Update: Reddit Suicide Lawsuit Is a Hoax

[spectrenihlus]

What they did is morally reprehensible however they did not physically harm him and their comments are protected by the first amendment. Or am I missing something here? I mean I can tell someone to go jump off a cliff would I have now done something illegal?

Freedom of speech was not created to defend comments we agree with, it was intended for the ones we don't.

 

[McMullen]

If these people can be held responsible for causing a person's suicide, then so can landlords, banks, spouses, significant others, family members, schoolmates, or anyone else who can give a person a bad enough day that they make it their last.

And they are. Accessories to suicide are taken very seriously and with good reason. If we were to limit the act of killing, be it oneself or another person, to a mere physical process, then we wouldn't be able to prosecute people who order assassinations and the like. There is no pragmatic doubt in areas of legal matters, philosophy and psychology that socialogical incentives have as much to do with individual actions as the freedom of that individual.
But the bottom line is: if you're mentioned in a person's suicide note, then you could loose that same freedom for a very long time.

It is a tragic story, but the Reddit users are not at fault for his death.

Doesn't "freedom of speech" mean anything anymore?

Not when that freedom impedes other humanistic values, such as that of life. Then it becomes a battle of what we deem most important as a society.

Freedom of life? The man killed himself. That was his choice. You cannot hold one person responsible for another person's choice. The man waived his freedom of life of his own free will.

And again, does this really happen often enough to justify taking away freedoms for it? I will repeat what I said earlier: Before taking away an internet user's right to privacy for the sake of saving a handful of people, we should take away the freedom to smoke and the freedom to choose our own diets for the sake of the thousands that kill themselves every year through lung cancer and heart attacks.

And if the trolls are guilty of manslaughter, then everyone who has ever sold a big mac or pack of cigarettes is equally guilty of manslaughter.

You're outraged, and you're allowing that outrage to overwhelm your judgement. You're coming to conclusions that are heavily distorted. Please calm down and take another look at the situation and try to see the implications of what you're saying.

 

[Laurie Barnes]

Oh fuck, I don't like where this is headed.

 

[Strazdas]

Being a jerk online = you get sued.
being a jerk offline = you get elected to be a president.

nothing wrong with that, really.

I sawy we sue his disabled 20 year old daughter for his death because she likely was the reason he got into the depression in the first place, therefore being mroe responsible for his suicide than any internet user ever could. Lets see how that goes?

 

[Shaevar]

Freedom of life? The man killed himself. That was his choice. You cannot hold one person responsible for another person's choice. The man waived his freedom of life of his own free will.

And they don't say they are guilty of manslaughter, this would be ridiculous. HOWEVER, inciting someone to commit suicide is still illegal and should be punished, even on the internet.

For the next part, I will be speaking as a Canadian as I am not familiar enough with US legislation. Here, Freedom of speech is NOT absolute. The Canadian Charter Of Rights and Freedoms protect free speech in its article 2. BUT (and this is a very important but), article 1 of the Chart state that somes exceptions can be made, and they have to be justified in a free and democratic society. Wich mean that I cannot tell someone else that I want to kill them, or that they should kill themselves. I cannot harass verbally someone, nor can I make hate speechs. Those are a violation of free speech, but can be justified in a free and democratic society.

I think this could very well applied for internet users. Hell, I don't see why not. I can speak with my keyboard on internet or with my mouth IRL; I am still communicating with someone else, and therefore I cannot incite them to commit suicide.

P.S: sorry for the mistakes, english is not my first language

 

[twiceworn]

"Is your right to be a jerk online more important than a man's life?"

Any of my rights is more important tan the life of someone who wants to throw it off a building anyway, I see no conflict here.

I'm sorry for the families who feel like blaming internet trolling for their unhappiness... but the whole matter is just ridiculous.

From another point of view: A man killed himself for an internet comment? Successful troll is successful?

agreed, he was clearly going to do it anyway so the lawsuit is just the family looking for someone to blame which is understandable from a grieving person i now just hope in time this will come to nothing and they will come to see how wrong this whole thing is.

 

[Seanfall]

I thought this crap was exclusive to Youtube and 4chan.

Saddly douchebaggery is exclusive only to sapient beings.

 

[Nurb]

Since when did kids get so conservative? Throwing rights away because you're angry?

This is a more tragic "YOU DUN GOOFED"; sure people were assholes, but it's not smart to make your PRIVATE LIFE visible to where THE WHOLE INTERNET can see it in the first place. Of course you're going to get a minority of scumbags preying on personal vulnerability. It's for similar reasons we don't put our social security numbers on our front doors... people WILL take advantage.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

you seriously have white people problems

WTF are "white people problems"?

You ever tried to be white? Man, I burn so easily in the sun.

Shit is whack!

OT: as someone who attempted suicide but survived thanks to some amazing doctors and nurses and has since regained some sense of motivation to live, this shit is pretty fucked up right here. Once it's gone... it stays gone. One has to wonder, why be a dick to the guy? If you think he aint gonna do it, what is gained by being an asshole? Unless you seriously want someone to kill themselves--which means you need to get the fuck to a doctor and have a long talk.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, I disagree with limiting it for this, hate speech, or any other reason.

Look out, guys! Watch your heads! The merit of that post just shot out the window before it even started.

 

[RubyT]

Believe me or not it's your choice here but I'm not going to piss my dad off by posting his info along with mine just to prove a worthless point.

Then black out your dad's information. Or find some other form of ID. Also, how is it a worthless point? You were proclaiming anonymity is bad and when I ask you to reveal your identity it becomes a worthless point?

Seriously folks, you are posting on the internet. The internet never forgets. You might claim you would never post something you wouldn't say to a person's face. Even if that's true, times change. Everybody over 30 looks back to when they were 15 and realize how stupid they were. It's normal. But abandoning aliases will lead to everything you ever said possibly ending up on some facebook timeline of doom, where in 20 years your wife, employer or neighbour reads something you wrote in the heat of argument and in the wildness of youth.

Or the even more dire consequences of everything you write being subject to backlash from 4chan or the Ku-Klux-Klan or Mom's for America.
You get into a spirited argument over gay rights and the feller you're arguing with is some militant bastard, who links to the discussion on other forums and some people from your hometown pick it up and soon stones fly through your window.

 

[Fishyash]

This is a bit of a weird situation.

I don't think the victims of the suicide have any legal power over this. This is mainly because I don't see any way to prove that any of these posts actually drove Jerry to suicide, and we can't ask him now, he's dead. Unless he left a note beforehand saying something in the vein of "redditors comments pushed me enough to commit suicide", there's absolutely no proof, especially since he pretty much said he was going to do it on the OP which means he was planning on doing it before he even posted.

It does suck though. The redditors should be ashamed of themselves, but I have no idea how this can hold water in a legal sense. Who knows, it may actually turn out successful though.

 

[Still Life]

There are many ways to decide when freedom of speech comes into effect but we are intelligent enough to know that not everything everyone would like to say deserves to be defended.

I wish more people understood this, and that Freedom of Speech is far from an absolute and inalienable right to abuse like a glorified blow-up doll.

It also appears that the cult of Charles Darwin is out in force today.

 

[HeatproofShAdOw]

If he had posted this on 4chan, he would have offed himself that night. Being anonymous on the internet just turns people into idiots. That said, I'm willing to bet almost everyone involved in this case will have no idea of how the internet works, with the exception of the defendants.

 

[Spider Expert]

Have any of you actually ever been on Reddit? their subreddits have prevented hundreds of suicides, who are any of you to criticize them as a community once their prevention ratio trips once? note millions of people use the damn thing, monitoring that sort of user base isn't exactly easy.