[dcow]

You either have no idea who travisbrown is or support this type of behavior. He literally harasses people he doesn’t agree with by defaming their character on any platform and/or forum that doesn't kick him out for breaking community guidelines and CoCs. I’m pretty liberal and think that fits a modern definition of harassment.

[anigbrowl]

Defamation implies falsehood. I'm fine with people being called out for things they've actually said or done.

[dcow]

I am too. It’s totally fair to say “this person said that” and even add on “and I don't agree with it”.

But travis very very liberally and unduly applies very serious and damaging labels to people.

“This person didn’t immediately agree with me that this other person is an alt-right white supremacist so they’re a transphobic racist” is not okay.

That’s is where I draw the line. One can make a statement of fact that travisbrown doesn't agree with or for which the implications make the left uncomfortable and he’ll label you a white supremacist racist transphobic bigot which these days can be career ruining. I support people’s freedom to express themselves but I also think we need to hold people accountable for unduly and deliberately trying to ruin people’s lives.

[anigbrowl]

I know absolutely nothing about Brown as an individual or the Scala community in which he seems to be a controversial figure, so I can well understand anger from people who feel they have been falsely mislabeled or seen that happen to their colleagues.

On the other hand, looking at examples from his page identifying people as having issued death threats, I (for example), I can personally vouch for the accuracy of that statement due to familiarity with the individual described. My comment refers to the use of the tool to unmask previous Twitter identities, which can be very useful in tracking the architects of or participants in harassment campaigns. So I have no compunction about using it to that end.

People who regret prior behavior on social media and want to turn over a new leaf have the simple option of starting over with a new account. If they want to change their ID for privacy reasons but hang onto their friends and followers, that seems like a case of wanting to have one's cake and eat it. I don't feel any sympathy for the LibsofTikTok account owner, for example, who hate-tweets about 'drag queen story hour' type events knowing full well that those she tweets about are likely to be crashed by Proud Boys.

[dcow]

Quite frankly all this stuff is so far beyond petty to me these days I mostly just avoid it. Undoubtably travisbrown has been right a few times. Point is, I disagree with the premise entirely. As a society, we must tolerate some ugly hurtful trolls if it means we don’t harass the livelihood out of normal people with diverse points of view. Ethically for me it’s better to let a bothersome troll go unpunished than to unduly cancel genuine/harmless humans. If the Proud Boys are harassing drag events I’m sure there’s a way to deal with that involving law enforcement and civil court.

[anigbrowl]

I fully get your point about harmless people that find themselves embroiled in manufactured controversy over a personal or carelessly phrased opinion. However, I don't think you have much/any experience dealing with aggressive people in the real world. Some of them are quite violent, and often have tacit or overt support from police.

[woodruffw]

You're right, I didn't know who he was. But I read some of his posts just now. He's clearly very angry (it's not healthy to be so angry), but I also don't see anything that meets a standard of defamation. He seems to have receipts for just about every potentially defamatory claim he makes, which presumably come from this big Twitter archive of his.

[dcow]

He’s actually been sued for defamation and there’s a bunch of history that isn't on his public Twitter account.

[woodruffw]

Okay. I'm going based on what I saw on his blog. I'll reserve further judgement.

(Barring a conviction for defamation, I don't know what a suit says. There have been a handful of defamation lawsuits in the tech community over the last decade, all(?) of which ended in embarrassment for the complainant.)

[trbrown]

For the record I've never been sued for defamation (I was once sent a cease-and-desist letter by John De Goes, a Scala conference organizer who didn't like that I had publicized things he'd said and done, but he was bluffing and never even replied to my lawyer's response).

[dcow]

Huh, didn't realize that was an empty threat. My bad.