Court rules universities may have duty to block websites that harass students

https://reason.com/volokh/2018/12/19/universities-may-have-duty-to-block-stud

55 140 8 years ago

mbrumlow7• 8 years ago

Somewhere we went wrong when coming up with this idea of online harassment.

People are going to say mean things to other people. This is never going to change.

The solution is simple. If somebody is saying something you don't like then don't visit their site. If it is in a platform then block them and or set your profile to only interact with a white list. If they say something as fact about you that is not true, sue them, we already have the laws for this stuff. But most importantly stop worrying about what somebody else says to you online.

People have a duty to police their own online content. Nobody should be telling me what I can and can't look at on the internet (please don't take that out of context of laws)

Universities are not our parents.

JoeAltmaier4• 8 years ago

Others visit their site. Some sites are very popular. It never stays on the internet, and its not all about what I'm seeing. Imagine a billboard that says "Joe is a deviant criminal". It's ok, I should just not drive that way again?

And Universities have a special obligation, lets not forget that.

JumpCrisscross• 8 years ago

Imagine a billboard that says "Joe is a deviant criminal".

The solution isn’t to ban billboards.

npmaile• 8 years ago

If Joe happens to be a deviant criminal and doesn't like to be reminded of the fact, then he should avert his gaze when driving by. If Joe is not a deviant criminal, then he can sue the person who put up the billboard for damages incurred.

nradov2• 8 years ago

Universities shouldn't have special obligations any more than any other employer or government agency. Another way to look at it is that regular people shouldn't have less protection against online harassment just because they don't happen to be university students. Rules and protections should apply equally to everyone.

Should public libraries be obligated to block online content that harasses some of their patrons?

EpicEng9• 8 years ago

Imagine a billboard that says "Joe is a deviant criminal"

Well now Joe has a libel claim. If Joe is actually a deviant criminal then, well... he pissed off the wrong person. What's the issue?

sgift• 8 years ago

Somewhere we went wrong

Yes. The moment we brought up the chant of "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me". The brain can break the same way your legs or arms can and the "just tough it out" answer is not an answer at all.

No one would suggest you should just not visit a neighborhood if people there attacked you. The proof that the web should be a special case because "muh, free speech above all" is very flimsy.

yostrovs• 8 years ago

Actually, people do avoid bad neighborhoods and suggest to their children and others to avoid those.

There's a reason, many actually, for freedom of speech. And all those reasons are more important than your feelings.

grawprog• 8 years ago

No one would suggest you should just not visit a neighborhood if people there attacked you.

To be fair that's exactly what happens. People warn not to go into the crime/high gang activity areas of my city all the time.

burke2• 8 years ago

Hate speech covers this, and it is illegal.

Recently, there's a cultural idiom that offense is completely in the eye of the beholder. What people often feel uncomfortable with is not banning hate speech, but reclassifying milder and milder forms of offense as intolerable. To extend your analogy, bumping into someone intentionally on the street makes you a jerk, but not criminally so. It's assault in only the loosest interpretation. People that have done this probably don't need to go to trial for it.

EpicEng9• 8 years ago

No one would suggest you should just not visit a neighborhood if people there attacked you.

I would absolutely suggest that. I'd advise you right now not to e.g. take a trip to the south side of Chicago. What are you suggesting? That the government has an obligation to proactively prevent crime? How is that to be done? Martial law?

You can't have the freedoms you enjoy and complete safety. It's the price we pay, and it's worth it.

porpoisely3• 8 years ago

Why should something be banned because someone somewhere might be offended or their "brain might break"?

Just because someone might get hurt playing sports, should sports be banned from universities? Everyone should be punished because someone might get hurt?

Why limit it to universities? People's feelings get hurt in everyday life. If someone asks a woman out and she refuses, it might hurt the guy's feelings. Should women be forced to date every guy who asks them out since there is a chance some guys' "brains might break" due the rejection?

Coddling and infantilizing people is the worst thing you can do. Especially for a university where you are supposed to have "your brain broken" by being exposed to new and offensive ideas.

I grew up protestant and went to university and took philosophy classes that "broke my brain" and were initially offensive to me as a christian. Should I sue my university?

