Bungie wins $489K from player for racist harassment of employee | Ruling sets legal precedent for companies to recover costs from harassment campaigns.::Ruling sets legal precedent for companies to recover costs from harassment campaigns.
Not sure how I feel about this. Employees should not be harassed. But setting precedents for corporations to sue individuals based on their interactions with employees is a dangerous dance. I just told a mod in another sub they handled a user posting in the wrong space poorly. What if that could be seen as harassment? Altogether though definitely don’t be a racist shitbag.
I think it’s fine. Calling this an “interaction” is a pretty significant understatement.
You’re going to get sued over a handful of text or not liking somebody. If you decide to run a campaign to harass an employee into quitting/suicide/etc, and throw in death threats, along with packages delivered to their residence… You should 100% get what’s coming to you.
The legal definition of harassment hasn’t changed. You’ll be fine.
Legal definitions can and will change if this precedent is set.
The guy tracked down the guys home address and sent threatening messages. If you think that shouldn’t be prosecuted then you’d be a hypocrite unless you also wanted real life harassment laws too be repealed as well. Just because harassment is done at a distance does not make it ok. Harassment laws aren’t taken lightly in person, you have to do seriously over the top and intrusive actions, so there’s zero reason to think that the same precedent wouldn’t apply to online harassment.
Obviously thats not okay. But once we accept large conglomerates sueing people they’ll start toeing the boundaries. Nintendo already enslaved a guy for the rest of his life. This particular case is deserving, some won’t be.
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The key difference is that what you did, at least as you described it, was actually not harassment.