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Comment by partitioned | Hacker News Reader

But that activism is free speech itself

always funny when the free speech absolutist gets mad when people use free speech to cancel someone

People conspiring to raise up hatred of an individual, and people of the same mind in HR departments green lighting the acquiesence to that hatred, is the problem. Someone shouting a swear word at me while killing me is unpleasant, but I'll allow it. It's the killing that's the problem.

That kind of depends on the individual and what they're doing, no?

Not the individual, no. Only what they're doing.

A distinction without a difference.

I feel like if you didnt do something shameful then theres nothing to be called out for, and if you did do something shameful then being shamed is a reasonable thing to have happen. If its shameful enough that your employer saw it and would fire you for it, then you 100% deserve to be fired.

no one is getting canceled for saying something that isnt shameful

happy to help

My first objection is that any intolerant minority then becomes the arbiter of shame. By nature an intolerant minority is the last category of groups that should have that power.

Second is the question of where you draw the line. Mason Greenwood was cancelled after audio recording emerged of him raping his girlfriend. Kurt Zouma was not cancelled after recording emerged of him kicking his cat. Should he have been? Any answer you give is based on your personal values around punishment for crime and behaviour towards the defenceless. I'm anti-punishment but also anti-cruelty, so it's a head-scratcher for me. What about drink-driving? Parking tickets? You see the problem?

I'm fine with deplatforming the genuinely loathsome, given some consensus on what that is...

...but one of the early cancellation twitstorms was over some hapless male nerd making a sexual joke about USB sticks within earshot of (I'm doing my best to phrase this in a value-neutral way, and I mean no imputation beyond this specific individual) a tumblerina.

I stipulate that it's a horrible experience to be female at a very male tech conference, and that may have given her good reason to be sensitive, but AFAICT the joke in itself was merely unfunny and not inherently offensive to anyone who isn't already primed to explode. I presume that tumblerina received some genuinely bad behaviour previously at the conference, from men unnamed, but hapless nerd was the one she could name, so she did.

Aaanyway. Tech nerd got cancelled. Then tumblerina got cancelled; both of them, understandably, for becoming liabilities to their employers. And much heat was generated in twitter datacentres. The whole thing was a storm in a teacup.

So I refute your claim that "no-one is getting cancelled unless they're doing something shameful". I'd argue that neither of those two people should be ashamed - their sins are no more than common human failings that I hope Osiris would gloss over in his reckoning.

Stepping back, I'm concerned with your comment's assonance with "nothing to hide". I find that mentality deeply problematic. I accept authority only grudgingly, as I believe that organised crime is inevitable anyway, but it doesn't sit right to celebrate that some group that holds power over one, in which one has no representation, can use that power to harm one, using dogmatic justification and motivated reasoning. I really hate your position. Please soften it, so that we can have more forgiveness in the world.

> I feel like if you didnt do something shameful then theres nothing to be called out for

"Shameful" is not objective. It's moral fashion, that can change very quickly.

Yes it’s free speech, I think the issue here is that companies care what their employees say about politics outside of work, enough to fire them if they find out.

Not really in the spirit of free speech.

It's not so much that the companies care about the individual 'wrongthinkers', they're worried about what the activists could do to the reputation of their company/brand.

The activist behaviour is close to blackmail - 'punish this person for us now, or we'll hurt your company'.

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