[AstralStorm]

Political speech, in particular, is supposed to be protected from this kind of treatment.

Most importantly, accusations of bias are also not a valid reason to fire a journalist.

There's also an intermingling of private and public sphere, and firing someone for private legal behavior because some internet hive mind started a smear campaign also should not be lawful. Of course, America has the coercive institution of at-will employment, ruining any attempt at fixing it this way.

A good step would be filling class action defamation suit against a class running a smear campaign over barely public and irrelevant things. Consequences for setting up mobs. While platform is not liable, the users are. That could make some people think twice before doing it.

[dTal]

You're going to sue me for running, in my head, the program "if misbehave, then boycott"? Because that's all it takes to be a member of a "mob". Or you're going to sue me for passing on information of <misbehavior>, even if it's true, because you're afraid of being cancelled? That's a fairly horrifying dystopia you're painting.

Nobody has to incite a mob. It just happens. It's collective action. There's no one to sue, unless you feel like suing everyone.

[JackMorgan]

I was discussing an individual being attacked for personal thoughts posted in the past. If a company supports things you don't, sure, just don't support that company. But when a group tries to get a person fired for something unpopular that they said in the past, then using a mob to get them fired is vigilante justice.

[dTal]

Companies fire such people pre-emptively, out of fear of such boycotts. This is the only thing giving "cancellation" any teeth - otherwise, how could a mob "get someone fired"? Why would any company bow?

[Udik]

> Companies fire such people pre-emptively, out of fear of such boycotts... Otherwise why would any company bow?

Because firing someone is cheap. It's not "damage control", it's virtue signalling, as costly as it is for others to express their outrage on twitter.

[shadowgovt]

But a group trying to get someone fired for what they did or said in the past is the individuals in the group exercising their own protected political speech. It's difficult to see how that can be made illegal without curtailing political speech itself.

[hackinthebochs]

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.

[shadowgovt]

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.

[AstralStorm]

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.

[hackinthebochs]

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.

[jimmydorry]

It is indeed difficult to see how cancelling can be made illegal without curtailing political speech itself.

If there was an easy solution though, it would probably already be in place.

[ashtonkem]

> Political speech, in particular, is supposed to be protected from this kind of treatment.

No, it is not. It is supposed to be protected from the government punishing you over it, any other requirements are purely made up.

> There's also an intermingling of private and public sphere, and firing someone for private legal behavior because some internet hive mind started a smear campaign also should not be lawful

So you would use the power of the state to suppress speech in the name of free speech? I don’t think you’ve thought through the long term consequences of this.

[Zuider]

>No, it is not. It is supposed to be protected from the government punishing you over it, any other requirements are purely made up.

The United States has an unusually robust legal protection of free speech in its constitution. It is the case that this only protects citizens from the state, and any other protections people imagine it provides are, as you state, 'purely made up.'

Even so, the First Amendment is based on a prior ethos of the value of free speech.

The philosopher, J.S. Mill, in his impassioned defense of freedom of speech saw both government and private actions as being threats to free speech, and advocated protections against both.

There is an adage which has been much repeated in recent years that freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences. That depends on what those 'consequences' are. One may disagree, argue back, or even block a person with whom you disagree, but it crosses a line when you respond by trying to destroy a person whose views you reject.

[jhgb]

> any other requirements are purely made up.

Protection from the government punishing you over political speech is "purely made up" as well. All laws in all countries are "purely made up", humans made them so.

[ashtonkem]

It’s fairly obvious from the context that we’re talking about the American tradition of free speech, and the jurisprudence around it. So in this case “made up” means “there is no case law to support your assertion about how the principle of free speech should work in American law”. I find an attempt to assert that all laws are made up kind of lazy side stepping of bother the issue at hand and kind of annoying.

Furthermore, even if one just decides to YOLO a few centuries of American jurisprudence on the matter, one will quickly find oneself either advocating for authoritarianism, or recreating our existing speech system from scratch. Those are the only two logical outcomes that can come from an assertion that one parties speech should be suppressed in order to “protect” (promote, imho) the speech of another group.

[jhgb]

> It’s fairly obvious

But why? Do people from other countries deserve to have their digital pasts weaponized? That was absolutely not obvious to me.

[ashtonkem]

> But why?

Because the top article is a NYT article, and this forum is largely American in composition. There are interesting discussions about free speech rights in other countries, but in this case it’s reasonable to assume an American context.

> Do people from other countries deserve to have their digital pasts weaponized

I’ll remind you that presuming good faith is a rule here, this is a nakedly bad faith interpretation of what I said.