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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

For those who can't read the article, here's a summary:

> Brandi Levy sent a profanity-laden post to her friends on Snapchat in 2017, venting her frustrations with cheerleading and her school. When coaches at the Pennsylvania school discovered the post, she was barred from the squad for a year. The case will determine whether schools have the right to punish pupils for what they say off-campus. It is being viewed as a major test of the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech rights.

As for my own thoughts... I'm hoping the outcome of this case can be used as a litmus test for related bannings/cancellations when people express an opinion "off-campus" (so to speak).

Edit: More info about the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v....

Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")

View on HN

This is a lot different than being "canceled". The school must abide by policies and incorporate student's right to free speech, access to education, and equitable access to related school services and programs (including cheerleading).

Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals. This is entirely a social phenomena and has no legal basis. People legally can and will fire/hire people as it serves my business goals even if you think it is lame. There is no 1st amendment violation here.

Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same.

The first thing I always look for is if I can find some level of discretionary public funding that ties the organization to being a public institution.

Or at least creates funding consequences for them if they try to act like a private organization that actually has rights like a private citizen.

specifically, when an organization tries to "cancel" someone, it makes me wonder if they are

A) able to, or if they must tolerate basically any level of speech

B) able to have their own funding consequences by losing government funds if they choose to regulate speech

> some level of discretionary public funding

That's going to be everything.

Is there a categorical difference between, say UVA, and Harvard? Arguably Harvard takes much more federal funding than UVA.

How about a local dance studio that got $160,000 in federal loans to keep it afloat during COVID pandemic?

Try it in court. Who cares about the hypotheticals or the line? Well I mean, I don't. That's the beauty of it, you don't really need to have strong opinions on anything, just the ability to make an argument that is convenient for you and persuasive to a judge.

The extent of consensus, for me, is understanding what reality can match the arbiters that matter. So I don't really have a fixed world view on much of anything. (sidenote: I'd probably be a decent lawyer, but software earns so much more without any licenses needed.)

> Who cares about the hypotheticals or the line?

Well, for one, anyone administering anything IRL. You're a programmer, so you're not really responsible for much besides your own code. If you were a school principal (or a dance studio runner), knowing where the line exists (or is "liable to exist") BEFORE having to walk into court is important. A legal battle is not as easily ninja'd out as println debugging.

correct its good for the principle to not make kneejerk decisions, and it gives them ammunition against kneejerk parents or a board.

ideally their local counsel knows better too.

the best action in inaction.

all they have to do is do nothing. let the student represent whatever values the student wants in most circumstances.

There is a categorical difference between UVA and Harvard. Harvard competes for federal grants on equal footing with all other research institutions. UVA is a permanent line-item on the Virginia state budget. They are treated as legally distinct for that reason and it means UVA is subject to all the restrictions placed on governments but not private actors and Harvard is not except where a restriction is explicitly written into the conditions of accepting funding (i.e. how the federal government sidesteps state sovereignty to enforce a national drinking age).

> (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately)

Are we talking Church of Satan or the Satanic Temple here?

Either although mainly from ignorance in the later case. TST is freaking awesome, seriously American heroes. (and hilarious)

Not necessarily.

There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist.

I don't see a problem with extending such protections to include more free speech. The problem is, where does one draw the line? If one is against abortion and protests that, seems different than say if one is a full fledged neonazi spewing rhetoric.

The way it sits today, the majority of people are afraid to speak their thoughts for fear of workplace retaliation. This is effectively corporate controlled speech, which is not a good thing for society.

> There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist.

That's not "basic protections", it's existing case law about a conflict within the constitution. Freedom of religion and freedom of association are both protected, but where they conflict we generally find that whichever side is providing some kind of good to the public (be it products or employment) needs to bend. You can't fire me for my religion because of the nature of "firing" (being something that denies me something most people have), not "religion". It can't be extended without stepping on some other right-holder's toes.

Sure, but it's worth considering whether we should care about stepping on the right-holder's toes. That's what got us into corporate controlled speech, doxing, and twitter mobs in the first place. Read, people wouldn't do it if it weren't effective.

It probably wouldn't be -as- bad if in the US healthcare wasn't tied to employment. As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

> As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

Ridiculous hyperbole. First, because it imagines that people get killed for tweets, and second because it hilariously invokes the idea that this is a new thing. You genuinely don't think people have been persecuted for opinions in the past? Let me get my dead buddy Galileo to drop a few rocks on your head.

Likewise McCarthyism, etc... Objectively free expression of inconvenient conservative ideas in the US has never been cheaper, freer, easier or more pervasive than it is RIGHT NOW. Good grief, just look at your own posts. You don't look like someone afraid of being killed by a mob.

I certainly didn't mean to offend you, or to pretend things today are worse than at any point in the past. It was more an argument against this weird celebration of getting people fired. I mean, there's even a subreddit called ByeByeJob. Just pointing out it's not so simple as 'hur hur he got fired.' Imagine you just found out you got cancer, and had a public meltdown on the way home that someone happened to film. Somewhere people would be laughing at you, while others are trying to get you fired, and poof there goes your health insurance. Crazy world.

That is exactly what happened to gays and lesbians and single moms in conservative places. That is what happens to anyone with history of sex work. There is actual organization right know to collect wrong thing said by liberal professors and to try them get fired.

The abortion clinic volunteers that go with you so that you are not yelled at alone are a thing for a reason.

And in civil rights era, white who did not supported segregation was economically punished and had hard time to find job.

I mean... is what you said advocation to keep this cycle going? That's where whataboutism leads to. Justification to just swing the pendulum the other direction.

I don't agree with any of it happening to either side of the political spectrum. At some point the shit has to stop.

And?

The direction of implication is "people are evil because they do evil actions", not "actions are evil because evil people do them".

Unjustifiedly firing people is wrong, and therefore conservatives are wrong to do so.

Unjustifiedly firing people is wrong, and therefore liberals are wrong to do so.

> As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

Exactly, this is a great reason to leave the USA, especially if you already have health issues. With AI taking hold and it getting harder to emigrate, the time to leave is now. Jobs with benefits for programmers are going to become more uncommon, with remote work being possible, as more contract work is going to be offered.

I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, who is culturally American. I can legally live in about 30 countries (Freedom of Movement rights) as an EU citizen. I left the US over healthcare. For most people on here, Ireland is the place to go to get EU citizenship. Once you get EU citizenship, it levels the playing field and you can go to places with better healthcare than Ireland.

More people migrate from the EU to USA than the reverse. So it seems the majority disagree with you.

https://mises.org/wire/3-times-many-europeans-move-us-other-...

Nah, people escape from the USA all the time. No one moves here. Our border walls are to keep people in, not out. I mean, why else would 2018 and 2019 have record immigration?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...

Look, people should live where they want, be happy and be proud where they're at. Nothing wrong with that. But single platform ideals to make wide sweeping judgements are a good reason to keep a two party political system. Focusing on one issue and bringing a hammer down to shatter everything is rather unproductive. Yea, the USA has it's problems. Duh. Just like everywhere else has problems too. But more people run to the USA. If someone is privileged enough to find somewhere better, good, go for it. No one wants to stop you.

Most Europeans from Western Europe speak English and have at least some cultural knowledge of the U.S. due to our cultural hegemonic status. It’s easier for Greeks to come to the U.S. and integrate than vice versa. Also the U.S. has a long history of taking in immigrants. I suggest that looking solely at respective numbers of immigrants doesn’t tell the whole story.

Wonderful, so how does a natural-born US citizen without a dual citizenship get the right to live and work in Europe?

The only ways I am aware of are having a work sponsor, the Dutch-American friendship treaty, or taking advantage of a country that offers citizenship to descendants of emigres, like Greece

How to immigrate is basically either as a partner of an EU citizen, on a work permit, or descendants of EU citizens.

There's a bunch of resources online to find out. Whether you are a US citizen (natural born or otherwise) tends to be irrelevant.

This portal has a simple way to find out: https://ec.europa.eu/immigration/

I'm super ignorant on this case but has there been a case in which speaking one's mind has caused their death and how was that death actually prosecuted, if it was?

"has there been a case in which speaking one's mind has caused their death"

The case that immediately sprang to mind for me was that of Alan Berg[1], a radio host who was assassinated (and about whom Oliver Stone made a movie called Talk Radio[2]).

But this has happened many times throughout history, where people were assassinated (or imprisoned/executed) for their beliefs.

More modern instances are things like journalists being assassinated in South America, for instance, for reporting on organized crime (similar things happening in Italy), or in Russia for criticizing Putin, or in the Islamic World for incurring the wrath of religious fanatics.. or the Charlie Hedbo attacks in Paris, or various beheadings of journalist and teachers.

Some older, but still relatively recent and famous cases have been the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Gandhi... etc.

