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Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

Mr. Wenig and Mr. Wymer have no such worries. In June, Mr. Wenig was re-elected to the board of General Motors, a position that pays $317,000 a year. Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, called the cyberstalking scandal “regrettable” but noted “it didn’t involve any GM business.”

Mr. Wymer has a new job, as the chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. The chair of the board said the nonprofit was “aware” of what happened at eBay, but believes Mr. Wymer is “a leader with integrity” and was the unanimous choice for the job.

I'm uncomfortable with the way that "cancellation" can destroy people's careers without a proper trial, but after reading the article I'm also disgusted that these two are able to continue their careers without apparent repercussion.

Is the problem that I'm trusting the article without allowing the two to defend themselves? Is it better to trust the judicial system is sufficient? Or are extra-judicial "mob style" punishments actually a good thing in cases like this?

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Cancellation culture exists because this is the expected norm for those in power. A slap on the wrist at worst while being protected by their powerful friends and expensive lawyers. Most likely they'll also destroy the lives of anyone who tries to get justice (blacklisting, smear campaigns, lawsuits, etc.). So you get a mob together where no one person is an easy target for having their life destroyed and ignore the justice system which can be easily bent with money/connections. It's a logical response to the power structure in place.

I honestly hadn’t considered that before: cancel culture is an overreaction to an under reaction.

I guess that’s just kind of what we do when we wield our protest powers. I wonder if a sensible measured reaction would be met more openly (although maybe not even possible to do).

As I see it, measured reactions against power structures get squashed. Maybe you get a token appeasement that actually changes nothing. It's just too easy for those in power to make it go away so they logically go that route. Going overboard is the only way to force a reaction other than suppression (not guaranteed of course, you might just get massive suppression instead).

A good example of this is unionization. If a decent chunk of employees are upset about things, but you don’t do anything to alleviate it, they’re more likely to want to unionize so they can force the hand of their employer.

Intuitively I think you’re right. But I also think the side effect of overreaction is that those who disagree can very easily point at it to dismiss the cause’s legitimacy. “Can’t take them seriously at all. They want to cancel everyone and defund everything.”

True but you generally get to this point where all other lesser options have failed. People are lazy and won't put the effort into mob justice if they see an easier approach. There have been decades of previous issues that simply were swept under the rug.

I also don't think public opinion matters when it comes to mob justice. It's background noise. The conversation is between the mob and those in power. If the mob frightens them enough then changes will be made. What those outside the mob think is irrelevant unless they care enough to form their own mob.

I hear you. I wonder though if the amount that the mob frightens the power is affected by public opinion. Especially when it involves politicians.

I think some politicians will care but it depends on the specifics of their voter bases. The mob and anti-mob groups tend to split across political lines so for many politicians one or the other are already lost causes. So it's a question of how your expected voter base thinks about the issue and that's likely to be a lot more skewed than the overall population. So even if 50% of the population is anti-mob, if 90% of your political party local voters are pro-mob then you have a reason to listen.

It's less that people are mob or anti-mob so much as pro their mob and anti the other mob. Don't forget that cancel culture is not an entirely left-wing phenomenon.

Plenty of the same people who rail against SJWs and leftists cancelling people would have no problems with cancelling Bill Maher, the Dixie Chicks or Colin Kaepernick.

And it's largely random. Someone's ill-considered tweet or even post on an internal company email list or political donations or etc. ends up going viral, they get fired, and the whatever will be at the top of Google searches for possibly the rest of their life.

I would think of the economic persecution of individuals as powerful weapon.

just like with any weapon:

- some will call it 'great equalizer'. Meaning that a victim no matter how small and physically weak, can still fight off a number of aggressors

- some will call it a tool of death making, that belongs to the hands of military (in the case of cancel culture, it would be equivalent to saying that this tool belongs government )

Point is, just like usage of any weapon, the morality and legality of economic persecution depends on:

- what / who is it used for

- amount of collateral damage

- who used it

- were there other means, was it legal

- the manipulative power of the legal team defending the use

One thing we can sure of, any new weapon gets adapted by all sides of a conflict.

The case of misuse of this weapon, in my view, was against Brendan Eich [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2014/04/05/backlash...

You also had the bidirectional mess at PyCon a number of years back.

One problem is that what is going to completely blow up is at least somewhat unpredictable. And, especially if an individual is low level/status (unlike Eich), many companies are going to take the path of least resistance and "kill them all and let God sort them out" so to speak.

