For the first one (twitter joke): I am ok with this. She has chosen to put her employment with the company on her twitter account. Someone sees the inappropriate joke, and it is very quickly linked to the company. She had damaged the company’s reputation and should be reprimanded.

Similarly, if she had added clients on Twitter and they saw this and complained, she should be reprimanded.

If you link your social media to your work activities, that is your choice. You need to keep it appropriate. That is just common sense and professionalism.

Now, if she kept her social media completely separate from work (didn’t advertise her employment, add clients, etc….) and people had to actually do some research to find out where she worked, then I would agree with you. People should be able to have a purely personal Internet presence separate from the work world. But if they choose to link their work to their Internet presence, there are standards.

I mostly agree with you so I’ll focus on where I disagree only:

I worked in HR for a while and a company can choose to fire people because of a comment that causes organizational distress if left unattended. For a programmer or accountant to say “fuck the [minority]” on facebook the effects will probably be close to zero. But if this person is a manager, someone in sales, PR, marketing or if their image in any way affects the capacity of the company to achieve results, it’s reasonable for them to fire the offender.

So the same comment in the same context by two different people is bound to have very diverse effects depending on this person’s role.

You view says that people should be able to practice whatever free speech that they want to.

Then you say that when other people react to this speech with their own speech they should be jailed.

Are you pro speech or against speech because I can’t tell.

There is a quote I like. “No practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.”

Freedom of speech comes with the consequences inherent with that speech. For every freedom you have, others have an equal freedom, even when opposite. Immunity to criticism, immunity to the consequences of your speech, is only a partial freedom. The sword must cut both ways if it cuts at all.

Perhaps at-will employment, such as you argue against, should change, and companies shouldn’t be able to just fire people for saying things they may not agree with in their off time. But it’s rather central that that lies on the decision of the *employer*, not the people complaining in the first place. It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that their employees are treated fairly and respectfully, and you seem to give them a pass for this in your post.

People should have the right to complain and boycott no matter who says anything, because that is just as much a component of freedom of speech as showing your ass on Twitter or Facebook. Speech cannot be suppressed by the government, but it does have consequences.

So there are three parties here: the person making the speech, “A”, the parties complaining about the speech, “B”, and the employer, “C”. Whose behavior should change? Whose behavior should be suppressed? If you truly believe in this concept of free speech, and you want to avoid the consequences of free speech, it would have to be “C”. To land on either “A” or “B” would end up chilling this absolutist free speech you seem to advocate; to land on “A” or “B” from that perspective harms *both*. The employment laws are the operative problem here, not the persons complaining.

My perspective is that you say stupid things, you take the consequences. You say it, own it. But that doesn’t seem to jive with your value system, so I offered up the other argument instead.

I’m going to try and change your view by arguing that the response is the not the problem, but the infinitely small amount of responsibility each sharer takes towards the outcome.

Take your initial example. Some identifiable guy on Twitter saw that shitty joke, and thought to himself: “Screw that. If she is stupid enough to have an open social media and post racist things, she deserves to face the consequences.” So he directly wrote to the company, and notified them. Now, I don’t have a problem with that scenario, mainly because she behaved recklessly online, and she reaped the punishment, and because it was one identifiable person who could be held accountable bringing the issue to light. The accountability portion is important, and I will get to that in a bit.

The scenario I strongly dislike is the following media buzzworthy headline: “So-and-so said that (blank) are (blanks).” Insert any nouns and verbs you need to create a viral, slacktivist, share sensation. Now, the real problem with social media lynchmobs and accountability is that many times we don’t have clear facts before the pitchforks are rolling, and a post will get shared millions of times by millions of people who read the headline, assume perfect veracity, and share on.

So when these posts are wrong, for instance in the whole Tim Hunt debacle, only the shoddy journalists who wrote a slanted blog post are semi-accountable, but the millions of sharers don’t receive any part of the blame, nor will they accept the responsibility of a retraction and/or apology.

