Matt Walters of Houston, Texas looks so normal and ordinary.
And then you read the abusive message he sent to a black woman he didn’t know on Facebook, in which he goes on and on with a violent fantasy in which he kidnaps her and tortures her gruesomely for months before killing her, and you realize that he’s simply a bad person. A horrible human being. A disgrace walking about in nicely groomed skin.
This is where free speech as a principle starts conflicting with the reality of the human condition. He is allowed to ramble to strangers about hanging them upside down in the dark and cut them and burn them, but at some point someone ought to take them aside and get them some help, and maybe explain to them that that behavior is inappropriate and vile, and that they should stop doing it. And while it may be nice for him to get off on telling people about the graphic abuse and mutilation and murder stories playing out in his head, it’s distressing to others and raises legitimate concerns about whether he is a threat to their safety.
He was quite reasonably reported to the police. They “brushed it off”. His target reported him to Facebook. They informed her that it violated no “community standards” (what community is that? The community of psychopathic assholes?). And then, when she shared his nightmare stories with others, Facebook blocked her for a week.
I guess all I can do is use my power of free speech to spread the word that Matt Walters is a nasty piece of work. Oh, and that his brother Buddy Walters is a barely literate dumbass.
I normally think PZ gives free speech short shrift, but this guy has no right and Facebook has no duty to allow him to send messages on facebook. Moreover, threatening to attacks someone with the intent to cause them fear is a unprotected true threat and illegal under Tex. Pen. Code 22.07.
I’m not sure how the law handles threats when they’re phrased in the terms of “I’m just fantasizing.” Reasonably, there has to be some point where it’s crossing the line, no matter what disclaimers you put in, e.g. when you’re sending the message specifically to the person you’re “fantasizing” about. For any practical purpose, that’s a threat and anyone on the receiving end would perceive it as such.
Well, we obviously should not be telling a man “don’t do that.” That would, y’know, cause the downfall of civilization and the extinction of humanity. And she just needs to understand that this was a compliment. And she needs to just toughen up and get a thicker skin. And stop wearing the bacon jacket in bear country.
(WARNING: May contain elements of snark.)
Yeah, could also just arrest him. Free speech isn’t the only right people have (nor even the most important one), and rights can conflict.
Let’s just hope his employer doesn’t fire him.
That would be the ultimate human rights violation and would infringe upon the white man’s inalienable right to be employed while being a dudebro shitbag.
So sending violent threats to someone on Facebook doesn’t violate their ‘community standards’, but reposting them for the world to see does violate their standards. Sadly, having already dealt with their reporting system, this doesn’t surprise me one bit.
zenlike: The core value of Facebook’s community standards is “no backsies”.
Ted Bundy looked normal, was well dressed, had a disarming smile. And he liked to fantasize about dark things. Then, one day, he stopped fantasizing.
I was unaware that Facebook actually had standards. You learn something new every day.
Is there any word as to why this asshole picked this particular lady? Some organization we can fund to keep people like him annoyed? Or did he really just pick a random person?
Apparently, she’s a Black Lives Matter activist.
Reason enough to threaten her with a prolonged painful death, yes?
As long as we are still figuring out this whole shaming thing in groups of people larger than can include a psychological in-group I’m going to see responses to asshats like this as part of how we have to work on fixing it. The public responding to vicious racist harassment IS FREE SPEECH. If the government starts interfering with speech then there is something to talk about.
Is it perfect? Fuck no. But without a visible, public response that works for role-modeling purposes we get more chances of things sliding towards pogroms and more.
Think about it this way, at it’s most basic level we are saying we don’t like someone doing something that is effecting another person, where they are saying they don’t like something that is not effecting them. Matt Walters is the one closest to committing free speech violations here because of how their speech is implicitly creating an oppressive atmosphere around the speech of another. We are responding to them in a kind of inverse of the golden-rule that is useful in socially managing each others behavior “do unto others as they give you license to to unto them”. Crying free speech here is a bullying tactic.