Of course, speaking one's mind against the rulers or their system in a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union has always been a quick path to the gallows or a concentration/labor/death camp.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_Radio_(film)

Specifically, one cannot be fired for being a satanist because of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Constitution is completely silent on the interaction of corporations and the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights; those rights describe a relationship between the people and the government. Within that framework, government crafts law that determines how business may legally operate.

Congress made a specific choice to extend (part of) a protection similar to the one described in the First Amendment to employees. It is not a complete extension; for example, at the federal level, freedom of association is not protected regarding one's business relationships, and you can be fired in most states for being a member of the KKK (there are some specific states that have added additional protections for political activities or political beliefs that would preclude such a firing). And most of the rights in the Bill of Rights aren't extended at all to the employer-employee relationship; employers may demand employees (and customers, for that matter) bear no arms on their premises, for example.

Basically, the difference is whether the US government can compel private organizations to give a platform to someone.

The idea of "incorporating" the Bill of Rights against states and cities is a result of the Due Process clause of the 14th amendment. (For example, I wouldn't be surprised if the Heller decision would eventually result in US cities like NYC, SF and LA being unable to require gun licenses anymore, after someone sues them like in MacDonald vs Chicago).

That said, Facebook and Twitter are not publicly owned, they are "private" corporations (which are publicly traded). The problem isn't their specific decisions, but that they are too big.

The Sherman Antitrust act actually gave a lot of teeth to the idea that the public government can break up businesses if they abuse their monopoly power (and supported even by Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt). Ma Bell. Standard Oil. Etc. Today, people look at Facebook and Google as targets for breaking them up into competing companies or unbundling their departments from favoring one another.

As a left-libertarian, I would instead like to subsidize open-source software to disrupt these Big Tech monopolies from the ground up. And it's a subtle point, but I would like for the State to simply pass laws explicitly declining to enforce property rights and other rights of entities that "control too much". Landlords who own too many houses, or banks that merge together into large conglomerates will be put on notice that the public system will not enforce their rights against members of the public, past a certain point. It doesn't serve society for private property to have no limits, similarly to how you can't scale up Roman era ships and still have them seaworthy.

I recently gave an interview at Glasgow Caledonian University about the economics of free speech, where I go into detail about the problems and solutions in all the aspects around Capitalism and Free Speech, from money in politics, to deplatforming, to Big Tech filter bubbles, to clickbait news, to the Sinclair television chorus. It contains a lot of critiques of Capitalism and Competition as the basis for free speech.

If anyone has about 30 minutes to listen through it, I would love your feedback: https://youtu.be/M8HbvC6vqIY

This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, and everything to do with workers' rights. You can't be fired for belonging to a protected class, but you can be fired for literally anything else - hence people are still rarely punished for firing members of a protected class.

There was an upheld case a few years ago where a man fired one of his employees for being too sexy. Not acting too sexy, or dressing too sexy, but being too sexy. You can fire someone for wearing Adidas, or for breathing too loudly (unless it can be shown to be the effect of a disability.)

The idea that we should have special rules for racists and sexists is an insult. It would be in effect creating a protected class for bigots, who could still be fired for wearing green on Thursday.

The most absurd part of this is that the vast majority of the people decrying "cancel culture" are the most antagonistic to any normalization of worker's rights, or enforcement of minority protections. Apparently, the only real racism is when you call someone a racist.

Good points all around. Since work is so vital to our everyday survival, and as pointed out, often health insurance, it should be much harder or with much better reason to fire someone than what currently exists today(which, in most states is nothing). I by no means intended to advocate for chiseling out special protections for bigots or antagonists.

I'll admit to a little frustration with people who act like current law (usually the first amendment) protects people from "cancellation" by private actors. But I'm more open to arguments that we should create new employment law that makes it harder to arbitrarily fire people. I don't think this is a good idea, for the record, but it is a reasonable argument to make. Many other countries have much stronger worker protections, which work well for them. I don't personally think they would fit with all the other interlocking policies in the US, but it's definitely not a crazy thing to discuss. But it's also not the case that it's a first amendment issue.

It is crazy the lack of protections around firing people. People fear that it would be harder for businesses to fire someone so they would be less eager to hire. But then you connect any health services to being employed and you created a big hole in the overall plan.

This is why I don't understand why businesses aren't demanding universal health care and a universal basic income. Employees are much less expensive when one is not providing health care, and also less expensive when pay provides a marginal increase in quality of life instead of all of subsistence.

I think that’s the same reason why I subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the US military opposes both universal healthcare and free of cost college and university education.

I think overall businesses don’t care enough about higher costs because at the end of the day they can just fire me without providing cause if I cost more than I am worth to the business.

There was a thread about cloud services such as cloudinary and why businesses put up with the absurdly high bandwidth charges and someone explained to me that the business isn’t paying for bandwidth charges, it is paying someone to solve their business needs. As long as fragile meat bag humans serve the business needs, I think businesses will employ us.

The US military has no official position on those things at all, and the actual people making it up run the gamut the same as any other cross section of the population. By far the greatest factor impacting recruiting is the overall state of the economy and how easy it is to get any other job, but surely you don't think that means the US military actively sabotages the US economy and job market to boost recruiting.

Businesses aren't demanding these things because they would take away their leverage over their employees. You need the employer for your income and your health insurance right now. Why would they want to make it easier for you to leave them?

Health care should not be linked to employment. This is the original sin underlying a significant number of problems in the country.

Word. Your last point is also right on, and the most irritating.

Where did the post you reply to mention "racists and sexists"?

The post mentions people afraid to speak up, like Gen-X members educated by super progressive people from the real student revolts in 1970.

Except that this education is not sufficient to keep up with the arbitrary word games of rich elites, who incidentally do not care about worker's rights.

> Where did the post you reply to mention "racists and sexists"?

The post pessimizer responded to explicitly mentions neonazis.

> The problem is, where does one draw the line?

The article goes into one of the possible problems: cyberbullying.

Especially with young women, cyberbullying is a bit of a problem. Though the people involved in this case are not involved with cyberbullying, it's not difficult to jump to that issue with the people involved.

Though it depends on local laws, schools often have the mandate to stop bullying and other such behaviors. Courts have been mixed thus far on how cyberbullying is legalistically different than regular bullying and where the mandates/responsibilities (if they exist) start and end for the school administration, especially with mixed minor-adult populations. It is, admittedly, a very difficult line to draw.

As the article states, SCOTUS rarely gets into school-student speech issues, so this decision is expected to set the stage for the next 25-50 years of US policy in the now digital era

EDIT: It's not just young women, cyberbullying is more of an universal problem.

If cyber-bullying is really that problematic, it should be a crime.

Schools aren’t called to solve crime; they should defer to the police.

I'm confused: you say only the police should do something about it, so do you mean that society shouldn't try to prevent bullying, or that the police should run the schools?

I assume they mean (and I agree) that society should try to prevent bullying (that is, criminal harrasment) by reporting it to the police, not by engaging in vigilante 'justice', which is what any school discipline for off campus activity (and really, cancel culture in general) amounts to.

If you believe your vigilanteism is justified (because, and only because, the police won't or can't do their jobs) the onus is on you to clearly communicate that your actions are because the police won't or can't do their jobs, and to support that assertion with resonable evidence, in every single case.

Uh, so if a kid needs a stern talking to you better call the police (and not their parents) is what you are saying?

If all they need is a stern talking to, then what they did isn't criminal harrassment.

So "stern talking to" is the only action a school is allowed to take?

If students know that then what exactly is the disincentive to engage in bullying that doesn't rise to the level of criminal harassment?

Shouldn't a school be a place someone learns appropriate behaviours with less risk of criminal sanctions? It seems that some form of punishment imposed by schools would be reasonable in some circumstances.

I am not sure how you got from "(responce <= stern talking to) implies !(severity >= criminal harassment)" to "(severity < criminal harassment) implies (responce <= stern talking to)"[0] via good-faith misinterpretation.

If they're making a nuisance of themselves at school, the school would presumably give them a detention, with repeat offences eventually resulting in expulsion. If they're making a nuisance of themselves elsewhere, the school is not involved. (Note that the latter applies to criminal actions as well; that's what the police are for.)

0: That is, from "X implies Y" to "Y implies X".

> with repeat offences eventually resulting in expulsion

Expulsion is not really on the table, at least in the U.S.

You seem to be making a bright line distinction between "at school" and "not at school".

This distinction doesn't really exist. Does "school" include virtual learning environments? School sports? Travelling to and from school or sports? Bullying that extends from school to out of school?

Traditionally, schools have always been responsible for these things or have taken actions that occurred out of school grounds into account.

I finished school in the early 1990s and students were expelled then for graffiti attacks out of the school, out if school hours, not in school uniform.

I don't see what is different or new here.

> I don't see what is different or new here.

That's fair as far as it goes, but I'm not claiming it's different or new; I'm claiming it's bad and needs to be stopped.

