How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life (article)
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I wouldn't mind, honestly.
Then we should just wrap up and close the forum, because it's all about pointing out the stupidity.
Philosophers. Lawyers. Everyone who cares about the distinction between the deed and the results.
"Criminal negligence" is still a thing in a lawyer world. As for philosophers, I haven't been in touch with any for a while.
Except the Twitter people wanted this outcome, and cheered happily when it happened.
So? I want an unicorn. It matters about as much.
If I see, I don't know, a Microsoft CEO saying something stupid in a public channel, and comment "this idiot shouldn't be working there anymore", am I an evil person?
She said stupid shit in public. I see no problem with her, as a director of communications and someone responsible for PR, being fired just over that, even scratching the angry mob.
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How do you feel about her current campaign to get hired by twitter in a User Safety or Anti-Harassment role?
In terms of online harassment, it's probably safe to say she has a fair amount of experience on both the business* end and the receiving end. That said, what would someone in that role actually do?
obligatory xkcd
Ah, the good ol' "showing the door," the SJW weapon of choice when justifying their harassment of people who don't share their worldview. Thanks, Randall, for encouraging them.
Instead of showing someone the door, they could perhaps respect the other person's opinion, agree to disagree, ignore it and move on with their lives? I seem to remember someone, somewhere talking about a word that begins with "T" or something. I think it was... "tolerance?"
I don't know what to call "free speech" where the messenger is still subject to such powerful chilling effects, but to me, that ain't free speech.
*See what I did there?
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Don't forget the tolerant racists.
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'Course they are. But pray tell, what kind of "justice" did they actually enact other than screaming a lot? You're saying it as if the "mob" fired her from the job, or actually did anything at all, when all they did was give the stupid joke lots of attention, because well, that's how a gossip works, on the Internet or otherwise.
They screamed enough to make the company look bad. The company has to please the mob or their finances will be impacted (probably not that much, but that's what drives marketing types anyways). It's not that hard to connect the dots, even for you.
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They screamed enough to make the company look bad.
She made the company look bad. People just reacted as you'd expect them to react to a stupid-ass statement.
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She made the company look bad.
She wasn't a highly-ranked official (rather a middle-tier). She wasn't (strictly) their PR spokesperson. She made the company look bad only for people who don't distinguish between business and private life. If she was McDonald's fries-frier, all the justification to fire her would still apply.
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Do you stand behind everything you have ever said in your life? Even during that teen phase when you were into emo poetry and Ayn Rand? To the point where you wouldn't mind that being the first thing someone finds when they google your name?
The older I get, the happier I am that the internet wasn't even a thing until I was at least 18, and didn't become fully mainstream until I was well into my 20's...
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What surprises me it that the employers fire these people every time. They even have a few days to think about it, and they still fire them.
I think the calculation here is that if they fire the person, then the controversy goes away. After all, they can just hire someone else to do the actual work that person was doing.
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I think the calculation here is that if they fire the person, then the controversy goes away. After all, they can just hire someone else to do the actual work that person was doing.
Yes... and that's pathetic. It costs real money to hire and train a replacement and all they have to do is say something like "We treat employees like family stand behind them even when they make a few errors in judgment. We expect you would do the same under similar circumstances." The likelihood of any lasting consequence is practically zero.
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The older I get, the happier I am that the internet wasn't even a thing until I was at least 18, and didn't become fully mainstream until I was well into my 20's...
So ... you're happy that you're old?
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So ... you're happy that you're old?
I'm happy that I didn't have to deal with bullshit like facebook at the same time as bullshit like being a teenager.
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Someone should study that. My hypothesis is that the calculation is incorrect. Taking strong actions like firing a person adds fuel to the controversy, and opens the company up to backlash. The best course of action is no reaction.
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experienced harassment
I'll admit to being mostly ignorant of her. But my memory tells me that her idea of at leat some harassment she's experienced was bullshit. I'm not nearly motivated enough to care or look up and refresh my memory.
I'd rather rant about how she's a terrible person who should starve and be forced to listen to dumb nerd jokes about forking repos.
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Are you proposing we should all just shut the fuck up when someone says something stupid?
Was the stupidity worth someone losing a job over? I haven't RTFA, but I think this was an old thing, and I think I recall it when it happened. I think that for a PR type person on her account, this could easily be fireable if I'm her boss.
What's the answer here? Should we not say stupid stuff is stupid if there will be consequences? I'm sure there are cases on both sides.
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Someone should study that. My hypothesis is that the calculation is incorrect. Taking strong actions like firing a person adds fuel to the controversy, and opens the company up to backlash.
Possibly. In this case, however, she was showing some incompetence at her actual job, however, which is communicating with the public, or at least others. Imagine that she said something stupid (but not something that the general public would care about) that cost the company reputation, business, etc.
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Ok, there are several cases that we might be talking about here. The one where a person was tweeting to 170 followers and got fired within the first 11 hours, before the company could even reach her, doesn't seem justified. The one I was thinking about when I wrote the post you were responding to was the guy who got fired for making a stupid joke at a conference. Given that he's still anonymous, that seems unjustified1.
The third one I find it hard to blame the company for. Though I don't know the details of someone else's employment, if a ‘developer evangelist’ is livetweeting a conference to 10k (?) followers, I would generally assume that that's part of their job. But more importantly: the company, a web service, got ddosed to where they could no longer do business. I feel that the most significant portion of the blame for her firing should lay on the terrorists who made it necessary. The extent to which her opponents mobilized against her went above and beyond any social media smear campaign.
Edit:
1 Although the company was identified at some stage; I'm not sure when. Here is their statement:PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways.
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