The protection of freedom of speech is fundamental, and one that Reddit is standing by.
The usage of that freedom of speech is a personal responsibility. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable.
Reddit the organization is entirely in the right here. To say otherwise would be to misplace responsibility and fundamentally change the idea of free speech that the US—and surely the internet—has enjoyed for many years.
The author of the article, however, sure thinks he's got some moral high groung alright. I implore him to get off his high horse.
There are a few things wrong with your line of thinking:
* Reddit is not the government, so yes, we cannot have them arrested. And no one wants them arrested- literally zero people. But yes, they can be held financially responsible and be made into the pariah of the civilized world.
* Even barring that, your freedom of speech only extends so far until it begins harming the safety of others. Creepshots, specifically, was showing easily identifiable women in compromising positions and actively encouraging that subreddit's community to create more of this kind of content. Without the knowledge of their victims, they trample over their right to a reasonable expectation of safety and privacy.
I've been a member of Reddit for 6 years- just 1 year shy of their entire existence. It's still, by far, my most visited site every day. My favorite subreddits all tend to be niche these days, like /r/ainbow, /r/python, and /r/kpop. Most of the 'defaults' I'm not even subscribed to, because of a way of thinking that honestly reeks of people who have never been under legitimate threat in their lives, yet feel entitled to expose others to it. Well, that and crappy reposts.
Once again: No one wants Reddit arrested. That's what the freedom of speech is about. However, the freedom of speech does not, by any measure, mean that you should not be exposed to the consequences of your speech. You should.
That's a pretty dramatic overstatement in the context of this discussion. There's no "reasonable expectation" of privacy in the sense of preventing people from seeing you and monitoring your publicly visible travels. That word "reasonable" is important. You do have a reasonable expectation that there won't be peephole cameras in dressing rooms and hidden mirrors on the floor everywhere you turn.
And safety is also a bit odd to bring up here. There certainly is a reasonable expectation of safety in public in the legal sense. In what situation is there ever a lack of the expectation of safety to such a degree that it could be used as a defense by someone harming you?
In the modern world, I think it's reasonable to ask whether monitoring of people's behaviour even in public is still acceptable.
If I followed you around and discreetly recorded everything I saw during a shopping trip and when you got home, there's a good chance that I could do all kinds of damaging things to you with the information I collected. I could be unpleasant (spoiling your kid's birthday surprise). I could be very unpleasant (spoiling your surprise proposal to your financee because I just watched you collect the ring). I could be downright criminal (identity theft, fraud, and the like).
I think many of us would consider that sort of "tailing someone" behaviour to be more than a little creepy, but it's important to understand there are good practical reasons for that instinctive negative reaction beyond just "I don't find it comfortable" (though the latter is important as well).
Modern technology allow us to do many wonderful things that we couldn't before, but also quite a few nasty things that we couldn't do before or that didn't have such serious consequences before. It's about time we stopped trying to apply privacy from 1912 to the world in 2012, and started asking why the principle of privacy is important and what it really means today.
That's a fair point, but I'm not sure where I'd draw the line. The worst consequences you cited -- identity theft, fraud, etc. -- are already illegal. We criminalize the act; not necessarily the surrounding things that made the act possible.
Spoiling my kid's birthday surprise might make you a dick, but I don't want it to make you a criminal. It's also hard to see a good way to enforce this kind of thing. As long as all a person is doing is visiting public places, then lacking a specific compelling reason (e.g., restraining orders issued by a judge), I'm not sure you should be able to prevent someone else from visiting those same public places.
These are definitely issues that are going to become more important as the amount of data we generate continues to grow. But right now, I think the balance is actually pretty good. The government probably has too many rights to collect information on you, but for private parties, I don't have a huge problem with things as they stand.
That's a fair point, but I'm not sure where I'd draw the line. The worst consequences you cited -- identity theft, fraud, etc. -- are already illegal.
The best I've come up with so far is that when it comes to prior restraint, you have to consider (a) whether there is an effective remedy to undo any damage after the fact, and (b) whether there is any legitimate reason to do whatever you're proposing to restrain, and if so, what the adverse consequences might be. Then it's a balance, and personally I think it's safest to bias against any form of prior restraint if it's not a clear case.