Now, to return to your example. There is no context for her post, it’s wholeheartedly indefensible. There’s no more “well let’s see what the whole story was….” The whole story is there in her publicly available post history. Same thing with that PR lady who made the Africa AIDS joke. You are in PR. You know how PR works. You deserve to get fired.

I agree that, in general, people should not be fired from their jobs for things they said in their personal life. It’s a horrible infringement on personal liberty, regardless of whether the thing they said was “I hate black people” or “fuck the rich” or “my boss sucks”.

But it doesn’t sound like you have any real commitment to that idea. You don’t seem equally angry at the prospect that someone might get fired for disrespecting their boss. You just think that you shouldn’t have to face consequences for saying things like:

>The word pedophilia used to have a definition before the great hysteria broke out

>We are near the point where people disagreeing with the consensus will be punished as enemies of the state or social justice.

>Feminists don’t hate men, but if you praise men in any way, shape or form you can’t be a feminist anymore.

>If Elvis would appear in front of a woman who’s anxious, depressed, and full of meds, she would probably drop her pants immediately anyways.

In the US, you have the right to say whatever you want, however stupid or hateful it may be. (unless it causes harm to others, i.e. “FIRE!” in a theater…)
Just as you have the right to say whatever hateful comment you want, others have the right to respond with whatever comments they like, directed at whatever parties they prefer. (i.e. totally lawful to tattle to someone’s employer, even if it is more or less objectionable than the original comment.) With today’s technology, yes, we do have far more ability to quote what others have said in many situations, but this does not change the underlying assumptions of the law. The law provides a framework for what the *Government* can do, and in what situations (criminal cases). The law provides options for recourse against others in many situations (civil cases). But there’s another option that doesn’t invoke the laws or the justice system that you advocate as the resolution. More on that momentarily.

Your argument seems to be that someone’s stupid or hateful comment *should* be limited in visibility to what is beneficial to that person. This is silly. Individuals have no obligation to act or not act beyond what is presribed by law. There is NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY when making public comments, in person, or online. (There’s not even an expectation of privacy when making “private” comments on most websites, as the commenter doesn’t own the site, which is analogous to speaking on private property owned by someone else.) The hateful commenter does not have the RIGHT to in any way limit the actions of others. The hateful commenter does have the expectation that the Government won’t throw them in jail for making objectionable comments, but the comments are no less objectionable just because they aren’t “jailable”. An individual’s right to free speech is thusly protected… from recourse by the government. This isn’t the government implicitly approving of anything anyone says… it’s the government being limited in what actions it can take against people who say disagreeable things. Furthermore this right to free speech DOES NOT protect the speaker from other individuals’ ability to express their rights, like person #2’s right to freely talk about person #1 with the employer.

So, I’ve established that there is an expectation that the government will not seek recourse for an individual’s (possibly stupid or hateful) comments. That’s not what your post was about. Your post is about limiting the possible responses of other individuals… there is no protection under the law against recourse FROM OTHER INDIVIDUALS. This appears to be what you are suggesting we put in place.

Thought experiment; imagine blasting a bunch of obscenities in a job interview, directed toward the hiring manager. Will you get the job? not likely. Are your stupid or hateful comments “protected speech”? yes, but only protected from government recourse. Other individuals have the right to respond to your speech as they see fit, assuming that they don’t impinge on your rights.

Thought experiment #2; you’ve ordered and paid for your fast food, and then proceed to shout a string of stupid, hateful comments at the cashier, other customers, or toward a gender or race. There’s a police officer ordering food where you were a moment ago. You haven’t broken any laws, so he just looks at you disapprovingly. The manager of the restaurant demands that you leave, as your comments are unwelcome. You haven’t gotten your food yet, so naturally you keep escalating and shouting obscene things. (I’ve intentionally muddied the situation, by making you unwelcome, but entitled to something you’ve paid for.) Is it right for you to get nothing? no. You are legally entitled to either your food, or a refund. Is it right for you to keep shouting? no. You are NOT legally entitled to occupy private property if you’re not welcome. The law is fairly straight-forward as to what is NOT allowed. It’s NOT allowed for you to trespass. It’s NOT allowed for the business to take your money and give you nothing. BUT.. what about next week when you show up again and a different manager is working who doesn’t recognize you… but a soccermom with her kids does recognize you, and talks to the manager who refuses you service? You’re hungry and now you’re angry that she talked about you and used your previous actions to change someone’s opinion of you… You can make the totally valid argument that she has harmed you. BUT-her actions are not illegal. nor unwarranted.

