we have weaponized outrage against our neighbors and it is absurd. weve gotten to the point where a hangman's noose is racist as is the OK hand sign, and it is now common for such simple displays to escalate to a federal case. we want kids to stop bullying each other in school, but ridicule, harassment, name calling, and ostracization are perfectly acceptable ways to settle disputes. if this is to change, we will have to tone it down, not pretend that someone is evil because of a single harmless thing that they said, and business leaders will have to steer their companies away from encouraging this childish outrage culture.
Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
141–150 of 177 posts
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#142Earlier 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.
The point isn't the power over the corporation, the point is the power over the individual. But if the law makes it so they have no power over the individual, the motive to boycott won't exist.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you walk up to someone and punch them, it is reasonable for that person to press charges even though the repercussions may only last a few minutes. The consequence will be more-or-less immediate, even if it starts and ends with a discussion with a police officer. If you slander someone, their recourse is to sue even though the repercussions may last for months or years. The consequence will not be immediate and th…
I believe your proposal weaponizes speech even more; giving the ability of someone to accuse someone else of cancellation, which brings with it the threat of criminal action. It seems pretty obvious to me that this would make “cancel culture” markedly worse.
Just to be clear: I am making observations, not proposals. I see the current situation as a problem, but do not see a clear way to resolve it.
It is difficult to understand why such an outcome is obvious. At one end of the spectrum, people are making claims that should be actionable through legal measures yet they choose to do make it actionable through speech. There are many reasons why this could be the case: lack of confidence in the legal system, expedience and perceived severity of punishment, or a lack of evidence to support the claims (assuming they are true). Regardless of why, I would classify it as vigilantism. Vigilantism has not place in a civil society that respects the process of law. In cases where the initial act was illegal, I find it difficult to call the threat of criminal action a tool of "cancel culture".
Then there are allegations that many may considered as immoral, yet are legal. The people making the allegations cannot use the threat of criminal action to cancel someone, unless they resort to slander (e.g. make up a criminal act). That is pretty much the current situation. On the other hand, those on the receiving end would have more recourse against deliberately malicious acts. Since there would be due process, I find it difficult to think of it as a tool to cancel those making the allegations.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
MAD doesn't work when the people who get destroyed aren't the people who launched the missiles. It isn't enough for them to be other people from the same faction. When Kennedy was considering nuking Khrushchev, he had to face the reality that, if he did, his own family would die, and if he didn't, they probably wouldn't. Khrushchev, mutatis mutandis . If Kennedy had given the first-strike command, an individual colon…
I mostly agree, but Kennedy and Khrushchev families probably had bunkers to survive. On the other hand, the families of the Colonels were probably living in a military facility that was a primary target of the counterstrike... Stanislav Petrov decided to ignore the official protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Kennedy's kids, yes. His parents, maybe. His aunts, uncles, and cousins?
Petrov is indeed a notable hero — but note that his self-interest was aligned with our collective survival in the same way Khrushchev's had been.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe your proposal weaponizes speech even more; giving the ability of someone to accuse someone else of cancellation, which brings with it the threat of criminal action. It seems pretty obvious to me that this would make “cancel culture” markedly worse.
Just to be clear: I am making observations, not proposals. I see the current situation as a problem, but do not see a clear way to resolve it. It is difficult to understand why such an outcome is obvious. At one end of the spectrum, people are making claims that should be actionable through legal measures yet they choose to do make it actionable through speech. There are many reasons why this could be the case: lack…
> At one end of the spectrum, people are making claims that should be actionable through legal measures
Be precise. What claims are actionable? Provide examples.
I think you might have a wildly inflated idea of what is and is not legally actionable, which is driving erroneous conclusions about what the law is, where it is going, and the limits of what is and is not possible in the courts under current jurisprudence.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: Which actions exactly should be illegal? I assume you don't want to make me force watching movies from certain producers that I don't like anymore. At the same time in some countries retail stores basically have to cater to everyone and already can be made liable if they don't sell something that they advertised for as long as customers stick to terms and conditio…
> 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…
my impression is that those threatened boycotts won't really cause much damage to companies
It still boggles my mind to see multi-billion dollar multinational companies cowering in terror from what is probably no more than a few dozen Twitter users in each case, none of whom were customers anyway, they just have too much time on their hands
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#147In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime. If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice". That said, I think it's going to take…
This is an astounding response: in reaction to people bullying each other on the Internet, you want to empower everyone to use the force of the law to silence their critics? In what world is that either (1) a reasonable de-escalation of a social ill, or (2) a net win for free expression?
I'm not very old, but I am old enough to know the history of SLAPP lawsuits and anti-SLAPP legislation[1]. Barbara Streisand lost a SLAPP motion so hard that we named an entire effect in free expression after her! Do you really want a world in which well-resourced parties can leverage the courts to silence dissent?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#148Ironic that this is being posted by the NYT (though not as an editorial, I guess), who fired Quinn Norton within 24 hours because she'd embedded herself in Anonymous and consequently used the word "fag", years earlier. The mob framed her as anti-gay despite her having had an outspokenly bisexual life partner around that time.
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…
Maybe 80% of the people that opine on this subject are in category 3)
Category 3 is actually “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
> I have yet to hear one of these people be anything but angry
That's because you don't "hear" people be silent.
Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
MAD doesn't work when the people who get destroyed aren't the people who launched the missiles. It isn't enough for them to be other people from the same faction. When Kennedy was considering nuking Khrushchev, he had to face the reality that, if he did, his own family would die, and if he didn't, they probably wouldn't. Khrushchev, mutatis mutandis . If Kennedy had given the first-strike command, an individual colon…
I mostly agree, but Kennedy and Khrushchev families probably had bunkers to survive. On the other hand, the families of the Colonels were probably living in a military facility that was a primary target of the counterstrike... Stanislav Petrov decided to ignore the official protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
> I mostly agree, but Kennedy and Khrushchev families probably had bunkers to survive.
What sort of "survival" would even be possible in a post-apocalyptic world?