{"id":33204,"date":"2015-10-17T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33204"},"modified":"2015-10-14T17:08:18","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T21:08:18","slug":"ken-white-of-popehat-com-talks-blogging-anonymous-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/10\/17\/ken-white-of-popehat-com-talks-blogging-anonymous-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken White of <em>Popehat.com<\/em> Talks Blogging, Anonymous Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/07SS_sztHoA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Published on 13 Oct 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ken White, founder of the influential group blog <em>Popehat<\/em>, tells FIRE how he got interested in the First Amendment and discusses anonymous speech on the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>White, who writes for <em>Popehat<\/em> on a variety of issues, including the First Amendment, criminal justice, and the legal system, said a college project at Stanford University \u201cduring \u2026 one of the upsurges of controversy on campus about speech codes and speech issues,\u201d opened his eyes to the nuances of the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wound up doing my senior honors thesis in college with a law school professor on the subject of legal restrictions on hate speech,\u201d White said. \u201cI thought it was very much emblematic of a very American problem, and that is: How do we express our disapproval \u2014 our moral disapproval \u2014 for bad things like bigotry, while not restricting liberties?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Popehat<\/em> seems to be a space created to do exactly that. The forum has evolved into a blog the contributors describe as a \u201cgroup complaint\u201d about \u201cwhatever its authors want.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That freedom hasn\u2019t always come so easily for White, who blogged anonymously for more than five years due to concerns his honest blogging might harm his career. He still thinks anonymous speech provides both benefits and drawbacks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the right to anonymous speech is very central in the First Amendment and in American life,\u201d said White. \u201cThroughout American history, people have said unpopular things, incendiary things, politically dangerous things behind the shield of anonymity. A lot of bad things come with that. There\u2019s some really terrible, immoral, anonymous behavior on the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>White said there\u2019s also a risk to writing anonymously, and that even while he benefitted from posting behind the security of an online persona, he supports the rights of others to try and discover his true identity. Eventually, White said he gave up the pretext and started blogging under his own name.<\/p>\n<p>For more from White, including why free speech \u201ccatchphrases\u201d harm First Amendment discourse, watch the above video.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Published on 13 Oct 2015 Ken White, founder of the influential group blog Popehat, tells FIRE how he got interested in the First Amendment and discusses anonymous speech on the Internet. White, who writes for Popehat on a variety of issues, including the First Amendment, criminal justice, and the legal system, said a college project [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,53,13],"tags":[186,529,154,217],"class_list":["post-33204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-lawyers","tag-privacy","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Dy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33205,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33204\/revisions\/33205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}