Yeah, apparently it was a pop reference, and that makes it okay?
The problem with references is that not everybody gets the reference, and without that (and possibly even with) this is a death threat. And with today's highly polarized and volatile political situation, you need to be really careful with that.
I've come to expect this sort of behaviour from random internet trolls, but a CEO really should know better. I think this counts as a disqualifying lapse of judgement.
It's not uncommon to add a minimal amount of plausible deniability to a toxic comment/threat (by calling it a joke or reference, following it up with "in Minecraft" etc), but imho that's intentional abuse of other people's good will and should be treated as such.
Either way knowing how to communicate responsibly is part of a CEO's job, that's one of the reasons they get paid so much.
Yeah there's too much insensitivity being brushed off as "it's a reference", "it's a joke", "it's a meme", or with things like "you can't say anything anymore without anyone getting offended". That's not accepting responsibility for what you said. As is "I / he was drunk"; again, shifting blame. It's an explanation, not an excuse, and if you "become" an unpleasant person when drunk, you're an unpleasant person full stop. Stop drinking then.
I called someone a nerd once, but it turned out they didn't feel it had been "reclaimed" like a lot of people do. I apologized, and we had a nice chat about the paths language takes. It was nice. More situations like this should go like that, but it seems like doubling down, making excuses, or going on the attack is too easy.
If his rapper persona had tweeted the lyrics to a diss track but clarified the theatrical kayfabe by breaking the fourth wall, that arguably could be less of a threat but still demonstrate questionable judgment, so I agree with you there.
But violent rhetoric certainly increases the likelihood that others will escalate violence against the target, and so the risk (threat) of death and harm very much does increase as seen in many unfortunate cases.
That is how asymmetric information warfare has a chilling effect on democracy and infringes others’ fundamental liberties (life, pursuit of happiness), and is different from “free speech”.
It doesn’t require sophisticated thinking to discern the difference, but X is where discourse goes to die.
Where the Supreme Court clarified that even more disgusting speech tinged with violence-encouraging rhetoric was, in fact, legally free speech. (Please, let's not call rhetoric itself violence.)
Citizens United says that something that’s undeniably speech—a movie about a politician—can’t be suppressed merely because the speakers pay for it through the vehicle of a corporation. What do you think is incorrect about that?
If Citizens United has gone the other way, the Trump administration would have been able, for example, to order Facebook to suppress posts about COVID death tolls near the election.
"Legally allowed" doesn't mean it's protected from consequences.
Call someone a dick and you're protected under free speech, but you can still get punched in the face. And a judge won't be very amenable to a possible consequent assault case if the victim was goaded.
The grandparent post is centered around the idea that it wasn't free speech, which is what I was responding to, not the idea that there can't be social consequences.
> And a judge won't be very amenable to a possible consequent assault case if the victim was goaded.
This is incorrect and fairly disturbing. The idea of "fighting words" (which are not protected speech) is extremely circumscribed; it applies basically only to the case of someone standing in front of you and saying something with the intent to provoke an "immediate instinctive reaction." (Ginsburg's words.) It absolutely does not justify punching someone you see in the street for a Tweet they made yesterday and you will go to jail for this. You will not get sympathy from a judge. Unfortunately, this is one of the very sorts of ideas that disintegrates free societies - "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" is true, but it doesn't justify violence legally or morally, and saying so undermines free and fair societies.
Apparently there is plenty of room for debate on this subject, and Brandenburg v Ohio — involving a KKK leader whose conviction under a state law for making threatening and racist remarks was overturned by a divided court — is still being hashed out by constitutional experts to this day.
It doesn’t invalidate the central idea that free speech is different from inflammatory speech “condoning” violence (wink wink) when it is amplified by technology to have an asymmetrical effect on the target of that speech.
And in any case, we are discussing the use of telecommunications systems for harassment and not someone shouting in a park behind a police barricade. I don’t do either of these things, so I’m admittedly not well-informed about the constitutional and case law in the US that might apply.