To those of you who talk of limiting speech, think very carefully about what you are asking. Who do you think will be silenced when speech is controlled by the government? The racist misogynist white man or the black woman struggling for justice. PZ might not even have this platform from which to strike back if speech was not protected.
Facebook definitely has community standards: you can be a white douchebro, but don’t report on that and don’t show any hint of breast unless it’s sexualized.
LykeX
In order for speech to be unprotected due to the the true threat exception, a jury has to find that 1) a reasonable person would understand the comments to be a threat; and 2) the speaker knew that the person he was speaking to would take it as a threat. (The supreme court has not ruled on whether recklessness or negligence by the speaker could support a conviction.) See Elonis v. United States.
…and (I would add) that the police involved appear to be utterly useless morons, and that Facebook appears to be run by clueless assholes.
@raucous indignation, #12:
I don’t see anyone here advocating that the government step in and control free speech. Freedom of speech does not mean that every human being is entitled to use every single possible avenue to say whatever they want to whom ever they want. I think that human decency would suggest that the folks who provide and manage a social media site (which already has a ton of restrictions regarding its use, implemented voluntarily by those same folks) have a responsibility to all of the users of that site, to ensure that the product / service is not used as a vehicle to harass or intimidate those users. Government does not come into it. For example, MacDonalds and Burger King and others decide that staff members and customers don’t get to put up KKK posters in their restaurants – that’s their prerogative in the spaces that they provide customers to use. I would expect the same with Facebook, since creating an unsafe space for customers is a bit counterproductive. Likewise, I get to decide that no one gets to use my own blog or email account or front yard to spout hate speech. That doesn’t limit anyone’s freedom of speech. It just limits their ability to be an asshole on my lawn.
Raucous Indignation, #12:
Should we be satisfied that our government’s actions are probably going to be racist? Or are you merely afraid of what might be?
If our government actually works for justice in our society, like it ought to be doing since that’s what we hired these people to do, then how is there supposed to be a conflict between protecting a person struggling for justice and restricting the speech of oppressive fuckers like Walters? What precisely is supposed to be the use of a restriction on government, if you’re allowing it (or expecting it) to be an oppressive force in our society anyway by not holding it to a coherent set of standards?
In what sense is she not already being silenced by Walters’ threats, while the police do nothing about it? Is it somehow okay that a person can’t speak freely (without losing their life/safety), if a powerful corporation like Facebook is responsible, or if it’s because the police are failing to do their jobs? “Not doing something” is a decision too, so isn’t the government also responsible for those kinds of choices?
Nobody’s saying it shouldn’t be protected, but that there are plenty of ways in which it should be restricted, that there are many kinds of acceptable consequences (including legal actions) for speech that is harmful or threatening to society and the people in it. Like I already said, it doesn’t follow that, because the government could misuse its power, therefore every use of the power it’s given is misuse. If PZ were issuing death threats, then I’d expect legal consequences and have no trouble whatsoever with them. But there is no just reason for restricting his speech, when he isn’t doing anything like issuing death threats.
The reason we want free speech is because that would secure some degree of justice for us, which is the job we give our government employees to do. It’s not an easy job and doesn’t just happen on its own by doing nothing, which is why we needed to create a government.
The reason for it isn’t about somehow ensuring that the government can’t do stuff, because it’s big and bad and opposed to our interests, because it isn’t our responsibility (since I guess we’re not imagining anything like a democracy anymore) for creating the government and its laws to agree with our interests, or because with the least amount of government we’d actually be “free” in some meaningful sense of the word. This more libertarian attempt at justifying free speech is fairly popular (at least in the US, maybe not as much in other places) and has a long history stretching back deep into the Enlightenment, but it simply doesn’t make any sense and isn’t consistent with the facts. So, maybe you need to think more carefully about it.
@#12, Raucous Indignation
My, my, what a surprise. Someone trying to defend free speech when some white male asshole is threatening a black woman.