> Does "school" include virtual learning environments? School sports? Travelling to and from school or sports?

Probably. Probably. Debatably and depends on the mode of transport.

> Bullying that extends from school to out of school?

That's two items; yes to the former, no to the latter.

You interpreted his comment in exactly the opposite of the way it was written, as best I can tell.

I’m ok with schools “punishing” people for breaking social norms, but the punishment should be proportional - detention, extra homework, public shaming, etc.

But expulsion is something that will affect the person for the rest of their life. There should be significant burden of proof before such an action can be taken, and we already have a system (courts) to deal with that.

If someone is bullying online block them or call the police.

Going to parents is probably unwise for a variety of reasons. Possible could solve the issue but more likely will increase the drama without providing any real punishment.

Harrassment and terroristic threats are crimes (varies by location). Most of the nastier bullying could fit those.

I think the issue is if adolescent cyberbullying rises to the level of a crime.

Similar to the US military's idea of Non-Judicial Punishment[0] (drop and give me 50!), school administration often also has the lee-way of assigning punishment to students [1]. This punishment often does not rise to the level of a crime, but still requires action. Things like detention, cleaning toilets, scrubbing hallways, etc. Often, the bully is a minor themselves, and may not understand the implications of their effects. Giving them a police record may not be appropriate if a talking-to will stop the behavior.

SCOTUS's ruling will flesh out this idea a bit more, maybe. If they rule that school administration is able to punish as they see fit for this case, then cyberbullying may be seen as something that does not typically rise to the level of a crime. If they do not, then cyberbullying may need to be revisited as a more serious action on the part of minors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-judicial_punishment

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_discipline

I think it's also worth acknowledging the current climate and context of concerns about law enforcement in general. These issues are often deeply nuanced, and I don't think LEA is currently equipped to handle that nuance. The fact that the legal system isn't currently involved in some of these cases is arguably a good thing.

> The way it sits today, the majority of people are afraid to speak their thoughts for fear of workplace retaliation.

I hear this argument regularly. Can you cite evidence showing it's actually true?

Look at this mail from the Python Steering Council:

https://marc.info/?l=python-dev&m=161652621725348&w=2

Similar rants from last year have been deleted.

Whenever someone posts the evidence you ask for, it is usually flagged instantly. Perhaps that is why evidence is rarely seen.

Well yes, many people will want to say "fuck you" to their boss at some point in time, and will not do so for fear of retaliation.

In the example you post, someone is ridiculing a group decision on a sensitive topic. Do you actually think that there should be no negative consequences to _ridiculing_ the decisions of your boss or coworkers? Being a dick has always been a way to lose your job, and I think that's okay.

https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-th...

I've read this multiple times over the last couple years. Please don't accuse me of cherry picking, I don't know anything about Cato, I just googled it and it was the first link(well, via thehill).

Extremely off-topic, but that URL is a great example of why using headline/lede text in links is a bad idea. Really loses its punch when the '%' gets stripped.

Thanks for following up. It seems like a reasonable source. This is sad and worth thinking about.

I wonder how this compares with other countries but I can look that up myself. The article you referenced from The Hill considered the issue but didn't provide much useful data either way. [1]

[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/510402-afraid-to-sp...

I've worked places with diversity and inclusion programs that I think are ridiculous. And I've heard of programs far worse. I smile and say nothing because it's not worth my job. I think there's a lot of people out there like that.

As tempting as it is, "I think a lot of people think like me" isn't really evidence.

For sure. I don't know of any actual evidence though, just anecdotes.

> try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career

I’m pretty sure that people would give me a weird look and then it would carry on as normal. Is this different somewhere?

If you are a politician, performer, athlete, or CEO in the United States of a high profile company - yes absolutely this is different. Are you an IC in Finland or something? People here get very upset and judgmental as a rule.

I’m in New Zealand. Maybe my assumption that people wouldn’t particularly care is wrong, or my oddities are already factored into their behaviour towards me.

The more imaginary friends you have, the more you're angry about the imaginary friends other people have.

Not really - pagans tend to be more open-minded about such things than monotheists.

I, as a Mormon, faced more social pushback in Georgia ~15 years ago, than my Wiccan friends, but neither of us faced any work pushback or worried about our jobs based on our religious beliefs.

Though I did have a co-member there get fired for being a Mormon and win a discrimination suit. His religiously motivated abstemiousness regarding alcohol got him fired from an aircraft maker since they worried about him NOT drinking with clients (as a salesman.)

Was the abstaining done in an offensive or obnoxious manner?

Nope, hence winning the suit. No one had complained, it was a proactive, hey maybe someone might take offense. Most likely a cover for actual religious malice, which wasn't necessary to prove to win the legal point.

> The school must abide by policies and incorporate student's right to free speech,

"Though public school students do possess First Amendment freedoms, the courts allow school officials to regulate certain types of student expression. For example, school officials may prohibit speech that substantially disrupts the school environment or that invades the rights of others. Many courts have held that school officials can restrict student speech that is lewd.

Many state constitutions contain provisions safeguarding free expression. Some state Supreme Courts have interpreted their constitutions to provide greater protection than the federal Constitution. In addition, a few states have adopted laws providing greater protection for freedom of speech." - https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/what-rights-...

> Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals.

Being "denied a wedding cake because one is gay" is a choice that private bakeries and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals.

That is not random speech however. That is a protected affiliation. Similarly you cannot discriminate on political or religious grounds.

Some speech is more protected than others.

Also worth noting that the baker in that case won because , in part, the gay couple were not denied service, they were denied a specific message. The baker was willing to sell them anything else.

Had that gone the other way, it would have had some icky implications for compelled speech/artwork.

> Also worth noting that the baker in that case won because , in part, the gay couple were not denied service, they were denied a specific message. The baker was willing to sell them anything else.

To quote the dissenting Opinion in this case, written by Justice Ginsburg,

In contrast to Jack, Craig and Mullins simply requested a wedding cake: They mentioned no message or anything else distinguishing the cake they wanted to buy from any other wedding cake Phillips would have sold.

The "Jack" in question:

> William Jack visited three Colorado bakeries. His visits followed a similar pattern. He requested two cakes “made to resemble an open Bible. He also requestedthat each cake be decorated with Biblical verses. [He]requested that one of the cakes include an image of two groomsmen, holding hands, with a red ‘X’ over the image. On one cake, he requested [on] one side[,] . . . ‘God hates sin. Psalm 45:7’ and on the opposite side of the cake ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin.Leviticus 18:2.’ On the second cake, [the one] with the image of the two groomsmen covered by a red ‘X’[Jack] requested [these words]: ‘God loves sinners’ and on the other side ‘While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. 319a; see id., at 300a, 310a.

...

The bakeries agreed to bake & sell him these cakes, but without the specific messages he wanted. Jack filled charges against these bakeries, and the Colorado courts upheld the rights of the bakeries in this case. The Supreme Court in the Masterpiece Bakery used this case as the precedent, and I agree with Justice Ginsburg's dissent that it should not apply.

> The Court concludes that “the Commission’s considera-tion of Phillips’ religious objection did not accord with its treatment of [the other bakers’] objections.” Ante, at 15. See also ante, at 5–7 (GORSUCH, J., concurring). But the cases the Court aligns are hardly comparable. The bakers would have refused to make a cake with Jack’s requested message for any customer, regardless of his or her religion. And the bakers visited by Jack would have sold him any baked goods they would have sold anyone else. The bakeries’ refusal to make Jack cakes of a kind they would not make for any customer scarcely resembles Phillips’ refusal to serve Craig and Mullins: Phillips would not sell to Craig and Mullins, for no reason other than their sexual orientation, a cake of the kind he regularly sold to others.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf

> Had that gone the other way, it would have had some icky implications for compelled speech/artwork.

This is addressed in her dissent as well.

Well, that's a weird take on things for being a member of a voluntary group activity at school. I certainly wouldn't want someone to be banned from school, expelled or given detention based on what they said, but I don't see why a coach should be keeping people on the team who bad mouth the team, or a music director keeping a tuba player on who continually speaks out about how bad the flute section is on instagram.

Does that difference make sense?

That only makes sense if the "optional" activity is not funded by a public school and does not make use of any public school property. Otherwise it is a government sanctioned activity, however optional.

>Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions

You're making a lot of assumptions about the comment above yours. Language changes.

Your argument would be stronger if you proposed an alternate definition rather than just saying “you’re wrong, that’s not what it means anymore!”

What I'm getting at is this: The story is about notable consequences at a school, which is not a private institution (generally). So, the commenter was probably using the term in conjunction with such consequences. It was clear from the comment, and the response seemed to be nit-picking a pseudo dictionary definition, so I tried to point out the colloquial usage.

> Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same.

