It used to be that you interacted almost exclusively face-to-face, within a small community. One of the better consequences was a sort of instant feedback loop, where your actions that hurt others were quickly reflected back onto you: abandoned your ailing grandmother? The local grocer will stop giving you credit.
These were social feedback mechanisms. They have the benefit of being much more subtle than the criminal justice system, and kicking in much earlier.
It’s ridiculous how some in the tech community pretend these mechanisms don’t exist, or that they should not exist: every time you have decided who to invite to your birthday party, or who to sit with at lunch, you have taken such considerations into account.
People are social animals. They use social cues to reward beneficial actions, and punish even slight misdeeds. This is necessary to establish standards of behavior, or basic human decency.
There should be limits to this process, the most important of which is time. No one should be forced to reveal to his neighbors that he is a “sex offender”, ten years after drunkenly taking a piss in a public park. Nor should your teenage shenanigans be the top hit in google for eternity.
But standing a front of a synagogue on a Saturday, with a torch, a gun, a swastika flag? Yeah, you better believe your friends and coworkers will look funny at you come Monday.