Listen up, my dear white male friend — because it’s pretty clear you are white and male — free speech is already not absolute. It never has been; you famously can’t “shout fire in a crowded theater” (which was a much scarier example back before electric lighting, when thousands of people died in theater fires every decade), but there are many many more limitations than that. As comment #1 says, you can go to jail for making credible threats of violence, and rightly so.
mudpuddles:
and
What do you mean by saying they’re “utterly useless morons,” if you don’t want them to do anything? What not utterly moronic use were they supposed to have here? I mean, giving your other reasoning, I can think of one thing…. Were Houston police supposed to call Facebook and kindly remind them that they’re within their rights to improve their website’s community standards? That’s not the police’s job, of course, but I guess it is something they could’ve done.
I’m trying to imagine the reaction of the Houston police force if a POC, a Muslim, or a BLM activist made similar threats against a white, Christian family member of a police officer… or if the same scenario happened to a white Facebook techbro’s family member. Funny, but I suspect there wouldn’t be a brushoff. There would be an investigation. The police would come down hard on the person doing the harassing and Facebook would ban the person with little thought on the matter.
Those in power respond with force and immediacy when a member of a hated group of people threatens a part of their group—with few exceptions. Maintaining freedom of speech isn’t an issue. Instituting fair moderation rules isn’t an issue. Social rank means everything. The rules are forged and interpreted in favor of those who make and enforce the rules.
Raucous Indignation, #12
Facebook closing his account is not limiting free speech. The police looking into the obvious racist threats is not limiting free speech.
Yes, because it’s a near 90 degree slope slathered with grease and oil and lubricant.
We can’t possibly expect society to be able to discern between Walters’ blatantly obvious racial threats and PZ’s posts about inclusivity in STEM. There’s just no hope of that. It has to be all or nothing!
timberwraith, #19
Bingo.
Now if Matt Walters had posted photos of breastfeeding, Facebook would have leapt into heroic action and banned him immediately.
If it wasn’t the best way I have to keep in touch with far flung friends and family as a group, I would have left that shit site ages ago.
Facebook community standards are bullshit.
They let people create groups lionizing Elliot Roger.
They let groups which clearly and obviously advocate violence against minorities continue to exist.
but if you openly complain about it, or post breastfeeding pictures, or anything that upsets the white hegemony of priviledge or, even WORSE, if you don’t have a 100% true full name, you get banned.
Hmmm, so I have had to block multiple MRA’s on my Facebook account. Most are also members of the FB group MGTOW. I have also blocked a few men who consider themselves fair and rational and totes not bigots, when they immediately resorted to vicious sexist attacks rather than engaging my pointed comments,
I have reported full female naked backside pictures, and they have been removed, but pages and pages of horrific sexist abuse from strange men? Oh yeah, FB doesn’t see anything wrong with that.
I am defending free speech. I do not have an answer to online threats or harassment. I wish I did. That the white male asshole in this case is reprehensible is without question. And damnable Facebook is a private institution; they are permitted to control speech on their damnable platform as they see fit. That’s not what I was getting at. The point I was trying to make is this: if limits were placed on speech, it would be the vulnerable and disenfranchised who disproportionally would be effected. Women. Minorities. Gay. Trans. Atheists. The poor. I am certain our governments’ actions would be racist, classist, misogynist et al. with regards to limiting speech. Our governments’ actions already are in many other areas. Government limits on speech would be used to prop up the status quo; the push for progress would grind to a halt. That was my point.
I agree with your strawman argument.
If he had made similar comments to Rick Perry, or Trump the police would not have been so flippant.
@24 That’s the thing about MGTOW, they never shut up and go their own way. They’re like that kid that keeps angrily shouting that he’s going home, and refuses to leave your yard.
Raucous Indignation
Do you really think that there are currently no limits to free speech?
Yet another fine reason I don’t have facebook.
