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Comment by zxzax | Hacker News Reader

So how could responsibility be ensured? Make a social media site where people can't criticize each other at all? Require all posts to go through third party fact checkers?

To put it another way: If, in your opinion, twitter users are not subject to accountability based on the chaotic randomness of public opinion, then who are they being held accountable to? Who even determines what a "consequence" is in that scenario, or what the threshold for that bloodthirsty behavior is? Honest questions here, I really don't know what the solution is.

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How about more employee friendly labor law so people can't get fired because of public pressure? Without teeth, this mob justice will be less of a real world problem and more contained to social media.

So what would that look like? Would employers no longer field public complaints about potential problem employees, under any circumstances? In effect, they would be required to always side with the employee in case of a dispute?

It would look like France, Japan, or, y'know, most industrialised countries. Employers would be required to give cause for any firing, and follow a documented process in which the employee has certain rights (e.g. the right to be assisted by a union representative, see the evidence against them, respond to allegations).

In some cases, that is how it already works in the US: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...

As usual with legal stuff, the answer really seems to depends on the nature of was posted, and the employment contract that is in place.

> In some cases, that is how it already works in the US: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...

Not really. Per your link, employees are protected in a very narrow subset of cases - where what they are doing on social media is 100% protected labour activity. But firing employees arbitrarily for social media posts (outside of those narrow protections) is completely fine. That's completely backwards from how it works in most of the developed world, where the burden of proof is on the employer who must show that the firing was for a permitted cause, rather than the employee having to show that they were fired for a non-permitted cause.

Perhaps it would exclude complaints about what they do in their job but firing someone for things they do that are unrelated to their job could be protected, like what happened in their personal relationships or what they posted on the internet if it's not part of their work.

Picture someone you really dislike, for some good reason. Now imagine you hired that person before they did whatever, or before you found out. Now you're stuck with them. Now your company is known primarily for what they did and you are losing business.

If everyone knows the company can't fire them, then why target the company in the first place?

The company is paying George the Putrescent Person to do nothing, because nobody there wants to work with him, either?

So basically the way it was with overt racist and sexist hiring before that was illegal? The solution is to suck it up and let the other employees who are too bigoted to cope quit.

That seems to hinge a lot on having a specific and consistent definition of what "related to the job" and "part of their work" means that won't unfairly affect some companies, maybe there is an established legal definition of that somewhere?

The legal system manages to work out vague definitions. Here's an excerpt from New Zealand's employment law regarding unjustifiable dismissal:

"The test is whether the employer’s actions, and how the employer acted, were what a fair and reasonable employer could have done in all the circumstances at the time the dismissal or action occurred."

How's that for specific and consistent! Yet it still provides protection against capricious firing.

Some US states do have laws of that type, though not all of them. In general, the answer to any kind of employer abuse is mostly the same as always: unionize.

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