[McDoku]

Freedom of speech. The one jerk of a teacher I had, made me realize this.

It is better they are out in the open, that they are confronted publicly. Those standing to be counted are not the dangerous ones.... it is the 10 more who agree silently.

If it is driven to silence it does not disappear but is spoken in whispers. It is better that they are challenged in the open.

[waterlesscloud]

And I think that's at the heart of why there isn't a technical or legal solution to these issues.

Whatever solution will be found will be a social one, that's the only way to actually change what people feel and think and believe. And if they feel and think and believe it, they'll act on it in one way or another, no matter how you try to prevent it.

[cmdkeen]

There is a commercial one. Twitter doesn't have to allow them to carry on in this fashion, and it is a massive enabler of trolls. It's attitude towards online abuse is shockingly neglectful.

Trolls will always act, but that doesn't mean we have to put up with letting them use the some of the most powerful communications mediums of all time to do so.

Twitter has a massive pulpit to make statements that influence social change. Deleting the weev account won't stop him, but would make a very powerful pronouncement about what the company views as unacceptable behaviour, would diminish his "credibility" and change the narrative.

[waterlesscloud]

That doesn't solve the problem, it just moves it to other venues.

[arrrg]

If by not solve the problem you mean not completely eliminate, then yeah. Of course. Obviously.

What’s with all this binary thinking? It’s completely non-sensical and irrelevant. Twitter is an important tool for communication for many people, so if harassing people gets harder there it makes it easier for those people, even if the harassers move elsewhere. In other places they do get less direct access, so their impact is diminished, even if they put in just as much work.

[waterlesscloud]

Sure, of course the harassers can't attack people directly on Twitter if they're banned from Twitter.

But what the article is talking about is also doxxing, sending things to physical addresses, etc, which are by far the more distressing elements of harassing.

Kicking people off Twitter does nothing to stop or even slow those things down.

It's not "binary thinking", so please don't try to dismiss it as such. It's acknowledging that the simple answers don't solve the worst aspects of the problem.

[arrrg]

It is binary thinking, though. A is not completely effective, so it’s completely worthless. That’s bullshit.

Obviously, for this there is no technical solution. But Twitter (and reddit) currently do a really, really shitty job and they have to do so, so much better. They make it worse.

The lasting solution is for everyone to shun harassers (if anyone you know does it, approach them, tell them to stop in no uncertain terms, always) and to shun enablers (those who downplay or minimise the effects). That’s really obvious, too, but obviously also a hard problem to solve.

[wpietri]

Banning those people from Twitter would do plenty.

Every bit of harm makes things worse. Ergo, every time we eliminate some bit of harm, we make things better.

The Twitter harassment is obviously material, because a) many accounts of harassment mention it clearly, and b) the harassers do it because it works.

Further, the harassment shows obvious patterns of escalation. It is entirely reasonable to believe that if the harassers get no oxygen on Twitter, there will be less escalation.

[cmdkeen]

It's much harder to use Reddit to issue a death threat to someone when they don't use Reddit. Twitter especially is a tool for magnifying hate in a way that other venues just aren't. The article specifically mentions instances of weev's tweets appearing in her timeline due to retweets, Twitter suggesting she follow him.

[McDoku]

Status is attention. If enough people stare at a fool he will be convinced he is king.

There are dollars in spectacle but in the end twitter, fb, reddit or HN are inferior tools because of this.

[McDoku]

Hearts and minds

[deciplex]

What if I told you that around 35% of the population is just terrible, and another 50% is too busy to do anything about it? Would that change your mind?

I'm not claiming these are the numbers, just pointing out that there are numbers, and I'm wondering where you would draw the line, if you would draw it at all. That is, giving these people a forum where they can freely associate, normalize their behavior, and find sympathetic friends, might make them a greater threat that if we just did everything we could to marginalize these assholes and atomize their communities/roach dens wherever and whenever we found them.

I really do emphasize the might here - I don't have an answer. But, I do think it's something that needs to be given serious thought, rather than reverting the default 'freedom of speech must be preserved' position so tempting to the typical liberal.

[McDoku]

Freedom of speech mean that these ideas can be challenged in the public sphere. Anything else is the department of arm chair theorist.

Freedom ain't free. It calls for noble labour.

[vertex-four]

> Freedom of speech mean that these ideas can be challenged in the public sphere.

I will note that much of HN doesn't seem to believe this - when the Brendan Eich thing happened, and people were choosing to boycott Mozilla for his views (thus using their freedom of association and freedom of speech to call for him to be removed from that post), many seemed to believe that Brendan Eich's rights to freedom of speech and political freedom were being attacked by anybody who chose not to associate with him because of his views.

