I have often considered blogging anonymously because I do not feel free to write my nuanced philosophical views about the world anymore, as nuance is mostly dead in the public discourse and anything I write could easily offend someone and cause me problems. But I decided that if I believed something and I was willing to say it aloud, I should be willing to write it down with my name attached. In the end, it has had the effect somewhat of self-censure, because I know some things I cannot write down, so I won't say them aloud either, even though they're perfectly reasonable and not prejudicial. The flip side has been that it's freed me in other ways to be radically honest about who I am in my writing and has helped me to more carefully identify people who are worth attempting a rational dialogue with.
To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media.
This article seems more focused on situations in which you are concerned about government action, but I think here in the West we've found that "cancel culture" and the like is more insidious and far-reaching in its own way.
> To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media.
Yes, exactly right. Unfortunately however even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this. I was recently in a hotel lobby waiting for an Uber and heard a conversation between two strangers. It started out fine but then one person said something mildly political. Almost immediately it seemed like a switch flipped in the other person and he began preaching and talking over. He clearly wasn't even hearing what the first person was saying, but was hearing what he thought that person would say (and was not accurate). It was demoralizing to say the least. We're getting so conditioned with outrage and hatred for people online that it's moving into "real life."
> even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this
Nicholas Carr argues in his book, The Shallows, how technology literally shapes our brains on a fundamental, cognitive level. To the degree that it is accurate, I would expect our "meat-space" interactions to reflect.
There is a good video that underlines your second point[0], specifically mentioning that compassion is increasingly being replaced by moral superiority, that dialogue is often reactionary instead of responsive, and that the system we live in is often trying to group us based on these very differences, not unlike what happens in a high school cafeteria. She's primarily talking about online and big media discussions I think. She goes on to say that "a lot of us are seeing people who remind us of our former selves and we're attacking that", reminding me that "the biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand -- we listen to reply" (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author).
Your first point does remind me of an early xkcd though[1], ironic in that it was about radically being yourself, come what may, and clearly identifying with what was then the underdog. It could be interpreted differently today, especially without an understanding of what the early 00s Internet was like.
You're very welcome. They really helped me. Ayishat Akanbi had a follow-up talk at Sydney's annual "All About Women" conference shortly after,[0] where she added that "intersectionality is seeing the importance of other people’s suffering. Being active on social media can simplify and minimize issues for the sake of being retweetable." The whole talk built well on top of the original video (though the Q&A was not as useful).
In addition, she used two more quotes that I wrote down: "If you understood everything I said, you’d be me," (Miles Davis) and "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (F. Scott Fitzgerald). This is just the first half of what he said though, the rest being: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise." I think that's nice too.
> offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people
Can you expand on that? What do you think are the factors that are causing this dehumanisation?
I am giving it a try: it has become easier to band togather, now groups often need an enemy - as a unifying tool and as a means of defining the group (us vs. them). If this is true then any improvements in communication will inevitably lead to greater polarization
There may be some more complex elements to this, but I don't think about this in a complex way. It's very simple for me. When you are face-to-face with a person, especially a person you know, there is a connection which forms through body language and other factors I can't identify which makes it very viscerally real that the person across from you is a human being who has their own unique experiences that have helped them to craft a particular worldview. It engenders at least some measure of respect, perhaps enough to give people the benefit of the doubt and to hear them out.
When you're online, you don't even know if you're talking to a person who is being sincere in their beliefs or a troll trying to get a rise out of you, or perhaps an advanced bot intended to drive discussion in a particular direction. There's no indication of the motivations, the sincerity, or even the reality of another human being when you interact online. I can't imagine how a conversation intended to be deep and nuanced couldn't be dehumanized by the Internet?
> This article seems more focused on situations in which you are concerned about government action, but I think here in the West we've found that "cancel culture" and the like is more insidious and far-reaching in its own way.
"While the torture and indoctrination in the secret prisons is bad, let us also have a moment of silence for my tweet that was unfairly ratioed. And yes, it's very sad that your aunt was publicly lashed for protesting in favor of letting women have driver's licenses. But is not also sad that MY uncle lost his job because he was a member of a few measly neo-Nazi facebook groups?"
Anyway I am sorry that I am CENSORING your views (by publicly disagreeing with them) and CANCELLING you (by being flippant). You can probably say that I am "not attempting a rational dialogue" with you.
