[Turing_Machine]

More on point:

Back in the 1950s, Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, decided that he wasn't going to buy any more screenplays from communists, or anybody who had communist friends, or even anybody who'd been accused of having communist friends.

MGM was a private company, so that was perfectly okay.

Right?

Right?

[swixi]

...Yes? It seems like the head of a private company should be able to decide how to spend money based on whatever reasoning they want, within the limits of the law. Are you suggesting there should be a law that would have prohibited this behavior somehow? Or just that it was morally wrong?

[Turing_Machine]

I'm saying that the Hollywood Blacklist is pretty much universally considered to have been a Bad Thing nowadays, even though, yes, it was perfectly legal.

It's also a suggestion that perhaps one might want to think about what could happen should the "cancellation" shoe suddenly be on the other foot, as it well might. These things can change, sometimes faster than people expect them to.

Robespierre was pretty surprised when the mob showed up at his door, you can bet.

[swixi]

On re-reading the parent comment above yours, I see they were referring to criticizing things done by private companies that are technically lawful, so that's my bad for not seeing the full context. Legality and morality often get conflated in these sorts of threads so I just wanted to clarify. Although I don't really agree with either the choices behind the Hollywood Blacklist or this current Ebay banning, I believe they should both be able to happen in a free(ish) market.

Personally, I think the cancel culture stuff will hit a tipping point and go the other way toward some mean. That sort of pendulum swing happens with culture all the time. Just like our society and laws survived the Hollywood Blacklist (and many worse societal upheavals), it'll survive this.

[ClumsyPilot]

Someone could use a history lesson..