If we followed your logic, everything would be banned because anything can "break a brain". Flat earthers could shut down physics departments because the spherical model of earth "breaks their brains".

bobthechef• 8 years ago

Nobody should be telling me what I can and can't look at on the internet (please don't take that out of context of laws).

But the law is mutable and so we must appeal to deeper principles than those that the law hinges on. Otherwise, we could pass a law that restricts your access to exactly those websites that you wish to visit.

This is the fundamental problem with liberalism. It desires to marry liberty and (an anemic version of) reason, but reason properly exercised also entails knowledge of good and evil. Thus we pass legislation to punish some evils for the sake of the common good and social order, and tolerate other evils the punishment of which would cause more harm than good. But when liberty chafes under the demands of reason, it will often resort to a tendentious skepticism in order to artificially erode certainty for the sake of securing greater permissiveness.

Now it may be possible to argue that, given the way things are, and as broken as liberalism it, it is nonetheless the most prudent way to organize a (Western) society and that the best available way to deal with many social maladies is through softer means than legislation. Whatever the case, the laws themselves are to a large degree informed by culture, ethos, and circumstance and so what ought and ought not be legally restricted online is very much a core issue. It is insufficient to say on the one hand that nobody should be telling you what you can and cannot look at on the internet and on the other preface the former with the caveat that you are assuming conformity with the law because the law can be changed based on a change in understanding of what will best serve the common good here and now.

csydas5• 8 years ago

I'm sorry, but this really is not reflective of the specific threats and comments made by the persons, and it's not a matter of simply "don't look at the posts", there were pretty clear written and verbal threats made which in any other context would be grounds for a real investigation [1]. Looking though the actual document and not the think tank summary, the threats are pretty explicit:

• “Gonna tie these feminists to the radiator and [g]rape them in the mouth”;3

• “Dandy’s about to kill a bitch . . . or two”; and

• “Can we euthanize whoever caused this bullshit?”

The University certainly took the threats seriously enough to assign university security to events that the members of the plaintiff's group were attending, and the University did absolutely nothing in response to the threats by simply claiming they were powerless. Keep in mind that the context of these threats was around the time that a member of the plaintiff group had been murdered (while eventually the murder was disassociated from the events/threats, the investigation took some time). Such context lends a lot of credibility to the threats from my point of view.

The basis of the appeal and the complaint in the first place was that the University made no action to even address such threats on YikYak (it is rather important to note that this is all about YikYak [2]). This means that one of two things was true:

1. The Yaks were posted by persons within a 1.5 mile radius of the campus

2. Someone was manipulating their GPS to alter their location to make the posts.

Threatening speech has repeatedly not been protected by 1st amendment rights, and the University's refusal to even try to investigate despite having received specific complaints and requests from the plaintiffs.

This isn't about randoms on twitch going KYS after someone trash talks in a game, there were specific acts of violence repeatedly threatened after this whole affair. The University had the ability to look into the events but did not, and their response was more exculpatory than educational/investigative.

Universities in fact do have a legal requirement to investigate these things and maintain a position of neutrality and encouraging an atmosphere and culture on campus that promotes learning. When you have people openly threatening one another, that's not an atmosphere that supports learning. All this is further exacerbated by the fact that one member of the plaintiff group was killed by their roommate who was a former member of the Rugby Team which is noted in the actual opinion as having been a key element in the Yaks coming up.

Even though eventually the murder was disassociated from the rest of the events, that was not for some time -- I don't see it as unreasonable for a group of persons who are receiving death threats and rape threats to take such threats very seriously after one of their members was actually murdered.

