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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>My most immediate takeaway from this novella of a thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long form tweets! (Musk's response)

this may very well be the first thing in my life I've agreed with Musk on. By god scrolling through an entire essay chopped up with random replies and profile links thrown in because you have to click "show more replies" (which pops up twice?) over and over is awful. Just link to a Twitlonger.

On yishan's actual points I agree though. Companies moderate haphazardly and improvise and they care about their bottom-line and to extinguish shitstorms. There's no coherent ideological bias on any sufficiently large social network, they just pivot to whatever is causing chaos on any given weekday.

One important point stuck somewhere in the middle is his observation that in the physical world, no public square, or public debate looks like what's on display on internet social networks. All of them have rules, civility is a thing, if you're crazy someone's likely going to throw you out, there's identity instead of anonymity and so on. Maybe provocatively, "cancel culture" is simply culture. Culture is a bunch of rituals, rules, coercions, customs and traditions that predominantly tell us what not to so so we don't behave like a bunch of naked apes.

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I agree with this except that

> "cancel culture" is simply culture

There are 2 types of cancel culture: society "cancelling" people when we discover they are extremely toxic and/or sexual predators, and private citizens getting doxxed, slandered, and sometimes fired from their jobs because of a racist tweet or off-putting remark. The latter is a by-product of social networks, especially Twitter, and it's a real problem with real consequences.

Saying or doing something racist or rude is bad, it should and would probably get you kicked out of a bar or event. But prior to social media, it would not get your entire reputation ruined, and you wouldn't get 50,000 random people to start harassing you. I hope most would agree that this is a disproportionate punishment.

But IMO the larger issue of cancel culture, is it makes people less likely to say edgy jokes or borderline politically-incorrect statements for fear they will also get "cancelled". Then the definition of "borderline" politically-incorrect shifts further left, more and more becomes taboo, and people start to deny facts because they don't agree to societal norms. When reality is taboo, you get real consequences.

We need a grey area, where you can say something which isn't "accepted by society", but it doesn't get you effectively blacklisted everywhere, and it doesn't affect things like job offers. I'm too young to confirm but I assume we had something like this before social media took off. But with everyone connected and very scrutinizing/critical it's starting to go away.

Saying the wrong thing in a private setting and getting fired has been a thing before computers existed.

Cancel culture is just a new name for an ancient practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning

> Brown soon found himself embroiled in the coming revolution. On 2 August 1775 a crowd of 130 Sons of Liberty confronted him at his house and demanded he pledge himself to the Patriot cause. Brown requested the liberty to hold his own opinions, saying that he could "never enter into an Engagement to take up arms against the Country which gave him being", and finally met their demands with pistol and sword. The crowd seized him and struck him with the butt of a musket, fracturing his skull. Taken prisoner, he was tied to a tree where he was roasted by fire and scalped before being tarred and feathered. Brown was then carted through a number of nearby settlements and forced to verbally pledge himself to the Patriot cause before being released. This mistreatment resulted in the loss of two toes and lifelong headaches.

Cancel culture has been with us since the beginning. Hell, other primates kick bad actors out of the social group; it's been a thing before language existed.

The new trend of sticking it to the cons by comparing 2022 to 18th century mobs or early 20th century speech codes is something I didn’t have on my bingo card.

It's being widely claimed that "cancel culture" is some kind of new and different phenomenon; it hardly takes much historical knowledge to know it's not. Examples abound, in nature, antiquity (go tell Socrates about being "canceled"), etc.

As a conservative I’m not even a big believer in the perfectability of man. I just find it funny that people are copping to being the latest generation of John Ashcroft throwing curtains over naked statues.

Is that the comparison you really want to draw?

Yes.

Today’s supposed “cancel culture” is substantially gentler than any time in history. We enjoy rights to free speech broader and stronger than ever.

Socrates would be jealous.

Socrates wasn't cancelled. Insofar as we can trust Plato and Xenophon, we know who he was and the things he said. Athens may have executed him, but they didn't deplatform him.

> Socrates would be jealous.

I doubt that very much. Your examples are bad enough to be considered trolling.

Execution for pissing everyone off doesn’t count as cancellation?

We know who Alex Jones is. Louis CK is out there getting awards. If “we know who he was and the things he said” means you’re not canceled, we’re in very good shape.

> Athens may have executed him, but they didn't deplatform him.

You get what a hilariously scary and silly statement this is, right?

;)

Why wouldn’t they?

I don’t the claim is that cancel culture is new, but the rate and method is new. It happens more frequently for different topics.

That’s what I think of when I hear “cancel culture.” When you present an example from the 18th century, that’s not a very useful rebuttal. It seems like you either don’t understand, are deflecting, or using a “but all lives matter” argument.

The method and rate aren’t new.

The method is “people tell others you’re an asshole”.

The rate is “quickly”. For most people in the 1700s, the news only has to go a few miles to spread to basically everyone you know.

Ask Aaron Burr. Not just canceled in short order, but remembered for it in a hit musical centuries later.

I remember the pr person fired during her flight to South Africa because of the hundred thousand retweets. Thats new and that’s much faster.

Aaron Burr wasn’t cancelled over a single message within twelve hours.

(Thousands of similar stories)

You remember her nearly a decade later because it’s rare. (She’s also doing fine: https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16911074/justine-sacco-iac-mat...)

People have irreparably ruined their reputations in less time than a plane flight. Burr did it in a single instant.

The woman in question was a VP of communications who tweeted the following:

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

It is not hard to see why a company would fire a VP of communications who tweeted this. In general, you have to be careful about what you do and say in public when you have a senior position within a company. This is nothing new.

In the bad old days, people used to get fired when their employer found out that they were having a gay affair, or had a mixed race child. Now people are more likely to get fired for saying or doing racist or homophobic things. To me this seems like progress.

What do either of your example trends mean? What 18th century mob has been brought up? What in 2022? What speech codes are you referring to?

It appears as if this is your way of saying “cancel culture” is different than it was before in terms of “cancelling” happening?

If so, then your examples would make sense as parroting the weak concept of “cancel culture” being anything but another moral panic and made up culture war in the long line of things to keep the status quo going.

Why do any of these cancel trends matter? Even if they do exist. Why not eliminate the possibility of the worst fears of cancel culture so that becomes moot and society is improved? That would require people not being able to go homeless if they suddenly lose their job and/or can’t work for some time. It doesn’t come across that being able to be homeless because of work and income issues is a horrible outcome no matter what. Not only when it is because of “cancel” culture.

> Why not eliminate the possibility of the worst fears of cancel culture so that becomes moot and society is improved?

Indeed why not? It’s glaring to me that when I read these arguments, the solution to cancel culture never seems to be to limit the ability of employers to fire at will.

The only reason cancelling works at all is that you can be fired for any reason or no reason at the drop of a hat, with little to no recourse, and at great financial loss to yourself with the potential of losing your food, shelter, and medical care in an instant. People have been begging to change this system for a long time for this very reason.

But why does this system continue to exist if it has the potential to be so destructive? As far as I can tell it serves wealthy elites like large corporations very well. They enjoy having this ability to ruin your life by firing you. It’s the best leverage they have!

This is why the whole cancel culture debate is so fascinating to me. Generally speaking the people who are so upset about cancel culture are the very people who are standing in the way of eliminating the worst consequences of it. Instead they ground their position in the idea of free speech, but paradoxically the principles of free speech preclude any solution to cancel culture, because such a solution would restrict free speech!

I’m really waiting for the day that cancel culture warriors recognize the root problem here: that we built our society in a way, on purpose, to give people (business owners) this great power over others (employees) as a means to control them. If I can be fired tomorrow and still have food, housing, and healthcare then getting fired isn’t going to ruin my life. The flip side of that is employers won’t be able to fire their employees for any reason or no reason, and that seems to be a bridge too far for some of even the most ardent anti cancel culture warriors (see if Musk would ever advocate to curb his own ability to fire his employees).

Very much this. The enormous arbitrary power that employers wield and have always wielded, is one of the sacred cows of capitalism. Underprivileged people have had to deal with being fired (or never even being hired) for irrelevant reasons or in fact without any reason being given at all. But now that this same hammer is coming down on white people's offensive tweets, suddenly it's a "free speech" issue.

I missed the part where they had high speed wireless internet and social media networks in the 18th century.

Technology has enabled us to have artificially wide reach and memory. And then they digitised it, made it searchable and opened it all up to the masses.

Don't like a person and they have Twitter? Guess I'll dig through their Twitter feed and find something objectionable they posted when they were 16. While I'm here I'd better make sure all my like-minded online "friends" from all over the globe pile on and try and coerce their employer to fire them. For good measure, let's find their address and make it easily accessible online.

Technology has a transformative effect on the things we apply it to. Let's not pretend that trying to shame people in the 21st century using freely accessible communication networks that span the globe is the same as monkeys shaming other monkeys.

The point is it that doesn’t matter as much as you’d think.

If you piss off your monkey tribe, you’re done for. Good chance you’re dead soon without your social group. The news of your being kicked out spread to everyone who matters in life.

Piss off your town in the 1700s and the same is probably true. People didn’t move far from family and relied heavily on local communities. Again, news spread to everyone who mattered rapidly.

I’d rather today’s flash in the pan outrage over a community shunning - or worse, tarring/feathering or lynching - a couple hundred years ago. It’s a lot more survivable; ask notable cancelee Louis CK about his recent Grammy win.

If I said something truly moronic as a teenager back in the “good old days”, but only my family heard me, I’d get punished and that could be enough to rethink my views or behaviour. My mistake would likely end there. Or at least your neighbours might never know.

Now some dumb kid can post to Twitter or Facebook and that can be used against them 10 years later by some random person. You could even be saying things that aligns with your communities values (say you have conservative religious views) and then a bunch of strangers who you don’t know will come after you because they disagree with you.

I can literally reach back in time and hold people accountable for things they no longer believe in.

Comparing this to not getting lynched is a really low bar. I would certainly hope in this day and age that we’re at least civil enough not to become pitch fork wielding mobs. That’s the bare minimum.

You swapped public vs private, but peoples diaries have caused them problems in the past. It’s an issue with the written word rather than the spoken one that’s adding repercussions years later.

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

Yes but it wasnt as easy to find out about and there weren’t as many companies who profited from making these kind of things easy to hear about.

Yes, people have been much worse than "cancelled" for much more "borderline" taboo opinions.

But spread of information today is definitely an issue. Back then you could be more comfortable saying stuff in private. Now with a lot of communications online, proof* of private conversations can affect you in public.

* There's also the issue of people framing things out of context but that's a separate topic.

In John Stuart Mill's seminal work On Liberty, he explicitly calls out the tyranny and power of social consequences and their ability to chill free speech. He notes that social consequences for minority opinions can be even more severely chilling than even state consequences. Of course, as I recall he also basically offered no solutions.

Social consequences are both necessary and cause problems. It's really a very complicated thing. People should be free to explore ideas that turn out to be bad without losing their livelihoods. We need to hold people accountable for their actions, but we also need to allow people to make mistakes and learn.

If I think about what happened with Lindsay Ellis, that seems like a gross overreaction. If I think about how people on Twitter sharply criticize Chris Pratt because of the church he attends (which is also attended by other Hollywood stars) then that seems like an overreaction, too. On the other hand, the response to Kevin Spacey seems like it might be more appropriate.

The real issue is that "being cancelled" is only a problem for people who are famous and not powerful. If you're powerful, being cancelled really doesn't do anything at all. Indeed, if you're powerful, being cancelled can just get people to agree with you more even if you have actually done the awful things you are cancelled for.

Nevertheless, there is so much pearl clutching, clout chasing, outrage Olympics, victim identity politics, and manufactured wedge issues on social media that it's just one big rat's nest. Worse, it all overshadows the real problems like actual political issues and misinformation being spread to manipulate opinion.

Saw this comment before I slept and I think I woke up with a solution!

The problem is incentive based, cancelling others gains one social power. So the solution is simple, use the same weapon, and we are getting at step 1 already.

1) Being "woke" about how cruel cancelling other is, collectively.

2) Cancel the cancellors by naming and shaming every single participant, instead of the cancellee, for reason 1). Script it if necessary.

3) The balance of power is restored, just as Jesus intended, armchair judges get judged. (Doesn't it sound like the beginining of just any other cultural shift?)

4) ...

5) profit!

Society is expressing its collective free speech when it "cancels" someone, for whatever reason.

When you support "free speech", you support all of it or none of it.

>When you support "free speech", you support all of it or none of it.

Free speech is not tautological.

It's these types of absolutist statements that drive people away from activist causes. Even a staunch proponent of free speech might have some types of speech they object to;

- Advertising dangerous and addictive substances, particularly to children [0]

- Lying about the contents or efficacy of a commercial product, especially medicine or food [1]

- Publishing private details about someone in an effort to inflict real world harm [2]

- Publishing private work against the will of its creator, as might have happened with Sir Terry Pratchett's unfinished books after his death. [3] (I distinctly remember a commenter I had an argument with stating that after his death, his wishes in that regard were irrelevant compared to the living's desire to actually read said work. Fortunately, such callousness is not the norm)

Collective free speech is an interesting idea, in any case. I'm always wary of the term "collective." It brings to mind collective justice. It's not unthinkably terrible, after all, to throw a single stone at a sinner. And if my neighbor has the right to, so do I. And his neighbor, and her neighbor, and soon enough the sinner is stoned to death and none of us are responsible. All each of us did was throw a single stone, after all.

It's a strange dissonance to state that censorship is free speech. But that's what people seem to often mean when they talk about cancelling or deplatforming people.

[0]: https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/rules-regulations-and-g...

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nestle-baby...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchet...

You have good one-sentence summaries of things that are reasonable exceptions/limitations to free speech. I’m struggling to come up with one that would prevent cancel culture without sounding like an unreasonable exception. For example, “saying someone should be fired based on a bad joke they made on the internet” doesn’t sound like it should be illegal, even though that being spoken en masse is tantamount to cancel culture.

I didn't say, "All speech should be free or none of it should be free", I said, "Both the repugnant ideas and the rejection of the repugnant ideas are expressions of free speech, and you either support both or none."

Of course there's speech that should be limited. I'm just saying if you support repugnant speech, you either also support rejections of repugnant speech or you don't support free speech at all.

> I'm just saying if you support repugnant speech, you either also support rejections of repugnant speech or you don't support free speech at all.

No, thats stupid.

It is absolutely possible to both support free speech, and oppose "rejection" of repubnant speech, if by "rejection" we mean that I would oppose sending death threats to their friends and family, and oppose the "rejection" action of attempting to assault the repugnant free speech sayer.

It is very silly to say that a free speech supporter has somehow underminded their ability to support the concept of free speech significantly, because they opposed assaulting, or sending death threats to the friends and family of a person who makes repugnant speech.