Can you direct me to any incidents where someone expressed support for Satanism, even as a joke, and was then summarily fired after a mob harassed his employer with angry phone calls/tweets expressing (almost entirely empty) threats to boycott or worse?

Maybe I missed something in this discussion, has someone ever said "I'm a Christian" and then been fired?

There aren't that many Satanists in the world, but the far more common case is presumably people fired as soon as an employer found out they were gay. Note that sexual orientation is still not technically a protected class, though the EEOC will often take up for you anyway: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/.... Many localities explicitly call out sexual orientation and Obama signed an Executive Order mandating non-discrimination in federal agencies and contractors, but the actual Civil Rights Act does not protect this and case law on specific suits has been wildly inconsistent about it.

But is it really only jerks? I've seen attempts to get people cancelled for what they've posted on social media over 10 years ago. Sometimes cancellation happens over allegations that are later proven to be false. There was a TED talk once about a woman who found out she was fired after getting off an airplane because she posted an insensitive joke. Was she wrong for doing that? Probably. Should she have been fired on the spot without even having any form of communication with her employer?

What if Twitter one day decided that something you happened to say, perhaps in the past, disagreed with some social "norm" that you weren't even aware of? Would you be happy to be fired? Or can you confidently say that you will never have any opinion different from that of the "social norm"?

> Should she have been fired on the spot without even having any form of communication with her employer?

Too be honest, that depends entirely on the joke and her role, doesn’t it?

Yes these things happen, humans are judgmental and leery of being associated with people who are undesirable in the eyes their peer group and the specific biases of that group - so it isn't always fair. That is life and has always been true.

However, the term "canceled" itself is more typically about a specific and recent set of peers and biases - people on the right who are angry that people on the left are telling them to stop using the f-g or n-word, etc or angry that guys are getting outed for doing exactly the rape-y crap they themselves did and normalized and probably celebrated when they were in college.

Now, I honestly don't know if Louis CK should have had his career ended because he was pervy (pulled his junk out a lot, right? I get these stories confused), but that is more a function of social media being a huge, new megaphone for ostracizing people, not that the left is on some spectacular cancel rampage as it is normally characterized. We do need to grapple with how to deal with this new megaphone, I agree.

However, again, mostly this angst is not about a genuine desire to be good citizens and calling out dangerous corner cases. If it were, we'd be having a very different and much more constructive conversation. Most of this angst is really about the right wanting to keep being the right and going back to good old days, defensively dismissing the way the good old days were actually pretty terrible for a lot of people and we've learned a lot about how to be better humans. Of course there are cherry picked examples (in a population of 7B you can probably found thousands). But those examples don't change the underlying dynamics and motivations of what is going on here on average*.

I'm not defending the "right" in any means at all. For me, the term "cancel" means any attempt to ruin anyone's livelihood for saying or doing something considered "wrong", sometimes as a baseless accusation. It doesn't matter what political opinion they hold. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be of the opinion that the political "right" is the only group capable of being "cancelled". I disagree.

If I see something I disagree with on the Internet, maybe a joke gone wrong, I do not necessarily have to like it. But I will, nonetheless, celebrate that they are able to post what they have without facing potentially career-ending repercussions from the other side.

Respectfully, I think some introspection would be helpful here. You're responding to someone with a seemingly reasonable question about "cancel culture", and providing an explanation that the concept was made up by angry people with bad politics who don't want to be good humans. Do you see how this might be incompatible with the kinds of constructive conversations you're looking for?

For those not familiar with the lady he's referring to, her name is Justine Sacco. She was a senior director of corporate communications, and this (among several tweets making fun of people or places) is the one that presumably got her fires:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...

In case it isn't obvious, she's making a joke on racist stereotypes. Edit: definitely read the article, it's quite good.

I recognized who the parent comment was talking about immediately. Note that this woman is now the Chief Communications Officer of the Match group.

Goes to show the fear that everyone shows about this topic is almost always overblown. Assuming you aren't actually Harvey Weinstein and didn't do anything criminal, the worst that happens in every other case is you get the same job or even better for a different company a few years later. Brendan Eich and Mel Gibson still have no trouble finding work. Cancellation doesn't ever seem to be a life sentence.

James Damore seems to be doing fine, just not at Google: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-damore-b277b62b/ (interesting that he doesn't name the startup, though).

> Cancellation doesn't ever seem to be a life sentence.

I don't believe "they'll recover eventually" is in any way an excuse for "let's ruin this person's life [temporarily] for fun". They got fired and are likely unable to have a stable life for a year. I sure wouldn't like to get fired and have the paparazzi in front of my house for the next month.

> Goes to show that the fear everyone shows about this topic is almost always overblown.

Sounds like the right amount of fear to me. Some people don't have the privilege to go without a job for a year. Some people don't have the mental fortitude to deal with the crap that ensues.

People shouldn't need to worry about getting fired because the people of social media didn't agree with what they said.

> Was she wrong for doing that? Probably.

You're being somewhat generous here.

Am I though? She posted a joke on Twitter mocking the idea that white people couldn't get AIDS. It's only unfortunate that her statement was immediately interpreted as racist.

> Am I though?

Yes.

> She posted a joke on Twitter mocking the idea that white people couldn't get AIDS.

Even if you believe the subsequent backtracking, that's still a profoundly stupid thing to be doing in that circumstance, and it shows a complete lack of any critical thought as to how your actions and words are perceived.

> Even if you believe the subsequent backtracking

Of course I believe the subsequent backtracking. Have you read the New York Times article? Most people aren't racists.

> ... a complete lack of critical thought as to how your actions and words are perceived.

A lot of people have times when they don't think about how their words will be perceived. I sure have, and I'm sure you have too. However, I do not believe such minor stupidity should result in immediate loss of job, without warning.

> Conflating these things....

If I'm reading you right, then you are very wrong [0]. So much so that the court's own website addresses this:

"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

The idea of free speech is that for it to be free, you MUST allow unpopular speech (otherwise, it's not free!). This is hard to remember when we disagree with someone' actions.

A government agent (the school) taking repercussions against a child (she was 14 at the time) because she expressed frustration about the government should clearly fall into the violation category.

To not be a violation would be have an incalculable chill on free speech across schools impacting roughly 70 million kids (plus their parents).

[0] - https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...

I find it hard to believe that the anti cancelation argument is purely made by evil jerks (e.g. I don't consider lex to be a jerk). You don't think it's easier now than ever before to be 'canceled' by a social media mob? Don't there have to be some negative consequences to allowing for permanent cancelations? By all means, people that do extremely horrible things should be shunned but how and where does the line get drawn for the more mediocre offenses? Also, people are fallible, they screw up and make mistakes. Do they have a right to make amends and be forgiven for dumb things they did in the past?

It almost seems like it's trending towards a crowd sourced social credit system similar to what the CCP implemented.

I am not on the left or right, but shouting social media mobs with pitch forks doesn't seem like the best way to achieve internet 'justice'.

Being harassed/doxed is different than being cancelled

It is important to disambiguate the two

The difference being that in one case they harass you directly and in the other they harass your employer, family, and any future employers?

Unorganized individuals from twitter contacting your employer isn't harassment. If it is the implications would be scary the other way around: would you punish someone who pointed out a problem that happened to become popular on a social network?

That's not how cancelling works, except maybe in the case of celebrities. When you are canceled, no one calls and has a polite chat with your employer. They call and threaten your employer with arson. They find where you live and vandalize your home. It's harassment. It's illegal.

That line seems blurry to me. How do you define both and where is the line? I'm not sure that many angry emotional twitter users contemplate any line, I would assume most just think "I strongly disagree with that person's opinion or actions and I must punish them". I think most people would agree that harassment and doxing are bad, but I also think that most people would think that doing bad things to "bad" people is sometimes ok. Mobs of emotional people are not paragons of morality, bad actions by a few quickly spread and the morality of the mob normalizes to that new worse level.

I don't see how you can possibly say it's easier now than ever. Past incarnations of this type of thing like the KKK, lynch mobs, witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, often had legal authority and canceled you from Earth rather than just forcing you to use some platform other than Twitter or Facebook to publish your opinion. Nor are Hollywood blacklists a remotely new thing. The only new element is the blacklistable offenses have changed from support of communists and various left radicals to sexual harassment and racism.

> I don't see how you can possibly say it's easier now than ever. Past incarnations of this type of thing like the KKK, lynch mobs, witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, often had legal authority and canceled you from Earth rather than just forcing you to use some platform other than Twitter or Facebook to publish your opinion.

I was talking specifically about "cancelling" people with social media mobs to shout down opposing views or harass them into submission. The scale and ease at which it can be done has allowed it to be used as a tool to beat down morally reprehensible individuals as well as some that have arguably reasonable views.

> Nor are Hollywood blacklists a remotely new thing. The only new element is the blacklistable offenses have changed from support of communists and various left radicals to sexual harassment and racism.