Please just read the actual Opinions [1] top to bottom and not the think tank summary. Think Tanks are fine for finding issues, but their summaries are not to be trusted. They are always politically charged and often omit very important facts, such as the exact reasons the Court accepted the appeals (basically, the previous decision failed to meet the standards for protections under the 1st amendment and also the University did not fulfill its legal obligation in many ways)

[1] http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak

(Edits are fixing formatting and introducing the context of the murder earlier for clarity of my second paragraph)

tzs• 8 years ago

Tying someone to the radiator and graping them in the mouth sounds like a reference to this "The Whitest Kids U' Know" comedy bit about an inappropriate grape soda commercial pitch [1], especially about 1:56 in.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmrDypTB_Y0

mcguire4• 8 years ago

In addition,

"About a month later, on June 8, 2015, President Hurley wrote to the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation addressing the OCR complaint. He promptly distributed copies of his responsive letter to the UMW community and several media outlets. According to the Complaint, Hurley’s letter falsely asserted that the OCR complaint drew a connection between Grace Mann’s death and the threatening social media posts. Hurley also inaccurately claimed that neither UMW nor its campus police had received any reports of Yik Yak threats directed at Feminists United members. Additionally, Hurley suggested that the safety concerns of Feminists United members were exaggerated because some of the online threats simply derived from “pop culture.”"

DanBC4• 8 years ago

People are going to say mean things to other people. This is never going to change.

This case is not about saying mean thigns to other people -- US first ammendment allows people to say mean things to others.

This case is about credible threats of violence being sent via a social network. One of the features of that social network was that you could only see messages from people who were geographically nearby.

--begin quote--

We first address the University’s expressed apprehension about punishing students for their speech. Put simply, we are satisfied that its First Amendment concerns about penalizing speech lack a proper basis. The University could have vigorously responded to the threatening Yaks without implicating the First Amendment because “true threats” 27 are not protected speech. See Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 359 (2003) (recognizing that “true threats” are not constitutionally protected and describing them as “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals”). 7 The Supreme Court and our Court have consistently recognized the principle that threatening speech is not protected by the Constitution. See, e.g., Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 707 (1969) (upholding constitutionality of statute making it illegal to threaten president with physical violence); United States v. Maxton, 940 F.2d 103, 105-06 (4th Cir. 1991) (“Threats to kidnap or injure persons are legislatively proscribable, falling within that group of expressions, such as fighting words, which are not constitutionally protected pure speech.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Moreover, both federal law and Virginia law criminalize the communication of threats to kill or injure others. See 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) (prohibiting transmission through interstate commerce of threat to injure another); Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-60(A)(1) (criminalizing electronic communication of threat to kill or injure another if threat recipient is placed “in reasonable apprehension of death or bodily injury”).

--end quote--

mbrumlow7• 8 years ago

I don't care what the case is about. We already have laws on threats, its not the Universities job to hide or block those threats. Even if they did somehow block the sites these "credible threats" were posted on it still does not stop the fact that the threats were made.

In fact I argue that if the university prevented a threat from reaching me that they could be held liable for any damage done to me should that threat come to fruition -- by blocking my ability to be aware I was in danger.

Moreover, even if the Universities did so on their own networks that does not thing for the rest of the internet that lives in each and every students pocket.

If somebody makes a credible threat you report it and take action. Banning sites that some people use to make threats is not the solution -- if it were, you might as well ban the entire internet.

bilbo0s3• 8 years ago

I don't know man?

What they are talking about is more than saying mean things.

In the dorm I lived in at U Wisconsin, everyone was perfectly free to call anyone else a fat, ugly b word. But if you said, "I'm gonna go get my gun and kill all you fat, ugly b's." It should come as no surprise that you would be kicked out of the dorms. (Out of the university too, but I digress.)

Point is, some things you say, the university, or high school, or whatever, they just have to take action on it. They can't just let it go. To expect them to do so is just being unrealistic. Sorry, but that's just not how anyone else in the world wants it to work. And those other people are able to sue the university or high school or what have you to press their point when situations like this arise.

mbrumlow7• 8 years ago

The university does not, there might be a case for a high school or any place responsible for taking care of minors to take action, and that action simply should be the same action that individuals in public should take -- call the authorities -- that is the people we pay to enforce laws.

A dorm is no different than living in a apartment. When somebody threatens you living in a apartment or a house you call the cops. You don't call the landlord -- or even the owner of the property. These people are not equipped with the resources to properly handle these situations.

