[Udik]

> 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 involved businesses- it's not meant to prevent an economic damage but as a form of PR and advertising.

[goatinaboat]

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

[bigbillheck]

> 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.

[JoshuaDavid]

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.

[CodesInChaos]

Did you confuse at-will employment (employer can fire for any reason) with right to work laws (companies can't have an agreement with a union that forces all employees to join or pay union dues)?

[Udik]

I don't understand what you mean, can you elaborate?

[ceejayoz]

> Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob.

So, all I have to do is hire a few Twitter bots once in a while and I’m permanently unfireable?

[hackinthebochs]

You can still be fired for cause. But the company will have to do work to document that to demonstrate it wasn't for past statements.

[bjl]

So you're incentivizing being racist on the internet to make it harder to fire somebody.

[Udik]

This is silly. A twitter storm is a pretty well defined, public event. Do you seriously think it would be common to post racist stuff on the internet, and then organise a permanent campaign against yourself, in order to become un-fireable for causes that are work related? A company that wants to fire you for your poor performance can do so, and if you sue them it's not going to be hard for them to prove they have a legitimate cause which has nothing to do with your self-organised mobbing campaigns.