[auslegung]

I’m all for accountability, but I feel very uncomfortable with the idea that hundreds or maybe thousands of randos on the internet can ruin someone’s career, even if that person has done something wrong. The legal system should be the solution here but it is broken. Ideally we’d spend our energy fixing it but… easier said than done. So I guess there are no good solutions :( Please tell me I’m wrong

[the_lonely_road]

There are a number of solutions but it seems the best one would be labor protection. One of the downsides of “at will” employment is you can be easily fired for things as innocent as being a temporary embarrassment to your employer. How many public teachers or police officers are being canceled? I use them as examples because I believe they are examples of strong union protections in America, but with 50 states that generalization will of course not apply to all teachers or police officers in the country.

[rndgermandude]

Labor protection may help with keeping your current job. But they probably will not help with you advancing your career, and they will not help with your co-workers looking funny at you because somebody on the internet alleged you are a so-and-so-ist. Or customers and/or other partners refusing to work with you. And so on.

Back in school (in Germany[0]) we had a case of a teacher, who among other things taught PE, and who was falsely accused of "inappropriately touching some girls". The girls in question told everybody (except the teachers of course) that they will be fabricating such a story as "revenge" for the PE teacher actually trying to make them take part in PE instead of just sitting around. As soon as the police got involved, they backed down and recanted, apologizing and basically claiming they considered it not "a big deal" and just a "prank", but by that time the damage was done.

The teacher in question had been suspended during the investigation and of course that was the talk of the school and everybody including their parents knew about it. After being cleared, parents would constantly ask to take their kids out of his PE class "just to be sure", so he ended up not teaching PE at all anymore shortly after. Afterwards we usually saw him eat alone, as the other teachers seemed to avoid him, and roam around alone in the halls during breaks instead of going to the teachers lounge like everybody else. He retired as early as he could.

Not directly related to "cancel culture", but to the mindset that goes with it, my mom told me later in life that back in elementary school, one couple took out their kid of my sisters' class before school even started, because their kid had been assigned a teacher who... was male. That was enough. There was no allegation, no rumors of inappropriate behavior, no nothing. The parents in question had never met him before either. He just was male.

[0] Germany has (had) very strong labor protections for teachers. All teachers, including the one I am writing about, used to be "officers of the state" (Beamte), and therefore in order to be fired they'd either have to commit treason, an act against the democratic order, or a crime resulting in a felony conviction of no less than 1 year in prison. These days, a lot of teachers do not automatically become "officers of the state" but are merely employed.

[luckylion]

That mostly empowers the unions, as they'll then be the judge of who gets to stay and who gets fired. I'm not sure that's a big improvement.

[atq2119]

That's not how it works in countries with stronger protections. Unions don't have the power to fire anyone, nor do they have veto power. There are rules (e.g. no firing without a cause from a whitelist of acceptable causes that typically come with additional requirements), and courts to decide cases where there are disagreements over the rules.

[luckylion]

Sure, but for this part of the equation, the employer wants someone to go. The union (or the labor representative in the company, it's not necessarily a union) decides whether that's okay, or whether they want to fight it. You still want to work with your labor representation as an employer and if you're not hellbent on getting rid of someone, you'll accept what they decide.

That gives them power, for example over non-union employees of the company.

[baryphonic]

"Something wrong" is the key criteria here. Ultimately, most of the cancellations are differences of opinion, even if someone finds an opinion particularly offensive.

In my experience, no one's opinion changes because he gets punished by some faceless bureaucratic authority. He simply doubles down, because he believes that not only is his opinion correct, but that it has provoked a crackdown from the authorities.

Not every "wrong" needs to be punished or "held accountable." And "cancel culture" itself is sort of a faux accountability, anyway: an angry mob lobbies some bureaucratic authority to deprive an "offender" from his supporters, often on trumped up accusations and with meticulous organization. They could have instead brought up whatever the offense was forever, they could have debated the person, they could have boycotted, all of which at least give the supporters and the offender the chance to think about what happened.

A large part of cancel culture involved excluding the multitude of middle ground positions down to either legal sanction or a few degrees of unpersoning. There are so many more solutions, including maybe just tolerance of statements we find offensive.

[peyton]

It’s paid. Like ~$10–30k plus a bonus if successful. The cancellations are not differences of opinion. They are paid operations.

[klyrs]

I could be getting paid to cancel people? Please tell me more.

[atq2119]

You personally? Probably not. After all, what's your chance of succeeding?

And I'd like to see proof of GP's claim, but it's pretty plausible that there are people who would try to offer and seek such a service. Imagine the damage you could cause if you managed to cancel a competitor's CxO...

That doesn't mean that such deals actually happen, of course.

[klyrs]

> After all, what's your chance of succeeding?

I could make a twitter account if that would up my chances?

[dionidium]

The phrase du jour is, "freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences," but this merely begs the question. The whole point is which consequences for which actions and who gets to decide? (Who in their right mind thinks, "a literal mob" is the right answer to that last question?) And it's a very weird status quo where something you said in private or in a forum or at a party 10 years ago -- let's even assume it was something genuinely offensive -- can be used as evidence that you shouldn't be allowed to have a career in the present day.

Another phrase lefties love is, "I don't know how to convince you you're supposed to care about other people." Whenever I see some regular Joe fired from his forklift job because he isn't totally up-to-date with elite social norms around discussing race or gender -- or how about people literally calling CPS on "bean dad?" -- I just think, yeah, I don't know how to tell you that you shouldn't take pleasure in that outcome. Apparently people genuinely do get off on getting guys like that fired and, again, I don't know what to say that would make them just a little less bloodthirsty, because it's in fact very easy for me to empathize with that guy.

[code_runner]

To each their own, but I think the phrase “people on the left” may be better than “lefties”.

Lefties gives me the impression I know your opinion and political views well before the end of your thought. It weakens an argument that I actually agree with… even though I’m a lefty.

[dionidium]

That's fair enough. I struggle with what to call them. I have been broadly "on the left" my entire life and I don't want to cede the terms "on the left" or "progressive" to these folks.

[lapcat]

> Whenever I see some regular Joe fired from his forklift job because he isn't totally up-to-date with elite social norms around discussing race or gender

How often have you seen this?

[cm2187]

The legal system should be the solution to controversial opinions?

[wahnfrieden]

When people say they want the legal system to be the solution they mean they want people to be caged and/or they want fines that only matter to the poor, in practice. They’re promoting state violence, not an ordered society

[auslegung]

You are assuming and generalizing, two things that do not go well with good faith discussion. Part of the legal system being broken includes a prison system that is awful, and unbalanced penalties to the poor. So what I am proposing, "fix the legal system", would address these as well.

[wahnfrieden]

from your wording you are still supportive of caging people (just doing it better) so I'm not sure why you would paint my response as absurdly off base. you're like the people who say that crony capitalism is fixable you just need to solve the cronyism and return capitalism to some purer and equitable form that never existed

[auslegung]

At what point was I talking about controversial opinions?