You mean the same argument used to justify posting pictures of kids in bikinis, right?
So, when’s it OK to use that argument? I’m getting confused…
I’d say people take calculated risks when they post private information on the internet, including stuff they shouldn’t be judged for. I don’t, for example, want my employer to know that I’m an atheist, but this is a risk I accept because the freedom to exchange ideas online is more important to me than an absolute guarantee of anonymity. I take reasonable precautions but I am aware they are not always fail-safe. I believe that if for some reason I was outed, I would be accountable for every word I said, no matter how embarrassing. Sort of the way people are responsible for what they say to other people in real life. I don’t see the point in having different moral standards on the internet.
I’d also say that a lot of people are assuming this one specific instance will become some kind of mandate. I don’t see that. It seems to me we should be able to use our judgment and weigh each situation according to its merits. It’s not like we can stop assholes from getting ahold of our private information anyway. I will be interested to see where the dialog leads, though, because I think both perspectives have valid points.
Wow. You really went there.
For the record, “nothing is private” applies to those who post photos of the drunken aftermath of the frat party on Facebook, too. It’s not some special rule that only applies to pedophilic Redditors. And it’s nothing like “shouldn’t have worn that skirt.” If you act like an asshole in the middle of the heavily trafficked town square, you can’t reasonably complain you expected no one to see you. The expectation that people not violently assault each other IS a reasonable expectation of adult behavior.
I think this is a good analogy. What if this guy was making a speech at a KKK rally and someone ran across the stage and pulled his hood off? Would pulling his hood off be morally wrong? Would it be wrong of the Klansman’s employer to fire him? What the Klansman’s hood fell off, would be OK if he got fired for that?
He used the anonymity of the internet to get away with shitty behavior he would not have attempted in real life for fear of repercussions. But his behavior was not harmless, it had real life consequences for his victims and for all young women who had to exercise extra diligence lest some perve follow them around then exploit them. So someone used the internet to bring real life consequences on back on this slug. Cry slippery slope/1st amendment/unfair all you like; none of those arguments is a perfect fit. This is karmic justice less the mysticism.
I mean, I feel fairly safe because I don’t think much of my online life of interest to others. But, I think it’s worth noting that libel and slander are usually only subject to civil penalties, and are incredibly hard to prosecute and collect on. They also will not protect you if you you are attacked by someone in some other country.
But we don’t have differing standards right now. Following someone around, documenting their activity, and making it public would be frowned on in real life just as it should be on the internet. Making something public, that someone reasonably expect to be private, should be avoided online and in real life.
Maybe you are right about the mandate, but the larger issue is that people will not get to vote on each situation. The only reason this was made a big deal is because of the collective visibility of Gawker and Reddit, and the egregious nature of this guy’s actions.
Another, more interesting recent example was the outing of porn stars real names, addresses, etc. on Porn Wikileaks. It’s speculated that the names were stolen from the company that used to do STD testing for the industry. A former adult actor is suspected to have leaked the names because he felt the need to, “speak out about the gays ruining the porn industry”. One performer commented:
That, to me, is illustrative of the problem. Very little of the information released is strictly hard to obtain or private. You could also make a very compelling argument that someone who is literally naked to the world does not have a reasonable claim to privacy. Even so, releasing all of that information seems wrong to me, even if you buy the claim that those actors were ruining the industry. I just think there are too many people terrible judgment who will exercise their right to out people they find despicable or loathsome.
Thanks brickbacon.
I have a friend who does adult modelling online. Nothing porny, but fetishy-- shoes and such. She also happens to be a stepmom to a couple amazing kids. But her husband is paranoid that some parent of his kids’ friends will see her online, alert someone, and it’ll jeopardize his custody arrangement to have an “adult model” in the house.
So, does she not have the “privilege” of working online under a pseudonym? If someone outed her, would it be her own fault? What if it was a religious group who felt strongly that what she was doing was “wrong” vs. some ex-friend who had a vendetta? Would that make a difference?
It’s just super-easy to think, “this guy had it coming to him” but really-- who are we to decide who “has it coming”? It’s just shitty that some jackass Gawker guy has so much power to hurt someone, regardless of whether or not they’re doing legal stuff we personally disagree with.
Life is a whole bunch of calculated risks, but the one thing that is certain is that at any time you can be held accountable for your actions.
