Employment law seems to me like a surface-level-reasonable way to prevent small mobs on twitter from spilling over into the real world.
But if the majority of people are forced to behave super conservatively in order to hedge against cancel culture does it really matter how small that vocal minority really is?
I see the phenomenon to be similiar to people being worried about frivolous lawsuits or being worried about Karen calling the police because their kids are playing outside unsupervised. These events are rare but fear of them shapes all of society's behavior in a bad way.
Also all past transgressions will count at any later time. So something said today what might be fine is not fine in a few years. And someone might just dig up this thing and rally up lynch mob to act upon it. There has been already cases of this happening.
I do really see that some protections are needed. Either by preventing companies taking actions or making the people calling for losing job liable for damages.
But in terms of ending cancel culture, if a small mob is all it takes, how effective can anything but employment law be? People calling on someone to be fired, after all, have free speech rights themselves; the best the law can do is limit the consequences of that speech.
Somehow the "everything is free speech and nobody should ever be censored" arguers forget this.
Beware empty belief in general principles.
That was a rather fringe outrageous thing to say.
Let me clarify: While people may be educated enough to cast votes how many beans is in the jar, or what cause to support in the moment, they are mostly not equipped to be jury and judge of mob rule, or am I wrong?
I always shake my head when seeing people smugly trotting out the "trying to get people fired is protected free speech too" argument. Don't they realize they're trying the same arguments that cross-burners tried in courts and failed at? Moreover, don't they realize what using having to use cross-burners' legal arguments to defend their desire to freely intimidate individuals looks like to an outsider from a moral perspective? If free speech proponents are forgetting things, well, they're not the only ones.
13/ Ironically, then, dismissing cancelling as a “culture” allows critics to not engage with the actual substance of calls for accountability. If it’s a culture, there cannot possibly be reasons behind their desire to hold people accountable.
14/ Side note: Look how often critics of #CancelCulture label their opponents as being a “mob” rather than a movement. A “mob” works off passions and emotion, whereas a movement is an organized effort to change society.
15/ And, by labeling calls for accountability as “culture,” critics draw the same kind of civilizational contrast as early anthropologists. They (often BIPOC) are governed by reflexive culture whereas we (often white) uphold the principles of free speech and rational debate.
13. The blanket term "accountability" implies some sort of clear, reasoned collection of guidelines. The reality is that there is little consensus on public standards. If there were a real level of consensus this wouldn't be a topic.
14. Calling your mob a movement doesn't change it's nature. Movement is every bit as loaded of a term as culture.
15. That looks a lot like "If you disagree it's because you're a Victorian racist". From what I've seen, the vocals sides of this are both affluent whites claiming to have the moral high road.