In this case, once a severe privacy invasion has taken place, often the consequences are permanent. Sure, your kid might have another birthday and still enjoy the new toy, but you'll probably never get another chance to propose in the way you've spent the last six months planning and see the look on your wife-to-be's face before she says yes. I would have no problem with severely punishing someone who thought it was OK to deliberately spoil that kind of special, once-in-a-lifetime moment. On a more objectively measurable level, you'll never get back the three months of your life that you'll probably spend chasing banks and fixing your credit records if someone steals your identity.
I'll note in passing that none of this is the really bad stuff, which is less likely from my example of just being followed around for an afternoon but all too possible in a world of ever-increasing surveillance and data mining. The really bad stuff is probably when your career and/or private life get destroyed by an untrue allegation that taints your reputation irreparably. No amount of retractions and apologies printed later is going to remove the cloud of having once been accused of privately being a little too friendly with children, or abusing your spouse, or botching a medical procedure that left a patient permanently disabled, or stealing your client's private records and selling them to the competition.
That's the "can the damage be undone" side of things, so what about the damage from restricting the other action?
When it comes to someone following someone else around and systematically recording their behaviour, I find it hard to see any legitimate reason for doing it at all, other than genuine security/law enforcement considerations, in which case the usual caveats about due process and independent oversight must apply.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about merely being in the same places as someone else here. That could happen coincidentally, and clearly there is a severe negative consequence to trying to prevent one person moving freely just because another happened to go the same way, as well as it being completely unrealistic. I'm more concerned about the kind of active surveillance I mentioned, such as someone deliberately following you and recording their observations. Perhaps more realistically, I don't see any real difference in privacy terms between that scenario and the use of an automated surveillance system that allows a similar picture to be built later by data mining, whether that is from CCTV cameras and facial analysis around town, or a cell provider recording the location of your phone, or your ISP logging all your Internet activity, or Google/Facebook tracking your web browsing history via beacons, bugs and other dubious practices. If anything, the latter type of surveillance is worse, because at least you can see the guy following you around and peering over your shoulder or through your home window.
(In case anyone's wondering, the proposal-related example came to mind because a popular wedding venue near where I live recently burned down. Obviously if that was a deliberate act of arson then it was criminal anyway, and the loss of the buildings and revenue to the operators was severe, but the really heartbreaking thing reading those stories was the idea that what should have been the happiest day of some couples' lives was going to be ruined because there wouldn't be time to make other arrangements. When it comes to issues like privacy, it is often the personal, emotional consequences rather than some measurable financial or practical cost that are the most damaging, and I think it is regrettable that many legal systems seem to assign little if any weight to such harm.)
I think there's a reasonably clear difference between a forum dedicated to sharing sexual content defined by the subject's lack of consent and pretty much any other forum discussing potentially "offensive" material.
And taking someone's picture is far less offensive than murder, which a large part of the population believes includes abortion. Should Reddit ban abortion resources?
I think that both of our horses share the same sire.
Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible
for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in
ways that others may find objectionable or questionable.
A reasonable position. Let me grant you that. So here's an oblique question, one that does not argue with your perfectly understandable feelings about Freedom of Speech. What's with this man being fired from his job for exercising his Freedom of Speech during his own personal time?
Obviously there's freedom of people to boycott his employer if they don't like them employing him, and his employer has freedom to fire him if they don't want to deal with any such consequences, but all that being said...
Isn't there something deeply disturbing about people holding his employer responsible for his freedom to speak when it's wholly unconnected with their business, but not holding Reddit accountable for his freedom to speak, when it's their business to allow him to speak?
It seems to me that dissenters in the internet age will ultimately need a new, expanded "freedom of speech".
I hold quite a few controversial opinions, and in the last year or two I increasingly feel unsafe when expressing them on the internet. I do not fear governments, but I do fear witch hunts, and I fear automatic indexing/flagging of my speech by corporations. The recent doxxing scandals are not helping my peace of mind, and neither do the firings of people who get "exposed".