When you give these ill equipped organizations the power and authority you remove due process -- which is an assault on everybody rights and freedoms. When these organizations are responsible for "taking action" you will end up with a real quagmire, much like the one we have today where students are kicked out of school without any investigation into any allegations later to find out accusations were made out of spite. In the cases that are real, the universities should not be involved at all, the police and courts should be -- this ensures that offenders are removed from society and not just the campus.

A university is a lot like a gym, or grocery store, or a library, or even a public park -- more so with ones that take in government money. It is none of these peoples jobs -- or should it be -- to vet who they are, and or monitor or interpret peoples online behavior. If one individual has an issue with another it is their duty to take action, not some 3rd party.

University is the real life, you are a adult, and people need to start acting like an adult and expecting people to act like adults. Out in the world you don't run to your teacher when you are offended, threatened, or assaulted, you take real legal action -- involve local law enforcement.

People, please stop acting like University is some special place where all the rules and laws are not valid and we need a entirely new set of them to be enforced by people who not equipped to do so.

anigbrowl13• 8 years ago

People are going to say mean things to other people. This is never going to change.

I reject this premise. The social costs for abusing people like this need to be quite a lot higher. Right now it's virtually free and the internet is awash in trolls and malicious behavior. This is a novel situation caused by the confluence of effectively unlimited communication possibilities and we're in no way required to normalize its negative aspects.

One novel approach to rebalancing such costs would be to give the recipient of a credible-seeming threat license to attack the threatening party in proportion to the perceived severity of the threat. So people who credibly threaten others with murder, for example, would be making themselves a legally valid target for homicide.

leetcrew3• 8 years ago

One novel approach to rebalancing such costs would be to give the recipient of a credible-seeming threat license to attack the threatening party in proportion to the perceived severity of the threat. So people who credibly threaten others with murder, for example, would be making themselves a legally valid target for homicide.

not sure whether you're serious, but this actually seems like a decent idea. it would require some very well-written legislation to define "perceived severity", though. if someone threatens to kill you, specifically, and you can show that they know where you live, you shouldn't have to wait until they're in your house to do something about it.

russdill3• 8 years ago

I'm sorry, harassment is legal now? And society has solved the problem by telling people not to go where they get harassed? Called a #?$? $%%$ and told to go off and %$%$ die at the movie theatre? Don't go there. Harassed at work by your boss? Just stop going to work!

kevinpet• 8 years ago

Simple harassment has always been legal. It's only illegal when some other factors make it so, for example, sexual harassment by an employer or another person in a position of power. It's also legal to fire someone or kick them out for being an asshole.

The problem with the 21st century is that people have lost the concept of anything between "illegal" and "forced to put up with". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbid...

pixl972• 8 years ago

Harrassed online, just dont go online!

I hope you see the problem there.

Nasrudith4• 8 years ago

Well the legal definition of harassment requires systemic or persistence to qualify outside of separate circumstances. If If someone were to heckle or catcall you outside of a bar or in a movie theater once that isn't harassment. Following you down the street persistently and heckling or cat calling after you told them get lost or organizing a different person to heckle you every day would qualify as harassment.

A coworker, boss, or anyone in a privileged position like a doctor or police officer sexually harassing you once is unacceptable legally.

Klathmon• 8 years ago

I don't know if this is the answer, but "just block them" isn't a solution.

I've had someone call my work and try to get me fired, I've had someone make dozens of accounts on various social media platforms to harass me, and even when I blocked them they would post my personal information and make up lies about things I've done, and because I blocked them I had no idea, and then more people would believe the harasser because I didn't respond to it, and would pile on.

Filing a police report for some of the more threatening messages didn't do anything, as the police basically told me there wasn't going to be anything they could do.

Locking or whitelisting accounts like GitHub wasn't really an option as I work with it and I maintained a semi-popular project that I wasn't willing to just delete, but it came close.

In the end the harasser gave up eventually, and I was lucky that my job didn't believe them, but it was a pretty shitty time in my life that had me really worried that these lies would stick around my name forever and I wouldn't be able to escape them in the future.

infogulch• 8 years ago

This kind of harassment is completely incomprehensible to me. Especially as the work of a single individual. How one can be so full of spite and hate and so empty of empathy, I cannot understand. I get how mobs can do this by stirring themselves up into a frenzy, but for an individual to persistently lie and flame someone in an attempt to ruin their life, without stepping back and reconsidering what is the point. I must be naive to not be able to comprehend this kind of behavior.

briandear• 8 years ago

Universities are not our parents.