I make no claim that sexual harassment and racism are good things or that they should be allowed. My problem is with the gray area that is harder to say whether or not it is allowed. I think trump is a corrupt numbskull, but I think it is absolutely horrible to attempt to "cancel" people or organizations that openly support him and I think the whole idea of shouting down or harassing opposing viewpoints that a good portion of society consider to be reasonable into submission is reprehensible.

Vigilante mobs are not rational entities, they should not be used as a tool to win arguments. Their use will continue to further radicalize both sides of the spectrum and I don't see how they could possibly lead to anything good for humanity. Anyone or any group that says I think this therefore I am correct and they are wrong should be looked at skeptically. Policies and issues need to be discussed academically and not through twitter shouting matches.

> This is entirely a social phenomena and has no legal basis.

It can still be a major problem in a supposedly "free" society if there is a culture of punishing people for their thoughts. For one thing, it makes democracy pointless.

> Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications

Speaking of straw men. There’s a legitimate concern that political discourse is run through a few monopoly providers with biased and inconsistent moderation. Stating that the actual reason is because they’re jerks is a fantastic straw man of your own.

You seem awfully against the anti-cancel culture crowd, but do you feel like there should be zero recourse for someone who's company fired them amid public baseless accusations? Say for example a bunch of people jump on a bandwagon to tarnish someone's reputation publicly after hearing from someone else that he (lets be real) did X. So the company fires them because twitter is spreading their name around and then it turns out the accusations were plainly false. Now his income is hamstrung and everything else is just out there.

An even more ridiculous example might be an annocuous disagreement with what a lot of people are saying. "I don't think the cops should be abolished, and anyone should be able to protest for their beliefs".

I don't think anyone disagrees with the other implied strawman of the guy who goes around constantly making rape jokes and is surprised when his friends don't like him anymore. It's more about how easy it is to just spread dirt, truthful or otherwise.

It's not just that it was expressed off campus. It was expressed privately. Her speech on its own never reached the school. It was deliberately recorded and rebroadcast. The disruptive speech was the replaying of what she said, not her saying it. There is a huge difference.

If everything private is fair game, then I expect we should be able to depose all parties involved for any disparaging statements they have ever made. Then we can proceed with either cancelling the large majority of everyone, and prosecuting the rest for perjury. I suppose there is as third group who just don't say anything at all, and we should just go ahead and nail them for thoughtcrime.

Sure, there is a blurred line with posting something on a forum which is read in school, but this case clearly isn't that. The speech wasn't public and wasn't available at large.

> I suppose there is as third group who just don't say anything at all, and we should just go ahead and nail them for thoughtcrime.

“Silence is violence”

No, it isn't.

Scenario 1) someone who has bullied you in the past calls classmate a racist term. you stay silent for reasonable fear of reprisals.

Scenario 2) your boss says something overtly sexist. you know he is fairly temperamental, so stay silent because you want to keep your job so as to continue paying your bills.

Scenario 3) the government is jailing a certain ideological group you happen to somewhat agree with. you stay silent for fear of being included in that group and leaving your children parentless.

Do any of those sound like violence? Or do they sound like a reasonable course of action for an individual lacking power over the perpetrators?

I understand the instinct to condemn silence in the face of injustice. But the real world places real demands on people, some of which are more important than abstract notions of justice.

I wasn't declaring that silence is violence. I was providing it as an example for the OP's enumeration. Hence the quotes.

noted, thanks for clarifying.

I think its perfectly fine to shun people if you think they're awful. Continuing association with someone who is, for example, is supportive of ethnic cleansing, is expressing that you condone those things. Choosing not to decide is still a choice.

The question at hand is whether you believe isolated private communications to be representative of true nature.

I don’t think that’s true. If you visit a convicted rapist in prison when nobody else will do you condone rape? Or are you performing an act of kindness?

I think the ironic and not obvious answer here is that we stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning. That reaction is what gives bad ideas power.

People are complicated. You can’t boil them down to a true nature that is “good” or “bad”. That’s “us vs them”. Only ideas can be judged that way and history decides what the bad ideas are.

" Only ideas can be judged that way and history decides what the bad ideas are." Well, historians do. Subject to change.

Accurate.

Although I suppose I was referring to "history is written by the victor". America is a great nation, but had the revolution failed, it would have been a disgraceful insurrection instead.

Honestly, it wouldn't even be that much. It would be a trivia question.

Even now the American revolution is kind of a non-event to the British. It is of less interest to them than the French revolution, which led to the Napoleonic wars and ultimately the rather drastic reshaping of European nations. George III is the villain in the American version of the story, but he's mostly known in the UK for his long, sad descent into madness.

They had their own Civil War in the 17th century, and even that tends to be glossed over in British history classes. They've just got so much more history than Americans do that it's just unfathomable. They don't really spare a lot of thought for the successful revolution, and an unsuccessful one would have been a footnote.

Visiting a criminal in prison does not condone their crime. Associating with someone that commits crimes, while turning a blind eye to their criminal behavior, does condone their crimes.

What do you mean by "stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning"? Do you have a social group in mind that does not enforce its own social norms?

> Visiting a criminal in prison does not condone their crime. Associating with someone that commits crimes, while turning a blind eye to their criminal behavior, does condone their crimes.

To me, this does not seem logical (for the dictionary definition of "condone"). Would you mind explaining your reasoning?

This was related to the parent comment that asked, rhetorically, if visiting an incarcerated rapist meant that you condoned rape.

I was pointing out that visiting a criminal does not directly imply that you condoned the actions that landed them in prison. However, if you know someone that is committing crimes, and you do nothing to stop them, then you do condone their behavior. I hope that clears it up?

Everyone enforces norms some way or another, but their statement implies an unwillingness to forgive transgressions, which isn't a given. Nowadays people's mistakes quite easily become viral memes that are their legacy. Huge mobs of shallowly interested detractors are unforgiving and can cause disproportionate harm.

I don't think you have to "turn a blind eye". It's not a zero-sum game. But it does mean you have to engage with people. Shunning would be the opposite of that.

The best modern-day example of how we should all live is probably Daryl Davis...

"It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy — it doesn't have to be about race, it could be about anything...you will find that you both have something in common."

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...

I think what you're trying to say is that compassion is a more effective tool for bringing people back into the fold of widely accepted facts and norms, and you offer Daryl Davis as an example.

I hear what you're saying, but I think Daryl Davis is an inexplicable exception, not the rule. I think most people know someone that has held onto truly shocking beliefs for decades, and hasn't responded to reason or compassion.

No solution is perfect, but I can't doubt that the world would be a better place if more people tried a little compassion and outreach first instead of going straight to assuming the worst and shunning.

> bringing people back into the fold of widely accepted facts and norms

> held onto truly shocking beliefs

Can you see the extreme subjectivity in your comments? Why should your opinion of what's a norm or shocking be the ultimate judge? What if its your ideas which are actually shocking and violate the norms? For example, you should believe in a god because that's normal and if you're an exception, you need to be brought back into the fold of believers.

Okay, believing (without evidence) that high ranking Democrats, [sic] globalist Jews, celebrities, and coastal elites are eating aborted babies and performing satanic rituals involving pedophilia and human sacrifice is a truly shocking belief.

I'm okay with being extremely subjective and saying that's actually shocking. Claims that strong should be accompanied by at least circumstantial evidence. If you don't believe this is a real world view that people are trying to spread, look up Q-Anon.

I don't doubt that you find those beliefs shocking. But why do you see it as a given that they should be changed? You probably hold beliefs that others find shocking and would like to persuade you out of. Are you willing to be changed by them too? Even if "them" is, say, Islamic fundamentalists? Maybe it's OK that different people have different beliefs and you should be no more frustrated in your inability to change them than they are at their inability to change you.

There is obviously a balance to be struck here and I don't think we yet have a great framework for thinking about such problems. A lot of what makes a nice society is social norms and conventions. The group must have a way of punishing bad behavior or that system falls apart.

If there are no consequences for "acting like a Karen" what is the social incentive to stop behaving like an angry toddler anytime you don't get your way? Now extend this to even more extreme behavior like people who say you should be killed just for existing because you're an abomination. Is the argument that we should just get along and there shouldn't be any social consequences for that? Such a view would be incredibly naive at best.

On the flip side clearly people's views do sometimes change, people make mistakes, etc. Changing minds and hearts is a process, not a one-time event, so complete shunning for any perceived slight is rather extreme and can be counterproductive.

> A lot of what makes a nice society is social norms and conventions. The group must have a way of punishing bad behavior or that system falls apart.

Yes. But it's a problem when different cultures coexist and see each other's good behavior as bad. Societies that kill their "abominations" are also enforcing their social norms. And they may even be right to do so given the environment they live in and their desire to continue existing as a society. Modern western culture has the luxury of being very tolerant of diverse types of people because we're so wealthy and safe, but many societies or their members are closer to the brink and the presence of too many ineffective or counter-productive members is an existential threat.