The original version of "freedom of speech" only said that the government should not persecute people for speech. That was certainly a great idea, when the government was the only entity that could realistically persecute you. Today we additionally have huge corporations and online hiveminds that can and will punish you for what you say. Other "human rights" that have sprung up in the last century acknowledge the new reality, e.g. people get protected from discrimination by private companies, not just by the government. Freedom of speech is lagging behind: a company cannot fire you for being black, but can fire you for your online conversations outside of work.
> Freedom of speech is lagging behind: a company cannot fire you for being black, but can fire you for saying "vile" things online under a pseudonym.
You changed that, likely because you realized that companies have always fired people for saying "vile" things publicly outside of work. Which is why pseudonyms have always existed.
Nothing's changed about freedom of speech. It's just that it's not so easy to hide the vile things you say online as it was, say, 10 years ago.
> You changed that, likely because you realized that companies have always fired people for saying "vile" things publicly outside of work. Which is why pseudonyms have always existed.
Sometimes the definition of vile has meant, "Argued for democracy", or, "Came out as gay", or, "said my religion was false", or, "suggested reforming the government".
Freedom of speech must in many ways mean the freedom to be a despicable scuzz, because freedom means divergence. And divergence frequently (to the horror of the mainstream) includes divergence from morality.
I am profoundly impressed with the need for anonymity, pseudonymity, and free speech for all of us, because otherwise we are simply limiting truth telling, the capability for reform and improving our collective lot.
The protection of freedom of speech is fundamental, and one that Reddit is standing by.
Ah, but the crux is how you define "freedom of speech". After all, in the USA (AFAIK), it's legal to publish the personal details of a reddit user (which is exactly what gawker did here). And yet that is not allowed on reddit. Reddit have already decided "some things are legal, but we won't allow them here".
So you have to look at what sort of speech they protect (sexual photos of children, sexual photos of people without their consent) and what sort of speech they don't protect ("outing" people who take photos of people without their consent).
So you have to look at what sort of speech they protect (sexual photos of children, sexual photos of people without their consent) and what sort of speech they don't protect ("outing" people who take photos of people without their consent).
So you have to look at what sort of speech they protect (sexual photos of children, sexual photos of people without their consent) and what sort of speech they don't protect ("outing" people who take photos of people without their consent).
"Outing" people leads directly to harassment. It's happened plenty of times in the past to make a fair assumption that it will happen in the future as well. This is the reality of the situation.
The reason you can't allow it at all is there is no good way to enforce that "outing" someone is appropriate or correct in any given instance or that the person being "outed" is the person attached to said Reddit identity at all.
So that rule protects direct harm from being done on users of Reddit.
Agreed. But so does 'trying to take photos of a women's secondary sexual organs without her knowledge or consent' (creepshots). So shouldn't that be banned as well?
We know. For god's sake, of course we know. What do you think, that we are blind? That every stalker has an expensive long-range camera and magical cammo where we can't see him? That you visit one Reddit, but we visit another Reddit? Or that we visit the same Reddit but just can't make the connection that pictures that happen to other girls can happen to us? Do you also think that it's ok to have sex with a girl who's drunk and passed out as long as you clean up afterwards?
Someone visits, recognizes the person, sends the photo to friends, and soon it is circulating in the peer group of the victim, and they are being made the butt of jokes and being harassed.
And that theoretical harassment will pale in comparison to what results when someone tied to something controversial is outed on reddit. It's not really comparable.
1. It's not theoretical that people get bullied and harassed for photos of them found online.
2. Violentacrez is being harassed for unnecessary acts he CHOOSE to do (violating people's privacy). His victims did NOT choose to be violeted by him. He forced himself upon him. You are right that it is not comparable.
3. Violentacrez is an adult. He can change his name and move away for a fresh start, or obtain a firearm for protection. His young victims often will not have neither of those options.
I'm talking about the rule against doxxing in general and why it is necessary. You are are picking a specific person and arguing that the rule shouldn't apply in this case. But that's not how rules like this work and you are taking a shallow view of the issue.
> The usage of that freedom of speech is a personal responsibility. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable.
