense to ram through their personal beliefs onto others.

I have been known to be in the company of men to whom I am not related. Some consider this offensive. They can explain to me that its immodest. I can explain that I find the suggestion insulting beyond belief. Who is objectively 'right'. Am I not empathetic or are they?

> Being 'offended' runs a whole spectrum from legitimate outrage of a betrayal of vital social norms through to mildly inconvenienced that not everyone agrees with my personal world view.

I agree & this is already more than what Neya is willing to believe, given what I quoted from him. At least you believe being offended actually exists. Neya's comment seems to suggest that being offend is just whining and should never be considered at all, ever.

If a consumer has parity with a service provider it may be hypocritical to both publicly criticize and use the service. However, when a service provider has leverage over the market; e.g. Microsoft 10 years ago; there is no hypocrisy.

I think this is a case of the employees acting out and not a corporate policy or corporate retaliating. Nevertheless, EasyJet will be taking most of the brunt of the bad PR

He did actually get on the flight so the title is misleading.

Initially I read "to let communist on board"...

10 years too early or 60 years too late.

how about throwing passengers out from the flying plane for doing the same via onboard wifi? or, at least, denying them right to use toilets.

Not letting lawyers on board sounds perfectly ok for me...

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