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you really don't have freedom of speech when you can get mugged by being obnoxious online.

Ken White has quite a few posts about freedom of speech vs the Internet. I think this quote is apropos to that type of comment.

Speech Is Not Censorship: Put another way, as we often say here, speech is not tyranny. Freedom of speech does not (and cannot, under any coherent legal or philosophical approach) involve freedom from criticism. Free speech does not mean "I have a right to say whatever I want without social consequences." [0]

[0] - https://www.popehat.com/2012/10/16/a-few-words-on-reddit-gaw...

To me the unresolved problem here is that this approach leads to online coercion, bullying, and suppressing dissent and steers opinion to the center. Korea has many examples of people being harassed and some leading to suicides due to online castigation.

And, as others have noted. On the past these idiotic social indiscretions and letting off of steam were for the most part quickly forgotten, people went on with life. People say all kinds of idiotic things in ordinary speech for many reasons. Few of those reasons are malicious.

For cornering people's though like this is not productive. It's like whack-a-mole. People will let steam out some other way. You can't change society and its mores by force of on-line bullying. Many many times those calling offense don't understand the context.

It's like one day calling out people who when they have sex have a disposition to say nasty things. I can see it rationalized right now. Don't say b c* d* etc. Even as re playing as that unconsciously has an effect on people....

No. Fuvk no. I've come to the conclusion that only allowing the ugliness to surface can we call ourselves free. Anything else is a sanitized life. The thing is who decides what is healthy?

> you really don't have freedom of speech when you can get mugged by being obnoxious online

If you published something similarly obnoxious in a newspaper before the Internet, I'm sure you'd get a similarly angry response from some people, and quite possibly have someone harass you in person if they knew where to find you.

If you stood on top of a soap box and shouted offensive crap at the public, you might have stuff thrown at you.

The only things that have changed - it's easier to publish things online, you're publishing for a global audience rather than a national or a local one, it's easier to find other people who find those publications obnoxious online, and it's a two-way medium rather than the traditional one-way medium of newspapers.

Basically, the masses finally have a voice. If that's a problem, perhaps free speech has never actually had a chance of working?

You're missing a crucial point: whatever an average person does lasts forever. It used to be that you had to be somebody notable before this happened, which meant you had a recompense -- you were already famous for some reason. Now, the average shit you might say at the bar to your friends can mark you for all eternity. That's something unheralded in the history of communication, and it's horrifying.

Exactly. And if you were famous and got tarred one had the option of moving. It wasn't a good option as that typically meant starting from scratch --but it was there. You could start a new life.

Perhaps the so called right to be forgotten deserves serious consideration at least for some kinds of instances. Say, you can have indiscretion purged but not info on a felony.

On the other hand... In addition to searching foe people who get called out for offensive behavior also search for those who engage in mob mentality and hold them accountable when they try to find a job.

One of the cited cases was a person whispering to a friend during a conference, and a stranger who listened in felt offended.

Not only is it easier to publish things, it is also easier to attack people. The only thing needed to begin a shaming, is a large list of followers and the ability to tell a narrative.

I'm not certain if you realise this, but that was part of a much broader discussion on sexism in tech - there's plenty of discussion on the topic of women feeling threatened by the male-dominated atmosphere at some tech conferences.

It's not good, however, that these two got singled out when I have no doubt that there was much worse said at that conference alone.

Anyway, the point of my post was the last line - if free speech doesn't work when the masses have a voice, has it ever actually been a good ideal to work towards?

But it's still niche media manipulating the voice and attention of the masses, as illustrated by the article. There is so much bigotry and racism that goes unnoticed in the depths of comment boards and bad blogs. Why aren't the masses also voicing about any of this? Because they aren't speaking briefly enough to be easily criticizable.

> There is so much bigotry and racism that goes unnoticed in the depths of comment boards and bad blogs. Why aren't the masses also voicing about any of this?

They do. Constantly. It's just that most of the time, they're talking about <such-and-such a site's community> or <such-and-such a blog> rather than individual people.

I stand corrected.

Over-reaction or not, freedom of speech does not guarantee a receptive audience.

It is deceptive to characterize an online lynch mob as not a "receptive audience".

