

Ruling in Twitter harassment trial could have enormous fallout for free speech - vonklaus
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-ruling-in-twitter-harassment-trial-could-have-enormous-fallout-for-free-speech

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tzs
TL;DR:

1\. Some fuckwad in Canada released a game where you punched an image of a
feminist blogger.

2\. Two feminists (who were not the one in the game) organized an internet
shaming campaign against him.

3\. George Elliot, who had a cordial online relationship with the two
feminists from #2, tweeted in opposition to internet shaming, which he
considered as vicious as the face punch game.

4\. The two feminists blocked Elliot on Twitter, told him to stop mentioning
them, and to to stop commenting on heated political issues.

5\. They also organized a massive twitter shaming campaign against Elliot,
including having someone pose as a 13 year old and accuse him of being a
pedophile.

6\. Elliot is now on trial for criminal harassment. There are no allegations
that he threatened them or sexually harassed them, but they claimed they had
feelings of fear, and that is apparently all this is required for "criminal
harassment" in Canada!?

Edit: This seems astonishing, but a bit of Googling on the newspaper (National
Post) and the reporter (Christie Blatchford) didn't turn up anything--they
appear to be legitimate mainstream press.

Edit 2: Coverage in the Toronto Star:
[http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/01/09/gregory_alan_el...](http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/01/09/gregory_alan_elliott_frustrations_boil_over_in_twitter_harassment_trial.html)

Looks like Elliot did insult them, in that he made a #FascistFeminists tag in
relation to them, and in response to someone in the shaming campaign against
him calling him a "perv and a sad little man" told that person they were wrong
and they should go "listen to (Guthrie) play her s--- music in crappy bars
with your loser faux-feminist friends".

~~~
vonklaus
I found Blatchford's wikipedia and did a bit more research because at first I
thought it could be someone from 4chan trolling. One of the accusers is a
gender justice consultant who has given a tedx talk in Toronto. I found more
on infowars and the Toronto standard. It looks like the case originated in
2012ish but is close to being ruled on now.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Blatchford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Blatchford)

------
vonklaus
I don't want this thread to devolve into a flamewar about tropes and internet
memes, but this is pretty serious so I wanted to post it. If a conviction is
declared it would be a massively dangerous precedent.