Please don't do this. The idea of HN is curious conversation, not flamewar. Yes, that's hard in the current climate. But the site guidelines cover this—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and in particular:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against.
And in many cases, the same celebrities are still able to have a career that is sometimes even boosted by their ability to campaign against "cancel culture" generally.
Do you have any books/articles/resources for thinking about "cancel culture" as it would relate to an ordinary person writing an ordinary blog?
Also think about this: people who were not in the limelight and were "cancelled" would never appear on your radar simply because they were not in the limelight.
>As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against.
This massively understates the problem. One could easily put together a list of non-celebrities who have had their lives ruined after making some completely anodyne comment.
"so you've been publicly shamed" by jon ronson goes into this, I don't remember if there's specific stories about personal bloggers, but there's stories from normal, everyday people.
Ok, I understand now that people are taking "cancel culture" to mean online shaming generally. In that case, I think it is reasonable to take precautions like blogging anonymously.
I was specifically thinking of how "cancel" is used as a verb to mean "boycott a cultural product from an entertainer", "boycott a product from a company", or something like that.
Of those, the last three didn't suffer any long term consequences (all three were employed relatively soon after they were fired), and the first happened too recently to really analyze.
I never understand these kinds of arguments. Is the idea that "because there are still enough good and decent people resisting the mob in order to prevent long term consequences for their targets that we should not condemn this mobbing at all"? What point are you making?
Presumably something to the effect of "It can't [currently] be a especially horrible problem if all the listed consequences were quickly fixed.". On the other hand, see (https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2278).
Justine Sacco still suffers from severe PTSD and has to attend regular counselling.
Adria Richards fell off the face of the planet, was chronically unemployed for a while, then finally ended up at a no name company, probably making peanuts compared to where she was.
James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while, was in several lawsuits with Google, and claims to be working at a start-up, but he may also just be freelancing since he's effectively unemployable.
Those are all long term consequences, so, you're effectively wrong here.
James Damore threw away an engineering job at Google with a long, generalized, and internally-shared rant about women, listing off their "Qualities". He then tried to start a lawsuit making it about his politics, which never went anywhere.
He sourced things from scientific journals, but he pieced them together to fit a narrative that he knows better about what women want. It wasn't a good argument.
The facts of his case are he went on bizarre and unsupported rant against women. Are you going to support the thesis that women are inherently intellectually inferior and that hiring practices that encourage hiring people from diverse groups are enforcing intellectual idiocacy?
Adria Richards is actually an interesting case. She was "cancelled" for cancelling someone else. One of the major criticisms of the Harper's letter is that people speaking out about injustice have historically faced severe retribution, and that the recent concern about cancellation is only in response to this retributory cannon being pointed toward those "in power".
I can't see the people who are today concerned about Cancellation standing up for Adria Richards were that to happen again today. See the recent argument between Yann LeCun and Timnit Gebru for a somewhat analogous situation.
The backlash against the person perceived as trying to cancel someone else was much greater than the initial "lash", so to speak.
> James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while
Not a very long time though. And the lawsuits were ones he chose to file.
Yes and no. One of the concerns about cancel culture is that it results in people's lives being ruined/ended. This (usually) is not the case, even among the most egregious examples that people can come up with.
And how about the psychological effects on these people of being bullied by a large group of people online?
I don’t know what I’d do if it happened to me, but I know it would leave me in an even worse state mentally than I am in, because I know how it feels like to feel that other people don’t want you around.
Because social protections haven't eroded enough to get to the point where lives are actually ruined. Why wait to speak out against cancel culture until it's actually ruining lives?
If your entire concern is based in a slippery slope, it's more difficult to take it seriously, especially when the concern conceals a disregard for actual harm happening now.
"Cancellation" is a democratization of power. It allows the little guy to push back effectively against the bigger guy. Saying "look there's the possibility that it might eventually have bad consequences" rings hollow when it's also actively having good consequences right now.
> If your entire concern is based in a slippery slope, it's more difficult to take it seriously
Of course the same argument could be applied to anything, such as covid back in March. "What's all the fuss about? Things are trending in a bad direction, but they're not that bad yet so naturally they will not get worse in the future." I hope the fallacy here is obvious.
> the concern conceals a disregard for actual harm happening now
I could hazard a guess as to what you're alluding to here, but it hardly matters--if you have some concern about some actual harm that's happening right now that you'd like to express, free-speech has your back with respect to your right to express it.