The issue here is not that others are finding freedom of speech objectionable. Rather, Reddit as a privately run website has created a system in which people committing (legal) violations of people's privacy and safety can find an outlet to encourage and promote those behaviors and actions. Creating a space for people who are acting unethically while profiting from user traffic and advertising is hugely unethical and Reddit staff should rightly be called out on it.
Reddit as a whole promotes the viewpoints of the most privileged, which is why spaces like creepshots and jailbait found a home on Reddit in the first place. The flaws and pain that Reddit causes should be identified and proclaimed loudly such that other people can see just what Reddit is (hint: it's not a happy land of free speech and community).
"Creating a space for people who are acting unethically..."
But where is the line? Is /r/atheism a space for acting unethically because they know certain people will be deeply offended? /r/trees for advocating, even glorifying, an illegal activity?
Being an atheist or smoking weed is your own personal choice, stalking women so you can take suggestive pictures of them so that a community of fellow stalkers can oogle is a violation of another person's integrity. If you are suggesting that kind of behavior is equivalent to what is going on in r/atheism or r/trees, you might want to reexamine your views on stalking and sexism against women.
/r/trees and /r/athiesm might not evoke the same rancor in you as /r/CreepyShots but I am sure it does to somebody.
So, while I don't personally think they are equivalent on an offensiveness scale (I personally don't find /r/trees or /r/atheism offensive at all), somebody might. Should reddit censor those subreddits too? Maybe they should allow people to take a vote on controversial subreddits every week and remove the ones that don't make the cut? I don't know.
I am not defending CreepyShots. I am trying to start a conversation that might lead to some answers that I simply don't have. How do we defend open expression of ideas while censoring things? Is it possible? How offensive does something have to be to reach the censorship threshold? Is there a better test (e.g. legality (doh! /r/trees) or potential danger to others (doh! /r/athiesm)?) Can we let the mob decide on a periodic basis?
I know how I personally deal with it. I just don't subscribe to those subreddits.
I'm sure that the atheism and tress subreddits are offensive to somebody, but offensiveness of speech isn't the issue here. Also, I'm not advocating for community votes on banning subreddits, I'm merely pointing out that the site operators of Reddit are acting in a very unethical way.
> I am not defending CreepyShots. I am trying to start a conversation that might lead to some answers that I simply don't have. How do we defend open expression of ideas while censoring things?
Creepshots isn't just about ideas, it was a community which promoted and encouraged actual, physical acts that violated the privacy and safety of others. Again, this isn't just about speech, Reddit created a space that endorsed and promoted what those assholes in creepshots were doing all while the owners of Reddit profited and did nothing to keep the overall site safe for those targeted by users of creepshots. Again, they are not obligated to do so, but they should sure as hell be called out on it and feel the consequences of that.
> I know how I personally deal with it. I just don't subscribe to those subreddits.
I'm sure many of the women that ended up in pictures on creepshots didn't subscribe to it, but that doesn't help them when they have been violated or when those photos are used by some weirdo to target that person for more of the same treatment. Saying "just ignore it" is the kind of derailment that perpetuates sexism and racism, hence why you are de facto supporting creepshots.
> Creepshots isn't just about ideas, it was a community which promoted and encouraged actual, physical acts that violated the privacy and safety of others.
This is very solid argument and could make for a very good test.
"Could this subreddit reasonably pose a direct physical danger to someone without their consent?"
The 'without their consent' avoids arguments against home chemistry subreddits and things like that.
"Is this subreddit at least partially about the expression of some idea?"
If the answer is in the affirmative, the first test might have to be re visited. For example, a subreddit dedicated to the overthrow of a government might strictly fail the first test but the crux of the subreddit might be the exchange of ideas on that topic.
I can get behind the removal of subreddits based on these questions.
Why is it axiomatic that the protection of freedom of speech is always a good thing? It is in the American constitution, sure, but how many others have it? Is it really a good idea? Do we not also have to protect weaker members of our society from charlatans and manipulators?
> It is in the American constitution, sure, but how many others have it?
FYI, it's in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in most countries legislative corpus.