Read the article again... some of the lynch mobs weren't even factually correct about what they mobilized for. The attempt to implicitly pull in the "well, they sorta deserved it defense" fails on the grounds that you're leaving the determination of who deserved it up to a mob.

Hi, I'm one of your friendly neighborhood HN libertarians, and everyone take note, I'm about to defend government here. If someone does something seriously deserving of that level of opprobrium, firings, and social tarring-and-feathering, they deserve the protections that government processes can bring to bear to try to do our best to make sure that we only fire the big guns at people who, to the best of our knowledge, have been determined to deserve it by processes with a longstanding historical pedigree and centuries of back-and-forth tuning. There's a reason we have trials and such, a deep and important one.

Do not be so hurried to give up that social standard because, let's not mince words here, you're playacting at being offended because that's what your social group expects. Let's not pretend that anybody was actually offended at the statement of someone with 170 twitter followers, and if anybody really, truly was somehow "offended" it was only after the actions of the lynch mob itself! They're the ones who actually spread it around... maybe they're the ones we should lynch. Without trial, of course.

It is deceptive to characterize angry comments posted online as a "lynch mob".

Scale matters. And it has real-world effects... people get fired over this sort of thing, among other things.

The only thing preventing the lynch mob from doing what things the physical lynch mobs used to do is simple, sheer lack of physical proximity, so A: I consider it a valid use of the term and B: It should not be viewed by any sane person as a normal and healthy social correction mechanism, it should be condemned by all. It is still dangerous, and if everyone acts like it's no big deal or even a good idea, it will get worse, until the lynch mobs do do what lynch mobs used to do.

And I mean that 100% fully literally, with absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever. In the real world, the line between "dozens of death threats", which we've already handily reached, and "an actual attempt on your life" is very thin. As easy as it may be to tell others not to worry, if you personally were betting your life on that line, you would not be happy; it is not to be relied upon. There are crazy people out there. Failure to take that into account while passively accepting that online lynch mobs are OK is just stupid.

This stuff isn't a joke. It's one of the foundational bricks between having a civilization and not having one. It is unwise to be so lackadaisical about it, if you like living in a civilization.

Sometimes I wish I could give Reddit Gold for comments on Hacker News.

It's hyperbole, as the victim doesn't actually die. But there are certainly similarities.

They were able to get Sacco fired. They were able to mobilize someone to take her picture right after her plane landed. And she had to leave Cape Town because "no one could guarantee her safety". So, it could have easily escalated into a real lynch mob.

How about people getting "swatted" by internet vigilantes?

So the "not dying" part is about the only significant difference I can see in some of these more extreme cases, and, God help me, I wouldn't be overly shocked if someone actually does end up dead from an "internet shaming" some day.

It's happened already: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/online-trolls-w...

(posting from a throwaway because I resolved to stop commenting here, but couldn't help myself here)

Not only is someone bound to end up dead, based on past human behaviour the majority of shamers will claim they deserved it, and feel no shame themselves for their part in the death of an innocent. Diffusion of responsibility is a terrible thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

Cyber-bullying is a thing, with real consequences (depression or suicide).

> Over-reaction or not, freedom of speech does not guarantee a receptive audience.

That's so. But if society frequently inflicts severe extralegal punishment for unpopular speech, then you don't really have free speech. You just have First Amendment rights. They aren't the same thing.

As a thought experiment, imagine Person X said something deemed offensive and society responded in a uniform manner - by constant public humiliation, refusing to do business with them, refusing to even speak to them, etc. All this is well within our legal rights (with maybe some exceptions) but life for such a person would be very difficult, if not impossible - they'd probably end up starving in the streets. That's not a very free society even if there are no legal consequences whatsoever for any speech.

I think it's very important to affirm that even if someone says something offensive that the response should be measured.

I've thought it odd that the discourse over free speech focusses on legal rights.

The idea behind human rights is that they're not government granted, but instead are innate to humans are humans.

The issue is more complicated than "let everyone say what they want to say", but it's also more complicated than "you have a legal right, but nothing beyond that"

> As a thought experiment, imagine Person X said something deemed offensive and society responded in a uniform manner - by constant public humiliation, refusing to do business with them, refusing to even speak to them, etc.