Interestingly, the most common use of Karen I have seen is women being assertive and actually right.

Yes, sometimes it is in racist or exaggerating context. But, most often, Karen is used to shut up woman who don't want to be doormat or is telling you off for good reason.

You can respectfully communicate your feelings about somebody without being horrible and hurting people or losing control and getting laughed at. It's not easy but women shouldn't aspire to be bitches because they might succeed and then everyone suffers.

The goal of those encounters is not to communicate feelings. Typically, people you are interacting with don't care about them and nuanced explanation won't change anything.

The goal is and as when men do the same - make them stop or at least minimize. Or vent frustration, sometimes.

Respectfully communicating feelings about somebody being horrible and hurting people rarely achieves anything. Cause horrible people hurting people don't care about your feelings.

You might be talking about something different. I'm thinking of the stereotypical Karen who's angry at the shop assistant because of some pricing or stocking mistake made by somebody else. If your Karen is standing up for a victim of bullying, that's not really what Karen commonly means, I don't think.

> we stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning

There’s also religious-like forgiveness too. Some incredible acts of forgiveness were accomplished by very religious people. Pope John Paul II immediately forgave the person who almost killed him.

Now you're conflating a crime that was committed vs. an uncovered privately held belief. Visiting a repentant criminal doesn't condone their crime, obviously.

Visiting a rapist who speaks freely, or privately just to you, about how much he enjoys rape certainly begs the question of why you're doing what you're doing.

Employing such a person who says these things speaks volumes about your concern for the feelings of people who feel threatened or have suffered sexual assault in the past, especially on your team.

All of this boils down to how much legitimacy we're willing to offer people based on what we know about them. If you want to offer the worst of the worst people just enough legitimacy to have a human conversation once in a while, I think that's defensible. If you think one's reputation doesn't have massive reprecussions on which social groups you welcome them into I think you're naive.

> Continuing association with someone who is, for example, is supportive of ethnic cleansing, is expressing that you condone those things

I disagree. Why should associating with someone automatically mean you condone all of their beliefs/actions? You can disagree with parts you disagree with. Otherwise that's like a religious person saying they have to shun all democrats, because to associate with them is to condone abortion.

worse. if you can't associate with such people, then you can't work to change their mind either. i remember a story about someone who made friends with kkk members, and one by one managed to turn them away from the kkk. that probably took some time for each person, during which he had to have been seen associating with them.

As a control, how many people left the KKK without knowing him?

It doesn’t matter. Guilt by association implies you can’t even attempt the idea, regardless of success rate. It’s very strictly an us vs. them heuristic, with little to no room for nuance.

As a control for what, exactly?

The assertion is that his friend's acquaintance with KKK members was effective at helping them leave. But we can't tell how effective unless we know how many people would have left without the friend's assistance.

Reread what they said; it's not their friend and he made no claims to efficacy. Your response seems off-context.

You're correct: it wasn't their friend, it was something they read.

It does sound like they're making a claim to efficacy. It says "one by one managed to turn them away". That's the part I'm asking for clarification on.

The anecdote about Daryl Davis is the preamble, the last sentence is their point.

I'm not saying that's not a valid point of conversation, I'm saying it comes across as off-context to the point where it seems a little like bait.

How many people left the KKK without ever associating with people outside of it before?

i remember a story about someone who made friends with kkk members, and one by one managed to turn them away from the kkk

Daryl Davis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis

Sounds like Daryl Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6FDQ301Q7s

Why change their mind? You can also let them change your mind. Just because you disagree doesn't mean you're right and they're wrong. For these big ethical and moral issues, people are often completely certain their view is right but they can't explain why. The reason is probably because their society tells them they'll be a bad person (at risk of being shunned!) for thinking otherwise. Strong social punishment for holding a belief isn't a good reason that belief is wrong.

You can also let them change your mind

only if they are able to convince me, but even if they are completely certain their view is right but they can't explain why, then they will not be able to do that. if you want to change someones mind you need to understand and be able to explain why they are wrong.

However, he did not managed to endanger KKK power one bit.

And way more people who socialize in KKK circles end up naturally moving toward racism and extremes of it. They change toward racism, because that is what choose to hear most of time.

It so happens that these are quite aggressive when voice disagreements with them, so socialising with the requires you to pretend you agree, at least on the edges. It works like any other bubble overtime, the anti-racists become crazy ennemies.

that is a rather defeatist attitude. just because one person won't have much effect at changing a large group of people, doesn't mean their effort is worthless. (besides, it is also not correct that he didn't manage to change anything. read the above linked wikipedia page. he dismantled the kkk in one state. when a new leader emerged, he converted that person too. if a few more people do that all over the US, keep it up for a generation or two, the kkk could be gone)

there is also quite a difference between people who socialize in kkk circles, and those who befriend individuals with the intent of changing their mind. the latter, for certain will not only socialize in kkk circles but also in other circles where they get the necessary grounding for their work to change those people.

i understand your point. from your perspective it makes sense. but i think you are missing something. pretending to agree does not make me believe what i pretend to. but i also think that pretending is not needed here, but rather it's important to empathize with my opponent, and then gently educate them to point out the flaws in their argument.

if i am working with someone to educate them and change their mind, then i am not joining their bubble. i am not giving up on my other circles either. rather i am breaking out of my bubble, and i help others break out of theirs. i end up with a better understanding of why they have their beliefs, and they hopefully get a better understanding why they might be wrong. we both gain something.

Looking into history to see what worked and what did not worked is not "defeatist". It is absurd however to take one outlier and then talk about it as if this was the way social issue were solved - ever. Sometimes it works on individual level, but acting like this is how things gets changed, no.

> pretending to agree does not make me believe what i pretend to.

It somewhat does. More importantly, as you pretend you agree, the people who happen to disagree will slowly move themselves out from your company, because listening to you agreeing is uncomfortable for them. And they get better treatment elsewhere.

Also the pull of extreme groups is not just rational where you point out flaws in thinking and logic will do rest. There is strong social (strong bonds to other extremeists) component and strong emotional component (it feels good to be superior, it feels good to see yourself as protector of race - a hero).

i may simply be unaware of this, but what other attempts have been made to solve this and other social issues?

as far as i can tell, also from personal experience, education and friendship are the only ways to solve social issues that actually have a lasting effect.

as you pretend you agree, the people who happen to disagree will slowly move themselves out

possible, but as i said, pretending is not actually part of the strategy. you don't pretend, you empathize, but that doesn't mean you agree or even pretend to agree.

There is strong social component

which is broken by your friendship. you show that they can find better friends, and you are one of them.

That's irrelevant: this is a social issue not a legal or technological one. "Associating" is covering an awfully broad amount of ground there.

If you employ jack and jill, and jack tells jill he wants her to be killed, your relationship with jack is not isolated. The way you treat jack signals whether you think it is important that jack hates jill. If you go grab a beer with jack and hang out on weekends, that sends a strong message. If you do nothing, that means its ok for jack to think jill should die and jill can fuck off. If you fire jack, you've sent a strong message in the other direction.

This doesn't materially change if instead everyone finds out jack says these things to randos on a weird forum on weekends, unless jack decides to persuade people that those opinions are not representative of who he is. That would be an entirely different problem.

A religious person who hangs out with pro-choice individuals is condoning that its ok to be pro choice. That's not the same thing as saying pro choice is the right ideology, but that it is a tolerable difference of opinion. It's basically tautological. If you refuse to accept pro-choice individuals and then hang out with them, you're just an inconsistent person.

If you share employment with someone with a different religious background and that really bothers you, but you remain employed, you're ultimately deciding that being employed is more important to you than the virtue of your religious objections.

No amount of politicalization will erase the fact that social reputation is an important part of how humans socialize.

If you refuse to accept pro-choice individuals and then hang out with them, you're just an inconsistent person

you seem to suggest that disagreeing with an opinion requires me to reject the person as a whole. but that is wrong. i can, even must accept you as a person, even if i violently disagree with your opinions. if i don't then it would be impossible for us to have any dialogue, and for me to learn and understand why you have this opinion, and also for you to learn and understand mine.

this idea that i must not associate with people who i disagree with is a core problem. we must get away from that otherwise we won't ever be able to resolve our differences.

virtue of your religious objections

there is no virtue in objecting to someone elses religion. that's just pure intolerance, which is something that needs to be eliminated.

> you seem to suggest that disagreeing with an opinion requires me to reject the person as a whole.

That's not what I said. The difference is whether you see an difference of opinion or something that is so ideologically different that you can not tolerate their opinion.

> there is no virtue in objecting to someone elses religion. that's just pure intolerance, which is something that needs to be eliminated.