What's stupid is not realizing that both are forms of free speech. You can "oppose" it, but trying to prevent it is an attack on the freedom of speech. Either you support free speech, and the right of the "angry mob" to be angry, or you don't support free speech.

But the fact that you can't distinguish between the expression of an angry idea and a death threat disqualifies you from this conversation, though. Obviously that's different, and you know that isn't what anyone reasonable is suggesting.

> distinguish between the expression of an angry idea and a death threat

So then you agree that a free speech supporter opposing death threats and harassment of people's friends and family of those who make offensive speech does not undermine their pro free speech opinions.

Yeah that's my entire point.

> the right of the "angry mob" to be angry

What the free speech supporters oppose is this angry mob sending death threats and harassing the friends, family, and coworkers of people who have made offensive speech.

So yes, people can both support free speech, and oppose the angry mob when they harass, dox, and threaten to kill people who say offensive things

> that isn't what anyone reasonable is suggesting.

"Canceling" someone very often involves sending death threats, doxxing, and harassing people's friends, family and coworkers, when the angry mob is involved.

So yes, that happens, and is what the pro free speech supporters are opposing.

But yes, I agree that the angry mob that harasses, doxes, and threatens people when it "cancels" someone is unreasonable, and is what the pro free speech people oppose.

You're equivocating between two different things, hence my comment on dissonantly categorizing censorship as free speech. A comment on this site a few days ago mentioned the difference between "pro-speech" and "anti-speech" dissent. Someone who disagrees with a repugnant idea but supports free speech might, for example, allow the speaker of the repugnant thought a platform and the opportunity to defend their idea, in the understanding that this affordance will be reciprocated and the truth and repugnance of that idea revealed. Someone who does not, fundamentally, believe in free speech can instead choose to bar the speaker from airing their opinions in any way. Sometimes this involves "speaking," defined broadly. For example, showing up to an event where the speaker is bearing airhorns or calling in bomb threats/pulling the fire alarm. Demanding that platforms remove the speaker. Publishing private information to intimidate others to silence.

The first path supports free speech. The second uses the high regard that free speech has in many minds to attack free speech. It is using "free speech" not as an ideal that allows many ideas to compete in honest search for the truth, but rather as a cudgel to censor heresy. A free speech advocate can absolutely oppose such speech without being inconsistent in their beliefs. One might say, "Free speech is that which allows me to hear anyone's point of view, regardless of how offended or hurt others might be by them." The mob shouting a speaker down deprives the rest of us that right.

So... silencing people is practicing free speech? I thought it was letting people talk.

Telling someone to shut up is not the same thing as telling someone to shut up while holding a gun. People need to stop conflating these two things.

People are free to express negative reactions to speech. That in itself is a pretty important part of free speech.

Your wording is a bit of a sly semantic trick.

By attempting to equivocate stopping speech with free speech, it sort of dodges the whole purpose of free speech in the first place, which is to ensure that unpopular ideas are tolerated in a free society.

Free speech isn't just an abstract principle. It exists to ensure that tyranny of government or the masses is not able to stifle the creation of the new knowledge that progress depends on.

The improvement of knowledge is a useful side effect of free speech, but it's not the main justification. Free speech exists because it's wrong to harm someone because of what they say.

Firstly your belief is knowledge that was created at some point and it spread because people had the right to say it.

Second, a just society is dependent on there being a society at all. The only way humans will solve the problems that threaten our existence is by creating new knowledge.

In this way the progress created by free speech is foundational to all else.

It appears that you're conflating the notion of free speech with any speech whatsoever, and implying that if free speech rights weren't enforced, then we would have no speech and thus would have no society and no knowledge. This is demonstrably false according to plenty of historical evidence. It's simply nonsense.

You got the wrong idea. I’m saying when we limit speech we risk limiting progress, not eliminating progress all together. The key is that we have no idea how we are limiting progress because the progress has yet to happen. But it will, as long as we tolerate new ideas and criticism (and not just the “right kind” of new ideas). We should always err on the side of more freedom rather than less, except in cases where there are imminent and likely illegal consequences.

Again, this is absolutely not the main justification for free speech.

As a thought experiment, suppose we had a way of knowing which speech would advance knowledge and which speech would hinder our knowledge; by your reasoning, it would then be ethical to silence the speech that we knew would hinder our knowledge, since the point of free speech is to improve our collective knowledge.

This is wrong on its face. It's not what free speech is about. The concept exists because it's unethical to harm others over what they say.

The point is we don’t know. We will never know which new knowledge is created and which new problems will be caused. But only by allowing open and free trade of ideas will we be able to quickly solve them.

But to take your point and run with it…why is “because it’s ethical” a worthy goal? That seems to be circular reasoning, and also relies on one concept of “ethical”. How do we define what is ethical?

You already used your own notion of "ethical" in your original comment when you implied that stifling the creation of new knowledge is bad. Did you really think that just because you didn't use the word "ethical" in your comment, that it is devoid of ethical statements? That's not how it works. By suggesting that free speech has a "purpose", you are making an ethical statement.

>The point is we don’t know.

That's really not the point. Your whole thesis depends on your assumption that new knowledge is created. The contrapositive to your statement is that if no new knowledge is being created, then free speech doesn't matter; this is false.

But new knowledge is always created as people solve problems which inevitably pop up. And the ethics of today are replaced with new ethics (knowledge) as people conjecture new ideas.

This process goes one way. Free speech leads to progress. Using a contrapositive is invalid because I’m not making an equivocacy, I’m making a causal statement. Man drives car doesn’t necessitate that car drives man.

And I’m not saying “ethics” are bad. Only that our current forms of them, like all forms of knowledge, will eventually be replaced by something better (see: all of history).

Anyway, you dodged the question so I’ll try answering it for you: Your sense of ethic in relation to speech was created because people had the freedom to criticize the fact that ethics come from God/priests/kings/tribal elders/et. al and develop new, better forms. In this way, your and my ethical forms will be replaced in the future by something better.

>Man drives car doesn’t necessitate that car drives man.

Fortunately that's not what I implied, and you fail to recognize the error in your own reasoning. I'll say this one final time, and I expect you'll intentionally misunderstand again.

Your point depends on the premise that free speech leads to the improvement of knowledge, which means that if a specific situation arose--even an isolated incident--where your premise of enhanced knowledge were untrue, then it follows that your conclusion that free speech is good would no longer be necessarily true. That is why your statement is false. The rest of what you've written is pseudo-intellectual fluff.

>But new knowledge is always created

This is not a given. You completely made it up. I wish you a pleasant day.

>This is not a given.

Not with that attitude!

You can support free speech and still ask people not to say things. I think cancel culture is bad. And people should stop trying to get people fired for saying something (especially if it was said ages ago) I'm not going to force you to stop. Just consider what you are doing. You are basically wishing the person would die (or before a ward of the state) is that the proper consequence of speech?

As a society we have agreed that somethings shouldn't be said. Like the n word. You aren't forced to not say it. By the same token we can agree that cancel culture is bad and chills speech. We, as a free society, should strive to keep speech free. Not look for ways to shut it down. I may not like what you say, but I'll fight for your right to say it, had become I don't like what you say so I will do everything in my power to prevent you from saying it

The problem you keep running into is that if we, as a society, value free speech, then we, as a society, also value the angry mob, because they are also exhibiting free speech! You can't just ignore the angry mob's rights, just because you don't like what they're saying.

If you like free speech and dislike cancel culture, the people to be angry at are the decision makers who kowtow to the mob's demands, not the mob itself (since they're just exercising their free speech, which you claim to support), but even then, aren't those decision makers just expressing themselves, too?

I'm in complete agreement that workers' rights should be stronger and protect them from quisling employers. But there is also something to be said about the technological mechanisms that allow the mass-mob to form. For example in the case of people who have a few hundred followers and end up with hundreds of thousands of people talking about them, there is a hateful amplification that should not be enabled.

> I'm in complete agreement that workers' rights should be stronger and protect them from quisling employers. But there is also something to be said about the technological mechanisms that allow the mass-mob to form.

Agreed entirely, but it’s interesting to note that 99% of the public discourse here on HN and also elsewhere focuses on the technical mechanisms and almost none of the discussion is about workers rights.

As the parent points out, the free speech position against cancel culture is internally inconsistent. That’s why these discussions have no solutions; because the paradox of increasing free speech by restricting free speech is never resolved.

Which is why I think we need to move past the idea of the mob. The mob has no power if your employer can’t fire you capriciously and ruin your life. That power exists irrespective of cancel culture, and needs to be curbed. Doing so would also serve to restrict corporate power considerably, which is why I believe this area of discussion goes unaddressed (it’s that there are a lot of people who are both anti cancel culture but pro corporate power.)

Yeah, I think that's the silicon valley effect. I often feel at odds with the majority viewpoint here when things like the free market, welfare, or regulations are being discussed.

Though in this case, I think the technological perspective makes the inconsistency you're speaking off disappear. It's arguable but I don't think free speech, left to its own devices, leads to these mass mobs as often as we're seeing it on Twitter & Cie. Our culture is being shaped by recommendation algorithms, that needs to be addressed along with workers' rights.

Sounds good. Until it is used against you.

“When I shout you into silence that’s just me expressing my support of free speech”

A fantastic hot take from HN

>But IMO the larger issue of cancel culture, is it makes people less likely to say edgy jokes or borderline politically-incorrect statements for fear they will also get "cancelled".

This comes up all the time that "you can't make edgy jokes anymore", but it isn't true. Just look up someone like Anthony Jessolnik. Here is his most recent joke on Twitter[1]. Mocking both pedophilia and the death of a 4-year-old. This guy has 1.2m followers and plenty of those are liberals. A talented comedian can joke about anything.

I think this narrative comes from the fact that many people don't see a difference between a joke about racism and a racist joke. They see someone "canceled" for a transphobic joke and take it to mean we can't joke about trans people. It isn't the case. I have seen comedians kill with material about trans people in front of young leftist crowds. It is possible.

I see the value in joking about these issues. I don't see the value in making a racist, sexist, transphobic, or overall bigoted joke made at the expense of innocent people simply trying to live their life.

[1] - https://twitter.com/anthonyjeselnik/status/15046838415957196...

No skin in this race.

Perspective is the mechanism that changes the perception of a joke, that's not something the joke teller can influence.

Anyone can take offense to anything. Only when it gains critical mass will it be cared about.

And I'm so tired of people responding "nope, there's nothing to see here, [good] people aren't being cancelled, and no-one is afraid to speak their mind." It's dehumanizing. Or maybe gaslighting. You're telling them that they aren't seeing and feeling the thing they are seeing and feeling. You're not arguing against their take, just denying their experience.

Cancel culture exists. It hurts people, and it generates fear. Heresy exists and it is punished. Most people are self-censuring heavily now. I have experienced it myself in personal and professional contexts, and I am a moderate liberal. The OP mentions the fact that both sides always have truthful anecdotes to support their positions, and use it to attack the other. And that is what you've done here.

Regardless of the details of cancel culture, how could you think a system like that could ever possibly work? When there is status to be gained from making an allegation then they'll be made, true or not. When allegation is enough to generate a mob, which affects your employer, your friends and family, you're entire life, this is a disproportionate punishment even if the allegation were true. But the accused rarely, if ever, even gets to speak in their own defense. It's called "social justice" but it's not a court, there are no rules, and the judge jury and executioner feels just fine if they never take a dispassionate look at facts. This system, applied to anything, is the opposite of justice. To believe otherwise is to reveal a deeply flawed understanding of how human beings respond to incentives. (Of course, one way to get around this problem is to redefine "guilt" to require only that the victim feel bad. But again, this incentivizes victims to feel bad, and somehow everyone forgets that people feel bad for all sorts of reasons, sometimes having nothing to do with the accused.)

Maybe this reply to my comment wasn't directed specifically at me, but I want to make it clear you are arguing against points I didn't make. I wasn't saying cancel culture doesn't exist. I wasn't saying people don't self-censor.

I was instead saying that people who complain about self-censorship often don't understand the reason behind why some things are now objectionable. This results in them painting with too broad of a brush when they talk about that self-censorship and cancel culture. You can still make edgy and politically incorrect jokes today if you do it right.

> You can still make edgy and politically incorrect jokes today if you do it right.

Not really. Doing it right means adhering to the left’s idea of what is right. Your whole position is based on the left being correct about everything.

Take non-binary for example. I’ve looked into it, read the studies and my conclusion is that it’s pseudoscience that deserves to be mocked. But you probably think it’s real so if I joke about it you think I’m a bigot. From my perspective, joking about it is like when we used to mock people who believed in creationism.

So what is doing it right if we both have two fundamentally different positions about a subject?

——- I’m not gonna get into a debate over non-binary. That’s not the point here, it’s an example.

It's not a democrat thing. Large parts of the population disagree on things. When people do things objectionable to republicans, they all try to cancel them too. Many republicans want to cancel gay people, trans people, immigrants, minorities, socialists, etc.

So were you against mocking people who believed in creationism? It sounds like you’re fine with shaming people when you’re in the ingroup, while at the same time you don’t want to be shamed for being part of an outgroup.

I mocked creationism too. You can mock my dying mother for all I care. I wouldn’t like it but believe in your right to say whatever you want.

You are free to mock non-binary people, though. And others are free to call you a bigot. Both of those comport with a right to say whatever you want.

Let me focus on this part of what I said in my first comment "joke made at the expense of innocent people simply trying to live their life." Would your joke about non-binary people be about the idea of being non-binary or at the expense of the people who are non-binary? The former is allowed. The latter is cruel regardless of your opinion on the science. Even if you believe that every non-binary person in the world is mentally ill and suffering from a mass delusion, why would you think it should be acceptable to mock the mentally ill? It is cruel regardless of politics.

> Would your joke about non-binary people be about the idea of being non-binary or at the expense of the people who are non-binary?

That line is so thin, one person might think it has been crossed while another might not. Ideally, the joke would be about the idea but some will say that’s still at the expense of those people.

Mocking the mentally ill has been done for decades. I don’t think there should be any taboo in humor. There’s always someone who will be offended, no matter who or what you joke about.

For the record, I don’t think non-binary people are mentally ill.

>That line is so thin, one person might think it has been crossed while another might not. Ideally, the joke would be about the idea but some will say that’s still at the expense of those people.

This is shifting the goal posts. We were talking about cancel culture not offending one person. No one is cancelled when there is only a single person that objects. The problem is when large groups of people object. The line for that is not nearly as thin or hard to ascertain.

>Mocking the mentally ill has been done for decades.

Do I have to point out how silly this excuse is? People also spent centuries yelling the n-word as Black people. Should that still be acceptable today?

>I don’t think there should be any taboo in humor.

I have seen comedians joke about almost every controversial issue under the sun. The only real taboo in modern comedy is to not punch down. Mocking people who have historically been oppressed and who want nothing but the end of that oppression is punching down.

