[shadowgovt]

> I'm guessing you would argue that this is immoral and harmful behavior

I do not. I argue that the public putting pressure on individuals who spread bad ideas to stop doing that---up to and including looping their employer in, up to and including the employer terminating that employment relationship---is part of the healthy public immune system to bad ideas and antisocial behavior. "We live in a society" and all that. The government is constrained from doing it because the machinery of government can be co-opted by tyrants, so people need the right to call tyrants what they are. Not because it's the obligation of every individual to feed those who seek their destruction.

In US history, unpopular politicians used to have their houses torn down brick by brick by an angry mob and tossed in a river. We've come quite a long way in expressing disagreement in a civilized way, but there's no expectation that someone should keep paying you money (or, in the concrete case of Facebook and what content they host, giving you an open "billboard along the highway" of their community communication service) so you can spend it on denying their history or their right to exist (or the history and right to exist of their customers).

[throwaway894345]

> I do not. I argue that the public putting pressure on individuals who spread bad ideas to stop doing that

The whole point is that there's not a good way to determine what ideas are "bad ideas" apart from ongoing public debate.

> up to and including the employer terminating that employment relationship---is part of the healthy public immune system to bad ideas and antisocial behavior

The obvious problem is that "employers can terminate any employee at will" is that it does at least as much harm to "good ideas" as to "bad ideas". It optimizes for "popular ideas" and your ideas might not be popular, especially if you believe (as many cancel culture proponents do) that we live in an abhorrent white supremacist, rape culture. If these ideas are indeed popular, then a mechanism that allows employers to terminate employees for any reason coupled with an incentive system that encourages employers to terminate employees with unpopular ideas will naturally result in the propagation of those popular ideals.

[shadowgovt]

> it does at least as much harm to "good ideas" as to "bad ideas"

If that's the case, then one is assuming that the public is incapable of discerning good ideas from bad ideas.

Calling that into question calls all of American democracy into question. At that point, why even leave leadership up to the voters? A dictatorship, oligarchy, or plutocracy would be wiser if the public really can't determine for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom.

One of the cornerstones of American government is self-governance: the ability of the people to discern, in aggregate, good from bad. If we accept the public's ability to vote, we ought to also accept their right to inform a company of someone they perceive to be a bad actor in their midst and boycott said company based on their perception.

The public isn't always right. We assume, as a matter of American self-governance, that they often are.

(We probably shouldn't fork the conversation on the topic of white supremacist rape culture, because I'm guessing from your statement that you don't believe that describes America ;) ).

[throwaway894345]

> If that's the case, then one is assuming that the public is incapable of discerning good ideas from bad ideas.

I'm assuming that the mob can't, and that even a democracy struggles; however, given enough debate good ideas will rise to the top more often than not. The viability of this kind of debate depends on free-speech ideals, however--our debate is presently very toxic in no small part to the fear that cancel culture inspires.

[shadowgovt]

What is the difference between "the mob" and "the public?"

[throwaway894345]

I wouldn't get too hung up on the term for the group as long as we both know which group I'm talking about. I used "the mob" because cancel culture behaves like a mob (a group seeking extrajudicial justice), and because it's silly to use "the public" to refer to <13% of the population (only 13% of US adults say cancel culture is not a problem, but the statistics don't differentiate between people who are indifferent about it and those who actively support it).

https://today.yougov.com/topics/entertainment/articles-repor...