Should free speech be less free?

QUIZ What was Justine Saccos’s tweet? Describe Lindsay Stone’s photo. What is the ACLU? Why did a “dongle” get someone fired? What finally got Milo fired?

Free Speech is actually Conditional FIRE!

Miller v. California ( Miller Test) Acts prohibited by law Depicts acts in a patently offensive manner appealing to prurient interests and judged by a reasonable person using community standards No serious literary, artistic, social, political or scientific value

Is the internet a place/space or a medium? Medium (TV) can be regulated – FCC Harmful Sexual Hateful Place/Space Open Access that ISP/Users Control Legally ? Shamefully?

You A school is not a constitutional dead zone. How can we expect today’s students to grow up to be tomorrow’s civic leaders if we do not respect these fundamental national values in our schools? (ACLU) Children’s Internet Protection Act ( Filters on all federally funded school computers)

Cyber Bullying (Megan Meier) "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you." 

Milo Gamergate “Privilege Grant” #FEMINISMISCANCER Leslie Jones Twitter Ban “Dangerous Faggot Tour” Protests Consensual 13 year olds "I will never stop making jokes about taboo subjects," he warned. (qtd in Cummings)

Hate Groups https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map

Pillory and Whippings abolished (Federally) in 1839

Does Shame Work?

Justine Sacco “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

Lindsey Stone

Adria Richards “Not cool. Jokes about . . . ‘big’ dongles right behind me.” Someone tweeted Richards’s home address along with a photograph of a beheaded woman with duct tape over her mouth. Fearing for her life, she left her home, sleeping on friends’ couches for the remainder of the year.

Why? Still, in those early days, the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and effective. It felt as if hierarchies were being dismantled, as if justice were being democratized. As time passed, though, I watched these shame campaigns multiply, to the point that they targeted not just powerful institutions and public figures but really anyone perceived to have done something offensive. I also began to marvel at the disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment. It almost felt as if shamings were now happening for their own sake, as if they were following a script. (Ronson)

Why? More likely it was her apparently gleeful flaunting of her privilege that angered people. But after thinking about her tweet for a few seconds more, I began to suspect that it wasn’t racist but a reflexive critique of white privilege — on our tendency to naïvely imagine ourselves immune from life’s horrors. (Ronson)

Why? Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval, and that is what led to her undoing. (Ronson)

Reputation.com The crux of the work is to trick search engines into downgrading bad results by piling good news on top of it. Reputation managers write positive articles and promote them, create false reviews, edit biased Wikipedia articles, and add comments and links on blogs and other sites. Politicians, lawyers, and tech giants all do it.  (Barrie)

Questions Is internet shame a good thing? What community standards apply online? How do we stop cyberbullying? Is there anything you can’t or shouldn’t joke about?