I don't agree that there is something as punching down. Jokes are jokes. Doesn't matter who makes them or who or what the joke is about. This is once again you thinking that your ideas are the norm. It's clear why you think that though, people who disagree get canceled and thus fringe ideas like punching down get pushed into the mainstream even though most people disagree with it.

> Do I have to point out how silly this excuse is? People also spent centuries yelling the n-word as Black people. Should that still be acceptable today?

You misunderstood, it's not an excuse, I'm saying there is no taboo on jokes about mental illness. Except in the progressive part of society, which is only 8 % of the US. There is nothing cruel about making jokes. They are just jokes. Don't like it, don't listen. It's not that hard.

> Mocking people who have historically been oppressed and who want nothing but the end of that oppression is punching down.

This line of reasoning doesn't even apply in this case, non-binary people haven't been historically oppressed as it didn't even exist 10 years ago, it was invented on tumblr by teens. 99,99 % of non-binary people are under 30, it's brand new.

>I don't agree that there is something as punching down. Jokes are jokes. Doesn't matter who makes them or who or what the joke is about. This is once again you thinking that your ideas are the norm.

This is not just my opinion. This is a rather mainstream opinion in the comedy community.

>This line of reasoning doesn't even apply in this case, non-binary people haven't been historically oppressed as it didn't even exist 10 years ago, it was invented on tumblr by teens. 99,99 % of non-binary people are under 30, it's brand new.

I'm not going to criticize your opinions of non-binary people, but this is statement of supposed fact that is simply wrong. There are plenty of examples of non-binary people throughout history and in various cultures. Just because the specific terminology we use today is relatively new does not mean these concepts are new. So whatever studying you claimed to have done about this issue, you should know that exercise was wildly incomplete and therefore your conclusions were at best premature.

No, I knew that and I stand by what I said. It didn't exist here until tumblr. There are also tribes who believed that every man in the village needs to have sex with a woman for her to get pregnant. I guess that's science now too. And the world is flat because that's what Europe in the Middle Ages believed.

And again, we can't historically have oppressed something that didn't exist in society 10 years ago. Look at the numbers. It's all under 30. Look at the numbers for gay people, even before they were accepted by society. There were gay people in every age group, spread evenly by age. Not for non-binary. Why not? Where is the oppressed 70 year old non-binary person? That person doesn't exist.

Anyway, I think we're wasting our time. We're not gonna convince each other. Thanks for staying civil. Have a great Easter.

>And again, we can't historically have oppressed something that didn't exist in society 10 years ago. Look at the numbers. It's all under 30. Look at the numbers for gay people, even before they were accepted by society. There were gay people in every age group, spread evenly by age. Not for non-binary.

This also isn't true. The percentage of people who identify as homosexual is not "spread evenly be age". Look at the chart toward the bottom of the page here[1]. Rates of bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people were 0.2%, 0.4%, 0.1% and 0.2% among the traditionalist/silent generation and grew to 15%, 2.5%, 2.0%, 2.1% in Gen Z. The rate of transgender people grew almost identically to the rate of increase in the gay and lesbian population and nowhere near the growth in the bisexual population. Do you not understand how a society that is openly against LGBT people might keep those people in the closet and a society that is more accepting allows people to be more open about themselves?

Once again, the "facts" that you are using to support your opinion are wrong. Maybe it is therefore time to reconsider those opinions.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...

You misunderstood what I was saying. Doesn’t matter, it’s too sunny outside to keep arguing about this.

Yet… there are no witch hunts for those that mock creationists. Some things are acceptable to mock to leftists. I have seen a student kicked from the University where I am finishing my PhD for mocking LGBTQIAP issues…never have I seen someone kicked for making fun of the religious folks.

You missed the second part of my quote "innocent people simply trying to live their life".

Mocking is often excused because many (but obviously not all) creationist will try to push their views on others. No one cares what your beliefs are. They care when you use those beliefs as a basis to impose your morality onto others. That opens them up to justifiable backlash.

Non-binary people generally aren't pushing any belief beyond just wanting to live their life how they want to live it. The change they are looking for is acceptance.

Is it not ok to mock creationism anymore? I need to get out of my cave that's 5,000 years old and learn modern customs.

You either used a bad example, or don't understand your terms. There's nothing pertinent about non-binary you could possibly glean from studies, because it's cultural. What someone feels about their identity isn't the sort of thing you can create a science around.

This is precisely why someone would call you a bigot; Oxford defines the term thusly:

> a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

The belief in this case being that your opinion of their identity, based on the studies you have read, is more relevant to their truth (or anyone's) than their feelings about their identity. As far as some of us are concerned, it isn't.

This isn't a left-vs-right matter, either. That framing establishes factional conflict where there could be simple misunderstanding, which isn't terribly productive.

Really, the issue at hand is that you feel like you should get to make jokes about people's identity, and others feel like joking about people based on their identity is rude so they call you out on it. It just happens that there are enough people who feel that way that being ostracized by them stings. Your options are to not do it or accept that a large portion of society will think you're a dick.

> The belief in this case being that your opinion of their identity, based on the studies you have read, is more relevant to their truth (or anyone's) than their feelings about their identity. As far as some of us are concerned, it isn't.

But why should I take someone's view of their identity without question? Why, and to what extent, am I obliged to uphold and reinforce someone's self-perception? And why on some issues but not their race, height, age, etc.?

Saying it's a "cultural issue" or a "social construct" doesn't help here. "Social construct" does not mean an individual gets to decide unilaterally - quite the opposite in fact! A social constructed category is one which society decides.

Nor does "socially constructed" mean something is arbitrary. Language is socially constructed, but that does not mean we can change anything we want about a given language without consequence.

> Really, the issue at hand is that you feel like you should get to make jokes about people's identity, and others feel like joking about people based on their identity is rude so they call you out on it.

Presuming to know someone else's motives better than they know themselves is not persuasive.

> But why should I take someone's view of their identity without question?

Basic respect of others involves at least paying lip service to their preferences (and I realise it’s not a preference but I don’t have the correct language here), or ideally genuinely respecting other people.

You don’t have to do it, but it’s awfully rude and in cases can be quite a nasty thing to not respect their wishes. Why not do the right thing? How much does it really hurt you to do so (not how much does it irritate you, that’s not really relevant here)?

Ideally you try respect the, and they forgive and accept mistakes on others part. Both people should try be kind to one another.

Whenever I ask these questions, this is always the response I get. It's really frustrating because it's really a non-answer that isn't at all helpful.

Firstly, do you think I go around taunting people about their self-perceptions of their gender? Even if it wasn't something I could be fired for (which it is) I don't actually take delight in causing other people psychological distress. I am asking these questions here, in this forum, because I want to hear better reasons other than "it's the nice thing to do".

Secondly, I listed several cases where your rules of politeness don't apply and aren't the norm - how are those different? This whole "take people's identity claims without question" works in some limited contexts, but breaks down in so many different cases that it really isn't a generalizable moral principle. At best what you propose is a useful tactic for having pleasant water cooler conversations with strangers and acquaintances. It is not a solution for the rest of life where our identities have important implications for how we relate to each other.

Thirdly, that social etiquette is the only justification you provide suggests you understand our acceptance of these identity claims is merely a social fiction. Now, I am a well-socialized adult, which means I understand how often little fictions, little white-lies grease the gears of society. And like I said previously, I don't like to cause others undue distress. But I also think forcing other people to lie (by threatening their job, for example) to be dehumanizing and immoral in its own right.

Lots of LGBTQ organizations have FAQs about transgender issues. E.g. https://www.hrc.org/resources/transgender-and-non-binary-faq What questions do you have that are not answered in this sort of material?

If someone says "I identify as a woman and prefer female pronouns", it's not clear to me what it is that you'd want to 'question' anyway. If the person is, for example, a colleague, why would you care about their anatomy or what gender they were assigned at birth?

It's important to be kind to everyone. Anyone "skeptical" of a trans person really ought to mind their own business. I agree with you there.

To play devil's advocate, some identities have less currency in current society. See "Neopronoun" [1] for examples. To lliamander's point, there is a gray area where not everyone is going to feel comfortable with unfamiliar gender constructs. If the rule is to accept everybody's identity at face value, then that closes down any space to feel uncomfortable calling someone "kitten," to use an extreme example.

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

You are indeed using extreme examples. This is not the sort of thing that is causing people to get shouted at on twitter.

I'd be interested to know if you can link to a single example of someone insisting that they be referred to using a neopronoun (and not accepting e.g. they). Here, for example, is a discussion of neopronouns on r/nonbinary: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonBinary/comments/k7hegi/can_someo... I don't see anyone getting canceled for expressing a degree of skepticism about neopronouns.

I also think you're being slightly disingenuous in talking about 'accepting people's identity at face value' as if it was being proposed as an absolutely rigid rule. No rule of social interaction is completely rigid or without exception. If you really have a reason to think that someone is being dishonest or disingenuous about their gender identity then you don't necessarily have to go along with whatever they tell you. But if you are not inherently unwilling to believe trans people in general, how often is that scenario going to come up?

> I'd be interested to know if you can link to a single example of someone insisting that they be referred to using a neopronoun (and not accepting e.g. they).

Read the HRC FAQ you just linked to in the previous comment. It includes this:

> Some transgender and non-binary people do not identify with the gender binary and prefer not to use pronouns typically associated with men (he/him) or women (she/her). Instead, they may prefer if people simply use their names, use gender neutral pronouns such as “they/them” or use other pronouns such as “fae/faer” or “ey/em.”

I meant a real example of someone refusing to accept any of he/she/they as an acceptable choice of pronoun. So much of this debate is based on trans people being truculent in someone’s imagination.

My point in using the extreme example is not to suggest that people are insisting on their use. I chose a fringe example, for which it is socially acceptable to express skepticism, in order to illustrate the point that there are gray areas in how society validates some identities and is less inclusive of others.

In the link you provided, one Redditor "struggles to stay progressive about" neo-pronouns. Another Redditor considers such skepticism to be "extremely gatekeepy and transphobic."

I don't have any reason to believe that someone preferring kitten-folk pronouns is being dishonest or disingenuous, even in this more extreme example.

But what is the principle under which some identity claims are accepted more than others? I have my own thoughts, but I'm curious to get yours. Do you think there is room in society for people on occasion to feel uncomfortable with someone's proposed identity?

Obviously there is not some simple set of rules that will help you to navigate every difficult question relating to personal identity. But now you are talking about hypotheticals, not real problems that occur in choosing a suitable pronoun for someone in a realistic situation.

I’m highly skeptical that there are people who go through life getting angry with every person who won’t call them ‘kitten’. But if you know of any actual examples of this, feel free to provide them.

It’s sad that debates about issues that affect real trans people so often get sidetracked into these irrelevant hypotheticals. This isn’t an academic debate. We don’t have to solve all the edge cases before we can start doing the right thing in the common case.

All too often in these discussions, one side is just saying to be kind to everyone, while the other insists on a philosophical debate, so they end up talking past each other. I would hope that someone learning about trans people is able to update their beliefs about gender: “I used to believe that gender is always tied to sex, but there seems to be a sizeable majority of people for whom this is not the case, and so I will update my beliefs and learn.” Anybody who isn’t capable of this is honestly stubborn, and there are also assholes who go out of their way to harass or debate this topic in contexts where they shouldn’t. The majority of discussion around gender should focus on these points and being humble about your beliefs and kind to others.

But these are all points agreed on by myself, GP, and GGP comments. The question you replied to asked, “Yes, we should be kind to people and refer to people how they prefer. But, there are some non-binary identities that I don’t have buy-in for. I will of course refer to people by their preferred pronouns to be kind, but can anyone give another reason?” There is a place for this kind of conversation, too, on occasion.

You can see that lliamander doesn’t actually agree with all of those points from replies upthread (they are being asked to “lie”).

> But, there are some non-binary identities that I don’t have buy-in for. I will of course refer to people by their preferred pronouns to be kind, but can anyone give another reason?

In the general case your question answers itself. If you don't believe that someone is really (e.g.) a woman, then obviously there is no reason to refer to them using their preferred female pronouns except general politeness and kindness.

If I understand correctly, you are concerned about cases where someone does not accept either 'they', 'he' or 'she' as acceptable pronouns. I would urge you to find a real example, as discussing such cases in the abstract based on Wikipedia articles is frankly ridiculous. But again, the answer to your question in the abstract is obvious. If you don't believe that the person's identity is real, then you can either use their preferred pronouns to be polite – or not.

I fail to see any real philosophical issue that's raised here, given that you already accept that gender and biological sex are not inextricably linked. I guess there's the question of "How do I tell if someone's reported identity is real?", but that seems to be just a special case of "How do I tell if someone is being honest?". The answer is of course that you do so using your general nous.

> that seems to be just a special case of "How do I tell if someone is being honest?"

Is it that simple? Nobody is doubting the honesty of anyone involved. The real matter is there is a cultural tradition called gender, and some people see it as a flexible thing, and to others it’s not, or less so.

You linked to the HRC FAQ, so you must have felt it was relevant to what lliamander was saying. I’m curious what information it contains that could convince someone to be more flexible in their gender definition? What would you say to someone who doubts the validity of non-binary identities? What would it take to convince you that those “extreme,” to reflect your language, neopronoun-based identities are real and valid?

> If I understand correctly, you are concerned about cases where someone does not accept either 'they', 'he' or 'she' as acceptable pronouns.

That’s not what I said at all. I’m not sure how you got that impression. I brought up neopronouns to show that most people have a degree of inflexibility in their conception of gender. These examples you’re asking for are besides the point.

Edit: Do you see how I’m using devils advocate? I personally believe that transgender identities are real and valid, for whatever that’s worth. But if you consider an extremely liberal position on gender, it’s useful to see how you react to it.

>I brought up neopronouns to show that most people have a degree of inflexibility in their conception of gender.

People's objections to neopronouns are usually practical and linguistic in nature rather than stemming from any particular inflexibility about gender. I don't really doubt that some people have gender identities that fall completely outside the usual male/female classification scheme. What I do doubt is that any significant number of these people think that the pronominal system of any given language must necessarily encode the relevant conceptual aparatus in its morphology. After all, there are plenty of languages where pronouns don't have gender at all. If someone is talking about you in Chinese, then 'tā' is all you're getting – and who could reasonably complain about that? That's not to say that I'm reflexively (tee hee) opposed to all neopronouns. Adding additional gender-neutral pronouns to some languages might make sense, conceivably.

I can see how it would be nice to have a general argument that would prove to a skeptic that any arbitrary non-binary identity was 'valid'. However, there are a couple of reasons why I don't think this is a reasonable thing to ask for. First, different identities are different. If the 'validity' of a given identity comes into question, then one has to argue on a case-by-case basis. Second, while it is almost certainly very rare for people to be delusional or dishonest about their gender identities, it is clearly possible in principle. Thus, the requested argument would either be an argument to a false conclusion, or would have to presuppose the honesty and sanity of the relevant person, at which point it would beg the very question that is usually at issue.