The fact is, any individual or entity can, and should, choose not to associate with those who they see as causing harm to others. That's an individual choice. Free speech and free thought should not mean that anybody give anybody else a free pass to cause harm or spread ideas that are likely to cause harm - and we should use every right we have to ensure this, so long as it doesn't end up with people losing their rights to food, water, shelter, and (a duty of the Government and the people) protection from direct abuse.

Your right to freedom of speech do not mean that I have to listen to you, interact with you, or provide a platform for you, no matter whether I'm one person or a multinational. You can be angry that I won't - I'm angry that the mainstream media won't give my minority a platform - but I don't have to. The only entity which has to be fair is the Government.

[dubfan]

> Free speech and free thought should not mean that anybody give anybody else a free pass to cause harm or spread ideas that are likely to cause harm

But then you don't have free speech or thought anymore. You only have the freedom to express ideas that are deemed to be acceptable by whoever holds the most sociopolitical power at any one time. And there's never a guarantee that the progressive side will hold that power forever.

And the Mozilla boycotters weren't just "choosing not to associate with him". They were calling for him to be fired for participating in a political campaign they disagreed with. This is exactly what McCarthyism was about. It's amazing how progressives have forgotten the danger of this now that they control the social narrative.

[vertex-four]

> You only have the freedom to express ideas that are deemed to be acceptable by whoever holds the most sociopolitical power at any one time.

If there's any reasonable amount of support for your ideas, any at all, you really should have no problem finding work, friends, and wealth. We're not exactly at a point where LGBT rights, feminism, and similar subjects have anywhere close to unanimous support. You only have to look across this discussion board and in most newspapers to see that.

> They were calling for him to be fired for participating in a political campaign they disagreed with.

Yes, that's part of a decent protest - telling the company what they can do to get you back as a customer - and Mozilla could've chosen to ignore them and potentially lose them as customers and community members. That's fine. That would be their choice. Many companies have done so and succeeded - Chick-fil-a, as one example.

You really think that when it comes back round again, if we're nice and don't try to cause any real societal change, the (little-c) conservatives won't try to cause any real change in the opposite direction? That the Government and the media are never going to pick another scapegoat minority for society to go after when the majority is fed up again? That they'll always tell both sides of the story from a fair and neutral perspective? That's never been my experience, and history tells us the complete opposite.

The majority is always going to have immense amounts of power, and they're always going to wield it. We might as well try and push in our direction while we have any power at all (and seriously, we have far less than you think).

Here's a question: We have the right to freedom of association. Is that somehow a lesser right than freedom of speech? Or must we be forced to associate with those whose speech we find bigoted and harmful?

[mkr-hn]

> Yes, that's part of a decent protest - telling the company what they can do to get you back as a customer - and Mozilla could've chosen to ignore them and potentially lose them as customers and community members. That's fine. That would be their choice. Many companies have done so and succeeded - Chick-fil-a, as one example.

Chick fil A pulled back on most of its homophobic donations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_c...

I still don't eat there, but only because Bojangles is closer and better.

[ryanpardieck]

Yes, for some reason many people think freedom of speech means they--and those they identify with--should be able to speak free of social consequence. I don't really know what leads a person to think that. Maybe they just said stuff for so long without being challenged, that they start to think they are entitled to never being challenged?

[michaelt]

  It calls for noble labour.

I'm guessing, from your choice of words, that you've never tried to change public opinion in a forum like Reddit, Twitter, HN or 4chan?

[McDoku]

The design here is flawed. It is insane to expect anything different then what it is. You can still hack it if you are inclined, but I agree the bias is not prosocial.

By labour, I mean grab a pen and paper and devise a method to fix the problem. If it is broke devise a method to fix it.

Noble labour takes resolve.

[pjc50]

Ideas can be discussed and challenged. Threats and harrasment are not ideas and should be dealt with differently.

Organisation of campaigns of threat, harrasment and violence is on the boundary, and needs careful consideration. But the worst case is very bad; a sufficiently powerful hate campaign can provoke genocide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libr...

[deciplex]

Perhaps. I don't think people are as noble or reasonable or responsible as you obviously do. I'm envious of this somewhat :-)

My gut feeling is that most of the '50% busy' people I reference above do not identity strongly with the assholes in their community, but neither are they going to go out of their way to do much about it, and that includes listening to anything the other side has to say. They're going to usually conclude the truth lies somewhere in the middle and then move on to the other shit that occupies their time. It seems to me that, over time, a totally unmoderated and free community devolves into chaos and bigotry - look to television or talk radio after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine for a solid example.

[verroq]

What if I told you I'm a fascist dictatorship and I and I alone uphold the moral authority? Maybe we should find these people and exterminate them, for the good of everyone.

[McDoku]

A bit bold, but it does highlight that insidious tension that leads good people to doom.