Comment by drenvuk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drenvuk | Hacker News Reader

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You proposal has no teeth and ignores the history and reality of mobs. It's like you expect unorganized people to be intelligent as a collective. That's foolish.

Removing any punishment isn't vague - just take it out of the hands of those who can currently inflict it:

1. Make it illegal to fire employees for any speech in the public square.

2. Make it so they have to be found guilty in a court of law in order to be fired or shunned for anything sexist or racist.

3. Make it so that any publicly funded institution (even partly) cannot terminate their relationships with individuals because of their speech in the past or the future.

Right now what we're seeing is extrajudicial punishment instigated at the will of anyone with a twitter account and following. The above suggestions reduce the twitter mob's leverage because they shouldn't have any to begin with. Anyone seeking damages should have to go through channels that allow some kind of defense. The court system is supposed to be systemized thoughtfulness so we should rely on it.

The way I see it playing out is that companies will force all employees off of social media with their own names or fewer people will attack companies because they know that the company can't do anything. Both cases are a positive change.

You're being optimistic about vengeful people online. I don't think you're being realistic.

I see your proposals as having the same requirements as mine.

> 1. Make it illegal to fire employees for any speech in the public square.

So you can't fire an employee that is causing an uproar and a subsequent boycott of your product? Because that's why they get fired now, to prevent a decrease in sales. The only way maintaining the employee and the sales is for the public to recognize that an employee (including a CEO) does not represent the company (which in a case of a CEO can be shaky). This is a tricky situation that I think you're overly simplifying.

> 2. Make it so they have to be found guilty in a court of law in order to be fired or shunned for anything sexist or racist.

I feel a bit better about this. But this lines up with my tempered approach. I think this may be a bit too light handed though. For example, it is legal to be a Neo Nazi. That is protected by free speech. But if a high level employee is openly a Neo Nazi then that's going to affect your sales.

> 3.

Same goes here.

I think these solutions are too simple that they miss the nuance I'm asking for.

> Right now what we're seeing is extrajudicial punishment instigated at the will of anyone with a twitter account and following.

This is a huge problem that I'm concerned about. But I don't see a way around it without having society act better.

Well I do see one other solution, but it has a lot of consequences too. Twitter/Facebook/etc could change their algorithms to prevent these cases from going viral. But there's big consequences to that and makes them arbiters of "*ism". That's also a dangerous situation and honestly a position I don't think Mark or Jack wants to be in.

> You're being optimistic about vengeful people online.

I'm not optimistic about them. I'm optimistic about the public. That the general public will get tired of this shit. Getting tired will cause less clicks, which will cause less rage, and momentum will dampen the system. But right now we have media resonating with this vocal minority because it brings in dollars. People still click a lot on hate porn (articles like "You won't believe how dumb {Republicans,Democrats} are" or "Watch this {Democrat,Republican} get totally destroyed!"). People are already getting sick of it, that's why we're having this discussion. So I'm saying fight by not clicking. Increase the momentum back to normality.

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