I will note that until relatively recently, those who we consider "conservatives" today did exactly that towards "progressives". You try and dare being publicly against segregation and the mistreatment of black people in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s - Juliette Morgan did, and promptly got fired and ostracised. I'm sure you can find similar examples for supporters of gay rights, right up to today.

It's not exactly a new, nor a partisan thing.

I would just like to point out that the progressives were the ones who pushed to disenfranchise African-Americans for decades.[1] The conservatives were on the other side, pushing for equal rights; as an example, President Coolidge said "[As president, I am] one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race.".[2]

The progressive movement has a horrific history, and I find it puzzling as to why someone would self identify with a movement so steeped in racism and eugenics.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge

Mainly because "progressivism" as the term is used today has little to do with what it was about in the past? Most movements have had huge changes over the past hundred years.

It wasn't exactly conservatism which brought us back to the point we're at now from there, was it? It seems as if it were a different movement entirely from the late 1800s progressives and the conservative movement.

> I will note that until relatively recently, those who we consider "conservatives" today did exactly that towards "progressives".

And we agree that's bad, right? I thought we had all agreed that was bad. 'Cause it really seems like here you're advocating "well they did it to us, so it's okay if we do it to them."

> And we agree that's bad, right?

Sometimes. It's less clear-cut in some cases - specifically, when a statement or action is more directly against some group's human rights, or otherwise directly dehumanises people. However, what I'm suggesting that it's not going to stop - all sides are going to keep doing it, and always have done.

It used to be that if you learned that something was OK, it'd be OK for the rest of your life (more-or-less, ignoring major political events). Now, that's not so much the case as the progressives have more power and visibility, and so it's more visible when someone says something that might've been accepted 10 years ago and isn't now, vs someone saying something that is generally not accepted now but might be in 10 years.

But if you value what freedom of speech provides—an open marketplace of ideas, socialization between those of different values and opinions without fear of violence—you should practice and encourage tolerance and equanimity, regardless of what the laws about speech are.

Angry mobs petitioning people to be fired from their jobs for bad jokes or unfavorable political donations don't violate the First Amendment, but they certainly discourage speaking freely.

It doesn't but one should expect some maturity from society. I think it'll take a generation maybe less but people will learn and understand it as an extension of self albeit diffused.

> Demanding this mind of self censorship is a sign that a society is fragile rather than robust. A robust society can take the jokes.

Sure, but you don't magically make society robust by telling racist jokes. The healthy society comes first; the fact that these jokes no longer sting is just a pleasant side effect.

> A robust society can take the jokes.

Let me rephrase that:

> A robust society requires everyone in the minority to shut the fuck up when anyone in the majority makes them feel invisible

> An irony is that many of the people calling offense don't realize their own transgression in becoming part of a self-righteous mob meting out punishment at the speed of thought.

There's a difference between pointing out someone acting obnoxiously and couch-fainting.

No not quite. A robust society is one which evolves to know limits. You can have stereotypical jokes, racist jokes, etc. But they are part of a bonding mechanism rather than an alienating mechanism.

Societies need to allow the free flow of ideas. We can't be choosy about what we consider proper or not, desirable and not. We have to allow everything.

I used to be a dreamer growing up and thought why not make these bad thoughts illegal, racism cured. No. That was naive. It has too many negative collateral consequences.

> Societies need to allow the free flow of ideas.

Then when does "That makes me feel like shit when you say things like that" become taboo?

You should not receive that from a superior. Nor should one be harassed (repeated uninvited antagonism). Else, society at large, there is no guarantee --taboos change over time. They come and go. People become sensitive to things and become desensitized to other things.

My belief is only our own selves have control over our reaction. We as receivers of all kinds of bad things need to learn how to deal with adversity. Nature is not sanitized, we should be taught how to deal with this kind of adversity. It's a cold place, and not everyone's or every thing's nice. Children often are not prepared by adults for these things.

Now, bullying is something different and there are different aspects to it. Sometimes it's peer pressure, other times it's harassment, other times it's a social mechanism to get people to behave a certain way (don't cut in line), be a certain way (slim, not fat, etc.) Bullying is an intimate attack, a malicious attack on a particular person, typically by a group, but also by an individual often accompanied by explicit or implicit violence. It's about control.

"When men are friends they have no need of justice"

Aristotle