If I were a C-level executive I would probably aspire to higher level of online citizenry and behavior, perhaps, than a KKK leader, and hire someone else to do the tweeting.
> Apparently there is plenty of room for debate on this subject, and Brandenburg v Ohio — involving a KKK leader whose conviction under a state law for making threatening and racist remarks was overturned by a divided court — is still being hashed out by constitutional experts to this day.
There's always room for debate on anything, but nobody but a tiny minority of legal experts are "hashing out" the case. It's been settled, quiet law for decades. It's also important to note that it came out of a much more restless time in American history, and a time when violence was very regularly politically or racially motivated violence driven by speech and the spread of ideas.
> And in any case, we are discussing the use of telecommunications systems for harassment and not someone shouting in a park behind a police barricade. I don’t do either of these things, so I’m admittedly not well-informed about the constitutional and case law in the US that might apply.
Harassment is another thing that has a specific legal definition. It's become common over time to use stronger words than are justified colloquially because it makes a more persuasive argument. For example, we might describe an accidental death as a "murder". But I don't think it's very productive in coming to understandings or deciding how we should set norms and make laws.
> It doesn’t invalidate the central idea that free speech is different from inflammatory speech “condoning” violence (wink wink) when it is amplified by technology to have an asymmetrical effect on the target of that speech.
In what sense is it asymmetrical? It's been my observation that many people making arguments like this seem to believe that 21st century social media technology has changed everything. Rather, historically speaking - at least in the modern era - it's more akin to returning to the norm, rather than the closely gatekept broadcast media era. This sort of thing is obviously gross, but it is not beyond the historical pale. It has seemed to me that many people would prefer to return to the brief period we did have asymmetry, where the wrong people saying ugly things were kept out of what was regarded as the place of public discourse, which discourse could then target people not blessed with access and leave them no way to publicly respond or defend themselves.
But in this case we're talking about a tweet made about a politicians and public figures. (It's worth mentioning that in the US, anything related to political speech is given even more leeway.) Twitter is available to both their proponents and their detractors. Any politician has themselves an enormous platform. Nothing about this case is asymmetrical, unless the argument is that the politician(s) has acquired more vitriolic haters than defenders. Well, that's the nature of social life. I would hope that the police would seriously investigate any actual threats and keep a close eye on the neighborhood they live in.
As for inflammatory - well, yes, inflammatory speech has been held to be protected over and over and over again. I also don't think it's fruitful to go down the road of "this speech is secretly condoning violence" (which is also not illegal or the "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences folks advocating for the enemy du jour to be assaulted in the streets would be in trouble.) Even if it is secretly condoning violence, it's very obvious that criminalizing "coded" speech is a wide open road to serious abuses of rights.
> If I were a C-level executive I would probably aspire to higher level of online citizenry and behavior, perhaps, than a KKK leader, and hire someone else to do the tweeting.
No argument there. I do not know Gary Tan or anything about him other than what was in this reporting but it's obvious the tweet is trashy and unprofessional and the world would be better off without it. Nothing in my posts should be construed as an endorsement or agreement with it or Gary Tan.
I think we can both agree that online behavior can be harmful even when it is legally protected, and that free speech is a topic about which some people are very passionate.
Whether it fits any legal definition of a death threat or not is... kind of moot, you can be a dick to someone else without violating the law. Society isn't built on laws, but on decency and respect, and wishing anything negative on someone else isn't it. A few days ago the CoC of an online community was posted, and "slow death" threats wouldn't pass their "be kind" rules either (https://www.improbableisland.com/coc.php, via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39135779).
The problem with references is that not everybody gets the reference, and without that (and possibly even with) this is a death threat. And with today's highly polarized and volatile political situation, you need to be really careful with that.
I've come to expect this sort of behaviour from random internet trolls, but a CEO really should know better. I think this counts as a disqualifying lapse of judgement.