> Lots of LGBTQ organizations have FAQs about transgender issues. E.g. https://www.hrc.org/resources/transgender-and-non-binary-faq

That site makes some obviously false statements (e.g. about what 'sex' is).

> What questions do you have that are not answered in this sort of material?

Allow me to quote myself:

> But why should I take someone's view of their identity without question? Why, and to what extent, am I obliged to uphold and reinforce someone's self-perception? And why on some issues but not their race, height, age, etc.?

None of these questions except the first have been addressed, and the answer to the first was wholly inadequate as I explain up thread.

> If someone says "I identify as a woman and prefer female pronouns", it's not clear to me what it is that you'd want to 'question' anyway. If the person is, for example, a colleague, why would you care about their anatomy or what gender they were assigned at birth?

Again, I'm not going to be needlessly confrontational with a colleague, but I still don't believe their identity claim (I believe they feel that way, I just don't think that feeling is has much bearing on my beliefs). And while I will comply with their pronoun requests, I do care that I am being expected to lie, and there are limits to how far I am willing to go to preserve the fiction.

> Whenever I ask these questions, this is always the response I get. It's really frustrating because it's really a non-answer that isn't at all helpful.

Do you think it might be possible that you keep getting this answer because you are asking why no one respects your opinion that you don’t need to respect other opinions? You’re kinda coming from a hypocritical ground on the root argument here.

> Do you think it might be possible...

So far my experience has been that, no matter how respectfully I dissent from modern views of gender and sex, the only level considered "acceptable" is to not express my dissent at all.

I don't really have time for some side discussion about my level of propriety. Let's either discuss the object-level issue or be done.

This answers nothing.

Respect is earned, otherwise it's meaningless. And who said this is the "right thing"? Why does it matter how much it "hurt"? All you're doing is saying that one group must always be "respected" at the cost of the others agency. This is ridiculous and dystopic.

People have the freedom to behave and accept whatever they want. What you're talking about is manners, politeness, and civility. And sure, people should be civil, but civility doesn't mean acceptance without question either and should never come at the cost of freedom. The moment you do so, you've lost both.

> Respect is earned

Respect isn't earned in polite society at some base level. I say "Good Morning" to the people I meet on my run not because they saved five children from a burning building, but because they're people I ran into today. That's the right thing to do. Sure, I don't put the person that I said "Good Morning" on some bright pedestal and worship their feet, but I still treat them with respect.

To call someone by the name they prefer and the pronouns they prefer and not being a dick to them is pretty basic, and it's not dystopic to expect people to do so.

> "Respect isn't earned in polite society at some base level."

Polite society requires politeness. Manners. Decorum. Civility. Not respect. These are different words for different concepts and should not be conflated.

Respect is earned based on your knowledge of that person. Why would you respect random people when you know nothing about them? What if they were murderers? Would you respect them less? If so, why? Because its new knowledge about them that caused a new score, therefore zero knowledge = zero respect until you learn enough to make an assessment. I can also be polite with a murderer but not respect them; see the difference?

> "I say "Good Morning" to the people I meet ... because they're people ... That's the right thing to do."

What's right about it? What if they didn't want to talk to you? A lack of engagement is not wrong.

> "name ... and the pronouns they prefer"

Preferences do not overrule rights and freedoms. The point is why should someone accept an identity without question - and both you and the other user made the same argument that it's "the right thing to do".

But that means not accepting identity without question is wrong, which therefore removes the rights and agency of one group (to question) the preferences of another. Your rights are my responsibility; your right to question my identity is my responsibility to accept that my identity is open to questioning.

That's why those arguments are meaningless. They may sound good but they fail to hold any logical consistency. Expectations of civility are more than enough for society to function, however as soon as you mandate civility at the cost of freedom them you will end up with neither.

So when I meet a flat earther I need to be respectful and acknowledge the earth is flat? Those people consider it to be part of their identity too.

Why is it ok to dismiss one group but we have to be respectful of another?

Anyway, I never said I want to mock people in their face but the ideas they believe in should be fair game.

Presuming to know someone else's motives better than they know themselves is not persuasive.

Saying that people shouldn't presume to know your motives about a joke when you're talking about mocking people's self identity is hilariously hypocritical.

"Don't assume things about me when I'm mocking people I've made a massive assumption about!"

Just for clarification, I'm not vimy. But further more, he didn't say he wanted to mock people, but the concept of "non-binary" as presently accepted in our society (and presumably related concepts around gender identity) because he concludes it is nonsense.

Pksebben is not arguing with vimy about whether the concept of "non-binary" is meaningful or coherent; Pksebben is merely making the accusation that vimy is rationalizing his desire to mock other people.

If I say you have an incoherent view of the world, and you claim that I only think that because I'm a mean person who wants to hurt people, then I'm not going to find you persuasive.

he didn't say he wanted to mock people, but the concept of "non-binary" as presently accepted in our society

You can't separate the two things though. Mocking a belief is the same as mocking people who hold that belief. If someone says "I am a man" and someone else says "Men don't exist" then it's entirely fair to say the second person is attacking the first. They are. Maybe that's OK under the guises of free speech though.

You can't then also say that the first person should be free to say what they want without acknowledging that the second group should be able to call them out for it (aka cancel them). There's no reasonable way for the first person to have the freedom to say what they like without the second group also being able to say what they like.

Cancelling just means that the first person is scared of the consequences of the second person being upset. Well, tough luck. If you're scared of the consequences of your actions then you don't get to do those actions.

You can separate the two things, most people are multidimensional. I have a lot of friends that I respect who hold abhorrent beliefs.

You can say that the first person should be free to say whatever they want, and that the people affected by it should be able to say whatever they want, that's completely irrelevant to the issue.

Cancelling means someone losing their financial safety and that of their family for expressing their opinion. If your response to this is "tough luck", I'd say you're showing a lot of privilege, and lack of empathy that'd get you cancelled if expressed about one of the hot button social issues.

You cannot both claim there is free speech (the principle) and that it's fine that people get fired for what they say, it is fundamentally incompatible.

> Cancelling means someone losing their financial safety and that of their family for expressing their opinion. If your response to this is "tough luck", I'd say you're showing a lot of privilege, and lack of empathy that'd get you cancelled if expressed about one of the hot button social issues.

Tell a racist joke at work, and there are good odds you'll get fired. Tell a sexist joke at work, and odds are good, you'll get fired. Are you going to argue that freedom of speech should prevent you from being fired for telling a racist or sexist jokes?

Three points with regards to that scenario you laid out.

First, I won't be fired. If I make such a joke around colleagues who know me, they'll probably take me apart and tell me they found it hurtful and I'll apologize and it'll end there. If I do it around someone who feels more strongly about it, I'll have to have a serious talk with people I know and who know me in HR and in my hierarchy, who value my contributions, understand the larger context of the person that I am and my personal circumstances, yet recognize I did something inappropriate that needs to be addressed and corrected, and importantly with whom I have a contract enforced by the state. That's a whole lot more nuance, maturity and sanity than getting a hundred thousand people calling for your job online because you made a joke.

Second, the way you behave at work and outside of work are not equivalent. If I'm just some lambda employee, no reasonable person should assume I speak for my company when I express myself on a non-professional public platform.

Third, nobody holds the ultimate truth about what is sexist, racist and to a larger extent right and wrong wrt current social and political issues. That's the nature of social and political issues, there are two sides, one is not good and the other evil. If your job depends on complying with online zealots representing a single extremist side of an issue, you are in essence forbidding some political opinions.

Sure, there's process at most jobs for disciplining employees - but there are generally still consequences for speech that is racist, sexist, and so on. If a company doesn't enforce those standards, they will probably find their legal bills becoming very expensive. Ergo, there are consequences for speech in the workplace.

If an employee takes part in a KKK rally, should their employer turn a blind eye towards it if they find out? If a person advocates for killing gay people online, should their employer ignore it? If the employer ignores it, then there is a good chance that black people or gay people won't work for them. Why? Because gay people won't feel safe working next to someone who advocates their death.

> Mocking a belief is the same as mocking people who hold that belief.

So, do you defend defend creationists with the same vigor when their beliefs are being mocked?

I'm saying mocking creationism is the same as mocking creationists, sure. I'm not defending them though. They can defend themselves if they want. They don't need my help.

Why the difference?

Not OP and not agreeing with this, but I believe the purported difference is that some beliefs are granted the status of identity, which makes them in some sense sacrosanct.

The (faulty) chain of logic goes:

1. You are challenging my belief.

2. This belief is about part of who I am.

3. Therefore you are challenging me and/or my existence.

If it's about "challenging me and/or my existence", why is acceptable to make jokes about, say, bald people? Why hasn't Chris Rock been cancelled?

> I believe the purported difference is that some beliefs are granted the status of identity, which makes them in some sense sacrosanct. The (faulty) chain of logic goes:

In the case of mocking, I would say there's no difference between the two. Mocking either creationists or nonbinary people is mean-spirited and a wrong thing to do. In fact, I've always had quite a problem with Richard Dawkins for this very reason. But I'm not going to say that either one should be deplatformed or anything like that.

When it comes to laws then there is a big difference between the two. In the case of creationists, no one is creating laws restricting creationists from participating in public life. It's true that people have an issue with creationists teaching creationism as fact, but that's a different matter entirely. However, on the other side what we see are laws against certain people existing in public places.

That's what we mean by "challenging me and/or my existence." It's not, "You can't talk about creationism here". Instead it's, "You can't be here if you believe in creationism", which I don't think is a law anywhere. And yet in the past many people have passed such laws against minorities of all kinds restricting them using attributes they can't change about themselves. This is what you perceive as "granted the status of identity, which makes them in some sense sacrosanct". While it's true that being a Christian and believing in creationism is in some sense an immutable property of one's self identity, at the same time no one is passing laws barring Christians from bathrooms because the Catholic Church has a problem with harboring pedophiles.

Who is passing laws restricting nonbinary people from participating in public life?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_non-bin...

In particular, there is a very strong conservative movement in the US dedicated to the idea there are exactly two genders, and they are very intent on legislating as such, just as they legislated gay people from participating in public institutions such as marriage.

I see no examples in that article of laws restricting nonbinary people from participating in public life, and somewhat the opposite (recognition of nonbinary as a protected characteristic under anti-discrimination laws).

It's amazing to me that same-sex marriage was legalized just in 2015 by the slimmest of margins (a decision that wouldn't have been made by the current court, and is vowed to be legislated away by the GOP), we're on the cusp of a new moral panic regarding transgendered people, and you're still requesting to be spoon feed proof that this discrimination exists, even after I already spoon fed it to you. Here's another spoonful: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/politics/anti-transgender-leg...

You seem to be equating nonbinary and transgender. I’m quite aware of the state of play on transgender bathroom bills and sports inclusion, but I’m really genuinely unaware of any legislation that would prevent nonbinary people from participating in things like marriage (we’re taking about legislation aren’t we? Not discrimination in general?)

> You seem to be equating nonbinary and transgender.

First, many nonbinary people identify as transgender. Second, anti-trans laws don't have very clear delineations on who they target, first of all because the legislation is written by clueless people who hardly have an idea or even care to have an idea what it means to be trans versus nonbinary.

But moreover it should be obvious by now that the current crop of anti-trans laws are just a backlash to the Obergefell decision in 2015, and it's not even intended to target specifically trans people. They are vice signals intended to put LGBTQIA people in general on notice as to the ideological posture of the state. They are not going to be very discriminate about targeting you if you're trans but leaving you alone if you're nonbinary. It's a distinction without a difference to them.

Anti trans laws are an admission that the anti-LGBTQIA movement lost a battle but intends to continue the war by moving over to a new letter of the acronym. We know this to be true because they're recycling all the same anti-gay rhetoric and tactics they used to use in the 90s against gay rights, but this time subbing in "trans", who appear to be targeted next because of their visibility in the community. There are no principles behind these arguments, because if there were they'd still be making the same arguments about gay people. They aren't making those arguments anymore because they know they lost those arguments culturally. But they still believe those things and want to keep saying them but this time directing their hate toward trans people.

And it's true Obergefell gave us same sex marriage, but since 2015 they have been vowing to erase that decision, and they've worked tirelessly to make that a reality. The Supreme Court is now exactly where the GOP have wanted it for a generation, and they are using it as they promised; abortion rights will be done this summer, and next on the chopping block is gay marriage as promised. They said they are going to do it, and it looks like they will. Right now it doesn't seem like there's a lot to stop them.

> we’re taking about legislation aren’t we? Not discrimination in general?

One last thing I'd like to point out, is that when lawmakers stand in the way of anti-discrimination laws because they want the discrimination to continue, this is a form of legalized discrimination. You don't need to make harassment and discrimination legal by passing a law saying it's okay, instead you keep it legal by preventing the passage of laws saying it's forbidden.

> If you're scared of the consequences of your actions then you don't get to do those actions.

I’m pretty sure you don’t actually believe that.

... or it is being biological.

Would you extend your analysis to mockery of creationism too? That’s part of people’s identity too, and creationists are undoubtedly offended at being mocked.

And if you mock them, creationists will also start a mob against you. And probably try to prevent you from ever being hired at places they work at.

Such behavior always existed.

It's just that if a sect cancels you it's less painful than if the majority of society cancels you. And lots of right wing people don't want to believe how left wing society as a whole has become, so they see canceling as a conspiracy by the left, when it's really just the majority of society boycotting you.

Progressives are not a majority of society, they are a vocal minority. The majority is not on Twitter and doesn't care much about politics either way

There are very few regions in the western world where progressives are not the majority.

In terms of the total population of countries, pretty much the enture west has a significant majority towards progressive policies.

The opposite is true though, conservatives — while, with some exceptions, being the minority — tend to feel like they deserve more publicity, and tend to believe in a silent majority (which isn't real, btw).

(Some of aforementioned exceptions are smaller communities — people tend to cluster spatially based on their beliefs).

Mocking individual creationists often is a cheap shot. Particularly a decade or two ago there was a slightly nasty side to the 'new atheism' that took delight in making fun of people who were either just morons or extremely uneducated.

Not going to dive further than this into this ridiculous can of worms, but this is not an issue of accepting someone's expression of identity, it is the use of that expression to change culture and reality through force of law, by deign of grievance.

You should absolutely be allowed to make terrible jokes about that, people are also allowed to tell you you're not funny.

> by deign of grievance.

What you call a grievance is someone's life.

> You should absolutely be allowed to make terrible jokes about that, people are also allowed to tell you you're not funny.

And you might face consequences for telling jokes that aren't funny and are offensive. Tell a racist joke at work, and there are decent odds you'll lose your job.

Facts are more important than feelings.

> It just happens that there are enough people who feel that way that being ostracized by them stings. Your options are to not do it or accept that a large portion of society will think you're a dick.

