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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

Right, the problem is that a small mob of people can have outsized control by putting pressure on individual employees. To that employee, it doesn't matter how big the mob is.

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.

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> People calling on someone to be fired, after all, have free speech rights themselves

Somehow the "everything is free speech and nobody should ever be censored" arguers forget this.

Intimidation, harassment, and attempts to harm individuals are not protected speech. If they were, cross burning would be protected speech as well. See, for example Virgina v. Black; quoting from the Wikipedia article: "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivered the opinion stating, 'a state, consistent with the First Amendment, may ban cross burning carried out with the intent to intimidate." In so doing, the Court considered the speech to be constitutionally unprotected 'true threats. Under that carve-out, "a State may choose to prohibit only those forms of intimidation that are most likely to inspire fear of bodily harm.'"

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.

Free speech is not a positive in isolation, but need to be channeled constructively according to democratic principles. Most people are not educated to wield that power.

Did you just say most people are not educated enough to have free speech?

What a wild ride we're on.

Yes indeed. Of the kind social media optimize on, most people are NOT educated enough for, or rather, society have not enough controls for; fringe outrage growing into trends and mob.

Beware empty belief in general principles.

> most people are NOT educated enough for

That was a rather fringe outrageous thing to say.

Indeed. So will you protect it, or will you lie?

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?

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