Law Student Web Forum: Free Speech Gone too Far? 264
The Xoxo Reader writes "Today's Washington Post carries a front-page article on the internet message board AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), which proclaims itself the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world." The message board has recently come under fire for emphasizing a free speech policy that allows its users to discuss, criticize, and attack other law students and lawyers by name. Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?"
When Free Speech goes to far (Score:5, Insightful)
whatever (Score:1, Insightful)
flamewar (Score:4, Insightful)
can anyone say 'flamewar' ?
Free speech gone too far? (Score:3, Insightful)
A) You're talking about an forum (electronic or otherwise) designed to promote freedom of expression, and holding that as one of your primary ideals,
and
B) You ask whether this is freedom of speech gone too far,
The answer is always, "no". Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Article = dumb. I RTFAs, but not in this case.
Re:Obvious metaphor? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as "limits on free speech" or "Free speech going too far". It either is free speech or it is not.
If it is libel that's a different thing, there are laws that regulate that.
A: We are a free country, free speech
B: Lawyers are assholes
A: You are stepping bounds on your freedom of speech, offensive comments are not included in it
B:
An interesting contrast (Score:5, Insightful)
Are Law Firms Stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
The inference in the article is that the protagonist got minimal call-backs and no offers as a result of what was said in postings (possibly anonymous) about her on the AutoAdmit law school admissions discussion board.
Goggling an applicant and finding pictures of them on their myspace site, smoking blunts and self-copulating is one thing.
If law firms reject otherwise stellar applicants on the basis of anonymous postings on a cheesy discussion forum, then they are stupid beyond words. Can you hear it?: "Oh she's top of her class at UPenn, just *blew* the doors off the interview, goddamn articulate, but I heard an anonymous rumour she cheated on her LSAT".
She best start looking for other employers, 'cause you don't want to work for people that have their heads so far up their ass that they'll pass up on the next Clarence Darrow because of what some anonymous shill said on the fscking Internet.
The point has been missed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Really, it just combines a few popular online subjects - law career discussion and outlandish bigotry/racism/general abuse. Go look at any extremist forum, for example. You'll see hundreds of thousands of posts, each one serving up Google adverts.
And the site owners aren't championing free speech in fear of what all those law students could do if they felt their rights were collectively infringed - they are worried about traffic leaving the site. Simple as that. Applying strict moderation isn't going to bring out Gary Bupkis from Moronica State University all aflame in anger about his constitutional right to call Sheila Labiastein from Jeronimo College a filthy cock-sucking kykecunt who couldn't get into a university as prestigious as his which he pretends is Harvard or something...he's going to toddle off to some other online forum and passively boost ad revenues there.
Don't attribute to nobility what is clearly just commercial greed.
Too far (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An interesting contrast (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously this isn't one of those cases. These law students are idiots, and law firms that make hiring decisions based on their flamefests aren't any better.
[shrug] I'm one of the few people on
If I didn't make it clear above, I am in no way comparing these idiot law students to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Just saying that the same conditions which allow anonymous communication of genuine importance will inevitably be exploited by morons; it's a price we should be willing to pay.
Re:When Free Speech goes to far (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I'd lose the anonymity of the writer aspect of it, and leave it alone. Free speech is one thing, but if you are going to write it, you should be held accountable for what you say (ummm... Write).
But too address the original commentary, free speech in and of itself doesn't go too far, but there are always people who will abuse a system, the more free the system, the more likely the abuse, it's just human nature, there is always someone out there with ethics and/or morals that don't meet the basic set of expectations that idealists seem to have.
Re:1997 called... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obvious metaphor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Providing and guaranteeing it is one thing. It being something good and beneficial for society is something else. The latter requires a mature and well informed public. Otherwise, it becomes a brawl where whoever has the loudest voice wins.
Re:When Free Speech goes to far (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does society need to be protected from people making truthful statements? (Aside from issues of trade secrets and national security - which I doubt apply here).
Re:bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
does you definition of "freedom of speech" include the freedom to break laws/oaths too? like a doctor who's breaking his oath telling everyone of his funny patient stories, because he feels he can go as far as he wants with his freedom of speech? if it would harm another one's freedom you are not entitled to use your's. there's always compromise, even if some americans seem to be completely blinded by their constitution. remember, after all it's just a piece of paper with some words on it written by some other human, who lived ages ago (like the bible). just because it says so, you're not allowed to go rampage on others. that 's what common sense, ethics and morale is all about. think before you speak.
Re:Obvious metaphor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Trouble is, true free speech also requires intelligent listening.
If we could rely on people not to make important decisions without looking critically at the evidence, laws on defamation would not be necessary.
If your employer fires you because a.n. blogger accuses you of kitten huffing, then it is your employer who should be held accountable - not the teenage troll who doesn't know any better.
"Free speech NEVER goes too far!" (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=51069
Names, pictures, personal information, and enough sexist and racist comments to make my head hurt. Now tell me you'd be happy if that thread was the first thing that came up on Google for your name.
Free speech is one thing. To my untrained eyes, that looks like sexual harassment, and I'm sure there's some slander in there to be found. Even worse, from some of the comments I got the impression this type of thread is a popular "sport" on that forum...
The definition of trolling (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm only going to dash off a quick response here because if I take the time to explore the topic fully I won't get any work done today. To be fair to the spirit of your inquiry, I'm not going to look at Wikipedia before I write this.
My working definition of trolling is "deliberate ignorance." To me, a troll isn't really a troll unless they (apparently) deliberately ignore obvious facts in evidence that contradict them. Admittedly, even this is a fluid definition. In an anti-gun-rights forum, saying "Guns kill people" isn't trolling because everyone agrees. In a pro-gun-rights forum, the same statement (out of any clarifying context) is a troll because, obviously, no gun can pull its own trigger.
For another example that moves beyond the realm of religion, I once had a discussion online about appropriate speed limits on the highway. I wanted to be open and genuinely communicative, so I tried to define terms and find common ground. I made a simple statement that two objects could never collide if they traveled the same speed and stayed on parallel courses and that traffic accidents could only happen if one of those two conditions was not met. This is so simple that it should be no more controversial than the notion that gravity makes things fall down. Yet the person I was talking to staunchly refused to agree to even this most basic statement and continued to wail emotionally about the human cost of traffic accidents. At that point, because he was unwilling to stipulate to obvious facts that would give us a common ground from which to proceed with discussion, I could only brand him a troll and abandon the conversation.
Trolls don't listen. They put their fingers in their ears and hum when presented with facts, as opposed to logically arguing their points by showing how my interpretation of those facts is flawed. That's deliberate ignorance and the hallmark of a troll.
Yeah, there's more to it, especially the part about how you're not really trolling unless you're trying to elicit a response. But I gotta go to work, now. Thanks for the good question.