In this case it’s 10 % of the population (progressives or woke whatever you want to call them) who make a lot of noise and have the power to push their ideas on the rest of society. You get banned on twitter for questioning or mocking current gender ideas. Media also don’t give airplay to people who disagree. There’s no debate possible. So we get a misrepresentation of what society really thinks. And that’s why, if you believe him, Elon wants to buy twitter.

I've never really been persuaded by the 'facts are more important than feelings' statement. At best, it's an apples and oranges comparison in most cases. People don't typically claim they feel creationism is true, rather they take creationism as a fact. Similarly, the fact that I feel this way is nevertheless a fact, one which we take on good faith many times a day in person and online. If someone tells you they're angry, we're usually justified in believing that fact about their mental state. The degree to which we're skeptical of that claim is heavily influeneced in turn by epistemic trustworthiness and epistemic justice.

I think GP's point is that being or not being non-binary is unfalsifiable. I don't have a horse in that race, as I'm not sufficiently informed on the topic. However, it's important to note that (i) falsifiability is not the only reason to believe something and (ii) there is serious criticism of the idea that a statement must be falsifiable to be considered scientific.

I accept that someone is non-binary the same way that I accept that someone is a man or woman. I haven't had any issues with it so far, and it has the added bonus of making people feel validated, accepted, and comfortable around me, which is also a benefit to me in turn.

> What someone feels about their identity

The meaning of "identity" has changed over the last 10 years in two distinct ways. First, the number of identities has increased (which is great), and second, my identity is a stick with which I can beat up others (which is not fine).

The most common and visible "stick" takes the form of creating a new pronoun to represent my identity and forcing others to use it, lest they be labelled a bigot. This strategy is coercive and antisocial. You change language and then use the threat of attack to enforce the change. (The argument that without the change, people are disrespected, or unable to express their identity, is simply false. This is why God created adjectives! Foot fetishists don't need a pronoun.) It is authoritarian in the sense that you brook no argument, and accept only submission. Anything else means (social) death. This is a leftist authoritarian power play, and I resist it totally.

There are secondary "sticks", like when liberals think it's okay to let trans women compete with bio women, especially in sports that are dangerous, like MMA. That's not okay, it will never be okay, and I would have though that was obvious, but a sentiment like that will get you labelled transphobic. There seems to be some sort of slippery slope effect at play, which makes every argument all or nothing - the possibility that you might respect and like transwomen (as I do) AND be against them participating in competitive sports (as I am) isn't a reasonable possibility in the current climate. Ironically, and sadly, this bad position weakens the path to trans acceptance.

All that said, none of this matters if we're all dead, so better to focus on fixing climate, nukes, and authoritarianism.

You poor oppressed baby. How mean those liberals/gays are to you that they ask you to call them by their preferred name and pronoun. You're so brave in resisting our hegemony!

I would resist any rule system enforced in this way, even if I agreed with it. Not that it matters, but I do agree with most of the rules, as I understand them.

Also, I'm a liberal as stated, and I prefer the company of gay people. I'm happy to do what I can to make those around me comfortable. I am not happy to do that, or anything else, on pain of cancellation.

I don't really get the 'pronoun-as-stick' thing. I've never met somebody who has created a pronoun to express themselves. I've only really come across novel pronouns in 80's literature. I have met (and had friends) who were semi-regularly called the wrong pronoun, (as far as I could see) so people could make a point. That for me is the common case of 'pronoun-as-stick', not authoritarian foot-fetishists or whatever.

the OP's point was that public reaction will depend on the specific joke you make and the context in which you make it. a skilled comedian can make a nonbinary joke that is perfectly acceptable. a person at random is more likely to have their joke taken the wrong way. Or, in the common case, just reveal their bigotry.

The consequences for a misunderstood joke / revealed bigotry are going to be higher when billions of people can interpret your comments out of context. keep that in mind when posting to social media?

When has it ever been possible to be openly and purposefully offensive without consequence? What about cancel culture is unique to the left? The thing that’s so tiring about this argument is that people seem to have forgotten about societal events that took place before Twitter was created. This strain in society has always existed, the U.S. evangelical wing mastered cancel culture before smartphones were invented. So yeah, if you want to be openly derisive about wide swaths of the population, you’re going to get pushback. I’m not sure what about this is novel or noteworthy, this is part of the way society functions. I mean hell, Bentham invented the panopticon in 1786!

Right? People have been getting “canceled” for things since humans have had fire. Probably before. It was possibly also more lethal. “Let them eat cake” <- doesn't go well

There was a brief period of time, say from the 60s to the early 10s, where offensive takes in public were slightly more tolerated, but that's what's in a lot of peoples memory. I'm sure it waxes and wanes.

Either way it's not as personally damaging to be accused of being a racist in 2022 as being accused of being a communist in 1952, let alone before that when expressing the wrong opinions loudly enough could get you tarred and feathered.

> being a communist in 1952

A bit different as that was the mortal enemy of the day, with good reason. It wasn’t someone with a different viewpoint, it was a very real potential mole from the enemy.

The red scare was about as justified as the invasion of Iraq, which is to say, not at all and not even a little bit.

>> You can still make edgy and politically incorrect jokes today if you do it right.

>Not really. Doing it right means adhering to the left’s idea of what is right. Your whole position is based on the left being correct about everything.

Also, whats right today may not be right tomorrow. Tweets live forever.

> Not really. Doing it right means adhering to the left’s idea of what is right.

A good counter-example to that is South Park. They make edgy jokes that offend everyone and have withstood criticism from both the left and the right.

I think this thread is missing the main point, which is people are being cancelled for the content of their speech, not their behaviour.

That is the key difference between free speech and censorship. You can support free speech and still remove people for horrible behaviour, but as soon as you start removing people because of the content of their speech, you move to tyranny.

That is cancelling and why people self censor (you're full of it if you say that's not happening), because their content is considered dangerous, not their behaviour.

Just watch, if Musk buys Twitter the mass of woke narcissists will immediately move to demand social media be regulated, after feverishly admonishing Trump for desiring the same thing...

How is speech not a behavior?

Self-censoring is crudely how civilisation works. We accept some restraints on our biological urges for the safety and order collective society provides.

You could say everything we do is behavior, but it's still useful to make a distinction between one thing and another. Maybe you'd like a different term, but I really think everybody understands what is meant by distinguishing word from action, or message from tone, etc. We're not talking zoology here.

I was going to question whether you agreed in "free speech" because our U.S. counterparts are always up in arms about that, but then I see you're from Stockholm so no worries!

> Self-censoring is crudely how civilisation works. We accept some restraints on our biological urges for the safety and order collective society provides.

Are you saying our civilization is no longer working?

Speech is a behavior, it could be unpleasant, it could hurt, and it is also dangerous.

The reason free speech being cherished is because limiting it brings upon cons much out weight the pros. In particular you block the escape hatch of a death spiral. I'm not super familiar with history but even I remember it's repeated many times in many places, just that this time it's global.

That's not what I said. I said it's the content of the speech that is the distinction, not the behaviour around how it is presented.

People are self-censoring because of the fear of an out of proportion response to their speech's content, which is rife currently.

The saying goes 'Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'

It's like all of society collectively forgot about "political correctness", and how the exact same complaints about "cancel culture" used to be called "political correctness" and behold society continued to function so well we completely forgot about the horrors of "political correctness" only to now worry about the horrors of "cancel culture!"

We didn't forget. It's the same problem, but morphed and magnified by social media.

I'd challenge the idea it's been morphed or magnified. It's the exact same nonsense.

And just like political correctness, the label of cancel culture is very selectively applied and is often agenda driven.

> And I'm so tired of people responding "nope, there's nothing to see here, [good] people aren't being cancelled, and no-one is afraid to speak their mind." It's dehumanizing. Or maybe gaslighting. You're telling them that they aren't seeing and feeling the thing they are seeing and feeling. You're not arguing against their take, just denying their experience.

We used to debate things and have different views and opinions. Milo Ydbjsixjebdoaod, Ben Shapiro.

But now instead of debating and proving people right or wrong. It’s just complain and protest the venue and people and get them knocked off Twitter YouTube Facebook etc.

Climate change is another one. Anyone who wants to debate the topic is instantly cancelled as a denialist. Social media has ruined information to some extent.

> Climate change is another one. Anyone who wants to debate the topic is instantly cancelled as a denialist.

This is nothing to do with cancel culture or social media. It’s because big energy companies paid people to deny climate change. Unsurprisingly this makes people tetchy around those with let’s say heterodox views.

The well has been poisoned for fair criticism and it was not poisoned by environmentalists.

While I believe climate change is a real thing. When someone questions why data is excluded from models it’s automatically flagged as denial. You can argue that there’s people paid to deny but it doesn’t change the fact anyone who even questions it is cancelled. Look at the “97% of scientists” report that came out and half the scientists were either not even in that subject or said their opinions were taken out of context. Yet everyone cites that as absolute fact and questioning it gets you blasted.

That’s cancel culture no matter how you try to spin it.

You clearly don't remember the 'smoking causes cancer' debate - yes, there was a debate and it was hotly contested, and it was very emotionally charged. It played out similarly to the topic of climate change has so far. There has never been an era of reasonable public discussion and consensus building.

If that's cancel culture, then it's nothing new.

Sure but I would like to think the debates occurred and happened people argued back and forth and ultimately convinced the other side.

But what we have now is basically “you are wrong you have no say”

When you shut people out like that and they feel like they are not being heard you end up more divided and against each other. Which is basically what’s happening now in many topics.

Perhaps. I see what you are getting at. I’d suggest that there’s been an erosion of intelligent debate in general and what we see is just what’s left behind rather than something new. Complexity is not tolerated any more.

Maybe they did or didn't - but regardless of what those companies might have once done, they are now all owning big solar and wind businesses too.

If you look at the people asking tough questions about climatology, none of them have any links with energy firms. The median climate change skeptic is a retired engineer of some kind, or sometimes a retired climatologist. They don't have any links and they attack climate science because they think science should be accurate and disagree that big changes should be made on the back of bad science, but disagree that this particular field is accurate. That's it, that's their whole motivation.

Doesn't matter. Look at the post you're replying to. It's greyed out. You aren't allowed to even observe that people get cancelled for arguing about climate change - that's how far it's gone.

Yes, it exists. Remember when Trump called for the cancellation of Kaepernick? The treatment that whistleblowers get? Freedom fries? Cancel culture is a deeply embedded component of US society.

> You're telling them that they aren't seeing and feeling the thing they are seeing and feeling. You're not arguing against their take, just denying their experience.

In psychology, a term for that is "minimisation" [1]. I commented on the power-play aspect of it here [2]. It seems so common in all forms of social media (and seems significantly less common in real-life to openly minimise another's experience [3]) that one suspects it's an immanent feature of electronic communication.

That seems to mesh not just with diffusion of responsibility, but that every other person in the digital world appears as a single, isolated data point who could be gaslighted into thinking they were totally alone in holding their opinions. As an amplified tyranny of the majority it seems the go-to attack in tech circles, where minority users are openly threatened with the "inevitable" march of "ubiquitous" technologies and will be "left behind" for failing to fall into line.

Until these mechanisms have widespread recognition and are named I don't think it's possible to build social media technologies absent of serious harms.

[1] https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Minimisation_(psychology)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31006944

[3] Perhaps it's my privileged position to experience/witness it less.

The issue here is that saying a thing on twitter with the potential audience of the whole world is an inherently different thing than e.g. saying that thing to your blokes in the pub.

Imagine it is 1980 and you went into a disco with a certain percentage of people of $ethnicity: What is your expectation for what would happen if you started yelling that people of $ethnicity have $negative_attributes and no right to exist? That they come to you and tell you that you have a point there? Of course the group will not ignore you, you are directly criticising their existence from an outside position.

And this is the issue here: expectations. When speaking on a global online platform with near instant feedback your expectation shouldn't be that you can just voice a controversial opinion and have nobody disagree like it would happen when you talk to your likeminded friends in a small circle. Your expectation should be that you are in close vicinity of all the people you are talking about, because you are.

And this can also be a good thing, because assuming a ton of things about others that you could just directly talk to is a sounds like a receipe for disaster. Imagine that instead of yelling stuff in the disco you were to talk to people and getting to know their point of view. The issue is that you can't do that on social media because you are always in the spotlight. And in the spotlight it is hard not to wave the flag of your team and have a human conversation instead.

Social media is a constant spotlight, global, instant and huge public space and the behaviour you discribe is a direct result of the fact that people treat it as their living room conversation instead.

Shitstorms are real and often they can get quite bad, but paradoxically you won't get rid of them with less moderation ("more free speech") but by interfering with the spread of the word.

"Imagine that instead of yelling stuff in the disco you were to talk to people and getting to know their point of view. The issue is that you can't do that on social media because you are always in the spotlight"

You can, with a direct private message/email. (not sure if that is possible with twitter, though)

That works very well to solve many issues, but of course it does not get you the same attention like publicly responding to someone stupid/insensitive and most people are on social media for attention.

Nah, private messages have been reposted on social media as clickbait to incite the lynch mobs called cancel culture.

>your expectation shouldn't be that you can just voice a controversial opinion and have nobody disagree //

Cancelling people isn't just disagreeing. Of course people can disagree -- but those who do disagree take the disagreement to other fora and greater levels. An audience member can always heckle, it's expected to some level, but if you follow a comedian home and harass them it's entirely different.

This is a consequence of twitter being a different place than what people are used to:

- your opinion will not be bound to where you say it (your local pub), but potentially visible to anyone on earth

- your opinion will not be bound to the time you say it like in verbal speech, but might re-emerge at any point in time

- your opinion might be seen as a public statement (or even a declaration) to the world

- the friction to post your opinion, to react to your opinion or to jump on bandwaggons is as low as it gets

This is fundamentally different from any place you could speech in ever before in history, yet most people speak the same way they might in their local pub after the third beer. This impedance mismatch produces all kinds of wonky results.

The bandwaggon problem is yet another class of problem, that is much more systemically rooted and could probably be addressed by introducing a little bit of friction in the right places. My hunch is that this is less of a culture problem showing up on twitter, but a twitter problem showing up in culture. Certain forms of media make certain forms of communication more likely while preventing others due to their systems of communications. Twitters systems make such phenomena more likely, so they show up more often.

I agree with most of what you're saying here, but those who get discussed on Twitter are not always tweeters. You can get dragged to the public square by someone who takes a video of you at that proverbial local pub.

True. The media spotlight can shine on everybody and improve or destroy lives. This was also true with boulevard press before social media.

Within social media this can take the shape of a angry mob with torches and pitchforks — and this is certainly undesireable. My point however was that this is not "a new school of thought" which has been emerging in the past decade or so, but this is emergent behaviour which stems from the communicative system social media has designed. What people might call cancel culture is therefore not a culture that somehow went and inflitrated social media, but instead a culture that formed precisely in reaction to or enabled by the communicative structures of social media.

