The Times has become one of the biggest online bullies. To be consistent the author would have to quit working there. Consider this article therapy, part of her process of working it out.
Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
131–140 of 177 posts
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#132A couple of things that I've learned about the country as I've watched the Cancel culture war:
1)Many believe having freedom of speech means having freedom from consequences of your speech. And not just governmental consequence but all consequence. That's wrong and always has been wrong, if rarely enforced. Speech has always had consequences but those consequences weren't cancellation. Not for white folks anyway.
2)White people can't live in the same world with the same rules that they've created for other people. Cancel culture is very much a thing and has been a thing used against Black folks and other minorities in America for decades. The list of things we get canceled for far exceeds exercising our freedom of speech. Here's a short list:
A)Our names. Got an ethnic name? Expect to get less interview callbacks.
B)Hair. We've had to lobby for laws to protect our right to wear our hair in 'natural' or 'ethnic' styles.
C)Actual Freedom of Speech. Try and bring up racism or discrimination practically anywhere and see what happens to you. See Colin Kaepernick.
D)Skin Complexion. Light-skinned privilege is a thing. Google 'colorism'.
E)Accent and use of language. Google 'code switching'.
You get the point. If the only thing you have to worry about is if you actually said something dumb in your past and if it's going to come up, then you have it good. Other folks are getting canceled just how they exist, from traits they can't change, and they have been for decades.
And even with all that, I still think Cancel culture is pretty shit because the mob is a broadsword, not a scalpel - h/t "The Siege". It doesn't stop at Trump, it keeps going to folks like AGM. But I'd love it if those fighting against cancel culture also fight for those who aren't white men complaining about it on Twitter and Hacker News. Fight also for those who have been victimized by cancel culture before it had a catchy name and impacted the white and powerful. Probably won't win until you do anyway.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, there are only three consistent positions here: 1) this type of firing is unfair and bad, 2) this type of firing is fair and good ("consequence culture"), or 3) "I'm a partisan who just wants my enemies to burn" Maybe 80% of the people that opine on this subject are in category 3), 19% are in 1), and only 1% actually believe this sort of thing is great even when it hits someone that's on their team. Unfortunat…
> if >50% of people on each of the left and the right would agree that someone has done something so egregious that they should face consequences Is that really achievable for people who are political figures? That is, for someone attributed to a "side", is it actually possible to get the two sides to agree on anything? We've seen the defense of some quite spectacular indefensible behavior lately. Attempts to investi…
I'm really thinking of normal folks in normal situations (Damore, Garcia-Martinez, Wilder), not people with massive political power and partisan sway like Trump or Clinton - those figures always get passes for the horrible things they do and say even when they break their own group's rules, but normal people actually do have to color inside the lines a lot more.
I agree about your distinction between "is this behavior bad?" and "has this person done that?". The important cancel culture debate to me is over the first, where it is 100% clear who said what, the only question is whether they should be fired/silenced/banned/attacked for it. The facts about what really happened matter deeply but to take an example, the Kavanaugh situation isn't really an issue of "cancel culture" being out of control because almost everyone agrees that if he did it he should not have been appointed, it's just that most Republicans really don't think he did it and most Democrats do. Something else is going on there that is very not good, but it's not the same as James Damore being fired for statements that most people in both parties find to be within the bounds of "speech you shouldn't be shitcanned for" (https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/policy/technology/3..., surprisingly the political divide on that one is only 10% but even Ds are 50/50 on it).
Edit re: Kavanaugh: I'd also put good money that even if the accusations against him were 100% proven or disproven almost no minds on either side would actually change, despite people claiming allegiance to the truth. Instead, like Trump and his misdeeds, we'd start arguing about fake facts and then further retreating to discussions about whether his sins we're actually great enough, etc. But as things currently stand the ostensible argument is at least over the real facts.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree that the status quo isn’t stable and must change, I don’t think what you’re suggesting will be stable either. The internet is one place where 99.9% compliance with a social norm or law isn’t good enough to prevent the remaining 0.1% from causing enough damage to be un-ignorable, even if you manage to get worldwide agreement on updating the law. (Consider that e.g. the UK does not have American freedom o…
Is there a standard way to convert an encryption key into a human readable name? Because then we could have a service where you signed everything with your key and then you were know as whatever the hash of that key is - and you can create a new identity with a new key, but your name won't be linked to any real world identity. I barely use Facebook or Twitter compared to reddit, and I suspect it is because of the rea…
This is called PGP
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, there are only three consistent positions here: 1) this type of firing is unfair and bad, 2) this type of firing is fair and good ("consequence culture"), or 3) "I'm a partisan who just wants my enemies to burn" Maybe 80% of the people that opine on this subject are in category 3), 19% are in 1), and only 1% actually believe this sort of thing is great even when it hits someone that's on their team. Unfortunat…
That's a very relativistic definition of morals. That's not too say it isn't valid, but there are tradeoffs to adopting a framework like that. One of them is that it inevitably shifts over time, making it more prone to abuse. On a separate note, I don't agree with your breakdown of people because I think it's possible to have principles that are not partisanship but are also orthogonal to "mob good" vs "mob bad".