If that were only true! When universities set up grief counseling and support groups for election results. Requiring warnings by professors for “trigger words,” or set up so-called “safe spaces” — it’s clear that universities have lost the plot. Universities have become bastions of coddling and infantilization. It’s a true surprise that universities haven’t begun issuing bubble wrap to student with which they can wrap themselves lest they trip over a challenging idea. Universities have become a farce: institutions originally set up to prepare students for the the messy marketplace of ideas have instead morphed into expensive day-care centers for delicate children. A stand-up comedian can’t even tell jokes anymore without being banished in a chorus of boos and hurt feelings. Chris Rock doesn’t do colleges anymore because of the absurdity.

awaywopassd• 8 years ago

Absolutely not how real world works. As an online harassment victim, you may never know even know that it is happening online. But all your classmates would know.

The sites might have lies about you or they might even have your real data. Someone might post your real photos; discussing your body, your fashion sense, or whatever that makes you loser.

You are a broke college kid. Good luck finding a lawyer who would help you find anonymous posters and then sue them.

In mean time, your social life is being destroyed. Online harassment seeps into the real world. Your classmates make fun of you in your earshot. You can complain about it once or twice but school get tired of it and stop taking you seriously.

You will get depressed and sducidal unless you have a strong support system. Even then you will have poor grades, you might quit school. Your life is being ruined because people believe in black n white definition of freedom of speech.

Perhaps we should recognize that there are shades of grey. We cannot harass someone in physical world without getting kicked out of establishment or getting arrested.

Maybe we should go after platforms that let online harassment happen on their platform. After all they are profiting off your data, why shouldn't they be held responsible to police their platform better.

That is like saying schools should not punish bullies, let the victim sue the bullies.

kart23• 8 years ago

It's called free speech. Yes, it sucks to be made fun of online, but most universities are getting better support systems to deal with this kind of stuff. Theres lots of free counseling services on campus that do provide the support in many ways, even with housing and food problems. Police does take threats seriously and will investigate to make sure it is not credible, and people do get kicked out of the university for making threats. But nowhere does blocking a site or service fit into the picture. I'm a student at a UC right now, and this is the message that was given to us.

syrrim• 8 years ago

That's called kids being assholes, it happened long before the internet was invented, and it will continue once we eventually decide to shut down the internet once and for all. The school should have legitimate solutions for it involving punishments against the involved students, and if you can't sue them when they don't, then your fucked under this ruling too, aren't you?

nitwit005• 8 years ago

That just sounds like high school to me, even though no one was using the internet to communicate. A girl had to leave my high school because other girls were spreading mean rumors behind her back. Some other girls had serious issues with the same problem. The school had no idea what to do.

mcguire4• 8 years ago

The application in question allows geolocated (as in "nearby") anonymous "Yaks". The Yaks in question threatened violence.

"Don't visit their site" indeed.

matchbok• 8 years ago

Dear lord. Are you an adult when you turn 18? Why all the babysitting at uni? It's school, not a daycare.

thecanman• 8 years ago

Uni is essentially extended High-School for students nowadays, unfortunately.

bilbo0s3• 8 years ago

Yep, and school shootings are way too common for university admins to ignore. They almost have to do something.

eximius• 8 years ago

We need Bill and Ted now more than ever.

KallDrexx• 8 years ago

Does this mean that Universities have to block Facebook since a lot of harassment is done over it?

(yes wishful thinking)

brudgers6• 8 years ago

MWU was successful in having the complaint dismissed in US Circuit Court. The ruling in the article is a remand from Fourth Circuit Appeals vacating the US Circuit Court's dismissal of two claims and upholding its dismissal of the third claim. As required, the ruling is based on a favorable reading of the plaintiff's argument (since the case was not heard at trial).