Let me give you an example: I have friends, a husband and a wife, who are swingers. They love it. They’ve got active profiles on swinger sites, meet up with people (safely and) regularly. They take pictures of themselves in the act with each other and others. Hell, sometimes they go to Vegas and do crazy things at one of the many Vegas swing clubs. All things that are perfectly legal and (by my definition, at least-- both are 100% willing and consenting participants) even perfectly moral. But one day, as these things tend to do, their secret started to get out. Whispers getting back to them. They got scared. Why? Because they both have rather contentious custody agreements with their incredibly conservative, incredibly religious exes. So, you know what they did? They stopped swinging.
Should they have had to go into hiding, as it were? No, of course not-- they are adults doing consenting things that are perfectly fine. That said, they weighed the risk before them and decided it wasn’t worth it. That’s what us adults do.
Violentakerz or whatever his name was is also an adult who should have been aware of the risk he was taking in doing his perfectly legal, but morally ambiguous speech exercises. He calculated the risk and deemed it low enough to go forward. He lost that gamble. His freedoms are not violated by this reality.
And, frankly, it can’t be said enough: the freedom to speak is not the freedom to speak without consequence.
This is not really about freedom or legality. I don’t think anyone is suggesting someone should be able to commit crimes online without repercussions. Similarly, few are suggesting anyone’s freedoms have been abridged. What I think is at issue is the expectations we should have as internet users that our privacy will be held with at least the same esteem that we are accustomed to in the real world.
More importantly, we need to look at the real world consequences of a blanket policy that anything you do outside of your home is fair game, and can be subject to widespread public scrutiny. The fact is that such a standard would radically change our behaviors in ways that might not always be good. How many people do you think would forgo abortions if they knew their names would be made public? How many people would seek counseling or psychiatric help if they knew their visits would be broadcast to their friends and family? Hell, how mad would you be if all the public information about you were neatly arranged in one place on the internet? Right now, you can find out if people owe property taxes, what houses they own, their address, cell phone number, family names, biographical details, arrest records, voting records, etc. Would you me comfortable if I could google “DiosaBellissima” and come up with all you and your family’s contact info and information? Of course not. The solution is not to tell you to stay off the internet. It’s to, at least informally, implore people to respect the privacy of others, and to not celebrate when people engage in egregious violations of that standard even if they think they are doing it point out nasty behavior, or hypocrisy.
Additionally, once the expectation of online privacy is gone, you will have companies, advertisers, and government utilizing your info for all sorts of questionable reasons. How long do you think it would be before your insurance company starts monitoring your internet activity for sign that you are a greater risk to them? How long before the government decides an internet search for drug paraphernalia is probable cause to put you under surveillance? We already have situation where the price you pay might be determined by what OS you run. And where advertisers predict people are pregnant before their families know. Why would anyone want to invite and/or hasten that kind of intrusion into our lives?
Now, some people will say that because this guy is a piece of shit, he doesn’t deserve any protections. But, that estimation is in the eye of the beholder, and there is no reason to think someone might not think ill of you because you do something they think is bad. Unfortunately, there is no universal standard as to who is and isn’t a piece of garbage. I am sure some one might think you are deserving of intimidation and outing because you lack the modesty to wear a burqa, or because you, as a woman, had the temerity to have an opinion on anything.
There is no reason someone might not do something like this to you. To me that is beyond the pale. I get that it feels good to see that VA asshole have his life fucked, but but our collective expectation to some semblance of privacy outweighs whatever punishment this guy has/will received.
I agree. I think we should go by this guy’s own standards as to whether strangers on the internet should be able to decide whether others on the internet “have it coming”.
I don’t know anything about this guy’s position other than what I’ve read in this thread and some news stories, but as I understand it he was very cavilier about other people’s privacy, and thought that people had no right to privacy when they appeared in public.
So if that’s right, then by this guy’s own standards, those who outed this guy were - in principle if not exact subject matter - behaving exactly as this guy would have. Can’t be fairer than that.
That’s what is missing from the arguments of those here who are saying that as a matter of principle, “outing” vigilantism is wrong. I agree, but I make an exception for those who enjoy outing others themselves.
SweetPotato: let’s take your example of your fetishy adult modelling friend. Your example is all well and good, but now let’s alter one small fact: let’s pretend your friend’s hobby is outing gay guys online. Now how do we feel about whether it would be wrong to out her?
Reddit is not a game, though.