And social ostracization of aggressive, intolerable groups is an effective strategy

so ideologically different that you can not tolerate their opinion

that still doesn't require me to stay away from them. if there is an opinion so bad that it actually is intolerable, (which the kkk obviously represents) then it is on us to do something about it. none of that affects whether i ought to socialize with these people or not. it only affects why. if my goal is to change them then i should be allowed to do that.

social ostracization of aggressive, intolerable groups is an effective strategy

effective to do what? to change their mind? i'd like to see some evidence for that, because i don't believe it. ostracization only strengthens people in their opinions. it may make then unable to spread their ideas, but it doesn't help them change.

ostracization also can end up hurting the wrong people. those who want to get out but can't because they don't have anyone helping them. it causes people who are actually unsure get stuck because they have noone showing them that there is another way. it causes people who realize that they are wrong being unable to get out because they have to fear to end up being completely isolated. they don't know that there will be others who welcome them. for all they know they have to expect to remain shunned because they are afraid could not convince anyone that they changed. (this is made even worse by todays climate of ostracizing people for things they said years ago. you said something racist on twitter once, and noone will ever believe that you learned your lesson for the rest of your life)

changing your opinion and then finding new friends looks easy from the outside, but very risky from the inside. finding new friends, and then have those friends help you get out is the only way.

it's up to us to be those friends.

a problem here is also who decides who ought to be ostracized. i should have the right to associate with whoever i want. it's not anyone's place to decide whether i am capable of avoiding to get influenced by those people or not.

if you are a close friend who knows me well, you may be able to tell if these people are getting to me or not and you can tell me, or help me avoid that influence. if you aren't already a friend, then your only option is to become my friend and find out. and if necessary help me understand that these people are influencing me. but if you ostracize me because i am not doing what you think i should, then you will achieve the opposite of what you set out to do.

you see, it's friends all the way down. and all the way up. the only way to change the world, is to change its people, one person at a time.

ostracization leads to disunity, and disunity leads to war. the well-being of the worlds society, its peace and security can not be achieved if we keep ostracizing each other.

> that still doesn't require me to stay away from them. if there is an opinion so bad that it actually is intolerable, (which the kkk obviously represents) then it is on us to do something about it. none of that affects whether i ought to socialize with these people or not. it only affects why. if my goal is to change them then i should be allowed to do that.

That's up to you then. Shunning occurs on various levels.

If you want to talk to someone in the KKK to discuss the merits of their opinions, be my guest. If you want to employ KKK members, I'm leaving your team. If I'm your manager, I might even fire you for making such a boneheaded decision.

Giving everyone legitimacy is a childish idea easily abused by bad faith actors.

i don't know how you connect talking to someone with hiring them. those are entirely different actions.

i might hire them after they renounce their kkk membership. are you ok with that?

where i am from, discrimination based on political opinions is illegal. on the other hand, political activism by employees is also not allowed. so i probably could hire someone who is not already known for their kkk membership, and you would not be allowed to fire me for that. they are allowed to stay as long as they are not becoming active. that scenario is unlikely to happen though because hiring friends is considered a form of corruption and strongly frowned upon. qualifications only.

but let's be clear. i am not giving someone legitimacy just by talking to them.

You are conflating your individual right to hang out with who you please with that of an institution like a school or company.

Nobody would disagree with the individual right.

Nobody should be banned, hands down, from working at a company, generically (that is. legally unemployable). But companies are run by people. And people make decisions about who is allowed to work in their company specifically. It's nonsense to suggest that managers of companies cannot factor reputation into their consideration of the pros and cons of having a person in their employment.

I would fire someone in a heartbeat if I heard they were a self identifying Neo Nazi or klansman, and they affirmed this when confronted. I don't want to work with nazis. I don't want my team to have to work with nazis. I don't want people to think I work at a company that knowingly employs nazis.

The converse is you need to offer a way for people to change. The point of social pressures like this is to get people to stop being the worst. We say "echo chamber" like its unilaterally bad, because in america 'muh freedom' means whatever the individual wants is what the individual is entitled to preach. But honestly there's a lot of basic social norms that are healthy to enforce, without embedding it in legal code.

There's also the question of how to reform people who misbehave and whether shunning is appropriate or effective for that purpose.

Have you ever watched The King and I? The original

"If everything private is fair game, then I expect we should be able to depose all parties involved for any disparaging statements they have ever made. Then we can proceed with either cancelling the large majority of everyone, and prosecuting the rest for perjury."

Worked for O.J. when his attorneys questioned Mark Fuhrman. Probably had a substantial impact on the jury verdict.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/03/people-v-oj-sim...

I thought the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" supreme court case [1] established the school's ability to punish views expressed off campus. So, is this just down to whether her intent was that the message was to be private? The distinction between public and private speech is already fuzzy on these hosted chat platforms, and some would argue is disappearing. The difference between a public and private message in a forum or social media platform might just be a single bit in a database. Ignoring the technicalities of end-to-end encryption, at the end of the day, you're sending your message to a 3rd party company, and that company decides ultimately whether it is public or private. As much as I'd like to see more first amendment protections for school students, I don't think this case is going to be decided in favor of the girl.

1: https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...

I think the key is that [1] was part of an off campus school supervised activity.

> It was expressed privately

That's immaterial. The teams rules prohibited any statements of that nature, in private or public.

The real question is whether such a rule is enforceable. If not, then every rule would have a limited scope. The article gives some examples of problems this would cause, e.g., sharing test answers, bullying, harassment.

If the rules only apply while on school property or in public, then why even have rules? The student can just flaunt the rules and claim "privacy" when challenged.

Of course every rule should have a limited scope. Institutions absolutely should not be allowed to have any say about what you do outside of their actual purview (ie: off of their property, not during work hours, while not representing them, etc).

Almost any way that Institutions have to detect rule breaking outside of their purview involves serious privacy breaches.

It's amusing to think that, if she had said it with her boob out, she likely would not have been punished by the school, because nobody would have saved and rebroadcast it for an adult.

This case will be irrelevant to workplace firings. It's the specific situation of children in schools having fewer rights than adults in the workplace that's the issue here. Some courts have already ruled that kids don't enjoy a full separation between school and personal lives because what they do at home can be disruptive at school, and this ruling is expected to address that specific line of thinking.

And really, any grown adult who says the same things about their employer that Levy did about her school should expect to find themselves unemployed as soon as word gets back. I don't mean that to diss Levy, who was a kid at the time, and besides, what kids don't privately rant to their friends about school? It's neither appropriate nor desirable for a school to say "you don't like it, then quit" to a child, whereas it's reasonable for most work settings to fire a disgruntled employee.

Strongly disagreeing. Which of us has not privately cursed their job at some point in frustration? The consequences for letting fly some profanity privately as an expression of human emotion cannot be so high in any reasonable civilization.

How’s it any different from writing a letter to 25 coworkers saying F** my employer? If one of the 25 recipients showed the letter to my employer I’d be fired.

How’s a private snap any different than a private letter?

The employer is not bound by the 1st Amendment. Whereas the school (functioning as a part of the government) is.

Communicating with coworkers about workplace conditions could be a protected labor activity.

What would/should actually happen in this case is HR/the manager would meet with the employee and ask them to vent any apparent frustrations. If the statement was made publicly, they would probably be fired outright for making public statements about the employer without permission. If it's only internal, they wouldn't be fired outright, but they will likely be passed over for promotion. Makes sense, why should a company invest in someone who apparently isn't invested in the company? If they are ever fired, the reason given would be for some other unrelated infraction that they are legally allowed to terminate for.

Protected labor activities are protected in the US by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, not by the Constitution.

I believe that I have not made my point clearly: simply, you should not be fired for that letter.

The snap self-destructs. The correct analogy would be showing a photo of the letter to others.

The by-default ephemeral nature?

The difference is, one is a private company that you are gainfully employed at of your own volition. The other is a public school that students are legally obligated to attend. The two have nothing to do with each other.

> How’s a private snap any different than a private letter?

I thought that letters had a copyright? The recipient has ownership but cannot publish. If they do copy and distribute (as a screenshot of a Snapchat message) does this not break copyright?

Edit: In New Zealand (where I am), an employer screenshooting and distributed an employee’s Facebook messages breached privacy laws. https://privacy.org.nz/tools/knowledge-base/view/366

Copyright generally doesn't protect usage of a work in criticism of it, even if it is basically verbatim usage without added commentary. I think Hughes v. Benjamin is salient here.

I don't completely disagree with you, FWIW. I do see it as fundamentally different to gripe about your job to a coworker in your living room or at a bar after work. That's the most natural thing ever. It's a different animal to make a public post telling the world that your company sucks and f- the company and your boss.

