I would suspect a lot of the harassment/threats was through things like e-mail, etc. Given the wide range of emotions this has prompted all over the place, I can find it believable that some people might send what could be construed as threatening messages, especially anonymously.
Apologies, I should have checked that claim rather than repeating what other people had said. The actual wording is that "Harassment includes... harassing photography or recording". That's somewhat less clear, though the warning about public shaming is still relevant.
Off-topic, but on that point, the full body of communications referenced in that case is publicly available online, and I invite readers to decide for themselves.
> If that's not a form of harassment, I don't know what is.
You may be right about that. By the way, Twitter has a 'block' function for dealing with 'mentions', as far as I am aware.
> Shaming and shunning can easily be considered harassment in the right context
Shunning is never harassment. Shaming could be, but not on its own -- it would probably have to be either extraordinarily sustained/egregious and/or paired with credible threats to person or property.
Even emergent behavior that has the same effect as blatant harassment isn't harassment. I.e., sending one person 10K letters, some of which contain (even unspecific) threats, is CERTAINLY harassment. But if 10K people each send one letter, there are probably zero instances of harassment unless one of the letters is seriously egregious (e.g., contains specific and credible threats). And even then, the other 99,999 letters aren't instances of harassment.
Organized behavior might be. It depends on the amount of coordination. But probably the case is too difficult to take on.
From the description, this might encompass phenomena that we would call both coordinated harassment and public shaming, and maybe the original article by Megan McArdle also means to encompass both, though it seems to have more focus on public shaming.
You are assuming that harassment was direct, sending messages to the accusers. My impression is that this was a group chatting privately about the accusers either making fun of them or coordinating actions.
While this can be done through other channels (in person or private cellphone) allowing it on corporate infrastructure without monitoring is not acceptable.
Apparently it was but that doesn't justify the harassment described in the article. Hate mail and stuff like that. I guess people got too emotional and both parties ended up with a bad taste in their mouths.
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