@29 as if I need more reasons
Face book has one product and one product only. everything they do is in service to that product with the goal of maximizing profits. That product is the “eyeballs” of the users. They get money by selling the user traffic and they get money from selling the user data they generate. They are clearly making a decision that they are getting more money by not restricting harassing speech, then they get by limiting it. Probably has something to do with the amount of traffic such posting generates compared to what social activist posting alone generates.
face book likes to portray it self as liberal and modern and facilitating the free and easy exchange of ideas helping to make a better world by providing a much needed and wanted service.
so does a pimp.
uncle frogy
@Chigau
Of course there are limits to free speech. None of our constitutional rights are absolute. I never said they were. My core point was that increasing limits on speech would hurt the vulnerable more than the establishment.
Hi consciousness razor (#18).
You’re kind of conflating two separate issues in my post but I see I wasn’t clear. Maybe its a European thing and my choice of words is a bit confusing, but I meant the police as separate from the government. I know there’s a semantic point there, but anyway in the context of my response to Raucous indignation’s comment, I meant that the police have a role in responding to complaints of criminal activity, and ‘The Government’ comprises the lawmakers who write legislation. The law enforcers should have acted here, the lawmakers need not start creating new controls.
The police received a report from the person who was harassed, and brushed off their complaint apparently without investigating. Considering that their primary functions are to implement and uphold laws and protect members of the public, and since it is quite possible that Walters’ intimidation crossed the boundaries of protected free speech into unlawful threats, I reckon the police involved are dumbasses.
My other point was that no one here had suggested that the government should control free speech. Facebook can choose to set and uphold high standards of acceptable uses of its site in order to create a safe space for all of its users (but instead it has chosen to set – and often not uphold – some pretty weak standards), and this would not affect anyone’s First Amendment rights not would it involve the government controlling free speech.
How exactly does imposing limits on obviously harassing and intimidating speech impose problems with vulnerable, especially compared to those with privilege who would intimidate them into silence? That is the point of the others here.
@mudpuddles
I don’t see how the police are separate from the government. They are the tool the government uses to exert force of the populace. Their failure to act on threats against a black woman is an official government response.
raucous indignation
The OP is about a misogynist and their hate speech, and how FB allows all sorts of hate speech. Why are you raising points about free speech at all? It implies that just like FB and the police in the OP, you don’t consider sexist or racist harassment hate speech. You might want to see to that.
You are confusing government with “bad thing that is trying to take away your rights”. Your rights are if fact protected by the government in the form of official legal documents such as the Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution.
Police are civil servants that are employed by cities. They are not a governing body. They are bound by the laws of the governing body.
Official government forces include the military, the FBI, CIA, DEA, etc. They also are bound by the laws of the governing body.
@Raucous Indignation: I think I understand where you come from, but as Saad pointed out yours seems to be a slippery slope argument.
I feel very conflicted on hate speech laws, but I think in this context the situation is more clear: you are not expressing idea that the government or the established power may not like, you are just threatening someone.
@Tabby Lavalamp: I found that facebook cheapens human contacts. Since i deleted my account I found myself putting more effort into my relationships, calling my parents more often and writing to my friends.
@Tethys
“Why are you raising points about free speech at all?”
Because I read the entire post. The first line of the second graph: “This is where free speech as a principle starts conflicting …” PZ raised the issue of free speech, to which I responded. PZs final graph is correct; all any of us can do and should do is use our powers of free speech to point out hurtful speech where we see it. Maybe you should read PZs post in its entirety. You might want to see to that, okay?
@Saad, #5
oh how I long for the day when that shit is rare enough I could call it a “special right”.
@Tethys
You know that there is no such thing as “hate speech” under US law, right? No legal definition of what constitutes harassment on in an online forum? Yes?
Please feel free to pick apart the semantics of my argument without actually responding to it’s substance. I yield the thread to return to work.
Yes, you responded to a case of sexist harassment with the classic frozenpeaches fallacy
Now you are claiming you actually meant to say
I am glad you recognize hate speech, but moving the goalposts is only going to make people here mock you even harder.
I’m more worried about Trump supporters suppressing free speech than the government.
Hate speech may or may not be on the US lawbooks, but it has a common meaning in general english, and restrictions of speech based on this are exceedingly common. Look at almost any forum on the internet, game with message functionality, workplace, conference, radio or tv show, etc etc etc. You will note that the overwhelming majority of them have rules restricting the speech of all participants; there is no requirement for it to be US law for them to do that and so your objection is an irrelevant distraction.