The consequence of this would be that the only way to get rid of online mobs would be to change the design of online interaction on those platforms (e.g. by limiting post visibility, adding friction on retweeting and sharing, highlighting options to privately communicatiate etc).

Arguing with someone that their opinion is wrong is not gaslighting. Gaslighting is denying fundamental reality. Like a man screaming obscenities at his girlfriend and then later telling her he never used any curse words towards her.

You can debate whether a joke is racist or a joke about race, or whether there's a difference between the two. It's not gaslighting

"Denying fundamental reality" is exactly what "cancel culture isn't real" is. Cracking one's knuckles can't reasonably be construed as objectionable in any way, and yet once the mob finds out you can lose your job https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...

Especially when there are plentiful examples of cancel culture in the news on a nearly weekly basis.

Arguing against the existence of empirical evidence showing real consequences is absolutely gaslighting, and I see it all the time from primarily left-leaning folks who, without always saying it, believe the people who were cancelled fully deserved their punishment, without bothering to assess the context or conditions of the situation in relation to our fundamental rights in society, where fair trial and freedom of speech/thought are ignored in favor of an unregulated digital militia composed of Twitter bots and large corporations like VISA/Mastercard coercing businesses to terminate payments for controversial people -- while narrative-approved late night entertainers humiliate you and people like you for daring to exist, opine, and jest differently than them as they broadcast their dogmatic standards as gospel to their fervent viewers who fail to see through them.

I recall when Patreon spent way too much manpower to silence Sargon of Akkad because their payment providers were enforcing their own private societal norms on Patreon's users, by proxy.

Imagine, if you will, that you're an Uber driver and while driving someone to their destination, you nearly get hit by another vehicle and in your fear, you scream an expletive that upsets just this one customer. You later lose your ability to drive for any taxi service because their payment services refuse to facilitate paying you for that one cross remark.

Many people argue that private companies have every right to deny service or operate their services in any way they like, but if most of them are operating in unison to control speech and aid in humiliating average people for breaching their "community standards", then having a society with rights to free speech, expression, and thought without undue punishment outside of the court of law is pointless. These rights may as well not exist if they only serve a vocal, angry minority. The irony being that those same rights are protected for them because large corporations use them as fodder for shallow marketing campaigns that take advantage of human compassion towards manufactured victimhood that inaccurately represent the realities of this world, signaling their defense of complete lunacy for profit.

Cancel culture is an absolutely pathetic way to treat citizens in our society, I don't care how "private" your company is in their ability to make decisions like these — you cannot deny the backbone of society to individuals for spilling their milk.

The term “cancel culture” suggests that there is some sort of epidemic of social mob justice that is consuming society—at least that’s the impression I get from most people who are railing against it. That is not an objective fact. IMO, that’s not real.

You are incredibly privileged.

You are incredibly bad at offering substantive criticism of opinions with which you disagree.

I have never wished for awards on HN, but this comment surely deserves one.

Man that joke’s fucking tasteless. Bonus points for the icon of an impeccably-coiffed white dude sitting above the photo of a black lady he’s making fun of.

But, that is someone who makes a living from making edgy jokes. I think OP was talking about random plumber/professor/programmer Joe/Jill making an edgy joke.

The point wasn’t that saying something racist was acceptable, it’s that a single tweet sent before taking off with racist overtones should not result in losing your career and 50,000 people screaming at you when the plane lands. A Disney star should not openly lambast a 14 year old kid in front of their entire Twitter audience for an edgy ironic tweet. These are real things that happened.

To quote Anthony Jeselnik himself, “I get away with it because I’m just the guy who does it.” Anthony built a brand around saying horrible things. I admit he is a talented comic, but that’s not the point; even when South Park misses, people don’t suddenly turn on it and start feigning surprise about how crude it is. “Of course it’s crude; it’s South Park, you idiot.”

People say stupid stuff all the time. Read my HN comment history and tell me how long it takes you to get to something I’ve said that’s stupid. I try to self-censor rather heavily by simply trying not to engage in too many controversial topics and I’m sure there’s still some statement or other in this entire corpus of my own comments that would appear pretty ugly in a decontextualized light (and perhaps even with context, I dunno.) Well, thanks to context collapse, that happens all the time. It’s almost the default and exceedingly few people care to check.

And if the mob winds up being wrong, do 50,000 people apologize? Do you get your job prospects back? OR: does it get ignored, you get a permanent set of headlines in the search results for your name, and your mere association with unscrupulous topics limits your potential indefinitely? Yeah, I am pretty sure I already know the answer here.

And I don’t care how rare it is. It’s not rare enough. It’s not good if it happens once. “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” And again, I agree that sometimes people just said something shitty or at least that got interpreted shittily, but I have never seen something even once where it didn’t feel like a horridly disproportionate response. Not even once.

Even if you did feel it was a proportionate response, somehow, it’s hard to argue that it actually accomplishes much of value. However, it has lead to some documented suicide attempts! So that’s just peachy.

Maybe people should stop trying so hard to justify vigilante internet mobs. Even if its not exactly a lynching, it certainly is character assassination, harassment, and frankly, disgusting shitty human behavior that is hard to justify.

Okay.. this comment finally got me to login and chime-in on this topic. > And I don’t care how rare it is. It’s not rare enough. It’s not good if it happens once. “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” And again, I agree that sometimes people just said something shitty or at least that got interpreted shittily, but I have never seen something even once where it didn’t feel like a horridly disproportionate response. Not even once.

Completely agree... No arguments with this ..

And as always there is a but.. (Note: following is not a personal or specific counter-argument to this comment). The general calling it "cancel-culture" or "leftist political correctness forcing it's way (Aka fascist-leftist" narrative misses the point as much as the common "it's rare, but these people deserve it. They're horrible people" narrative.

The way i look at it "freedom to innovate, and have a system that sets up a market that encourages innovation" has brought us this current social media centered around outrage, fear, anger and rage centered way of connecting to people. Those employers are "free-to-fire" as much as each person in the mob that responds with rage is free to express their opinion and the one person who uncensoredly tweeted something is free to make mistakes. So what's the solution, I don't know anything specific outside of going all mystic/mythic/wishful saying we should all practice empathy better, we should find better ways of connecting to each other and may be (social networking and recommendation) algorithms that can help deeper connections than shallow ones.

To be honest, there's a skeptical(and pessimistic and fearful) side of me that thinks that's not gonna happen and we'll end up in a divergent world(https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2022/02/23/divergentism/).

The other solution proposed is (completely free speech with pure anonymity based protection from society based outlash) also suffers from the problems like minority voices getting drowned out. Majority opinions and stereotypes being elevated to "The capital "T" Truth"(https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/224865-the-capital-t-truth-...) rather than being viewed in perspective..

> “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” This is a noble sentiment, but I do wonder how much this is true in what we have managed to implement and wonder if we would ever be able to implement something like this without going to "minority report" level extreme censoring and monitoring. (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=925249... ) or with some humour(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPOw2unxy0).

>this current social media centered around outrage, fear, anger and rage

Whenever I see takes like this, I wonder what platforms people are using and how they're using them.

I interact with my family on facebook, read some stuff on subreddits I like, and don't use twitter; I don't really experience any of the above. My girlfriend, by contrast, will come to me visibly shaken once a week regarding some drama happening on instagram, which baffles me.

Am I the one that's out of touch here? Or is this 'FUDmedia' a bit overblown and the result of spending time looking for the hot goss? I'm probably the one that's out of touch, but oh boy is it nice.

You know, for a long time, I used to blame Twitter or Tumblr for making people neurotic and thus causing “cancel culture” or whatever you want to call it. And, maybe there is some truth there. But honestly, I think the true issue that’s making us all sick is our neurotic attachment to the internet. If anything is making us sickly, it’s having smartphones that basically ensure we’re online literally all the time and can’t escape it. Maybe it isn't literally unhealthy in and of itself to have a smartphone around at all times, but I think the degree to which it enables people to become “integrated” with Twitter and other social media is insane. Things that were nice conveniences on desktop, like push notifications, can become scary and frankly intimidating when they follow you around literally all day.

The old internet Yishan speaks of might not be that old, but it feels ancient and very distinct from what we have today. The old internet was an escape from whatever life had to offer. It was something you could log into when you got home and hang out with other nerds and enthusiasts in your niche. That’s all gone because now it’s not just nerds and now your niche is decontextualized into a giant social media soup where people are constantly judging and critiquing everything and often in bad faith or at least irrationally.

I actually fully agree that cancel culture is a silly concept, because cancel culture doesn’t capture how insidious and unhealthy internet relations have become. It isolates one specific dysfunctional behavior (the tendency for people to form mobs and absolutely try to obliterate livelihoods over relatively small transgressions) while ignoring or maybe even inherently accepting all of the dysfunctional crap that leads up to it and surrounds it. “Cancel culture” is just a symptom of deeply unhealthy social relationships, rather than an intentional plot by the “radical left”. And maybe the reason we only complain about cancellation is because deep down, we don’t want to give up all of what the internet offers, even a lot of the less healthy things. Because yeah, quote retweets dunking on someone with bad faith arguments may make for great screenshots to send to your group chat of likeminded people, but is it really advancing the discourse?

I think it’s not necessarily Twitter’s responsibility to figure out all of the answers here. It would be kind of tragic if we couldn’t find some sort of solution that didn’t involve regulating social media or computers, though. Maybe it’s unlikely, but my hope is kind of that it resolves itself. If social media usage started to shrink simply because people became tired of it and it was no longer socially “cool”, that alone might help out a lot. In general, convincing people to take social media far less seriously would help a lot. The reduction of the real world influence of Twitter and its respective beefs and callouts would basically kneecap the concept of “cancelling” somebody online.

For now though, I agree it’s all a bit nebulous. There’s no obvious way out. I guess the only difference for me before and after reading the tweet thread from the OP is that I understand now that it isn’t Twitter’s fault. They’re just the platform currently holding the curse.

> many people don't see a difference between a joke about racism and a racist joke

Many people don't see the difference between a joke about racism and racism.

I'm not sure that's true <edit, snipped out a preface I had about my not-racist self, as after writing the whole comment I don't think I need to fear looking like a racist justifying their jokes, though perhaps I will look like someone who can't write a funny joke>

A joke about racism could be in the form of a story where "Person A says racist thing (that we don't get to hear), then Person B hits them". Sure, that's nowhere near funny enough to be called a joke, but it is simultaneously about racism while surely not being remotely racist?

I appreciate that a lot of the time people will define a joke as "about racism" while ignoring the fact that it ALSO contained racism - after all, if the actual racism in the joke isn't funny then why are you making the joke be about racism at all? - but I've definitely heard off-hand jokes that were about racism without having any racism in them (either in content or intent).

Not to mention that if you make a joke about racism that gets directed against your own race, it's hard to see many people viewing that joke as racist in itself.

I'm not saying that people that can see the difference don't exist. I'm saying that many people exist that don't see that difference.

Ah, sorry for misunderstanding, that is indeed what you clearly wrote I just interpreted it without thinking as including yourself in the 'many people'.

No problem!

Can parents laugh about a joke like this?

>I don't see the value in making a racist, sexist, transphobic, or overall bigoted joke made at the expense of innocent people simply trying to live their life.

I don't think the average non-"woke" person sees much value in transphobic/racist jokes either - at least not in public.

That said, I don't think there would be anywhere near the level of backlash if the average activist simply aired their disapproval in a normal way (ie, expressing discomfort at a live show, or leaving a comment online calling a comedian a talentless hack for making shit transphobic jokes) rather than vindictively trying to destroy their entire life.

> This comes up all the time that "you can't make edgy jokes anymore", but it isn't true.

What would be your explanation for Nimesh Patel being removed from stage at Columbia?

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/former-snl-writer-nimesh...

The "best" part of the toxic Twitter cancel culture is the "if you're not actively fighting for our cause, you're the devil and need to be cancelled". There can be no neutral ground, you're either fervently for them, or the enemy to be destroyed.

“A guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it.”

Remember how mad everyone got when George W. Bush said, "You are either with us, or with the terrorists"?

By "enemy to be destroyed" you mean a few people mocking you after you say something stupid right? Assuming you have the thousands of followers needed get the visibility? It might be worth reflecting on the cancel culture boogeyman you are terrified of, and how much of it is in your imagination. That goes to anyone reading this too. It could help you out.

That take loses a ton of nuance. This is probably talking about anti-racism.

When the status quo is actively discriminating and harmful, doing nothing is enabling oppression.

No one has a duty to fight for your political ideology. What you’re proposing is called fundamentalism. It’s what inspires terrorists.

Reminds me of forcing people to cry in funerals of dictators, honestly. Pure bullying, hiding behind a facade of righteousness.

That’s not how I understand the idea of anti-racism, at least from what I’ve read by people like Ibram X Kendi; I’m not really sure what you’re responding to about fundamentalism

Kendi frames it like this: it’s a contradiction to say “I’m not racist” but then continue to live in a way that perpetuates racial disparity.

In his writing he gives a bunch of interesting examples from his life where he realized he was acting in that way and tried to change.

Maybe you don’t agree with some of those views, but I kind of read your response in this genre of everyone talking past one another. I don’t really see what it has to do with the actual position of anti-racism

> When the status quo is actively discriminating and harmful, doing nothing is enabling oppression.

So when a mob targets and harasses a person, as well as their friends and family, not only do they deserve it, but everyone else who isn't participating in the hate mob is evil as well apparently!

Most people don’t believe the status quo is actively discriminating and harmful.

And you AND them are BOTH actually right because they live in a different circle/town/city/country than you.

I believe Twitter mobs have a factor of American mentality that believe that their personal reality is THE reality. See for example when they harassed the Bulgarian author of the “Rubocop” Ruby library because “cop = bad!”

> sometimes fired from their jobs because of a racist tweet or off-putting remark

I don't know about you, but I sure as hell am firing someone who is says racist things. Keeping them around is not good for your company, for the other employees, for your vendors/clients, or anyone else associated with your company.

> I hope most would agree that this is a disproportionate punishment.

Racism is a crime in any reasonable society. If anything, being yelled at on Twitter is too little punishment.

I’m not aware of any society where racism is a crime. In the US discrimination due to racism is a crime. Those are different things.

How’s that any different?

The US is very far from reasonable in many respects, which is why white supremacists, antivaxxers, etc, flourish. You should get familiar other societies, particularly in the European Union or South Africa.

In Brazil, you’ll go to jail for making racist claims. As you should. How could that be polemic in the 21st century?

The US is much more stable and prosperous than Brazil or South Africa.

Irrelevant. In regards to dealing with racism, Brazil is better than USA.

I could accept that if every race was treated equally and racism against any race would lead to same consequences.

If every race was treated equally there would be no racism. I think that’s pretty self evident.

Also, no one is asking you to accept it, it’s the law in many countries.