A better way to frame the question would be "what is the speech that is free", which is much more nuanced and interesting (e.g. is hate speech ok? religious blasphemy? stuff putting personal or national security at risk? Gossip? Holocaust denial? Lese majeste?).
But, in every case I can think of, freedom of speech is a right except for cases explicitly forbidden by some law.
So if reddit's defense is "we permit everything unless it's illegal" the case would be the same in most democratic countries and some non democratic ones, just shifting whhere the legal bar is set.
Why? Because there's basically no-one that can be trusted to decide which kinds of speech can be outlawed. In particular, I'm deeply familiar with the main group that's trying to get /r/CreepShots shut down and their views on how speech should be cracked down on, and they're pretty much identical to the ones that lead to the BoingBoing fiasco described here: http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/09/frankly-i-dont-care-how-du... In fact, their main subreddit at r/ShitRedditSays has a policy of doing this to anyone that points out when posts are outright lying through their teeth to get people riled up.
>Why is it axiomatic that the protection of freedom of speech is always a good thing?
Why are you making that assumption? Nothing was said about the goodness of it. The fact was simply stated that reddit considers it important, so they uphold it. You don't have to agree with reddit, nobody is saying everyone has to uphold free speech everywhere.
Exactly, as long ad it's legal, everything should go. Imagine HN banning posts about some topic because it rubs the majority's sensibility the wrong way. Without freedom of speech the Internet as we know it wouldn't exist. That's far more important than sheltering someone from what they may find offensive or objectionable.
That is not how Reddit works. There is some entirely legal things you could print in the USA that are against Reddit's rules. They do not allow publishing of personal information. They have already said "This is legal speech, but we don't want it here"
Maybe that's the point? After all, isn't the response to "someone is publishing material I disagree with" usually "well thanks to free speech rights, you can disagree with them publicly, and if you have a good point, people will agree with you"?
Do creepy, sexually harassing people deserve to be free of the consequences of their free speech? No. Free speech means the government can't ban it, it doesn't mean you are immune to the social consequences.
If free speech protects you when you post sexy photos of minors, then surely it should protect the free speech of someone who names you.
>..then surely it should protect the free speech of someone who names you.
There is another good reason for a sitewide ban on personal info, that being that if the internet is good at one thing, it's generating outrage. Outrage + Large amount of anonymous people = witch hunts. And I don't care if the guy's a serial rapist (which he isn't, not that you could tell with the acid-dipped keyboards in play) witch hunts are never a good thing. Accusations are thrown and innocent people's lives are impacted based on the flimsiest of evidence sometimes. Best to ban that outright and let people organize their raids elsewhere.
I also assume it would put them (the site owners) on shaky legal ground.
Reddit bans four things that I know of. Personal info, illegal pictures of minors, exploits targeting the users, and spam. There are very good justifications for every one of those.
I agree that witch hunts are bad, but so is the creepshot/jailbait stuff. Another thing the internet is good at is niche niche sexual interests, producing, distributing and promoting these sexual interests. This can be good (how many LGBT people have found out they aren't alone thanks to the internet), and bad (child porn). Should we not tackle the other things that the internet is bad as well?
I don't get what your concept of "be held responsible" means:
If the local KKK chapter -- a completely legal entity and one that enjoys the protection of free speech -- holds happy hour at my bar, I can either let them stay or kick them out. Let's say I let them stay, as long as they pay for their beers and not cause any ruckus. Understandably, the non-KKK part of my clientele may feel uncomfortable.
If the rest of the community decides to boycott my bar, are you saying that they, not I, am at a fault in regards to principles of freedom? The financial consequences of a boycott that my bar incurred is what I would consider, "being held responsible."
The protection of freedom of speech is fundamental, and one that Reddit is standing by.
The usage of that freedom of speech is a personal responsibility. Reddit nor any other organization can be held responsible for the consequences of using that freedom of speech in ways that others may find objectionable or questionable.
Reddit the organization is entirely in the right here. To say otherwise would be to misplace responsibility and fundamentally change the idea of free speech that the US—and surely the internet—has enjoyed for many years.
The author of the article, however, sure thinks he's got some moral high groung alright. I implore him to get off his high horse.