But I am a bit uncomfortable with how willing this blog is to jump on Reddit for their “free speech fuck you” stance. I quite like that Reddit has an anarchistic, ‘anything goes’ quality.  While I like Boing Boing, I do think it’s a detriment to this blog that comments are aggressively moderated/deleted by over-sensitive mods.  In other words, IMHO, it’s not Reddit with the problem. I think part of the tone of many of these articles is to try to shame Reddit away from it’s ‘free speech over all” stance.  I like that they are trying to stand tough and not back down from this, in essence, bullying by other mainstream blogs and now news media.

As for this article… no, I have much more hatred of Gawker then this Reddit troll-guy. I don’t think what happened to this guy was particularly wrong or unjust – there are risks to behaving the way he was; he had no right to privacy – but I think Gawker is a terrible blog that has done much more damage to the culture and world then this guy has.  And I don’t think I’m ‘privileged’ for having that opinion. I just think it’s fact.

Just serving as a legitimizer, if I’m understanding the apologists* correctly.

* of whom I am not one.

But, people have had certain expectations, and they do not like those expectations over-turned.

I tend to believe that anything I do online can be discovered and displayed to all and sundry (eg, “hey everybody, he’s a dog!”), should some entity choose to do so. As such, it tends to moderate my online behavior a bit. Hopefully in ways similar to how I would moderate my own behavior in public.

I contend that freedom of speech is the ability to speak without fear of prohibitive consequence.

Well, that is an interesting interpretation, yep, it sure is.

‘The law’ must not be misogynistic. Society must not be misogynistic. Both is *ours* to change this. Exposing committers of crime is just. But exposing them anonymously is dangerous. As FunkyDaddy says: intentions matter, but they don’t justify them implicitly. Or, more colloquial: good intentions and the ends don’t justify the means. You must keep a balance.

I’m not sure if he did though.  Depending on your definition of violating peoples privacy he neither sanctioned, curated no provided the content you’re referring too.  With regards to one of the subreddits he had such a low moderator level that he couldn’t even actually ‘moderate’ the content.

If he was just some guy taking pervy, invasive shots of girls and posting them on his site this would be a much simpler argument – but he’s not.  He’s just a creepy guy that got on the wrong side of Chen; the privacy violation is coming from a completely different direction in my eyes.

Do you also remember when Gawker went after a single moderator for the content of a subreddit he had no control over?

Who in this story has had the most influence over ‘preying on innocent people’?

From what I gather, that would be like expecting Antinous to ‘Stop the steampunk shit’.

He was one of many moderators – of a forum.  This is a key piece of information people still don’t seem to be taking in.

Ironically he was appointed in many of the 400+ subreddits he moderates because of his efficacy in removing illegal content.

He’s a moderator, not a content creator/curator.

I am a member

The way to avoid truly ugly persecution is to establish ground rules about what is ok as if everyone was on the same moral plane.

You yourself have shown where that fails: refusing to treat bullies and their victims differently is allowing persecution of the latter.

Yes, there are some people think gays are worse than guys who post underage photos without consent. But why should we care? They’re simply wrong, and so are any standards that won’t accept that fact, if you believe in any kind of human rights.

And apparently you do, because you don’t apply relativism to everything. But it’s interesting where you make an exception.

None for the girls’ privacy – some deviants might think spreading stalker shots is ok, and apparently it’s up to them not the girls to decide. We would have to study the exact harm before we consider condemning it as more than just an unpopular activity.

But for doxxing, “no pass” for deviants like Chen who think it might be ok in some cases. No call to study relative harm or help here; VA’s privacy is important, and so it should really be left up to him.

This is a double standard, one that itself enables ugly persecution and allows cruel people to empower themselves. Again, refusing to distinguish bullies and victims does not eliminate the difference.

Some, but not all, of Gawker’s properties are linkbaiting muckrakers that’ll do quite a lot (not anything) for lots of hits.

Other places have Lord and Lady, Dukes and Duchesses, Counts and Countesses and a shit ton of Sirs and Dames and may others galore.

But these need to be USA USA appropriate titles, and I think Asshole is definitely a standard that can be set. 

Imma call American Express and see if I can get that put on my card. If they will, I’ll ask them to put a title more appropriate to me on there, I’m thinking “Slacker” or maybe something else like my favourite video game or something.

Threatening someone’s livelihood is not force, it is the threat of economic sanction. A socially acceptable threat, especially where the threat is not the use of influence or power to terminate employment, but by making known the public acts of the subject in question. It is also a threat Chen never made, not that I have read.

The choice you propose is preposterous. If I had a choice between all dark meat next to my stuffing and eating a live possum, it’d be no choice at all. But who the hell offers that choice?

Yeah the article wasn’t terribly inflammatory as I saw it either, but I don’t frequent reddit often, or gawker, and a lot of the flames and smoke are based on one or the other. Some folk think that critics/journalist/blogger/whathaveyou can’t be both to a degree hypocrites AND correct, but it ain’t so. 

I think the crux of it is that the media generally pretends that what they’re doing is for the benefit of society, when in fact reality is much more nuanced at the least. It might be wildly unfair to compare the harm caused by one individual with the harm caused by an entire industry and ideology. But the idea isn’t to excuse what ViolentAcrez was doing, but rather to get people to think about what the media does more critically. 

For those that didn’t get it, Mr Brutsch taped nasty pictures to his window, and Mr Chen (and Gawker) threw the rock. The lines of legality and morality don’t line up in exactly the same way, but the structural similarity is pretty close. The rock thrower in this case can’t be anonymous, or doesn’t want to be (for pageviews etc) but it doesn’t matter. The window is broken, and nobody really cares.

Threatening someone’s livelihood is force.

So is making the world a hostile place for women.