> Saying or doing something racist or rude is bad, it should and would probably get you kicked out of a bar or event. But prior to social media, it would not get your entire reputation ruined, and you wouldn't get 50,000 random people to start harassing you. I hope most would agree that this is a disproportionate punishment.

If someone says something racist or sexist enough to get thrown out a bar, then I absolutely don't want to employ this person.

In the olden days there would be rumors and people would skate by. Hell, even the folks in first group of cancellation that you deem acceptable - the Weinsteins, Spaceys and Cosbys: everyone around them knew. FOR DECADES.

And nothing happened. It took until the same technological leaps that we are talking about for their victims to find each other, gather safety in numbers, and facilitate punishment.

This is of course going to be very unpopular with the "we are not racist/sexist - we are just asking questions" crowd.

Disagree, the concept of witch trials predates the technological "leaps" you mentioned.

Witch trials are overtly situation where someone is convicted of something they didn't do.

In all discussions of "cancel culture" there is no debate or disagreement that the person actually did the things they did - the only debate is whether the crime fits the consequences.

Sure there is. On your theme, say Woody Allen.

> I'm too young to confirm but I assume we had something like this before social media took off.

The period after most people moved to big cities and before internet was widespread was the golden age of privacy.

Yes! I'm glad someone remembers. You could walk into a different bar, cafe, park and be a different person. It was a great way to find yourself as a young adult. Now social media makes everything permanent.

More than disincentivizing the borderline ideas of today (something that has always happened everywhere) it also disincentive the borderline ideas of tomorrow (something that is generally correlated with oppressive regimes)

something fun happened a few weeks back:

someone made a compilation of all the time Joe Rogan said the n-word;

the Young Turks made a segment how inexcusable it was to say it "so many times"; someone made a compilation of all the time the Young Turks;

some time later on an unrelated topic regarding dwarfism the Young Turks went on a rant about it being impossible to know whether the word dwarf was a slur or not and worrying about a new d-word compilation in 5 years

the particular details of what is cancel culture elude me, I am not smart enough to define it. but I find this future-based self-censoring (not based on visible trends but hypothetical ones) to be corrosive

> We need a grey area, where you can say something which isn't "accepted by society", but it doesn't get you effectively blacklisted everywhere, and it doesn't affect things like job offers.

I am still thinking about all this, but I feel it is an unsolveable aspect of the global soapbox style social media platforms.

You also can't get away with risque jokes in big crowds when public speaking or with people you don't know. With your friends, there is a lot of nuance occuring, like them knowing you are a good person and have good intentions. To a crowd it's not necessarily obvious, and the range of people you could offend is way larger. You know you can grill your friend about their moustache because he knows you mean no harm. You know you can make a joke about bald heads because you know none of present company will be offended, you just can't achieve that in bigger groups. The internet is that issue but on a global scale.

The idea that you can say anything on the net without consequences is the wrong idea I think, because you can't even do that off the net. The solution is better community building and social tools for groups I think.

+1 on communities/social tools for groups.

I think one of the great challenges with the internet is that global broadcasting aspect of it. Knowing that something you say could spread across the world, and potentially hurt your prospects in the real world, is chilling and moderating. Our online identities/communication becomes more artificial in this environment. We feel the urge to broadcast what we think the world will think is acceptable/desirable, as opposed to what we truly think.

I feel like increased privacy, more localized online communities, and increased ephemerality of our content could all help towards making the internet a better place. How to do that is obviously a huge challenge.

As a society, we have not developed appropriate, constructive, non-permanent repercussions for minor transgressions like an offensive online post or an off-color comment.

Our culture hasn't caught up with technology which can broadcast minor transgressions to millions of people and save them in perpetuity.

What is the modern equivalent of getting kicked out of a bar? Anti-social or bigoted behavior should have consequences but not permanent or life-ruining.

This is assuming the behavior was actually bad. The other problem with cancel culture is 1. Many of the "transgressions" were not transgressions at all; sometimes just an opposing opinion. 2. It is selectively applied according to identity. 3. No checks and balances. Easy for a mistaken identity or simple misunderstanding go viral. Once the mob is ignited, it's extremely difficult to issue a correction or walk back an accusation.

> We need a grey area

Absolutely, life is shades of grey and never black and white. Unfortunately the noisiest people on the internet either can only think in black and white, or choose to do so to (to get note ‘engagement’ etc.)

See but this is a big flaw in the way most people view free speech. No one wants to hear it, but some views considered extreme or “bad” are considered “bad” based on your point of view.

Currently the majority of our culture feels acting on racist motives are bad. An individual who internally is racist, posts racist things on the internet is only bad when they act racist towards someone.

If a platform blocks someone from posting a non individual targeting racist post and it gets blocked on Facebook, that is similar to someone posting something against a religion and it getting blocked because the moderator is religious, or posting something anti American and the site moderated by an American blocks it because they disagree with the content.

As much as we might all hate it, the lobbying for an open free internet means giving everyone the freedom to post their thoughts without backlash. Imagine If the civil rights movement took place during the Information Age, Amit of people would have compared promoting anti slavery content on posts to anti vax information today.

> As much as we might all hate it, the lobbying for an open free internet means giving everyone the freedom to post their thoughts without backlash. Imagine If the civil rights movement took place during the Information Age

The civil rights movement experienced a lot of backlash. I mean… Malcom X and Dr. King aren’t exactly alive today. People in those movements were beaten by police and arrested for expressing their view. I don’t recall any police beatings or murders of anti-vaxxers. Freedom of expression never meant freedom from backlash. (well... ostensibly it means free from state backlash but that's never really been entirely true)

The parent post invokes two famous names but, if social media had existed back then, effectively no one would even have heard of them. They would have been deplatformed for having extremist views (by the standards of their era) and their followers would have been fired for voicing support for them with the illiberal mainstream piously saying "Freedom of speech isn't freedom from backlash." about it.

> They would have been deplatformed for having extremist views

The organizing principle of the civil rights movement was civil disobedience for the precise reason that they had no platform to begin with, and the only way they could get people to pay attention was to cause a stir. Sit ins, walk outs, boycotts, marches, and rallies were all methods used during the civil rights movement to create a platform for themselves that couldn't be ignored. So to say that they wouldn't have had a platform at all because they wouldn't have been platformed on social media if it had existed back doesn't track. Those individuals were unknown until they built their own platforms.

> their followers would have been fired for voicing support for them

Forget being fired, one civil right that was at issue during that time was discrimination in hiring practices (and firing practices too for that matter). This is the entire point of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. You could absolutely be fired or "cancelled" for expressing support for the movement, belonging to the movement, marrying someone in the movement, etc. Notably this legislative outcome restricts speech on some while freeing the speech of others.

I'm sympathetic to the idea the people shouldn't suffer a backlash like firing if they say something offensive; I've certainly said my share of offensive things that I regretted but wouldn't want to be fired over. But I'm never going to be sympathetic to the idea that it follows from the principles of free speech that we are free from backlash of our speech. Just explain how that would work without restricting speech on someone else.

> "Forget being fired, one civil right that was at issue during that time was discrimination in hiring practices (and firing practices too for that matter). This is the entire point of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. You could absolutely be fired or "cancelled" for expressing support for the movement, belonging to the movement, marrying someone in the movement, etc. Notably this legislative outcome restricts speech on some while freeing the speech of others."

Right, and the point is that if society has learned to embrace civil rights since then, society can and should have learned to embrace not doing that either. Or are the people endorsing cancellation today no better than those unenlightened people of an era that is behind us?

> "But I'm never going to be sympathetic to the idea that it follows from the principles of free speech that we are free from backlash of our speech. Just explain how that would work without restricting speech on someone else."

"Backlash" is a word that's trying to paper over a lot of sins. Your freedom of speech is preserved as much as anyone else's; you are still free to say that deplorable people are deplorable. That does not mean the you can hide harassment, intimidation, trying to get people fired, etc. (because that's what everybody knows what is actually meant when "backlash" or "consequences" is used) behind a claim of restricting your freedom of speech.

> Right, and the point is that if society has learned to embrace civil rights since then

Society hasn't learned anything, no. The changes of the civil rights movement were hard fought and enshrined in law that has to be continually enforced precisely because people haven't evolved at all.

> because that's what everybody knows what is actually meant when "backlash" or "consequences" is used

Are you sure everybody knows this? From my perspective, I surely don't. I've seen "cancelling" simultaneously used to refer to literally cancelling programming like "Rosanne", cancelling powerful people who are abusing women like Harvey Weinstein, cancelling people who foment insurrection against the US government like Trump; and also more mundane yet still dissimilar situations ranging from teenagers canceling friends from their friend group, to indeed some person saying something and getting fired over it.

And on the other side, when people complain about backlash they complain about a range of responses including boycotts of products, being moderated but not kicked off social media, actually being kicked off of social media, losing a publisher or a book deal, being kicked out of professional organizations, all the way to being jailed or fired.

These are all wildly different contexts that all fall under the "cancel culture" and "backlash" umbrella, so it's not at all clear that "harassment, intimidation, trying to get people fired" is what people mean by "cancel culture" or "backlash". In fact I think it's one of the biggest problems with this discourse.

>I'm too young to confirm but I assume we had something like this before social media took off. But with everyone connected and very scrutinizing/critical it's starting to go away.

As you correctly pointed out "open societies" need rituals/safe places in which a free flow of exchanges can emerge without stifling "artificial constraints" (= courtesies) which at some point just effectivley dissipates any drive for exchange/communication attaining maximum entropy within its boundaries devoid of any discernible "meaning" (other than our "box" has the highest moral value (i.e. tightly closed) compared to other "boxes").

Some examples of "safe open spaces": jesters (modern: comedians), interpreting dreams (modern: psychotherapy), ecstacy/dionysian rituals (modern: going out drinking) ...

I don't see Twitter in its actual form up to this challenge. And it's actually fine to admit that they have long reached a limit to reasonably scale up something resembling the first amendment. Fair enough: the 1st refers to the role of the government.

But then in a world of the WWW (with its current tech monopolies) and increasing PPPs: What exactly can be/is the role of governments and that of corporations in the 21st century? Most certainly not a recursion to an 18th/19th century understanding of social contracts (with "high-tech" movable types at their disposal).

> private citizens getting doxxed, slandered, and sometimes fired from their jobs because of a racist tweet or off-putting remark.

I think even more concerning for most people is a mob going after and firing people who didn't do these things. David Shor getting fired because he Tweeted that rioting was a bad political tactic, causing angry Twitter users to successfully press his employers to fire him. The case of the guy who got fired because someone thought he made an "OK" sign while driving and whipped up an angry Twitter mob (both cases are discussed here[1]).

Here's a random case I had stumbled upon a few years back that's now been forgotten[2] - man posts video of Chipotle telling him he has to pay for his burrito first because they say he's taken burritos without paying for them, accuses Chipotle workers of racism, and whips up a Twitter mob. Chipotle immediately apologizes and fires the manager. Then people notice old Tweets from the same guy bragging about stealing burritos from Chipotle. This leads Chipotle to rehire the person. If a random person decides to lie about you and whip of a Twitter mob, you have to hope that they've been so sloppy as to brag about their crimes on Twitter beforehand, because a simple unverified accusation from any random person is enough to get you fired.

And even after many cases like this, Twitter still let's people try to create Twitter mobs to get revenge on private citizens (particularly jarring when Yishan is arguing that the reason news articles are censored is to avoid angry mobs). However, they'll ban people who politely state heterodox opinions on controversial subjects (even if they are relatively common positions among the public). And since Yishan brings up Reddit, it's worth noting that they have a similar approach as well (whipping up angry mobs is fine, heterodox positions are not).

This culture on these sites is a result of the choices that social media companies have made (and not just the choices mentioned above, but others like the efforts made to push engagement). We see the results of that choice by the state of these sites. And the people involved, instead of taking responsibility for what they've created, decide to dump all the blame on the users.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chipotle-rehires-manage...

The internet gives everyone a loud, personally branded, indestructible PA system and a wide choice of busy street corners to play whatever messages they want, on loop, 24/7. If someone decides to use that power in a way they already know is going piss off many passers by, well, pissed off mobs are going to do what they do. Mob mentality isn’t going anywhere unless humans go extinct. Speak your mind but read the room, the room is the entire world.

> There's no coherent ideological bias on any sufficiently large social network, they just pivot to whatever is causing chaos on any given weekday.

This is both true in a trivial sense and bullshit in an important sense. Governments and companies work every day, and employ armies of people full time to create the "shitstorms" that social media companies react to. Even the news cycle is motivated by billionaire owned news outlets, and a brush fire on twitter becomes a wildfire because those outlets magnify it, often prompted by press releases from PR companies, lobbyists, NGOs, and administration officials.

This is only improvisation for the first five minutes you become important. Once the relevant institutions have employed people full time to focus on the manipulation of your platform, it's systematic and routine. In the current climate, resistance will mean you're called to Congress and yelled at, and every other journalist will be screaming for your investigation and destruction. Instead, what happens is that you end up knowing all of the manipulators of your platform by their first names, you go golfing with them, and your kids date each other.

“Ideological bias” doesn’t require some coherent master plan, just like minded people acting according to their incentives. Everyone really needs to read Manufacturing Consent: https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

>Social media companies are in the unenviable position of playing referee in the culture war

They are self-appointed referees in a game where many of the participants never wanted or asked for a referee. These companies could simply limit themselves to removing spam and explicitly illegal content (which should be referred to authorities), but instead they choose to put their finger on the scale and wade into the fray.

What Twitter client are you using? Mobile web at least threads it just fine. So much so I don’t understand why people use threadreader a given the junk that adds to a conversation as its being requested and replied to.

>What Twitter client are you using? Mobile web at least threads it just fine.

Chrome on the desktop right now. I agree that the mobile app is a better experience.

If you think mobile web threads fine, as in makes a good UX for reading written text, then that difference of opinion is the source of our and perhaps the parent of your post's disagreement. Mobile web looks just as awful as desktop web. I don't understand how people read on sites like this. I never read twitter threads unless I go through thread reader. It's intolerable otherwise.

I am not affiliated with thread reader at all.

EG for the OP link: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html

For anyone who doesn't have a Twitter account, the experience is endless nags and blocks.

I use Nitter for individual posts and searches, Threadreader to read threads.

The stock website is intentionally horrible.

Jules Dupuit explained why a over a century and a half ago.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170511130317/https://www.inc.c...

I whole-heartedly agree, and it's why I use threadreader app to read multi-part tweets.

Here is Yishan's thread. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html

Twitter could build their own multi-part reader functionality, but I'm content with using this tool.

this should have been a blog post. I absolutely can not stand threadreader because there's something about how people use it that rubs me the wrong way.

It does not help solve the fundamental problem (this should be a blog post not a series of Tweets).