Which of course given that "blow up" is pretty much defined by social media footprint means that they'll also have whatever happened probably dog them is search results for a long time.

But who's getting canceled under cancel culture? The people "in power"[1], or rank and file employees? From a unscientific sampling of cancellations[2], it doesn't seem many people in power are being canceled. The only one I can think of is Brendan Eich, but even then I doubt he has powerful connections. If this is the case, it doesn't seem like cancel culture is achieving its objective of punishing people who previously couldn't be punished.

[1] The parent comment mentioned "being protected by their powerful friends and expensive lawyers", so I wouldn't consider someone to be "in power" just because they're high on the totem pole within a small organization.

[2] https://twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598

Celebrities, CEOs and politicians have also been cancelled, if that counts.

Can you provide some examples?

Louis CK.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pajiba.com/AMP/celebrities_...

Side note: JFC I hate Google Amp. I'm preserving the link out of disgust.

It's like hacking. Most hackers won't be able to hack a specific target. But with a wide enough net they will get some hits. And the hits are usually due to the victim doing something really stupid rather than the hacker's ability. So you'd expect you'll mostly see nobodies get hacked.

The term is so broad and vague you just need to pick a meaning. Of course it would be much more useful to directly have conversations about, say, at-will employment.

That's the trade off with mob justice which doesn't mean it's not a logical response to a situation. It also doesn't mean that it's not a net benefit to society in the long term if it forces social change. Nothing is close to perfect including the current system and including cancel culture and including mass protests. Just logical and imperfect responses to situations by people who are trying to make things better.

As for larger targets, J. K. Rowling is a billionaire and is being hit by cancel culture on-and-off. Seems to be weathering the storm but the attempt is being made.

I think we’ve also entered a stage where people have learned to cynically leverage “cancellation” as a marketing strategy.

There’s no shortage of people who will rally behind someone whose been “cancelled” without any attention to the particulars. Knowing this, you can go out of your way to be cruel or obnoxious, and then turn around an play the victim to yet another mob, happy to indulge your ploy.

Worth noting for the record that Brendan Eich didn’t exactly get cancelled either. Yes he was pushed out of Mozilla but he found community success and support when founding the Brave browser[0], by all accounts nobody seems to be holding it against Brave for his actions

[0] https://brave.com/about/

> Brendan Eich didn't exactly get canceled.

Brendan Eich disagrees.

https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/1217512049716035584?l...

"In 2014-15, I could not get funding or a job, went outside valley to found Brave, took big pay cut & still-substantial long-term risk."

Frankly speaking, it'd be a better argument that he was "canceled" if he hadn't gotten funding at all. If this is what "being canceled" means, that your browser (I.e. commodity software in a mature marketplace where everyone gives it away for free) still gets funded then maybe it's not actually a meaningful harm to begin with.

I suggest "no effects at all" and "canceled for life, now dead or on welfare" is a false dichotomy. Obviously I had to rebuild a company and codebase rather than build on Firefox. Mozilla's loss, now.

Question is now, to be poignant, is to what you learned from the experience and what your regrets are.

I can't comment on anything about Mozilla covered by NDAs. The rest will have to await my memoirs.

Actually, the question is if you knew that Brendan Eich was harmed before you claimed he wasn't harmed at all.

Pretending the victim wasn't harmed and then asking him "what he learned" and "what his regrets are" is pretty malicious.

I take issue with this. Reading my question back, it wasn't intended to be malicious (short and to the point is what I was going for).

Broken down, its like this:

I'm asking what he learned: What was the take away form the situation? Is there something of value from what happened that can be shared that is worthwhile? If it comes across as implied as anything else, then I did a poor job at framing, but the question in the literal is asking nothing more than that.

My second question is simply, do you regret the experience? Do you have regrets surrounding the situation? An answer of "I don't regret anything about that situation" is another way to answer the same question.

I wasn't setting a trap, I was hoping to use the fact the person in question was actually commenting to get more information about the experience from a different source.

I don't think that's unreasonable at all.

I'm doing my absolute best to leave my own personal feelings out of it as well, which is why I used the words I did, actually, I felt they were far more along the lines of matter of fact than anything else.

Granted, I will concede we lose some of the human element in all this when talking over a text forum, so maybe this isn't obvious to others, however the questions were meant to elicit an honest response, not a defensive one.

Edit: I'll go on the record (now seeing I got an answer)

I think this narrative about "cancellation culture" is somewhat ridiculous. Its just an outgrowth of everyone being outraged in public forums now (Twitter, Facebook etc). Inevitable and very human, since any form of mass media was widely consumed (Tim Wu wrote a great book about mass media called The Master Switch which covers this very well). I don't think its a "problem" like some people make it out to be.