> "Cancellation" is a democratization of power. It allows the little guy to push back effectively against the bigger guy.
You have it completely backwards. You can't cancel someone without power over them, and many of the targets of cancellation have had little power and were cancelled by people with literal, explicit power over them (e.g., Lindsay Shepherd).
> Saying "look there's the possibility that it might eventually have bad consequences" rings hollow when it's also actively having good consequences right now.
"Good" is in the eye of the beholder, and you're observing the fleeting convenience of authoritarianism.
> Of course the same argument could be applied to anything, such as covid back in March. "What's all the fuss about? Things are trending in a bad direction, but they're not that bad yet so naturally they will not get worse in the future." I hope the fallacy here is obvious.
It is not. We know how viruses work. We also know how they don't do good things. Are you willing to provide specific falsifiable predictions on the harms that Cancel Culture will cause in 6 months or a year and how it will be so great?
Trying to explain away a slippery slope fallacy by comparing it to the well documented and well understood exponential growth of a communicable disease isn't good reasoning.
> if you have some concern about some actual harm that's happening right now that you'd like to express, free-speech has your back with respect to your right to express it.
Exactly! To allude to anther example: someone tweeting "@FSF, you should fire Richard Stallman because he is a bad man" is simply exercising their right to free expression. Why are you criticizing that?
> You can't cancel someone without power over them, and many of the targets of cancellation have had little power and were cancelled by people with literal, explicit power over them (e.g., Lindsay Shepherd).
Lindsay Shephard doesn't fit the definition of cancellation. There was no social media, there was an anonymous complaint to her university, who did something, and when the public was involved the university reversed course. "Cancel Culture" is characterized by a boycott or threat of boycott, or at least distributed criticism. Imagine that instead the members of her class had taken to twitter to urge the university to remove her from her position, and encouraged others to stop donating to the school if they didn't do so. That's cancellation.
What you described is a bad thing, but it's also a non sequitur.
And note the difference: her pupils (the non-authority) pulling in popular support to provide consequences to the authority figure when normal channels of feedback failed.
> "Good" is in the eye of the beholder, and you're observing the fleeting convenience of authoritarianism.
You're going to have to elaborate on how decentralized movements are authoritarian in nature, that's a relatively unique claim.
I certainly don't favor mob rule. And I don't agree that cancellation and mob rule are in any way comparable. If you want to make claims like that, much like your claims that "cancellation is authoritarianism", you're going to need to support them.
Large groups of people taking action you dislike isn't mob rule. Mob rule is characterized by violence. Is large groups of people expressing their disagreement with you violence now?
The danger of "mob rule" is that it endangers minority groups. It's really, really difficult for me to square movements that are often minority lead and exist to hold the relatively powerful accountable as being dangerous mobs in the classic sense.
Again, you're welcome to actually support that assertion, but drawing the metaphor without backing it up appears to be more of a veiled attack at my morals than any attempt to discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of these movements.
Yes, I think one primary difference is that mob rule is classically considered to be the primary form of government. It's a direct democracy with no tools to prevent immediate populist sentiment from controlling things.
Cancel culture exists as an alternative tool that, in my opinion is generally only used when normal power structures break down. It's not really comparable to mob rule because it isn't "rule".
Before I give a partial answer, I'd ask what you're trying to gain from this: I touched on this, but I don't think "cancel culture rule" is a thing. So I can't draw similarities between them in that vein. I can draw similarities between "cancel culture" and "mob rule", but because of the differences I don't know that those matter much. I'm suspicious of this question because mob rule is ultimately considered to be a bad thing, so much as I said to the parent, I can't see how this won't be used to, as I said before, attack my morals.
Like if I say that they're both ultimately democratic movements (which I believe to be true) whereas others might highlight that both involve aspects (though imo not the same aspects) of anarchism.
I'd turn this around: what are the aspects of mob rule that concern you, and what are the similarities to cancel culture that worry you. I doubt that you're concerned by the fact that both are at their core, democratic, so what does?
I think it’s a grotesque mistake to call them Democratic. These mobs (physical or virtual) are rarely more than 1% of the population, and are rarely supported by even 10% of a population (10% is about the ballpark for supporters of cancel culture as well, by my crude estimation). And yet they are able to push their agenda because they are (for the moment) uniquely willing to wield fear and intimidation. What about this is democratic?