Additionally; to limit the scope of possible recourse by other individuals to match the scope of the justice system is tantamount to declaring that all actions must be either expressly allowed or disallowed by law. Protection of free speech from government recourse is not intended to in any way imply that a person should be protected from recourse of individuals. Your suggestion that “We should probably lobby for laws that make this kind of vigilantism illegal, punishable by prison.” is just silly. You are clearly stating that “this type of vigilantism” includes talking about what someone said to other people who know that person. That’s not vigilantism. That’s recourse for the actions of the individual who made the comment. You seem to be advocating that the only acceptable form of recourse is in the form of governance; pass new laws, put them in jail for breaking the laws.

TL;DR: Is it mean for me to get you fired because you said something I disagreed with? probably. very mean. I agree with you on that. Is it fair though? You say it’s not fair, but I say it is; you reap what you sow. Not every interaction between two or more individuals needs to be explicitly allowed or disallowed by law.

I agree with you that the court case about harassment on twitter is seemingly frivolous. I don’t agree with you in that you say more action should be taken through our courts. I think it is perfectly reasonable for people to argue and take umbrage and to talk to that person’s boss regarding they’re behavior before going to courts, that’s just people skills.

If a coworker annoys me with some behavior I talk to them, not instantly go to the courts. In some cases it may be needed later to take legal action but the interaction of people first shouldn’t be discouraged.

Also, you’ve spoken about how employers are forced to fire employees. I don’t think that’s true at all, employers have the option of employing and firing who they want. In the same way that you congratulate that cafe for keeping it’s paintings, it could be said that many employers keep their employees.

If what you are saying is bad enough to get you fired, it’s not appropriate for work. If you want to be part of the KKK or whatever do it on your own time. Last thing any work place needs is some jackass bringing his fringe political opinions or dumb jokes into work. Keep it to your self and, if you cant be nice, at least be polite. People aren’t at work to hear your conjecture, they’re there to make a pay cheque

The fundamental problem here is that you don’t understand what free speech is. You have to remember that the BASIS of free speech is that “The best answer to bad speech is more speech.”

1) Alice says something offensive. **This is speech.**
2) Alice is employed by company XYZ. **This is an important part of free speech called freedom of association.**
3) Bob is offended by Alice’s speech, and writes to company XYZ saying that he feels that for company XYZ to maintain a relationship with Alice they must have similar values, or at least not care about the issue Bob was offended by. **Bob’s letter is speech.**
4) Either because they agree with Bob or don’t want to lose business from people like Bob, company XYZ decides to end their relationship with Alice. **This is also speech.**

Every step of the way is speech responding to speech. No violence, no government censorship, no lying or defamation. It’s a beautiful thing, and this is how it’s supposed to work.

Speech isn’t automatically “good” just because someone expressed it, and we readily acknowledge there is such a thing as “bad” speech. But our society has decided we don’t want to use the government to censor others because it’s too hard for government to determine what is bad speech and good speech, and the potential for abuse is too great. Instead, we believe that it’s better for citizens to decide, and to be **free** to respond to “bad” speech with “good” speech.

The irony of your proposal to outlaw responding to “bad” speech with more speech is quite thick indeed, and would turn on its very head the core principle underlying freedom of speech.

Unfortunately if you want to see this behavior changed, the change has to start with employers. It’s ultimately at their discretion whether or not they fire anyone. Law is a very crude tool for regulating social consequences and likely to cause more problems than it solves.

