[mellosouls]

I find this type of argument devolves into "I want to be a crappy person and not be judged for it or face consequences"

Whereas I find your counter-argument devolves into "Crappy people are those who disagree with my point of view and they should face consequences"...

The truth is there are extremes on both sides; but the censorship seems to be overwhelmingly driven by one.

[avgDev]

The whole "cancel culture" concept has literally be around for years, it was just marketed now and used for politics. Humans have been cancelling people and things for eternity. People with extreme views that did not align with the majority were always pushed away. This even happened in medicine and science.

[mc32]

I think the problem is the "democratization" of cancelation. Someone says something mildly controversial (some talk radio host said something terse about a neighbor) and people start lodging complaints against the employer and the hosts advertisers.

It's idiotic.

[klyrs]

As if this hasn't been happening to gay people who got outed until extremely recently. It wasn't exclusively democratic, of course: the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy was only repealed a decade ago. Cancel culture isn't remotely new; only now it's punishing bigotry, not an instrument of bigotry. And, no shit, bigots are pissed about that.

[mc32]

It’s not new. The ability for people with little context whatsoever to cancel something just because is new. The democratization is the problem. There is usually little due process, if any. It’s not different from East Germany where is you wanted your neighbors bigger apartment you convict a story about them listening to west German radio programs.

It’s stupid.

In Korea they use this to cow people into behaving “properly” whatever the fuck that means. There is no reason to maintain the belief it will only be used to smoke out the “bigots”.

[shadowfox]

> The democratization is the problem. There is usually little due process

In context of what the parent post, are you under the impression that gay people were cancelled after going through some due process?

[mc32]

I'm not under that impression. But I am under the impression that if we had had something like the democratized cancellation we have today that it would have been much, much worse.

People having done a bad thing in the past does not excuse doing a bad thing today.

[howaboutnope]

Yes, and gay people were pissed about it, too. Your point? It was an unjust way to treat homosexuals, it's an unjust way to treat supposed "bigots". Especially when it turns into vulgar Gesinnungsschnüffelei combined with double standards, and reading inner motivations and beliefs into snippets, because "it could be".

[klyrs]

Only gay people have suffered millenia of outright persecution, and face a death penalty in several countries to this day. Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison here.

[howaboutnope]

Something wrong doesn't become one iota better, or acceptable, because bigger evils exist. By that logic, persecuting homosexuals is perfectly fine, because bigger evils than that exist, too.

And no gay person suffered millenia of persecution, not even non-persecuted individuals live that long. You might as well say carbon-based lifeforms suffered millenia of persecution at their own hands and call it a day.

[kelseyfrog]

I'm simply not convinced that cancellations of mild controversiality represent a significant proportion of total cancellations without evidence.

[monkeydreams]

> The whole "cancel culture" concept has literally be around for years, it was just marketed now and used for politics.

Yes, but the power balance shifted so that the dissatisfaction of "small" people can now be perceived and felt by the wealthy and powerful. "Small" people can organise around a cause and make the powerful uncomfortable, so the powerful attack.

[Krasnol]

You are right, it's been around since we evolved into civilized human beings actually. We even have places where people are being "cancelled" out of society. We call it "prison".

The only new thing is that it's labelled "cancel culture" which makes it somehow "bad" for some people.

[specialist]

Socrates and Jesus are two noteworthy examples.

[bastardoperator]

So how does this work? Some one is crappy for thinking violence, racism, misinformation, and harassment should never be tolerated? What's extreme about that? Please do enlighten me...

There is nothing extreme about getting booted from facebook because one can't behave like a reasonable adult. As noted above if anyone did any of this in a setting like a restaurant they would be asked to leave, coupled with assistance from law enforcement and even possible arrest for trespassing and disturbing the peace.

So who's wrong here? The businesses that don't want to be subjected to certain types of speech from customers because it impacts their business or the people that feel they have the right to say whatever they want free from consequence? Why can a McDonald's ask a customer to leave their establishment because they used the N word in front of customers, but Facebook can't? And let's be clear, in both cases no censorship occured, there was just consequences after the fact. Looking forward to your reply.

[bena]

Only point I would make is to say that censorship has occurred.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are times and places to censor and be censored. Not all things should be said at all times.

I think the problem is that we see censorship as something bad, so anyone quelling speech inappropriate for the setting can't be censoring because they're doing something good, not bad. But censorship isn't bad in and of itself. It's the reason for the censorship that makes it good or bad.

Censoring people because they are criticising you? That's bad. Censoring people because they are talking about hockey on a basketball forum? That's good.

So I would say, don't fall into the trap of getting into an argument about defining censorship. Keep the argument focused along the lines of kicking assholes out of McDonalds. Have them explain how its different from that.

[_3u10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

In American constitutional law, this case established two important rules:

under the California Constitution, individuals may peacefully exercise their right to free speech in parts of private shopping centers regularly held open to the public, subject to reasonable regulations adopted by the shopping centers

under the U.S. Constitution, states can provide their citizens with broader rights in their constitutions than under the federal Constitution, so long as those rights do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights

So far the court has rejected the application of Pruneyard to the online space, but it might change with more sympathetic plantiffs