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Comment by JackMorgan | Hacker News Reader

I was discussing an individual being attacked for personal thoughts posted in the past. If a company supports things you don't, sure, just don't support that company. But when a group tries to get a person fired for something unpopular that they said in the past, then using a mob to get them fired is vigilante justice.

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Companies fire such people pre-emptively, out of fear of such boycotts. This is the only thing giving "cancellation" any teeth - otherwise, how could a mob "get someone fired"? Why would any company bow?

> Companies fire such people pre-emptively, out of fear of such boycotts... Otherwise why would any company bow?

Because firing someone is cheap. It's not "damage control", it's virtue signalling, as costly as it is for others to express their outrage on twitter.

But a group trying to get someone fired for what they did or said in the past is the individuals in the group exercising their own protected political speech. It's difficult to see how that can be made illegal without curtailing political speech itself.

It is indeed difficult to see how cancelling can be made illegal without curtailing political speech itself.

If there was an easy solution though, it would probably already be in place.

If firing for speech is made illegal, then a boycott will be ineffectual and thus not happen. You don't have to outlaw the speech of the mob, just the ability for a company to fire someone over someone's past statements.

The effectiveness of the boycott is a function of relative power levels, not whether the corporation can take action to adjust the issue.

If it's made illegal to fire people for speech, I doubt people would have any qualms (assuming they have the purchasing power and scale) with driving the corporation to bankruptcy. Another corporation will take its place.

It's very hard to boycott a company into bankruptcy this way, and it never worked. Maybe a tiny startup, by scaring off backers. It's much easier to scare their PR HR to fire a person or do superficial changes. Companies have more power than a random employee, unless we're talking CEO level.

The point isn't the power over the corporation, the point is the power over the individual. But if the law makes it so they have no power over the individual, the motive to boycott won't exist.

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