There’s a difference between ruining someone’s life out of spite and establishing a culture of unacceptability. Being racist and making racist jokes perpetuates a culture that *gets people killed.* What’s more life-ruining in the long run?

I agree and disagree with you, because you used such an extreme example in the first case. I don’t think anybody’s lives should be ruined over a tweet. But at the same time I think anybody reasonable would know not to do that, and a company would not want to be associated with that. I don’t think she deserves to be fired, but I think she should be. Not because of the act but because of what it says about her and her judgement. Is it a joke? Yeah, and are people being too sensitive? Maybe. But by even high school you should know when it is or isnt okay to make off-kilter jokes. And I really shouldn’t have to explain why.

You’re always going to suffer consequences for you actions — we have a justice system BECAUSE the world isnt just and life isnt fair.
But it can only be so big, and can’t be bogged down with EVERY conflict two human beings get into – and at that point the issue has to fall to common decency/whatever — the people who were affected by the act. The problem is that she blasted this across the entire internet, so now people in Bangladesh can take offense, and demand action taken against this lady. And people can go too far in that extent – objectively they’re taking it as far as their anger carries them, so if someone who is generally an angry, miserable person takes offense, you’re in for a bad time. That’s life.

You hedge your bets every time you do something like that, I thought it was common knowledge that people love a witch hunt?

EDIT: It’s the same reason companies won’t hire you if you have a bunch of photos of you topless at a party with your tongue out and a beer in each hand and cum on your face. It’s not discrimination, it’s just bad rep.

> Somehow some people got it into their heads that it’s their task to punish others for their wrongthink

Thinking happens in your head, not on Twitter. Once you publish it, it goes beyond merely having the wrong thoughts.

> Some people go even further and try to arrange that people who offended them won’t get hired anywhere else either.

Would you not think that she has herself to blame for having reduced hiring chances if she publicly shares racist comments with the entire world on Twitter?

Employers look for team members that fit with their company culture. One of their goals is to create a safe environment for all employees, without racism, harassment etc. Publishing racist tweets is a strong indicator to tell you how far a candidate is willing to go to share racist thoughts publicly. If they have the choice between hiring someone who has published racist tweets and others who haven’t, who are they going to choose?

Or would you say that employers ought to generally ignore public racism and ought to hire her, all else being equal?

I think your CMV relays the wrong idea. People are arguing if distasteful behavior should be enough to get you fired, but apparently what you are arguing is that people actively seeking the harm of those with distasteful behavior are as harmful as the ones who misbehave to begin with. Maybe you should edit your first post to reflect this since I think it’s a much finer point

Also, I think you’re getting caught in the “justice system vs private judgment” dichotomy, which is also avoidable. Maybe you should say that people that misbehave should be judged by the appropriate authority, not the public, be it their boss or the justice system, doesn’t really matter

> if you think you are so right in your beliefs that it’s your righteous mission to harm non-believers you’re a disgusting hateful bigot

> How can anyone with an ounce of sanity left in their heads think she said something I didn’t like so she should live on unemployment benefits for the rest of her life, her kids probably growing up in abject poverty?

>We should probably lobby for laws that make this kind of vigilantism illegal, punishable by prison.

What?

So it’s wrong to get certain people *fired* for what they say. But its right to get certain people *imprisoned* for what they say?

In the first example, the company likely (really likely) would not have hired the person had they known not only would she make a joke like that, but she is stupid enough to make it on social media for everyone to see. Most companies don’t want somebody like that working for them and that’s why a lot of companies screen social media profiles for any red flags like that before hiring. It’s not like you’re forcing the company’s hand, I’m sure the company appreciates being made aware of the situation.

The second example doesn’t seem as bad though I didn’t look much into it. If you can’t figure out why the first person deserves to be fired then I’m not sure we’ll ever agree on this. She’s reflecting poorly on her company and the type of people who work there and that’s bad for business, plain and simple. Furthermore, she is completely unaware and careless of the things she says, including when they’re pretty racist and insensitive.

The thing is that society hasn’t figured out how to work with the internet yet.