Strangely enough I originally posted this to HN as a threadreader link, but it looks like the mods switched it to the original thread on Twitter. I can't remember ever seeing that before. Is this a new stance that HN now frowns upon threading apps?

It's not a new stance, HN has always pushed for linking the original source unless the referring source adds something meaningful.

I'd personally feel thread unrolling is a meaningful addition, but I don't think that's ever been the mod's POV

A number of URL remappings occur automatically, and Threadreader conversions may be amongst these. OTOH, Reddit links seem to be automatically rewritten to old.reddit.com.

I've suggested YC consider running its own Nitter node for that system's UI/UX advantages.

No one's forcing you to write everything on Twitter in 40 tweets. He could have written a blog post and tweeted it.

I agree. The limit encourages creativity and brevity

It is not as if he Yishan was hitting the character limit on the individual tweets either, he was using the breaks for dramatic effect, like Shatner putting pauses in his speech.

Most people that I see behaving horribly on social media platforms do so under their own name, or at least an identity easily matched up to a real person, probably because they don’t feel like the repercussions affect them. So I don’t think the anonymity is that much of a cause or enabler for misbehavior in practice.

I think the idea of being thrown out of a bar for misbehaving is an interesting analogy. On twitter you can be thrown out of someone’s personal timeline, or you can be thrown out of all of twitter. In the real world that would be like either you are refused entry to someone’s home or you get thrown out of a country, with nothing in between. It seems like there is room there for more variations in between. Maybe hashtags could have moderators that forbid abusive individuals from using them, or maybe every tweet could form its micro-community, and individuals could be banned by the original tweeter from engaging with that tweet, but not from engaging with all of twitter. Twitter must have brainstormed a million variations on this concept of a moderated community, and I wonder why they have landed on the idea that you should only be allowed to curate your own timeline and not that of others who follow your tweets.

> Companies moderate haphazardly and improvise and they care about their bottom-line and to extinguish shitstorms.

Yes, after they've helped create the shitstorms in the first place with their escalatory like and recommendation models.

Maybe you've hit on what the real problem is - using algorithms to enhance the spread of things. Maybe have a damper algorithm to counter the escalatory ones that succeed too well.

There is obvious ideological/institutional bias. Look at who Facebook offloads censorship to and who finances them.

There is obvious censorship not due to shitstorms. dang censored plain links to scientific studies highlighting myocarditis side effects to covid-19 vaccines. Now those effects are accepted fact.

> Look at who Facebook offloads censorship to and who finances them.

The usual accusation is they pick left-wing fact checkers, but this falls apart on even casual examination. https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-brings-in-rightwing-n...

"Facebook has brought in the right-wing news site The Daily Caller, which was co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is known for pushing misinformation, to help fact-check articles, according to The Guardian."

Would you say the median fact checker has the ideological inclinations of the median American?

I would say that's a somewhat bizarre question.

Why? How else would you measure bias?

The way to evaluate a fact checker isn't via an ideology measurement, it's via an examination of their work.

This bias thing feels like a dangerous precedent. I get not wanting kooks to exert strong cultural pressure, but if we start locking people out of various parts of society because of their beliefs, that sounds like the definition of illiberalism to me.

> The way to evaluate a fact checker isn't via an ideology measurement, it's via an examination of their work.

We have a 6-3 Supreme Court. Do you think there's no conservative bias in their work?

> This bias thing feels like a dangerous precedent. I get not wanting kooks to exert strong cultural pressure, but if we start locking people out of various parts of society because of their beliefs, that sounds like the definition of illiberalism to me.

It's not about locking people out, but ensuring that the people who have power are ideologically representative of the people they have power over.

Saying you can have apolitical "fact checking" is like saying judges just "call balls and strikes based on what the law says." In many cases both statements are actually true. But in practice, in many important cases, ideology and politics is inextricable from the job.

FactCheck.org doesn't exactly stick to verifying the number of carbon atoms in Butane. Their fact checks regularly, for example, parse through a politician's words to make inferences about what they meant or may not have meant. There's a lot of subjectivity wrapped up in that sort of analysis.

Whenever you give someone power and discretion, their "work" will be influenced by their ideology. I'm not talking about transparent favoritism, but differences in world view, values, and priorities. And it drives people nuts when people who don't share their values exercise power over them. This is true of everyone--from people who grow up in conservative little towns and escape to the big city as soon as they can to distinct ethnic groups who declare independence for their own patch of land. "Who" the decision makers are matters just as much if not more than what decisions they make.

> We have a 6-3 Supreme Court. Do you think there's no conservative bias in their work?

Based on their rulings (their work), of course. But I would never presume to predict their work based on their ethnic background, their political contributions, the schools they went to, their religion, the kinds of websites they visit or music they listen to, etc.

> It's not about locking people out, but ensuring that the people who have power are ideologically representative of the people they have power over.

That's just a long-winded way of saying you're locking people out, based on their ideology. This is the kind of stuff that lets people argue that Catholics or Jews shouldn't be president.

> Saying you can have apolitical "fact checking" is like saying judges just "call balls and strikes based on what the law says."

I'm not saying this. I think the "balls and strikes" Roberts quote is 100% horseshit, whether it's applied to SCOTUS or grading student essays.

What I am saying is (within reason) we shouldn't let someone's ideology prejudice us against them. If you're a conservative I won't be prejudiced against you. If you're a flat-earther I will. This seems fair.

> There's a lot of subjectivity wrapped up in that sort of analysis.

I think there's a lot of middle ground between "number of carbon atoms in Butane" and epistemological free-for-all. I went to factcheck.org and opened up the 1st carousel article I saw [0]. It seems fine.

> Whenever you give someone power and discretion, their "work" will be influenced by their ideology.

Of course people are made up of their backgrounds and experiences (Justice Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment comes to mind). Why don't we want that? How could we ever not have that?

> And it drives people nuts when people who don't share their values exercise power over them.

I don't think the ideology matters more than the policies and actions. I don't care what Biden's ideology is, he hasn't canceled student debt yet, and I think that's real dumb. I don't care what Trump's ideology was, he sent billions of dollars in aid to Americans who need it, and I think that was great.

---

Zooming out a little, maybe you would agree with me when I say that the rise of fact checking is a symptom of decaying discourse. I think people are so used to the other side acting in bad faith that they think they need refs, and then working the refs starts to be part of the game, then you start questioning the motives and ideologies of the refs, blah blah blah.

I think we can change this! I think we just need to be a little more earnest with each other and be more willing to acknowledge when we're wrong. Truth is huge and humans are small. The most we can hope for is to experience a little more of it by working together.

[0]: https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/the-facts-on-de-nazifying-...

Why would ideological inclination be a primary bias factor unless the ideology includes such pettiness as putting your bias ahead of your work as one of thousands of low level fact checker employees?

If I try to not be a blind ideologue over such a small thing as being a fact checker, wouldn’t I be better than median politics fact checkers who want to exert their bias as much as possible?

We don’t want political stuff in the fact checking. It’s far more bias to have fact checkers who are in line with the median citizen and put their political stances above fact checking. Aka doing their work.

Every one has biases. However not every one will consciously or otherwise, have their biases seep into determining what is misinformation or not and so on.

Edit: Even sadder is the parent is not down voted to greyness like the person you responded to. A sad take. Not only putting bias ahead of an attempt at “the truth”. But leaning into that. Which makes the thread make sense —- not even trying to act in good faith.

1+1=2, even if the median American holds an ideologically driven belief that it equals 3. Truth isn’t determined by 50%+1 voting.

Who gets to decide for everyone else what the "obvious truth" is and what the "dumb ideologically driven belief" is? If the truth or falsity of some point is in contention, then the way to resolve the disagreement is to allow all sides to argue and justify their position. Of course this system doesn't always come up with the right answer, but no magical infallible truth-determining oracle exists, so we do the best we can.

Under certain definitions of "1" "2" and "+", 1 + 1 = 2. But it's completely possible to define mathematics where 1+2 doesn't equal 2. It just so happens that we have a universally-shared convention on arithmetic.

But that simplicity quickly breaks down when people don't share the underlying axioms, and "fact checking" regularly operates in that space. For example, does 1+1 = the number of human genders? Everyone where I'm from would say that's an obviously true fact, but a lot of the folks who run Twitter would disagree.

How about the Hunter Biden information which were labeled as misinformation but are now acknowledged to be real?

Agree with both you and Yishan on how social networks are simply trying to extinguish shitstorms. Yeah, for my part, hope Elon can just focus on solving real problems instead dealing with the rolling disaster area that is a social network (seems like Yishan himself seems jaded and cynical about the experience). Just doesn't seem worth it!

Social media sites encourage shitstorms because their algorithms are coded to boost whatever maximizes measures of "engagement".

Fairly sure there was a story recently where Facebook accidentally turned off "the algorithm" for some people for months and it made them miserable and angrier. I can't find it because Google thinks any related search is actually trying to look for "how to get unbanned from Facebook" though.

One reason for this is algorithmic sorting is what gets rid of spam and hides annoying acquaintances you had to friend who never shut up. If you want engagement you don't actually want to show everyone endless political arguments; sex and animal pictures are what's really engaging.

I do wonder if this was factored at all into the algorithms. Anger and rage inducing content is great for engagement but it adds a lot of overhead in increased moderation. Does that make it less profitable overall than an algorithm designed to elicit positive emotions? Engagement might be down, but happy users won't continually be at each other's throats leading to less required moderation and constant controversy.

> social networks are simply trying to extinguish shitstorms

Just rambling out loud, but perhaps Elon's superpower as the owner of Twitter might be having the luxury to care a whole lot less about user shitstorms.

Nobody has more Fuck-You money and ability to ignore a rabid mob than the richest guy on the planet.

At the very least, it could be very entertaining.

> random replies and profile links thrown in because you have to click "show more replies"

Huh, clicking show more replies only shows more of the original thread for me until I've reached the end of it.

That does sound horrible, if that's the common experience then all the complaints about Twitter threads make a lot more sense to me.

> no public square, or public debate looks like what's on display on internet social networks.

then there is the graffiti, the tags, the leaflets, the random crazy people shouting, singing, drug addicts, some people with guns etc etc.

Some people spend too much time in academic institutions. they are not the public square

I’m not sure about the comparison between a town square and the internet. BLM protests and Jan 6th, are great examples of town squares where civility and rule of law are thrown out the window like a free open platform on the internet would perform.

> this may very well be the first thing in my life I've agreed with Musk on.

You think electric cars and reusable rockets are bad?

You can't yell Fire in a movie theatre if there's no fire. Your speech can't disturb the peace, your protest can be assigned to a specific location.

Perhaps we need online equivalents. Online on one hand you have 4chan and the other Hacker News. It's a race to the bottom in some sense if all bets are off.

> You can't yell Fire in a movie theatre if there's no fire.

Actually Schenck v. United States was partially overturned and severely limited 53 years ago, so that hasn't been correct, technically, for some time. iow, you probably can shout fire in a crowded theater, but it depends on the circumstances whether you'll be arrested, whether you've presented a clear and present danger, whether you caused a stampede, whether anyone was injured or killed. But if you are arrested, it won't be a free speech case. The charge will be disorderly conduct, or negligent homicide, or some other charge. Justice Holmes' quote has sort of taken on a life of its own as a determination of what speech is not protected, but really there's no law against it. FWIW, I'm not advocating for it, just being pedantic.

It's wild how the "fire" argument continues to be regurgitated as if from the mouth of a network talking head. Thanks for dousing that quickly.

Maybe you should read Brandenburg v. Ohio first.

Good to have mentioned this. The interpretation of "immenent lawless behavior" varies greatly. My wife is an attorney and very recently was on a case where this particular case was cited. While I get your intent in mentioning it, the case is very specific and while Schenck is cited, it does not translate directly to "you can't say fire in a theater," but rather it's far more nuanced. It also doesn't change the fact that the "fire" argument is a lazy slinging of words lacking appropriate nuance.

If we are paraphrasing for the general public I think nuance was thrown out long ago with the bath water. Yelling fire in a crowded movie theater is a paraphrase itself, obviously context matters and always has.

> Actually Schenck v. United States was partially overturned and severely limited 53 years ago, so that hasn't been correct, technically, for some time

Actually, the “fire” line was dicta in Schenck, so it technically was never true.

And it was part of an argument in support of the government shutting down opposition to the draft.

> The charge will be disorderly conduct, or negligent homicide, or some other charge

This…seems like splitting hairs in a way to me.

It seems like a pretty clear acknowledgment that, in certain contexts, speech can be criminal.

After all, in those various charges it won’t be a free speech case because it’s settled law that speech in those particular contexts can result in a criminal charge.

So, I agree that the infamous line from Schenck (which was dicta already) is not good law. On the other hand, there is a kernel of truth that certain speech, in certain contexts, can be illegal and result in criminal charges.

Oh, here we go. Someone expressing an opinion you find extremely offensive on the internet is equivalent to someone directly, unambiguously causing a stampede. But, but, those hurtful internet words caused the “capital insurrection”! When did the modern liberal turn into the christian quack?

I really dislike the "fire in a crowded theatre" analogy - it was originally used in a court judgement where the accused had spoken out publicly against the draft.

It's honestly madness that this "fire in a crowded theatre" still comes up given where it originated - a court case where exactly the kind of speech that people worry about being restricted was in fact restricted.

To take a both sides view, I don't think anyone actually understands what it means, including the Supremes. Speech can clearly be regulated even in government bodies. You cannot disclose classified information even if you assert freedom of speech. You cannot disclose under a private NDA which the government will enforce that on behalf of a third party --- which is a wild argument if we have freedom of speech as in be free from government persecution. The economic penalty in many cases is equivalent to the criminal penalty (minus the scarlet letter). In fact the government will enforce anti-competes which is the ultimate suppression of speech. So the whole thing is a mess and fubar.

I actually like the way it’s threaded - it allows you to discuss individual points in the essay instead of everyone talking about the entire contents at the same time. I do think they should have a collapse option to read it as one, but still allow you to reply to the individual thoughts

I have a friend who writes long WhatsApp threads instead of one message. Usually I can see past the media and can read the message what she is saying. But on the other hand she is not saying inappropriate things about me.

I think the real problem of the social media platforms is the users.

Cancel culture isn’t new, what is new is that the cancellers are now “decentralized”. In fact this is the first successful web3 product built on web2. Someone create CancelCoin.

Just trying to be funny while still staying relevant to discuss. Please don’t downvote me to oblivion :)

Twitter threads are just blog posts cut and simplified to fit the platform’s limitation. People have learn to adapt and write more concise post. I hope that if Twitter adds long tweets, people still write in a similar way.

Enforcing civility and 'culture' is not just censorship, it censorship + imperialism.

You even disagree with him on physics, math, engineering and manufacturing?

Disagree on everything it’s possible to have an opinion about.

Speed of light or length of a second are not going to change just because I want it to.

Underneath all our clothes, we’re all naked apes.

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