To answer your questions about concerning similarities between physical and virtual mobs, they both use fear and intimidation to get their way. Neither are concerned about due process and they are happy to persecute innocent people (“scapegoats”)—of course legal courts are imperfect, but there imperfection is a big whereas with mobs (of any kind) it’s a feature. Both kinds of mobs are as happy to persecute the powerless and the powerful alike (or in the case of cancellers culture, they’ll pretend that the high schooler they’re targeting is “powerful” because of his race and that the mob speaks for minorities who the mob regarded as uniformly powerless—astute readers will note the racism here). Further, mobs have no sense of proportionality—the current cancel culture mob is notorious for its utter inability to distinguish between actual Nazis and progressives who fail to adequately toe the line (or anyone in between) and they are all punished as severely as the mob can muster. Since mobs are happy to target anyone who they decide they don’t like on a given day with the severest treatment they feel they can get away with, fear is imposed on everyone, not just those who have actually been targeted.
Note also that there are groups like antifa who openly profess a belief that violence is justified in order to “suppress fascists” (wherein their definition of “fascist” is so broad and arbitrary that it’s indistinguishable from “anyone they don’t like”) and they occasionally do perpetrate violence on these grounds. Note also that many (probably most) of the people who engage in cancellation also applaud Antifa’s violence or else they rationalize and justify it and very rarely condemn it (certainly they would never dream of cancelling people who engage in political violence which is apparently much less abhorrent than wrongthink). There is also a tiny minority of cancellers who are right-wing, and they also have their antifa-like physical violence groups who they applaud. So “cancel culture” and “physical mob” seem to be adjacent points on a continuum, and the only thing that keeps the majority of cancellers on the “cancellation-but-not-violence” side of the line is that as a society we have strong (but rapidly eroding) values of law-and-order and nonviolence and cancellers are usually rightly (though decreasingly) afraid of running afoul of those values. I take little consolation in the idea that our eroding social values are keeping most of the cancellers from using physical violence in their fear campaigns, and there’s nothing noble about cancelling someone because you’re afraid of the consequences of physical violence.
Lastly, if these mobs are allowed to continue, people will lose faith in the criminal justice system’s ability or will to keep their injustice in check, and counter-mobs will form (and to a degree already have formed). The mobs and the counter-mobs will go back and forth, continually escalating.
The Libertarian party is, at least ostensibly, democratic in nature. A group doesn't need to be the majority of the population to itself be democratic. My point is that the groups cancelling people are, themselves, democratic.
As for mobs, I disagree with your opinion on mobs and due process and proportionality, and have explained that at length elsewhere.
> astute readers will note the racism here
This is only racism if you deny critical theory. You should be explicit about that.
Bringing antifa into this conversation is a non-sequitor. I've yet to see antifa hurt anyone outside of like actual neonazi rallies where two groups of armed people beat the shit out of each other. It has nothing to do with cancellation, and the fact that you feel the need to bring it up is because your fears are based entirely on a slippery slope, as I've stated already. That because someone will criticize you on twitter the "antifa thugs" will beat you up. It's not a fear based in reality. The idea that "law and order" values are eroding is a right wing talking point used to stoke racial fear. It's again, not grounded in reality.
> if these mobs are allowed to continue, people will lose faith in the criminal justice system’s ability or will to keep their injustice in check
No, that's why these mobs exist. Which is my point. You're ignoring the viewpoint of the groups who are forced to take this action because the existing systems systematically fail to provide them justice. That is, ultimately a "justice and safety for me but not for thee" argument and it is a tool to perpetuate injustice.
If you want the things that frighten you to stop, you need to have answers on how to fix the existing injustice, because as long as the systems we have fail large groups of people, they will feel the need to get justice extrajudicially. That need isn't going to disappear if you oppress them more.
Finally, I note that the "counter" mob thing has been happening since forever. "Right wing" mobs are known to harass significantly more than left wing ones. We don't see people who are "cancelled" having to leave their homes for personal safety. But the Sandy Hook parents did.
Even if I grant you that cancel culture has no redeeming qualities, you want to make it illegal to participate in. I claim that any way to do that will be more harmful to society and to open expression than cancel culture itself.
Anyway, we're quickly running into politically fraught territory, so I'm going to disengage.