Facebook quite simply needs to improve its standards, that much is not in doubt. As for the police, their standards regarding online speech are just antiquated. It is too easily dismissed as ‘not real’ communication, which is barmy, but it is also beside the point: speech that is intended to create fear is harmful, regardless of whether the speaker really intended to go through with those threats. Intentional intimidation is a form of harm.
^ Aimed at #40.
Something similar just happened in the Women Without Religion Facebook group. The moderator told an obnoxious MRA to fuck off and she got suspended by Facebook for a week.
It’s a real simple deal I don’t understand how people can easily forget how it works.
White dudebro/people supporting them: protected free speech with no limits
Anyone speaking against them: EVIL CONSPIRACY CENSORSHIP NAZI
re 38:
I dispute that you read the OP in its entirety. All of your replies seem to have completely disregarded the 2nd ‘graph. Where PZ discusses that FB completely allowed the threats to remain posted, but when the threatened used her free speech to complain, she was immediately banned. PZ was not asking for some dictum restricting free speech to only be friendly speech, but for the police to at least talk to the bully asking him to reconsider his threatening speech.
what were they supposed to do?
follow the law, maybe?
there are in fact both state AND federal laws against online harassment.
no kidding.
that both YOU and these cops are ignorant of them is hardly any excuse.
Judging by their display here, RI does not actually understand what a government is, or how democracy as practiced in the USA works, what sexism is, or how logic works. If you read about sexist abuse and start yammering on about free speech you are personally endorsing misogyny.
He has taken his ball and gone home, rather than admit that FB isn’t the government, and that FB needs to follow it’s own harassment policy, ban dudes like the ass in the OP, and ban the many MRA hate groups. Period.
The part where he backpedals and says that everyone must speak out against this harassment is crap if he won’t even admit that he reserves the bro-code right to ignore his own sexism.
I’m not sure if this was directed at me or mudpuddles, but I understand that (although I am ignorant of Texas laws specifically). It seemed like mudpuddles was saying “the government” shouldn’t be involved — either in this specific case or generally — yet the police were still being blamed, presumably for failing to enforce the laws you mentioned. Which would be contradictory. I didn’t mean that anyone should take “call Facebook” as a serious option for the police, but I can see how my sarcasm may not have come across very clearly. I agree with you, and if Houston doesn’t do anything, perhaps state or federal authorities can step in.
mudpuddles:
According to our Constitution, it’s a violation of the first amendment (which also establishes freedom of speech) for public school teachers to force kids to pray in schools. That’s one example of what it means to be “the government” for these purposes. Teachers count, and they don’t legislate anything. The police obviously count too. It makes no difference to anybody whether a piece of paper somewhere (which a legislator endorses) says you have a right. That needs to be guaranteed, in actual fact, by what the government does in performing all of its functions. Those functions by the way can involve regulating corporations like Facebook — they’re not incapable of infringing free speech or other such rights (and being held responsible for that), simply because they’re “not the government,” as some people like to pretend. Anyway, enforcing such laws is what the police do, along with numerous other officials. So I don’t understand the purpose of making this kind of distinction here, and I can’t imagine how that would be any different in Europe or anywhere else.
The one problem with giving this appalling excuse for a human being the public shaming he so richly deserves is… a quick online search turns up thirteen ‘Matt Walters’ in Houston.
If Facebook said that they didn’t censor speech at all and people could post whatever they like, they could at least then claim they were being even-handed. But that’s not what happened. Not only did they not take action against fairly vicious harassment, they then suspended the victim of the harassment for calling attention to it. That’s beyond despicable. Surely Facebook has competitors in social media who might call attention to it?
Shay Simmons @ 51:
I’m not sure how, but you must have missed the photo of this particular Matt Walters, right up there ^ in the OP.
How does that prevent someone from being wrongly targeted? Quite a few people have an online identity that doesn’t include a photograph.