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Comment by tropicalbeach | Hacker News Reader

So companies are allowed to cancel peoples bank accounts because of a few words. The difference is companies aren't doing this because they want too. There scared and can't make decisions.

If one person in a boardroom says Elon is this or Kanye is this we can't do business with him and if you don't agree with me then you are labeled as them. So everyone falls in line out of fear of being cancelled.

You really think Adidas wanted to lose 40% of there revenue because of a tweet. They don't care what Kanye tweeted they would keep him if they knew they wouldn't get cancelled.

It's detrimental to society because it is just the beginning and will be used as a tool for people to get what they want which isn't always going to be good things in the future.

What ever happen to business is business. It's now turned into companies running social justice campaigns out if fear. I mean really were talking about things that are not that big of a deal.

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Yes, I really think Adidas, a company with a not so great history of being founded by former members of the Nazi party, wanted to cut ties with an anti-semite.

Yes, peoples actions should have consequences, that is the whole point of free speech. Bring speech forward, and reward speech we support and discourage speech we don't, and let the market of ideas decide. Do you not believe in free speech and free markets? The market of ideas?

So if you own a small business and one of your accounts makes up 40% of your business. And the owner tweeted one controversial tweet, your going to cancel the account and not do business with them. 100% no and no one would. It's entirely out of fear adidas did it plain and simple. People who don't want his shoes don't have to buy them but i can guarantee one tweet wouldn't have affected his sales at all. Which proves the people canceling aren't the ones who buy his product anyways. That's the point.

Re-stating your premise doesn't prove your point.

It's also entirely possible that Adidas decided that the overhead of dealing with public backlash + the fact that Kanye himself is unstable meant that the brand was no longer a long-term investment, and given that understanding, they made the call to cut it cleanly at once.

"Cancel Culture" is a bullshit term for "accountability"

You know I am right that's you won't answer the question. You would really eliminate 40% of your business over a tweet. Ye merchandise would sell the same because nobody really cares about the tweet there just scared to get cancelled. Sales would be the exact same. No sane person wipes out 40% of there business unless there just scared. Cancel culture is toxic and bad for society.

Sorry that cancel culture (i.e. People using their speech to speak out about what they are not ok with) is impacting the market for anti-semitism so badly. What do you propose, government forced business contracts for anti-semites? Feel free to add a clause to all of your future contracts:

'parties my not break business ties should one party to this contract post highly publicized anti-semitic statements'. There you go. Iron clad protection from cancel culture, all in a free market way without government involvement.

Adidas took that action out of self interest. Claiming that they didn't want to do it is beside the point.

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