The article requires that you accept that 'shame mobs' are real, and a threat to free speech on the internet.
If you, like me, don't know what that term means, then did that article make sense to you? Here are the uses of the term 'mob':
"You may be liable to legal sanctions or a twitter shame mob." - in the context of 'like-minded souls [who] via social media ... hold you answerable to their moral standards'.
"The shame mobs that spontaneously form" - that being those people who learned about Hunt's sexist comments at a meeting to support women in science, and attended by international journalists, and who then spread the word. It did not qualify which actions were mob actions.
"The internet allows ordinary people to exercise 18th Century mob justice in a 20th Century way, destroying people's lives bloodlessly from their mobile phones thousands of miles away." - That's an analogy .. and really should be the 21st Century, not? Plus, we've got 20th Century lynch mobs, so there's no real reason to reach back a couple centuries.
"Full scale shame mobs are still rare or course, but that is not all we have to fear.". I think it's appropriate to quote Alice's Restaurant here:
> And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in, Singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an Organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said Fifty people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and Walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement.
"Third, we could call on the government to save us from the mob [... for example] installing fire-breaks in social media networks that make the formation of flash mobs less likely making it illegal to fire the target of a shame mob without cause and due process" - "flash mob" are also considered good things, like the dance flash mobs that sometimes appear. So "mob" itself isn't the issue, but something more specific.
The author wants there to be legal job protections against the targets of a shame mob. There are already projections for those who complain about discrimination (on the basis of sex, race, religion, and a few other protected categories) in the workplace, so many of the people who protest against sexist comments are already protected.
It's mostly only those who advocate sexism which don't have these protections. So if I read this correctly, it's arguing for more protections for those making sexist and racist comments. And I wonder how the law might define what "shame mob" means in an actionable way.