No, it’s not clear - you seem to be suggesting that what happens on Reddit happens in some sort of isolated space - but clearly that’s not the case, or VA wouldn’t have had real-life meetings with other redditors, wouldn’t post pics of real people, and wouldn’t be able to suffer real-life consequences. Your RL/Reddit dichotomy is patently a false one.
I disagree. Economic consequences for social crimes strike me as eminently fair. No-one’s locked him up - he’s suffered a social punishment for a social offence. His boss didn’t want to deal with the shit his behaviour caused - sucks to be him. And no, his offense was pretty damn severe. Personally, I think he should be looking at judicial punishment, and would if I made the laws. And context? What context? Would you prefer a stricly Reddit-based punishment? Like that was ever going to happen - Reddit was enabling his behaviour, not stopping it. Taking it outside their jurisdiction was exactly what needed to happen.
He wasn’t anonymous. Chen used freely-available information VA himself had put out there, within the Reddit community. Nobody “violated” his anonymity, all they did was publicize his identity to an unprecedented degree outside Reddit. Daylight is the best antiseptic.
Can anyone clarify this point? What exactly did the pictures show? Were the subjects identifiable? Were any of the subjects ever even aware that this was happening?
That’s fine, since I never said what he did was illegal. I did say it should be.
:dubious: Oh really? So /r/Upskirt is just my imagination, then?
And no, I, too, visited Creepshots when it was first bickered about on Gawker (or Jezebel, I forget) and there definitely were upskirt and downblouse shots. And the “oh so subtly” revived Creepshots (/r/CandidFashionPolice) definitely has them.
Maybe I frequent a particularly high class gay bar, but if a guy walked in and started taking upskirt photos and talking about his Chokabitch website, no one I know would feel any obligation to respect his privacy.
Generally speaking, here in Sweden people remain anonymous a lot longer than they do in my native UK. I don’t know if this is the law or just journalistic practice.
Charged is a murky area, investigated I absolutely do have a problem with it. I was having this discussion just the other day with a friend regarding rape trials and how the “victim” gets anonymity in the UK but the “alleged rapist” gets dragged through the mud in the press.
At the absolutely very least, in my opinion, someone should get anonymity in the press until a criminal case starts. I’m a bit on the fence as to what happens then.
What I find problematic is the nature of internet vigilantism in general. I shed no tears for this guy, and nobody is claiming the guy “outed” or “doxed” isn’t the right guy, but the potential to pillory someone online for what someone upthread calls “social crimes” is troubling - what, for example, would happen if they “out” the wrong person? How would he or she ever be able to counter that?
It’s allegedly happened recently, in the case of a guy “outed” as the perv who persecuted suicide victim Amanda Todd. According to the cops he’s not the right guy. It is however easy to imagine someone being “outed” for a henous social crime, losing their job, getting hundreds of death threats etc., in a case where the cops have zero interest because (death threats aside) no actual crime has been committed.
Thing is, the trolls (like the guy being outed here) would no doubt find ruining someone’s life that way very funny.
It would be wrong just as her hypothetical friend’s actions were wrong. See, the problem with relative standards is that there is always someone whose flexible morality permits entitles them to do whatever they want. In your example, is there a substantive difference between someone whose hobby is outing gay guys online, and someone whose hobby is outing gay guys who campaign publicly against gay issues? Not really, but I am sure someone will try to claim one is okay and the other isn’t. You can’t count on everyone to be rational about their privacy intrusions into other people’s lives, so you shouldn’t encourage anyone to do it. Yes, it’s gonna happen, but I don’t think we need to be cheering about it.
The present UK government were going to introduce anonymity for those accused of rape but feminists stopped it on the basis that it would stop other victims coming forward. I do not know who is right, both have very compelling arguments - I do tend towards the anonymity for the accused generally… but then look what’s happening now that Saville has been named.
I had no idea either. I have heard it mentioned by politicians so I assumed it was some sort of political site so I never bothered looking it up. The only regular alternative news site I used to frequent was Fark.com
I don’t go there any more.
No, but for some it does seem to be about legality in that they think the guy doesn’t deserve what happened to him because what he did wasn’t illegal. Not to mention the excuse of “Reddit said it was OK,” as if Reddit is/should be some moral yardstick.
I really think this event is nothing more than a flash in the pan and will have little to no impact on the level of annonimity on the Internet. The slippery slope argument is akin to shouting the sky is falling given how this guy pretty much outed himself.