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Comment by snek_case | Hacker News Reader

It would be good to pass laws that make it illegal to fire someone over a twitter mob (or any kind of mob action). Anti-mob or anti-bullying laws. And/or initiate class-action lawsuits against twitter for encouraging this kind of behavior or failing to prevent it, resulting in significant damage to people's careers. It's far from being the first time this happens, so there's definitely a case to be made that twitter has known for a long time that this is a problem.

Edit: changed the choice of words.

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Yes, it is largely a labor law issue. Twitter mob is not just cause for terminating the employment of someone. Using anti-defamation laws against individual bullies is another possibility.

In general, in the US, there doesn't need to be a "just cause." Someone has become a headache or embarrassment for us--for whatever unprotected reason--is sufficient.

It is much more complicated when someone is tenured, and there was a reason academics were protected by that (but it is thinning now).

Right. Hence, "in general." Getting rid of a tenured faculty member is much trickier than getting rid of some junior corporate employee.

In the US sodomy was a crime too. Laws can change. Labour law is not written in stone.

And even with current laws, where there "need not be a just cause", there are protections against unjust causes (e.g. because they found out you're jewish, or you're fat, or whatever) and "because a mob campaigned against one" can be added to that. "But, under current law the business could just say they fired them for their own neutral reasons?" Sure. Let them defend that in a lawsuit, if it happened to coincide with a mob campaign.

You're arguing for something that in all likelihood requires a constitutional amendment.

Anti discrimination clauses only overrule the first amendments freedom of association due to the equal protection clause, and there's no reading that suggests that firing someone due to public pressure is implicitly discrimination.

But there is than the next obstacle in the US system: You need to have very deep pockets to actually take a case in court. "Justice" is only available to the rich in the US. (And this doesn't seem to be a construction error if you look closer. But that's another topic).

> "Justice" is only available to the rich in the US.

I disagree. I think we can all agree the government has a monopoly on violence which it is relatively inclined to use. The US system depends on the idea that someone will challenge the use of that monopoly in their particular instance, which we call precedent. It is true that people not-of-means may be subject to that violence unjustly but it only takes the government messing with the wrong person once to establish precedent. The wrong person could be rich but they could also just be a person who catches public support.

>but it only takes the government messing with the wrong person once to establish precedent.

Kind of like the case of police routinely shooting unarmed blacks and getting off scot-free?

This system seems to have worked wonders to prevent this from happening. Or maybe they just haven't messed with the wrong person yet, since Rodney King hardly changed anything, and Derek Chauvin's convinction wont either...

> Kind of like the case of police routinely shooting unarmed blacks and getting off scot-free?

That's not quite the same. Murder didn't need precedent, however, establishing some framework for grading police incidents retroactively does. What gets in the way of that is existing laws which protect police officers wholesale. If you're trying overturn an entire existing law for a new framework, that's a bit outside the bounds of precedent because you're not longer talking about interpretation.

Other countries have unions that will handle those cases for the laid-off employee. Doesn't work perfectly but it's another idea worth considering.

And what about twitter mobs that point out legitimate fireable offenses (like police brutality )? Would the fact that a twitter mob raised the issue help prevent the legitimatw firing?

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