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Comment by BucketSort | Hacker News Reader

In addition to government interference in free speech, all actions/words that offend have potentially life devastating consequences in this age of the digital permanent record. Suppose you slap someone in a moment of uncontrolled anger. If someone records that, posts it on the internet, and it goes viral, you then become the mad slapper in the eyes of the world. If someone googles your name, they will see you slapping someone. Even a single slap can potentially destroy your life. Not only do we have draconian laws, but also draconian self-regulation fueled by a vicious mob that demands political correctness.

People are angry. Everyone that steps out of line is now a target for that anger. It's a sad and scary state of affairs.

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The behavior isn't new, just the reach and visibility.

Conformist social pressure has always been intense. Previously, it was just very local and not visible outside the social context in which it happened. People didn't notice it (or if they did, would tend to approve of it) unless it was focused on them.

Yes, there has always been a social layer to regulating behavior. In this sense, the world has almost become one village where you cannot escape your social offences, no matter where you go on earth. Also, a video or archive of a tweet doesn't fade. So I would say the visibility, reach, and permanence of one's offences is something new, or at least has reached a new unprecedented level.

We do have laws to limit free speech in good and specific ways. You can't slander a person who isn't famous, for example, or incite violence against specific people or groups. And most of the cries of free speech being violated aren't really about the first amendment. Most are just people being deplatformed, which is a reminder that YouTube is just Google. It's a company, not a public space.

You can't slander a person who isn't famous, for example...

That was kind of the point. Thanks the the internet, we're all famous now. Just ask "star wars kid".

Well, let's suppose it's 1900, and you live in a small town somewhere in the US. You slap someone in a moment of uncontrolled anger. How long would that follow you? The rest of your life, unless you leave town. That single slap could destroy your life.

So I think that the "digital permanent record" removes the anonymity of the big city, and returns us to small town rules.

I agree with the similarity but as you're saying there was always the possibility of leaving town. It wasn't a convenient solution, and you might very well repeat the same actions wherever you go, but at least you could get a chance to start over elsewhere. IMO that's quite a bit different than the current situation, where I feel you'd have to go and change your legal name, move to another location and get new accounts online to manage to shake off what is now attached to your real name, and _even then_ the paper trail would probably be found at some point and it would all come back to you.

So small town rules, yes, but practically speaking there's only one town left. Whether it's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion - and depends on the specific context as far as I'm concerned - but overall I feel like something of value has been lost in the transition. It might have been possible to make amends and/or show that whatever you did was a temporary lapse in judgement before, but doing that one the scale of the whole internet audience we have nowadays doesn't feel practical, or even possible really. =/

Violence was much more acceptable back then. Beating your wife, beating your kids, getting into drunk fights. That's just what everyone did. If slaps had destroyed people there would be no one left. If you slapped the wrong person however, yeah I could see that having consequences.

Actually I have friends who have slapped other friends while drunk and nothing at all came of it. They didn't get excluded. They also didn't do it again.

We need to declare all speech religious speech. Politics is religion. One religion currently has the upper hand, and it's dividing people.

Which religion would that be?

What would such a declaration do? Religious speech should be protected as much as any other speech.

Not really. You can't be fired for religion. I wonder what would happen if someone (like Damore) said "I religiously believe that women shouldn't work".

You realize there are entire parts of the planet that operate this way, right?

> You can't be fired for religion

Therein lies the problem. Therein lies the problem. We've politicized religious speak. Who's the arbiter of what constitutes a religion and what religious views are tolerable in the workplace?

Some people want to take the rights of others to impose their preferred world view.

Why don't you make a free speech religion? Has anyone ever tried this?

Tried it with what goal? Is there any country where religious speech gets special extra protection?

Maybe you shouldn't assault people if you don't want to be known for assault? Slap or not, hitting someone in a fit of anger is assault, full stop.

Even people which have been 'cancelled' for things that aren't assault still end up going on to have their career mostly unaffected unless they did something really henious.

True. And "cancel culture" has always been the way things are. It's nothing new. It's just we used to "cancel" people for things like being gay or socialist. No one likes to be on the unpopular side of the social spectrum, but then again, no one is guaranteed a platform or an audience, only the right to speak to those who will listen willingly.

People aren't perfect. I don't think anyone commits a crime after performing a full calculation of the consequences. I think you demonstrate an important trend with your comment. The desire to label things and ignore circumstances. It appears to me that people don't want to think about the nuances of things; they just want to simplify all thought to some label level where conclusions are easily made.

Agree. Zero nuance. Twitter is the worst offender. Someone is either a monster or nothing. So disheartening.

The scenario you shared was someone assaulting someone else because they were angry.

Just because you're angry and not able to understand the consequences of your action does not excuse you from them. I find it more disturbing that we're defending literal assault because somehow it's the result of PC culture gone mad and not the result of laws meant to discourage violence.

If you're trying to connect this to people saying something silly on Twitter and having that follow them, you chose a really poor initial example of someone committing an actual crime.

Do you see how labeling a slap with the larger class of physical violence, which encompasses all sorts grievous acts, makes the rather innocent crime seem much more severe? This is a huge problem. It's a slap. Not a vicious beat down. It's violence, but there are degrees of violence. Should those degrees of violence not be reflected in our perception of the act?

Ah, the old "if you don't want the violent mob to get you don't ever do anything wrong".

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