Secondly no, I don't think he was harmed, Brave is a successful product, and having to go outside the valley to raise money isn't "canceling" somebody. You still have a business, you still are CEO of that business, and its a successful business. In fact, I know since all this with Mozilla he's been interviewed in positive lights for Brave specifically. This isn't exactly following the guys career.

I know I'll likely take some flak for this, but I also don't disagree with what happened either. Actions have consequences, and the more publicly visible you are the more severe those consequences will be. A CEO that doesn't stand for the companies public values and missions isn't going to be kept on as CEO. In Mozilla's case, social equality is important enough that it affects the boardroom.

Well, I think the lesson is that the safe thing to do is don't say anything on social media that could ever be perceived as remotely controversial (and given that's hard to predict probably don't do it at all), don't post photos with people because who knows might be controversial some day, and don't do anything like donations that are a matter of public record especially in a political context.

Now, most people will be fine with those things up to some point, but if you want to minimize risk you avoid those sorts of activities. And you may give up benefits if you don't do some of those things as well.

Your question, and explanation, read as malicious to me. Here you are explaining to someone that they weren't harmed by being fired because they managed to get another similar job two years later.

Well, I’d argue founding a company is a little more than just “managed”

I don’t mean it as being malicious. Doesn’t mean I don’t have a different point of view on what happened but that is separate from my goal of becoming more informed

And Brave is a little less than Mozilla. Regardless, you aren't in a position to tell someone else whether or not they were harmed by being fired. For one, getting fired is a pretty obvious harm. Second, the person involved is saying he considers it a harm.

Welcome to cancel culture.

Why should he "learn from a situation", and how can you have regrets?

The way I see this:

1. He spent $1000 of his own money on something. It was a legal transaction. (Some people spend that on car stuff, others spend this on computer parts, and others spend this on their addiction to anime). Others, in other countries spend money in ways the US deems "immoral."

2. Other people tried to take what he spent it on and then apply this on his performance and tried to associate that action with "how the work place may be" (Is there evidence that he treated gay married individuals differently?)

He did have an affect from this. (All the details aren't clear.. also I don't think they're important for this arguement from this). What is your stance on punishing him for doing #1 and #2?

Its all about takeaway, of course something like this might contain some valuable lessons, just like Osbourne Computer provided us with lessons in how not to sell a new product, in effect.

I ask about regrets, because people have them, another valid answer would simply be that they do not regret anything about the situation. Sometimes, when answering the first question, they never get around to talking about this part, which can be equally if not more so valuable.

I don't know how I could phrased this - and given the comment window, for visibility sake - any other way. They're two questions that I genuinely didn't intend to be "charged". I ask the same exact questions at the end of our sprints!

Of course, the human element can be missing a little in a text forum, but I didn't want to accidentally word things in a way that would make someone defensive either, as I couldn't come up with a good way of wording things without introducing my own personal biases and opinions on the matter, which wouldn't have been a way to approach this to get someone to answer objectively (where objective means non defensive and in their own words and thoughts)

First really consider the ask, on its face value, and consider you can always answer the question in the negative, if thats how you really feel.

Thats what I was going for.

I appreciate your clarification here, and apologize for the shortness of my response:

The way your comment was phrased, combined with your dismissiveness of Eich's departure from Mozilla in the comment's predecessor caused myself, and seemingly the preponderance of your respondants to read it in the tone of a kintergarten teacher asking a child if he'd learned his lesson, and to respond as such.

"And what did you learn from this experience?"

Probably not to donate to causes you believe in six years before you receive a promotion at the organization you've founded and helped lead for a decade and a half?

I just want to be clear I hold nothing untoward against you or anything like that. I have my 10000 foot view of corporate politics and such, and we may not well align there, but I don’t want this to be taken as something untoward.

I rather appreciate that you read and responded to my comment and I don’t want any thing to come across as untoward

Too late, you've already been cancelled.

So you faced what seems like an ultimately mild consequence for a publicly-held and socially unpopular position.

And this is the cancel culture we're all supposed to be worried about, really?

What would have been, in your estimation, the appropriate consequence for working to deny marriage rights to gay people in California? Please don't say "nothing," i.e. no consequence.

On on hand you're right that this is "real" cancellation but you're doing a terrible job at showing that this is some kind of undue, non-deserved pain. Being unemployed for part of two years with savings strikes me as something most humans can weather without permanent trauma.