The title of the article is misleading in so far as there is a difference between websites and mobile apps. And perhaps in so far as the specific app involved, Yik-Yak, used geolocation tied directly to specific universities and using MWU's network was a first order means of accessing Yik-Yak in the context of the MWU oriented Yik-Yak community.

Neither party denies that threats of rape and murder were made via Yik-Yak against specific students.

The plaintiffs allege that MWU could have blacklisted Yik-Yak's IP address on it's network. The plaintiffs cited the failure of MWU to block Yik-Yak as evidence of deliberate indifference to Title IX and Equal Protection claims.

The keystone of MWU's defense against the deliberate indifference claims was that blocking Yik-Yak would be a violation of the First Amendment.

4th Appeals determined that threats of rape and murder made via Yik-Yak were threatening speech and ruled on established precedent that threatening speech is not protected. As a matter of legal precedent the court noted the long standing practice of blocking music and video download IP addresses and sanctioning students for copyright infringing downloads as evidence of technical and practical feasibility.

The court vacated the dismissal of the Title IX and Equal Protection Clause claims and remanded back to the Circuit Court.

dane-pgp5• 8 years ago

Those are interesting precedents for the court to choose.

Music and video download sites (and apps) that get blocked are presumably ones where the majority of music and video downloaded are done so without the permission of the copyright holders. There is plenty of unlicensed music and video on YouTube, but it is a minority of the content available because of YouTube's filters, so the site is usually not blocked.

In the other example, sanctioning a student for copyright infringement only affects the student that has been found guilty. I can't imagine a university disconnecting all students if just one student is found infringing copyright.

So, while these precedents do show the technical and practical feasibility of the blocking, they are not examples of long standing practices where the not-protected speech of a minority is sufficient grounds for restricting the protected speech of a majority.

brudgers6• 8 years ago

I can't imagine a university disconnecting all students if just one student is found infringing copyright.

Napster.

kayfox• 8 years ago

So, what would have happened if they UMW had blocked Yik Yak on their network and students continued to use it (since its a smartphone app) on their phones using cellular data?

csydas5• 8 years ago

The actual Court Opinion misrepresented the actual block option. When YikYak was actually running, a proper block request could be sent to the company to blackout the GPS coordinates of a University from the app, effectively killing the local YikYak community.

The app worked based on GPS proximity -- you had to be within 1.5 miles of a given university in order to participate in the "herd" as they called it. This added a lot of character to each individual herd, even if all the groups essentially just reposted the same memes from 4chan/reddit non-stop, but with their own local flavor attached.

YikYak had for some time been cooperating with schools and universities to perform the blackouts and even advertised it as a means of compliance and battling harassment through the app.

Had a blackout request been made, it would have been effective and the above question would not have been relevant.

csydas5• 8 years ago

Could a mod please change the link to the actual Court Opinion [1]? Both the linked article and the source that is cited omit a considerable amount of detail as to what actions are actually being proposed, the context of the threats (surrounding events and the platform YikYak, which requires proximity to participate in), and also completely ignores the actual suggestions made by the Court.

[1] http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf

eugeniub• 8 years ago

Reason.com omitting context and detail? Say it ain't so.

cryptonector2• 8 years ago

This isn't so much Reason as the Volokh Conspiracy (who used to be independent, then were hosted at the Washington Post for a few years, and now are at Reason). Specifically this is Eugene Volokh, who is usually very careful and said this in TFA: "I'm traveling, and thus won't have time to post a detailed analysis myself, but here's part of the analysis from Samantha Harris at FIRE:".

cryptonector2• 8 years ago

TFA links the opinion in the very first sentence.

pinneycolton3• 8 years ago

If the speech in question was determined to be a true threat, blocking exposure to the speech could have serious unintended consequences. It could people unaware of specific threats and expose them to harm. Ignorance is bliss...until it gets you hurt.