Consider this: I am an employer in the 1980’s. One of my employees becomes widely known as being anti-women. My business is going to suffer as a result of lost sales, and my employees are going to feel uncomfortable interacting with him. He was hired to help my business and now he is hurting it. On top of that, if you are famous in the 1980’s you darn well made an effort to gain that fame. Even if he didn’t intend it to impact his job this person clearly went out there and deliberately did this without thought to the consequences (making him dangerously stupid on top of his other bad qualities). On top of that to get famous in the 1980s for misogyny you probably did something REALLY bad. I mean it took a lot to get people worked up back then.

What has changed is that with the internet the most sensitive flowers are exposed on an instant and global level to newsfeeds dedicated to feeding them petty outrage. It is immensely easy to do something that will really piss off any of three dozen highly organized, collected, and savvy groups from women, transexuals, homosexuals, animal lovers, black, latino, asian, jewish, muslim, christian, etc. etc. etc. If 1 person in 1000 were a super shitty person against each of these groups suddenly 1:50 folks are going to be super shitty against at least one of them.

Back in the 1980s if you wanted to slap a black baby on an airplane and call it a N-word, on film, you had to spend a ton of money out of pocket, get the airline’s ok, and hire a production company. Now you just need a drunk racist and crying black baby and the racist magic just happens.

The thing is this: in a hundred years if it is simply understood that you get drunk, slap a black baby, and call it the N-word you get fired then that is a totally fair rule. I would vote for that rule, its a good rule. The “problem” is that no one knew that was the rule until this guy did it. No one knew you couldn’t shoot a lion until the dentist did it. No one knew that is you were a massive ass-hat there would be consequences.

Now, btw, I am also ok if the rule is “You cannot film someone in public unless you a) have their consent, b) they are employed by the government, or c) they are committing a crime” maybe that is the better rule than the ass-hats lose their job rule above. The point is though that either way we go, we need to figure out what the rule is, let everyone know, and that is just something that will happen given time.

I’ll give you another example, and I do believe she needed to be fired. I work with kids, in child care, I love my job. We had a co-worker (she worked at another location in the same city) go on facebook saying how she hated kids and couldn’t stand the ones in her class. It was basically a 200 word tirade about how much she couldn’t stand the class she worked in. Someone reported her and she was promptly fired.

For me that’s about safety, toddlers are hard to work with, I get it. But if you’re publicly stating how you hate kids, and your job is to keep them safe and healthy for 8 hours a day, I don’t want you there anymore. My thought would be that she would harm the kids if the stress got to be too much. Granted if she hadn’t posted that hate-filled tirade she would have had her job, at least until she actually hurt a kid, but why wait?

I agree with others on the example you provided, you’re a marketing intern who uses a very charged racial slur. She sucks at marketing herself… If you’re replacable in your job and you go out and trash your work/boss what do you expect? No one wants to work with someone like that.

This has way less to do with the justice system and more to do with the free market. It is extremely bad PR to be associated with someone who says bigoted things, even in jest. “SJWs” aren’t getting people fired. It’s the decision of a manager who recognizes the way the wind is blowing.

The activists (and let’s face it, large amount of bored people on Twitter) who draw employers’ attention to the bad-tasting things their employees say aren’t doing anything illegal. So it’s not really vigilantism per se because they’re not really taking the law into their hands. It’s, as you say, just people sharing their opinions of what should be done. Actual vigilanteism is still illegal. Your proposal to jail people who say “hey we should fire this person because they said something racist” seems like a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime, no? It’s just speech. Kind of ironic (as someone else pointed out) for you to suggest such a thing.

It seems though that you recognize that social media is extraordinarily powerful. Everything becomes more politicised. Take the case of that cafe: they’re either celebrated by feminists for upending the patriarchy and taking the art down, or cheered by free-speech activists for leaving the art up. There is literally no way to remain neutral, where in the humble homespun times before twitter news of a cafe’s decision to take art up or down would travel at the pace of normal human gossip and dissipate in strength and vitriol as it traveled.