Humans can also weather having to exist in the same world with people who believe different things than they do, too.

Yeah... I think when your beliefs are then saying that other people in society should be treated as lesser and then you push money to enable those beliefs, it crosses a line.

If people just thought stupid shit but didn’t act or vote or spend money on it, it’d not be of consequence. Problem is, few people do that. They want their beliefs to be implemented. If they think gays aren’t worthy of being treated as equals then they’re probably gonna act on it.

Which was rather the point regards the reaction to Eich, who sought to put force of law behind his differences in belief.

Because Brave is a very niche browser still. As soon as it gets popular, people will start to remember.

Louis CK, Bill O'Reilly, Matt Lauer, Megyn Kelley, and several other celebrities come to mind.

While some may technically be employees, most were also executive producers and quite powerful in their own right.

Also, your source there isn't really valid because the author says at the beginning he is specifically calling out examples of regular people getting cancelled and rather than the rich and powerful.

> Cancellation culture exists because this is the expected norm for those in power.

The problem with that line of thinking is how "those in power" is defined more and more broadly and has now evolved to a point where who you are is more important than what you did.

So now most people who gets cancelled do not tend to be the Harvey Weinstein but one of those "racist Karens" videos where the context have been cut off and the people are obviously in the early onset of dementia or college kids making offensive jokes on Twitter.

> So you get a mob together where no one person is an easy target for having their life destroyed and ignore the justice system which can be easily bent with money/connections.

This is double edged knife since mobs and thugs can be bought too. There is a reason why all modern nations give the state the legal monopoly on violence.

> It's a logical response to the power structure in place.

Correction, it is an emotional response. Mobs are never "logical".

Mr. Wymer has a new job, as the chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley

Let's see who else is on that board...

Eddie Garcia - Chief of Police - San Jose Police Department

They had the chance to defend themselves after the case became public. What did they do? Had their trails tucked between their legs and went to hide. It's a shame only these pawns were charged.

That is arguably the best approach, especially if they think there is no usable defense. The storm always passes.

In the UK executive directors and non-executive directors of NHS Trusts need to be "fit and proper persons".

There's a rough guide to what that means here: https://nhsproviders.org/fit-and-proper-persons-regulations-...

In my opinion, companies need to start being more selective about who they appoint. Directors will say they need to be paid so much because they bare a huge amount of responsibility, so it seems fair enough to remove that responsibility for poor behaviours.

My recollection is that be declared unfit and improper had very little effect on Robert Maxwell.

I generally think of “cancellation” referring to punishing someone for an unpopular opinion.

In this case, if the emails The NY Times really exist, there was a conspiracy to commit a long series of crimes to harass critics of EBay.

If for some legal technicality these men cannot be prosecuted, a socially enforced penalty seems appropriate.

I’m perplexed at this reaction to the story - that the biggest takeaway is that the executives who sponsored this harrassment by the “security team” should not be tainted by the scandal as long as the legal system did not punish them.

when cancel culture first became a thing, I too found it very worrying. surely there is a better way of accomplishing these goals, I thought. eventually, I came to the conclusion that this is probably the best way for these people to express their frustration. it's basically just a boycott. the only reason it has any real power is because a bunch of people are getting together and threatening to vote with their wallet. they are using the tools provided by capitalism the way they are meant to be used. I might not always like the outcome, but of the available options, this is probably my favorite technique for forcing organizations to make changes. when people are this upset, the alternatives are much worse: enforcement action from the government, civil unrest, direct violence, etc.

if you still believe in the values of liberalism, you have to consider methods and goals separately. while I might not always agree with the goals, I can't really fault the method. even if you do think cancel culture is terrible, how would you stop it? you can't make it illegal for people to take their business elsewhere.

Absolutely this. Any single instance of cancel culture is an individual exercising their right to free speech and association, as well as the so frequently touted primary method of individuals to voice their opinion within capitalism, voting with one's wallet. Somehow when many people all with the same opinion do it in concert it becomes cancel culture. Both sides of the political divide do it, and both seem to have a problem with it only when the other side does it. Decrying a fundamental mechanism of democratic speech because it goes against what you agree with seems to me rather undemocratic. And I think the view that it is disliked by those in power as it gives normal people an unusually powerful weapon is spot on.

I think your mistake is assuming “cancellation” is only applied to the rich and powerful, but it has become used more and more against non public persons, who often have not even done what they are accused of, or at the very least the accusations against them are greatly exaggerated.

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