A lot of people would say "consequence culture" is a valid viewpoint on this, that people just need to face the music for the things that they say, and that there's nothing nefarious about it. That's well and good to claim, but I have yet to hear one of these people be anything but angry when a lefty is torn down by a right wing mob, which has me lumping them in with the partisans.
Maybe a charitable interpretation of the motivations fo that philosophy is "my mob is correct, your mob is not", but the end result is the same.
While I guess it is possible to have another consistent view, I think they mostly boil down to the specifics of where to draw the "bad speech" line. And I think in reality the vast majority of people who don't take a hard free-speech-for-all (asterisk: except people whose words are so horrible that a huge number of people agree) stance on this set the line based on their own politics rather than any stable set of principles.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#136[deleted]
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#137[deleted]
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Which actions exactly should be illegal? Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob. You are of course free to boycott whoever you want- but my impression is that those threatened boycotts won't really cause much damage to companies. People keep saying that firings are meant to "limit damage" but I have yet to see proof of this. To me it is mostly virtue signalling on the part of the…
> Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob Weird way to end 'right to work' laws, but any port in a storm I guess.
Assuming you meant "at-will employment" not "right to work", I unironically agree.
The symptom is that accusations or out-of- context statements or actions can spark a brief but intense reaction on Twitter, and companies frequently fire their employees based on that Twitter reaction. And then those employees may lose access to healthcare or otherwise be in a very precarious position.
So the issues are - The internet remembers forever. - Twitter mobs are self- amplifying and the size and intensity of the mob is not significantly correlated to the intensity of the perceived offense - Twitter mobs don't react based on the most correct information, but rather the most viral - Companies fire people based on Twitter mob actions because: - Companies can be liable for creating a "hostile work environment" for failing to act on things their employees did outside of work hours. - Companies can fire anyone for any reason except being a member of a protected class - Healthcare is tied to employment, so getting fired is disruptive since you need to get new insurance, which in turn probably requires you to switch doctors, get your medical records transferred over, etc.
The symptom of "people are having their lives massively disrupted by relatively minor things they did decades ago" could be approached from any of these angles. So
1. Fix Twitter (and it is specifically Twitter that is the bulk of the problem) to have a way to disprove of a message without further amplifying it 2. Fix the incentives for businesses so that the business is not responsible for what the employee does on their own time. 3. Fix the social safety net and healthcare system so getting fired is not ruinous. 4. Add more employee protections, making it harder to fire people without cause.
I personally think any of the above would work, though I'm wary of 1 (the laws required to obligate this would probably have significant chilling effects elsewhere) and 4 (depends strongly on quality of legal implementation, and I don't have a lot of faith in our legislators to write well thought out laws). I personally favor 2 - as an employer if you're not paying someone for their time I don't think you should get to dictate what they do with that time.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#139> Or at the very least, why hasn’t a fear of mutually assured destruction set in? I think this is the mutually assured destruction phrase. A lot of the “cancel culture” has been deployed by the Left. The Right is now using it against people on the Left. This “cancel culture” will go away when both sides see that there is no net gain, only a grinder destroying people.
One issue with MAD is that other side is moral where one isn't. That is right believes in free speech so there is much lower tendency of attacking the people on other side for what they have said...
These are untruths. Neither of you are moral.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
If firing for speech is made illegal, then a boycott will be ineffectual and thus not happen. You don't have to outlaw the speech of the mob, just the ability for a company to fire someone over someone's past statements.
The effectiveness of the boycott is a function of relative power levels, not whether the corporation can take action to adjust the issue. If it's made illegal to fire people for speech, I doubt people would have any qualms (assuming they have the purchasing power and scale) with driving the corporation to bankruptcy. Another corporation will take its place.
It's very hard to boycott a company into bankruptcy this way, and it never worked. Maybe a tiny startup, by scaring off backers. It's much easier to scare their PR HR to fire a person or do superficial changes. Companies have more power than a random employee, unless we're talking CEO level.