In Levy's case, she made a public post (even if she didn't mean for it to be public). And to be clear, I'm not going to judge a 14 year old for doing things that I'd be annoyed with a 30 year old for doing. A kid got frustrated with her school and complained about it? Ooh, stop the presses and clutch some pearls! I have a much harder time sympathizing with people twice her age who complain publicly about how much their job sucks, then complain that their boss has relieved them of the burden of ongoing employment.

I've always thought of Snapchat as "hanging out on your back porch with a beer". On the other hand, I've never sent any Snaps to more than like... 3 people. Sending it to 250 is a bit like hosting the entire class from your school at a party, and then getting on a microphone and saying "F--- all of you and f--- cheer!" and then someone recording that on their phone and showing a coach.

I don't think it's fair to call her action "making a public post" because she did not make it public. Someone else did.

It's the other way around. Public schools have more obligations than private employers. That a school is obligated to provide the cheerleading experience to a student they "don't approve of" doesn't imply that an employer is obligated to provide employment to anybody, whether they approve of them or not.

I agree with you on general principles. However, the whole point of this case being in front of SCOTUS is that other courts have ruled that schools aren't obligated to provide that experience. Levy's suing because she disagrees (and I do too).

I think she should be allowed to be a cheerleader even after complaining about her coach and school, as kids are wont to do. Now we'll find out if the courts see it the same way.

I predict the SCOTUS will see cheerleading as an extra-curricular activity outside of the scope for which a public school is obligated to provide and thus may restrict access to that activity in any manner they see fit. If they don't rule it that way then SCOTUS is about to open One Giant Can of Worms.

It would already be subject to Title 9, they have to provide equal access.

The school can certainly argue that all students have to meet the same requirements to participate, which would hinge on whether the student could reasonably anticipate the consequences here (an example where that isn't possible is if the school created and applied a policy for the incident).

My first comment is in response to the people inventing parallels that don't exist at all because schools and work places are very different things and wasn't an attempt to thoroughly examine the specifics. A finding that the existing obligations of the school do apply to this situation is irrelevant to at will employment.

> in any manner they see fit.

That cannot possibly be true. Here is an example. Imagine if a school banned people from sports, because they expressed support for Obama or Trump.

Clearly that would be a government infringing on people's right to speech, as it is expressely political.

Or imagine that a school gave certain benefits, only to students, who publicly support a certain political candidate. If you don't support their choice of president, you lose privileges or benefits or get expelled.

Or, if we are truly talking about "any manner they see fit", an obvious counter example would be if they just banned women from playing sports.

> is about to open One Giant Can of Worms.

There is no can of worms being opened here. A school is a public institution. How speech laws apply to public institution is not some crazy out there idea. It is well established.

I am not sure why people are making out speech laws, which have a long history of how they apply to public institutions, as some sort of alien topic.

You wouldn't say that a school could expel people, for example, for this kind of speech, out of school. Why is it so crazy, for this to be applied to other activities?

> A school is a public institution. How speech laws apply to public institution is not some crazy out there idea. It is well established.

Free speech laws apply differently in school. They're not exactly the same as other public institutions, as SCOTUS has ruled numerous times.

Bethel v. Fraser[0] is an example where the Court ruled pretty clearly that the school can go as far as to prohibit sexual innuendo, it doesn't even have to be obscene or vulgar.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethel_School_District_v._Fras...

> They're not exactly the same as other public institutions, as SCOTUS has ruled numerous times.

I didn't say that they were exactly the same. Instead I am saying that there is not some "huge can of worms" that is opened on up this topic, if the supreme court rules in favor of the student in this case.

It is instead something that predictably might happen, and which will have predicable results that are in line with how things work in other examples.

So, in other words, the sky will not fall, and schools will not collapse under the weight of not being allowed to punish students for purely off campus speech.

Schools sort of fall in an area between private employer and government entity. They have to allow more leeway than a private employer (they can't prevent speech just because it makes them uncomfortable) but they can put more limits on speech than the government normally would be allowed (in the interest of the educational mission).

I guess this case is about whether cheerleading falls into the former or latter category.

she didn't say them about 'her school' though, she expressed the sentiment of 'fuck school' which is pretty much as vague and general as possible. should your employer have grounds to fire you if you, in a private conversation, express dissatisfaction with the concept of 'work'?

Redirect created, so your link should work now. Given that Hacker News isn't the only platform that does this, I wonder if there's a world in which it makes sense for Wikipedia to redirect "foo" to "foo." by default, assuming a page named "foo." exists and a page named "foo" does not?

The answer should be rather obvious if you put it like this: Should a school get to regulate the speech and expression of its students outside the class room?

here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v...

url encoding the dot with %2E does work around it.

This is a public school so they are considered a part of (subsidized by) the government. But if it were a private Christian religious school, and she was promoting Satan worship in her out of school TikTok time, would you think the school should be forced to ignore it and let her keep singing in their televised choir?

Hmmm, I'm not sure that's the meaning of free speech. Forcing a private entity to provide an unpaid service is something quite different.

> Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")

Did you try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v... ?

Another workaround for the issue in Edit 2 is to use the page ID number instead of the title.

https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1019908655

Thank you for the summary! I was just going to ask...

adding a pointless query string to the url helps, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v...

A hash/fragment at the end likely also works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v...

Plus the school is “government”. This creates an interesting wrinkle here.

Is being on the cheerleading squad a natural right?

It's a qualified right, which she qualified for. A state actor doesn't get to dictate acceptable speech outside of that activity.

So it's fine for a police officer to attend klan events on the weekend?

The analogy would be the officer (the state actor) refusing service to someone who exercised objectionable speech.

Should a police officer be fired, if they express views prejudicial to people that belong to minorities they are meant to serve, even if they express these views while off-duty?

Don't you think you're walking a bit of an edge there, minimising racism by equating it with criticism of an organisation? I hope you're aware the history of it isn't something that should be trivialised?

This case would be argued along exactly the same lines before the court had the student in question thrown in a racial slur. It will also have an impact on the ability for schools to punish students for racist cyberbullying in future. So I don't think it's problematic in the slightest to bring race into the equation.

One is criticism of the running and operation of an organisation; the other is steeped in the history of genocide and slavery, there are even laws in place around the world to protect people from it because of it's heinousness. But you're professing that advocacy of racism is no more malignant than basic complaints about a company?

I'm not sure if what you're advocating is because of perhaps missing education on the subject but this is a serious hot button issue at the moment; I'm honestly surprised you'd espouse this so freely.

An unreformed racist sprouting out bigotry and a teenage girl having a bit of a moan about the cheerleading squad are both protected forms of speech under the first amendment.

If the Supreme Court made an exceptionally broad ruling to the effect of forbidding any organ of the state revoking an appointment on the basis of first amendment protected speech uttered while not performing duties, then the ruling would protect a racist police officer and irate cheerleader equally.

The Supreme Court is, of course, very unlikely to make such a broad ruling in this case, but it does seem like that's the remedy which quite a few people in this thread would like to see decided.

As a matter of their employment agreement, sure.

I guess students sign behavior pledges or similar, but I'm more inclined to enforce an employment agreement against an adult than I am to give local school administrators complete control over what activities students they disapprove of participate in.

I believe as public employees, they should be held to at least the same standard as people in private employment. If I, as the employee of a company, make a Facebook post outside of work denigrating a group of people and my employer is made aware of that, I believe that I can be terminated. Should termination be the only solution? I don't think so. In a functioning society, there must be room for genuine contrition and redemption of those who have erred. I don't know what the proper method of addressing it should be, however.. The removal of the offensive speech and an immediate and heartfelt apology would be a firm minimum IMHO. The same should be true for public employees with the difference being that the appearance of impropriety should weigh towards sanctions. In both cases, pending conflict with employment contracts or local law, suspension, re-training, and demotions are all possible alternative sanctions.

Yes it is unless you label the clan as a terrorist org. But yeah that’s the kind of edge case you have to allow for in order to have freedom. Cause today it’s a clan rally but tomorrow it could easily be a BLM rally and the state has historically been more harsh on BLM rallys.

Why should we limit your rule to comments made off duty? Why can't a police officer shout racial slurs from a bull horn while driving down the street in their cruiser?

> Yes it is unless you label the clan as a terrorist org

The fact the Klan is not labeled as one is deeply shocking.

"The Klan" has no relevance these days, and is used as a boogey man more than anything else.

This is a common practice in media and politics. There are more "Klan" members than there are anarchists, yet supposedly those anarchists burned down every urban business in the nation last summer.

Nope. Certain professions that serve the public require professionalism on and off the record. Policing is one of those. A police officer who vents racist speech in a private chat should reconsider their calling.

Cheerleaders? They are welcome to go to the Klan BBQ and liven up the proceedings within the limits of the law; like the rest of us.

> I’m hoping the outcome of this case can be used as a litmus test for related bannings/cancellations when people express an opinion “off-campus”

Additionally, I hope this can also apply to the workplace.

Private companies are not subject to the first amendment.

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