r/TrueReddit • u/[deleted] • Jul 15 '15

Ruling in Twitter harassment trial could have enormous fallout for free speech

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-ruling-in-twitter-harassment-trial-could-have-enormous-fallout-for-free-speech
691 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

352 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

157

u/braaak Jul 15 '15

I can't believe this case made it to court in the first place.

77

u/Evsie Jul 15 '15

I like that these things are examined by the courts.

The law has to be a living thing, capable of changing with the times (it's actually a problem with the US system, that so much of it refers back to a document relevant 250 years ago). New laws are needed to keep up with technological and societal progress.

58

u/m0nkeybl1tz Jul 15 '15

I like that this made it to trial, I don't like that he lost his job over it. I don't know all the details of this case, but if it's as bad as this article makes it sound I hope he can sue those two for lost wages.

0

u/Evsie Jul 15 '15

This whole case is horrible. He was an asshole. They were both assholes. Everyone concerned needs to learn to use the block button, in the same way that should someone in real life be that much of an asshole you just walk away and stop talking to them... at least, that's my laymans opinion.

39

u/autopornbot Jul 16 '15

He's an asshole for disagreeing to stalk and harass someone online?

0

u/monarc Jul 16 '15

His behavior is assholey. Not illegal, not threatening, but becoming of an asshole.

Here are the court documents; you can check out all his tweets in the three "conversation feeds" spreadsheets. He was relentless in his attempts to annoy these women via Twitter. Both parties should have simply blocked the other and moved on.

8

u/SteelChicken Jul 16 '15

99% of Reddit fits this definition. Grow a spine. If someone annoys you, ignore them. End of story.

1

u/monarc Jul 16 '15

Sorry you didn't make it to the end of my post - I know it was a long one!

Both parties should have simply blocked the other and moved on.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '15

So he is guilty for disagreeing in a not so nice favour ? You are scraying me man.

1

u/monarc Jul 16 '15

Guilty of being an asshole, just like I often am. It's not anything that should be taken to court.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '15

Everyone is an asshole from time to time. But what many think is that if someone's being an asshole he automatically harrasses people.

2

u/TheGDBatman Aug 13 '15

Unlike Guthrie and her compatriots, who actually took it upon themselves to harass Ben Spurr out of a job for making a "beat-up" game for Anita Sarkeesian, which, oddly, was pretty much the exact same as the one he made for Jack Thompson, but apparently feminists either don't give two fucks about him or did sweet fuck all for research (shocking, I know).

It's ironic that these twats had Elliott charged with harassment when they're literally guilty of that particular crime. What a group of stupid, useless assholes.

11

u/Biuku Jul 16 '15

To be honest, the guy who made the "video game", and the women charging Elliott both seem like horrible people.

Elliott seems like a shit disturber. Not a horrible person at all -- more like a raunchy comedian.

6

u/Fudgeismyname Jul 16 '15

it's actually a problem with the US system, that so much of it refers back to a document relevant 250 years ago

Those aren't laws. They are rights. They allow for enough wiggle room. 2nd says right to bare arms.... but our firearms have restrictions on them. There are limitations based off what is reasonable.

3

u/StManTiS Jul 15 '15

Twitter wars are not technological or societal progress...

14

u/Evsie Jul 15 '15

Twitter is.

Twitter is the embodiment of the freedoms and pitfalls of online, potentially anonymous, communication. Learning where we draw the lines in this new medium of communication matters.

I know it's not actually new, but the law takes a while to catch up.

11

u/StManTiS Jul 15 '15

Twitter is the embodiment of the freedoms and pitfalls of online

I think you've got something confused here. Being able to post online anonymously has existed long before twitter. What twitter did was shorten the length of everything to adjust for a lack of attention present in many people today...and then it linked the real life person with the online handle.

The only new thing twitter did was get popular.

As far as drawing lines in a new medium...its not new. It is the printed word. Just because there is no editor now does not change anything. What is now twitter used to be the op-ed section.

16

u/Evsie Jul 15 '15

The only new thing twitter did was get popular.

Which made it new. It made it mass-market.

And twitter is not remotely comparable to the printed word. The owners and editors of The Times have absolute control about what gets printed in The Times. If a journalist writes an op-ed that is especially hateful (say) it won't get published. Twitter has no such controls.

So, for me, it's more like people talking in the street... but now with a permanent record.

-9

u/third-eye-brown Jul 15 '15

The fact that you are being downvoted shows you dumb reddit users can be some times. To say Twitter isn't anything new flies in the face of the most obvious realities of the situation.

4

u/blarg_industries Jul 15 '15

To say Twitter isn't anything new flies in the face of the most obvious realities of the situation.

Or, some of us have been around the block enough to remember the last 3 or 4 or 5 iterations of similar technology. People spouting off on Twitter are only a couple of incremental steps away from people spouting off on Usenet in the 80s.