If someone posted a credible threat of violence against people fitting my demographic profile, I'd want to be aware of it. I don't need to be protected from the words. I don't say that to diminish the negative effects of hate speech at all. I may be hurt and angry after reading them. It could trigger me in ways that I try to avoid. That being said, I think our courts need a reminder that the negative effects of exposure to hate-violence can be much more severe than exposure to hate speech. I'd rather fight myself, in my own head, than someone who wants to do me physical harm.

csydas5• 8 years ago

This is a misunderstanding of the actual complaint from the plaintiff, and it likely comes from the very misleading article title from Reason.com:

I posted this below, but:

The complaint is not that YikYak wasn't blocked -- it's that no action was taken by the University to investigate the threats properly and readily, even so much as just creating a strong stance on "hey, don't tell people you're going to kill them". Blocking YikYak was simply __an option__ which the University could have taken, but that wasn't the thrust of the plaintiffs' argument at all, nor the Court's Opinion. The point of blocking YikYak was more of a point that "well, you absolutely could have done something", rather than a prescribed course of action.

You're arguing a point that was not made by the plaintiffs and also is not related to the actual court Opinion either. The crux of the complaint is that in light of real, credible threats, the University took no action whatsoever. The Opinion is more about how the defenses of anonymity made it "impossible" for the University to act and that 1st Amendment protections prohibited [the university] from doing so were considered invalid in light of other case law.

pinneycolton3• 8 years ago

About 10-15% of the opinion addresses the issues of whether or not the university had "substantial control" over the vehicle for harassment and if it displayed "deliberate indifference" in not taking appropriate steps to end the harassment. It rejects the idea that the University can't control activity on its own network. It also notes that the University allowed the harassment to continue for months when it could have stopped it.

It seems like we're reading pages 14 - 24(ish) of the opinion - plus some later sections - differently. That's the nature of this sort of ruling. This does not constitute a misunderstanding of the complaint on my part, nor was I misled by the title on reason.com.

Personally, I agree with the vast majority of the opinion. The University could have - and should have - done more to pinpoint the harassers and punish them in accordance with university policy. It does not explicitly state that the University should have blocked the app, but it does spend considerable time demonstrating that not blocking the app constituted deliberate indifference to the harassment.

I also agree with the other poster who mentioned there are other ways for communicating threats. With hindsight being 20-20, though, we don't know if a threat is a serious threat until it is acted upon. By the time those systems are activated, there has generally already been violence and/or loss of life, unfortunately.

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf

bilbo0s3• 8 years ago

They do have university wide alert systems for use when the doodoo hits the fan. I'm not sure everyone needs to know about every threat though? I think you might be underestimating the number of threats that come in everyday to a large public university for instance.

anigbrowl13• 8 years ago

blocking exposure to the speech could have serious unintended consequences. It could people unaware of specific threats and expose them to harm.

'ignoring the trolls' suffers from precisely the same problem - more so, as passive awareness of the threat may be construed as acceptance thereof by the threatening party. Basically you're placing the burden of assessing severity on the recipient and removing any leverage they have to mitigate it once they're aware of it.

Do not suggest 'report it to the police' or I will start linking cases in which people did that, were ignored, and were then murdered - at which point the free speech evangelists are nowhere to be found.

travisoneill1• 8 years ago

at which point the free speech evangelists are nowhere to be found

I'll let you skip that step. Since the vast majority of cases are false positives and police don't have the resources to follow up on all of them, it is inevitable that your example will happen. There is no such thing as a 0% failure rate. Your dismissal of the report to police option because it is not 100% effective is too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

deytempo• 8 years ago

No more Facebook or twitter... or social media...

drenvuk• 8 years ago

Looking at the opinion there's more than the university could have done in order to remedy the situation aside from block YikYak. That's where their failure lies. It doesn't seem like blocking YikYak would have been a must or required. I hope schools don't use this as a reason to make that kind of thing the first response taken.

jeffdavis2• 8 years ago

The important distinction here is not whether the speech is good or bad; it's whether we are punishing bad speech that happened in the past or actually preventing speech from happening in the future (which may be good or bad).

The first amendmemt rightly allows punishing many kinds of bad speech after the fact, but places a much higher bar for restraining speech in the future.

Blocking websites or communication apps over harassment is simply unconstitutional unless there is some kind of extreme example (like the domain name itself being invalid speech).

Court rules universities may have duty to block websites that harass students

Related Stories