The problem with mobs is distinctly not that they don't attack the "right" races (or whatever else you might've meant by 'minority'). Perhaps our disagreement is representative of a broader disagreement between (philosophical) liberals and progressives, in which case this might be enlightening. In any case, the reason societies for thousands of years have evolved away from mob rule and toward rule of law isn't that mobs endanger minorities, but rather that mobs are happy to extract their vengeance on anyone who is a suitable token irrespective of whether or not that individual or group has done anything wrong. Mobs also lack any sense of proportionality in their "sentencing"--it's always as severe as the mob can get away with. Further, mob rule always results in multiple mobs exacting ever-escalating vengeance on the other group or groups.
> Again, you're welcome to actually support that assertion, but drawing the metaphor without backing it up appears to be more of a veiled attack at my morals than any attempt to discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of these movements.
I mean, it really sounded like that's where you were going. Even now it sounds like you only disagree on the issue of violence, but that harm to one's livelihood and psychological well-being are all well and good. I'm happy that you draw the line somewhere before violence, but I would take more comfort knowing that you took issue with the "mobs are terrible at justice and always end up perpetrating more injustice" aspect.
Lastly, I invite you to have some empathy for the people who are being targeted, even if only for those who aren't powerful. Imagine if you felt as though the prevailing public debate was avoiding obvious questions or being framed in a very limited scope that disenfranchised you and people like you; imagine that you wanted to raise those questions, but were told your views had been determined in advance to be racist and hateful (and then being told to go read a book which purports to "take down" your views, but really only takes down a straw man). Imagine going so far out of your way to avoid offending anyone in a social media post, but a colleague gets whiff of it and begins a campaign to ruin your reputation in the company and the broader industry--you know you'll bounce back, but the sheer trauma of being targeted by strangers and acquaintances, to have work friends avoid you for their own personal preservation. You rationalize with yourself that you'll bounce back economically, but you're just so shaken to think that there are people out there who don't know you but have such an intense hatred that they'll spend their time and resources to ruin your reputation. Now imagine the same thing except you don't make a cushy 6-figure salary at an in-demand job and you have a family to feed and clothe.
Cancel culture isn't a theoretical debate for some people; it's a reality. Consider those people when you're tempted to tell yourself that it's just the rich and powerful who are affected.
By minorities, I mean in general minorities. The concerns about "mob rule" were that they were unfettered populism and that minority groups: racial, religious, whatever would be unable to defend themselves. That is, mob rule is majoritarianism, or a "tyranny of the majority".
As a result of that, I want to push back on your use of "mob rule" in this conversation entirely. There's nothing that related mob rule and cancel culture. You can argue that cancellations are mobs, but the existence of mobs doesn't "mob rule" make. So yes, the entire reason that we moved from mob rule was to protect minorities in a society. Otherwise the majority is able to repress the minority or minorities with no way for the minorities to defend themselves.
> Mobs also lack any sense of proportionality in their "sentencing"--it's always as severe as the mob can get away with.
I disagree with this: Look at the super smash bros and gaming community over the past week. Tons of people have been kicked out of the community, many of whom made their living by playing the game, but at the same time those who did bad, but not unforgivable, things have been offered the opportunity, or even apologized without prompt (https://twitter.com/dizzkidboogie/status/1280566816801124352) and faced no consequences. There's a sort of fatalistic argument that the outcome is always the most the mob could have gotten because it is ultimately a democratic movement, but I don't think that's the argument you're making, nor is it really useful (it's circular).
Or even the example of the truck driver, where the "mob" actually backpedaled and apologized, but the authority figure didn't. You can fault the "mob" for acting quickly, yes, but you can't fault it for aiming to sentence people unjustly. To the extent possible, the mob tried to fix the issue, it just couldn't.
> but that harm to one's livelihood and psychological well-being are all well and good.
To be clear, I think there should be more restrictions on free expression than exist today (or in other words, I don't support the level of 1A protection that exists today). However, if you do, you must apply that justly. Much as a KKK demonstration can (and have) caused harm to people's psychological well being, so too can cancellation. If you want to support free expression, you have to come to terms with the fact that some of that expression will harm people. It's unavoidable (https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1280994817305018369, https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1280995368738516992).