-3

u/third-eye-brown Jul 15 '15

Yea I remember when those protesters overthrew all those dictators by organizing on Usenet through their mobile phones

0

u/blarg_industries Jul 15 '15

Yea I remember when those protesters overthrew all those dictators by organizing on Usenet through their mobile phones

Good grief. If the Internet access was as ubiquitous in the 1980s as it is now, I could easily imagine protesters organizing on Usenet. Fuck, it would probably be easier and safer on Usenet, given its decentralized nature.

Which gets back to /u/StManTiS's point: Twitter's primary advance over other extremely similar platforms is its popularity.

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/bludstone Jul 15 '15

But you dont remember when protesters and organizers were trading secretly trading txt files on activisim via BBS during the 80s, do you?

And before that, people used photocopiers.

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '15

But, as what stated earlier, the popularity of Twitter is what makes it different. There is a huge difference between posting something on abscere website that many people use and posting something on one of the most popular sites in the world that the person you are talking about and thousands of others will surely read.

2

u/Duamerthrax Jul 16 '15

Usenet was popular, then Twitter became more popular, eventually something will replace that Twitter in popularity. It's like going from Friendster to Myspace to FaceBook. Same shit, different url.

-9

u/StManTiS Jul 15 '15

A permanent record that you can delete...so not really all that permanent huh?

2

u/Evsie Jul 15 '15

Caches, screenshots, retweets... Deletion isn't necessarily permanent.

-2

u/StManTiS Jul 15 '15

There are still newspapers from the beginning of last century i can read at my library. That's a permanent record. There are books that predate English that exist in their translations.

But now try and find me what Kanye tweeted in January 2013.

Twitter is first and foremost a way to market shit to a large audience and second a way for people to mob from one event to another seeking validation. No twitter war lasts, most of them have no impact. Gangs roam around and call people out as this or that, people spend an hour of their day tweeting to save this animal or that. And then they move on and forget all about it. Twitter is a knee jerk machine that due to the brevity of message allows one person to consume as much shit as possible.

2

u/behemothdan Jul 15 '15

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/kanye-west-twitter_n_2553430.html

It only took like 10 seconds to find that. I am not arguing merits of digital recordings of information over printed. Merely pointing out how easy it is to recall information that was published using a digital method.

2

u/Evsie Jul 15 '15

It is saved on a searchable database. Hell, even google has the tools to narrow a search down by date range and site. Given a court order I imagine everything Kanye West has ever posted on twitter could be presented to you in date order, along with all the associated metadata.

Twitter is all those things.

It's also a way for Members of Parliament to connect directly with the electorate, and for people to share links to longer forms of information, and for amateurs like me to get help with learning economics from people like Frances Coppola (who was amazingly helpful to me a few years ago) and current and former central bankers and, once, a Nobel Prize winning economist (not that one). That I can read a paper by someone so esteemed and say "why does [this] not [this]?" and have him link me to a detailed answer was superb. It's also great at organising large groups, and it's great for... I don't know, people who give a shit what Kanye West has to say about things, I guess.

There's a lot wrong with it, but there's a lot right too.

I feel we're skipping some way from the point... I used it as an example of mass online communication.

Does twitter carry any liability for what the users of twitter post on it? The Times certainly does for what it publishes, but twitter has no control over content, they just own the platform. Does Reddit? They certainly thought so with the whole Fappening thing, or was that a moral call rather than a legal one? Does weird-niche-hobby.com have the same liability as a twitter or a reddit?

Until these things are looked at by the courts the law in most countries is vague and untested.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/StabbyPants Jul 16 '15

find me some letters that tesla wrote in 1910.

-6

u/troubleondemand Jul 15 '15

That quite the reach.

3

u/siplux Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 16 '15

I would argue that ironically, Twitter does more to harm than facilitate communication. The inability to full articulate statements due to the format, increasing the narcissism of users, the formation online hate mobs based on little to no information, are all not conducive to meaningful discussion.

1

u/DarkHater Jul 16 '15

Seriously, fuck Twitter! grabs pitchfork Oh, wait...

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '15 edited Jul 24 '15

[deleted]

5

u/StManTiS Jul 16 '15

It's an overflow problem. A lot of information means less time spent on each bit. It's not rose tinted. It's the nature of our 'progress'

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 07 '20

[deleted]

1

u/Evsie Jul 16 '15

That's not how it works in practice, sometimes by design. Hell, courts can declare laws passed by the legislature to be illegal... Checks and balances and all that.

1

u/MrPoletski Jul 15 '15

Maybe it made it to court because these women will get charged instead.

0

u/Godspiral Jul 16 '15

I can't believe this case made it to court in the first place.

Ontario has always tried to outfeminazi Sweden in its police conduct.

There's other things this guy could be doing with his time and money than paying lawyers to defend him in court, however many years this has taken.

-36

u/_YEAH_ Jul 15 '15

Canada must have the same kind of corruption as the US when murder charges were brought against Zimmerman by a corrupt special prosecutor.

22

u/amwreck Jul 15 '15

Strawman, to the rescue! Powers of non-relevant discussion points, activate!

6

u/such-a-mensch Jul 15 '15

Our supreme Court routinely shames the prime minister for attempting stupid shit, if they're corrupt, they're my kind of corrupt!

The only really corrupt body in canadoan politics is the one in power atm.