The (New) Court of Public Opinion

[panamaican]

And its becoming increasingly difficult to be responsible for one's own privacy.

Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't judge Hogan because that is fine but even here you are agreeing that what happened to him was wrong. That's what I've been saying, its wrong and this sort of thing is only going to become more common as cameras get smaller and easier to conceal and information harder to conceal and its troubling

I disagree with this. It's no more difficult now that it ever was. You give up privacy when you enter someone else's space of control. When you leave your home, you give up privacy. Hogan had no expectation of privacy in someone else's home.

This is part of where I think people have adopted an unrealistic expectation of privacy. Once you engage people, privacy goes out of the window. This is because those people are not obligated to protect your privacy. It's all fair game...and always has been.

I think the divergence was a good thing. Its fine to judge others but having a certain expectation of privacy allows people to be more honest with those close to them instead of having their every action, intimate or not, open to public policing.

As above, there's no privacy expectation once you, or your communication, leaves your house. I've yet to see someone judged for opinions they kept in their home and to themselves. Once you communicate something - it ceases to be private.

No I don't see anything wrong with that, we already use discretion with how much of ourselves we reveal to people and how we act with certain people. You will act one way with your spouse and another with your client. Now, the way you act with your spouse or best friend in your most intimate moments can be known to your clients and it might be taken out of context.

Yes, but if my spouse tells my client something I've shared with her, I accepted that risk by sharing it with her in the first place. It's actually a real possibility because I'm friends with many of my clients. So, I never say anything about my clients to my wife that she might inadvertently repeat. And while we might reveal different aspects of ourselves to different people, if you hold opinions that will offend some of the people you know then you know that if they learn those opinions, they will judge you negatively. You have to accept that. If you don't like red haired people but you keep hanging out with them then you're fine with what happens if they find out that you don't really like them.

Sure we don't always get to put our best version forward but now our worst versions can be immortalized and open to judgement indefinitely regardless of how harmless that worst version is.

If the worst version is harmless then there's no harm done, is there? If people want to reap the benefits of their best version then they have to accept the consequences of their worst version. What is the argument that we can immortalize our best selves but no one should judge our worst?

Sure they can respond but I think there's a line that gets crossed. I'm the first person to say that a certain level of internet harassment isn't a big deal. Calling someone a **** on twitter is not a big deal but revealing their personal information or intimate moments is and that is a troubling trend.

Again, not to be cavalier, then avoid these circumstances. Don't post on forums. Don't have social media pages. Don't say dumb things in other people's houses. Simply be more responsible with how you conduct yourself.

People want carte blanche to act up in the public space (and, yes, your neighbor's house is a public space as far as you're concerned. So is a telephone conversation - there is no legal expectation of privacy. That conversation can be repeated as often as the other person chooses and there's no legal recourse, only the recording is illegal, not the repetition if done by word of mouth.) but then want to assert privacy when people disagree with what they've put out there.

 

[Sabin]

You mean this? http://nypost.com/2014/12/30/new-evidence-sony-hack-was-inside-job-cyber-experts/





Maybe it's just me, but my brain thinks all sorts of shit that I don't necessarily advocate or stand behind. Sometimes I'm weighing options. Sometimes it's what I'd perceive others to say or society to extol or condemn. Maybe even at times wrestling with the way I was raised. I can't always control what's going to pop in there. You ever get a song stuck in your head that you didn't really like?

Ah, had read quite a few articles stating it was North Korea, looks like that is the FBI's stance, while private experts doubt that it was. In that it becomes just censorship, which is not something I care about too much in this case. From a foreign government, though, yeah that would be a big deal, especially a regime as evil as that one.

 

[Sabin]

As I said previously, your issue is that the court of public opinion reached a conclusion that you didn't like.

That they didn't take seriously the issues that you took seriously and they took seriously the issues you don't.

But rather than realize that it means that you're out of sync with modern society, you've decided that a human dynamic as old as mankind itself is now, suddenly, flawed?

Technology has changed the dynamic, though. So from gossip and word of mouth, to photography, to telephones, to video and much more. For one thing people seemingly have a higher capacity for forgiveness in the lack of physical evidence - email, tape recordings, and king of all the video. Ray Rice was suspended for only 2 games for punching out his girlfriend... until video surfaced, then indefinitely. *The AP claims NFL received elevator video in April, then suspended initially for only 2 games in July.

So in this case you have a good instance of the technology, but point being the power of the video recording. From just words in memory and a limited capacity to visualize, to actually seeing the incident as though it just happened, imprinting images in your mind and carrying with that a seemingly infinite statute of limitations. In the Hogan case, the media tried him with it, the 8 year old private video. If there's no video and just word of mouth, nothing happens.

I think I have to add a disclaimer at this point, I believe what he said was really bad and it looks like he has racism ingrained in and I hope I don't sound like I'm defending him, just the concept that I think actions are more important and I see degrees in everything. As a celeb, I think he should have gotten suspended or fired and that's all. This feels like a bit much for the WWE to erase him to appease the mob...

With 2/3 of US adults having smartphones (all with cameras) and probably carrying them around all the time, there's also a real risk of a petty, spiteful, tattletell culture developing. There is a lot that is technically wrong and most people don't just make mistakes they make lots of them and of all types of magnitudes. 80 years is a long time, if we include spoken words as bad, and this creeps down from celebrities to non-public figures, then everyone's a potential target. With the exception of heresy, I'm pretty sure the old court was more interested in actions than words.