A common thread among classical liberals is the belief that speech can't harm people, it's just speech and it isn't real, or somesuch. More progressive groups have long realized this wasn't true. The conversation about cancel culture is forcing a reckoning about that among liberals, and instead of facing it head on and accepting that yeah, this is the cost of free speech, people are doing what you yourself have done elsewhere: try to slice the aspects of cancel culture that they dislike into a box of "not just speech". This is something that progressive groups have said for a while ("hate speech isn't free speech"), but have faced criticism for.
The idea that a threat or a boycott isn't just speech is an interesting thought. I personally am fully on board with there being no difference in theory between "a speech" and "an act", and that we should protect various acts on a gradient. But the liberal idea that speech is unique doesn't have that nuance. Speech is protected, whether it be hate speech or threats. Yet you yourself elsewhere expressed that the threat to boycott isn't protected speech, it's something else. That's decidedly illiberal.
Threatening to boycott something on moral grounds is absolutely speech. And trying to frame it as a threat that isn't protected speech is horribly problematic: how do we differentiate between the unprotected threat "I will not contract with you if you hire this individual" and what is presumably a completely reasonable threat: "I will not contract with you if you don't give me your product at below this price"? Or perhaps the even more ambiguous "I will not contract with you if you employ child laborers to help build your product".
> Lastly, I invite you to have some empathy for the people who are being targeted
I'm quite aware. I've been the target of online harassment (although not "cancellation" specifically) before. It's not, at all, fun. I didn't enjoy it.
> Imagine if you felt as though the prevailing public debate was avoiding obvious questions or being framed in a very limited scope that disenfranchised you and people like you
I often do. But I enter those conversations with curiosity and the intent to learn, not to fight.
> imagine that you wanted to raise those questions, but were told your views had been determined in advance to be racist and hateful (and then being told to go read a book which purports to "take down" your views, but really only takes down a straw man)
I've had exactly this happen to me. I read the book. I still do read books when people suggest them. Not every one, but some. I've yet to find one of these recommendations that I didn't come away from having learned something, both about empathy and about history or politics or society. But perhaps this is because I engage to learn, not to fight. So I read this more as a condemnation of the reader than the book.
> Imagine going so far out of your way to avoid offending anyone in a social media post, but a colleague gets whiff of it and begins a campaign to ruin your reputation in the company and the broader industry--you know you'll bounce back, but the sheer trauma of being targeted by strangers and acquaintances, to have work friends avoid you for their own personal preservation.
I don't think this happens, or at least not as often as you seem to think. It's not endemic. And to a large extend, I think many of the people who do this are overreacting: they're reacting to the perceived danger that's larger than the actual danger, and believe that it will be impossible to stop. If you have any sense of social capital with people, this usually is possible (https://twitter.com/le_roux_nicolas/status/12754857362597928..., and again the car driver) as long as you don't respond like an asshole.
> Consider those people when you're tempted to tell yourself that it's just the rich and powerful who are affected.
I don't believe I've made that argument. I've said it was a tool that could be applied to the powerful in cases where no tool existed before. Please don't construct strawmen, yeah ;)
There are specific cases of "cancellation" that I disagree with and think were bad. There are likely some that you also disagree with. But I can say that certain cases were bad while also believing that the net impact of the culture that did bad things is good, or is moving us forward.
Much the same way that someone might, for example, believe that the justice system in America is a net positive despite clear problems.
If you want to have the conversation about how we put "guardrails" on cancellation, I think that's an interesting conversation to have, and a valuable conversation to have, and it's in fact one that I have been having with others, and one that I know other progressives are having privately.
But that conversation can't be had publicly, and it cannot be had constructively with people who want to destroy cancel culture entirely. Interesting corollary, and I'll leave it to you to figure out why?
But those conversations have to come from one of two places: either you start from the liberal position that cancellation is just speech, and deserves exactly as much protection as any other speech. Then the question is how do we control and interact with these groups? How do we minimize the harms? If everyone has a stronger social safety net, does cancellation matter as much? What about the ideal of restorative, instead of punitive justice? Can we improve the existing power structures and justice systems so that we don't need to resort to cancellation?
Or you come from the progressive mindset: speech isn't holy, and stronger regulations on speech in general should be acceptable. But then if cancellation is unprotected, you should probably be willing to give on hate symbols or slurs and similar forms of harassment that are so often directed at the people who are forced to resort to cancelling to achieve justice today.
I don't see how any other starting point can be productive. It's ultimately a free speech for me but not for thee discussion at that point, and that's not interesting or helpful (https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1281004327327240192).
In the most polite way possible: these comments are not well-considered.
There are such things as mobs that arise during or after sporting events, you know. (What's the majority/minority
balance there?) So Twitter mobs, too, are very much a thing—no need for a stretch of
the imagination. The threats both of these pose are squarely in the category
of things to be concerned about wrt the dangers of mobs. And to argue about
things like the "classical liberal [...] belief that speech can't harm people" (i.e. that the belief is wrong)
while asserting that there is no threat of harm posed by clear-cut examples of mobs on Twitter is to talk out of both sides of the mouth.
> You can argue that cancellations are mobs, but the existence of mobs doesn't
"mob rule" make.
With the ability to rationalize thoughts like this, is there even any point of
trying to approach this with reason?
> Or even the example of the truck driver, where the "mob" actually
backpedaled and apologized, but the authority figure didn't. You can fault
the "mob" for acting quickly, yes, but you can't fault it for aiming to
sentence people unjustly.
Sorry, the obvious attempt to sidestep here is too obvious. Reddit may have
the best of intentions in trying to find the Boston bombers, but that doesn't
make it any less exemplary of a mob in action.
The whole attempt to narrowly recognize mobs only when a minority is
threatened is stultifying, and your entire line of reasoning is just begging
the question. Tyranny of the majority is a thing, but they're definitions
that overlap in their examples; they're not synonymous, even if the overlap is
significant.
In a prison, the inmates outnumber the guards, but that doesn't preclude a mob
mentality taking hold if the guards' behavior turned mob-like (or, say, police
behavior e.g. during in a protest where outnumbered by prostestors). At the
same time, mob rule remains a possibility in the scenario involving the
reverse. The numbers stay the same, but in each there's a plausible picture
of mobs and mob rule. Majority/minority is not only not the defining factor,
it's a footnote.
The actual key to understanding mobs, mob rule, and the dangers they pose
comes from recognizing the parallels between the bystander effect (where the
undesirable outcome is most commonly inaction) to mob mentality (where the
undesirable outcome is most commonly action)—it's diffusion of
responsibility/accountability, mixed with other things, case-specific.
> But I can say that certain cases were bad while also believing that the net
impact of the culture that did bad things is good, or is moving us forward.
This is just another attempt to make an illegal move, like the sidestepping
above. This time, it's implicit false dichotomy. Keep the good while
eliminating the bad—that's what's in the argument to handle this without the
chilling effect that cancel culture has.
> either you start from the liberal position that cancellation is just speech,
and deserves exactly as much protection as any other speech
All right, so you don't accurately characterize the totality of diversity on
your opponents' side and now it's come to strawmanning, then (or at least a
failure to steelman—opting to attack the weakest of ones' opponents positions
instead). There's a (possibily majority [hah!]) position among those speaking
against cancellation culture that doesn't involve removing these protections
of the speech. Yascha Mounk can float the idea of various things that involve
the law being used to enforce drastic changes to the permissibility of
cancellation efforts, but it doesn't mean everyone with a like mind about the
dangers of cancellation culture agrees with it. Present an argument against
those who acknowledge that the speech/actions are protected but should
voluntarily be avoided rather than wielded.
Popehat may be widely cited, but the arguments on this topic never fail to not be facile.
I agree. I never said mobs don't exist. I said mobs and mob rule are different things. That's true. You don't think that sports mobs are "mob rule" do you?
> but that doesn't make it any less exemplary of a mob in action.
I agree.
> The whole attempt to narrowly recognize mobs only when a minority is threatened is stultifying, and your entire line of reasoning is just begging the question.
I want to reiterate: I've never claimed twitter "mobs" aren't a thing. Nor have I claimed that mobs exist only when I minority is threatened.
I have claimed that twitter "mobs" aren't evidence of "mob rule". Mob rule is characterized by the failure of the government in the face of the mob. And mob rule is a concern because of it's inability to protect minorities. Please do not construct strawmen.
If you want to talk about the danger of a mob, let's talk about mobs, but don't talk about "mob rule" unless you really mean "mob rule", which you probably don't unless you're claiming that cancel culture represents an imminent threat to democracy in the united states.
> In a prison, the inmates outnumber the guards, but that doesn't preclude a mob mentality taking hold if the guards' behavior turned mob-like
Indeed, this would be due to power imbalances. But it doesn't mean that the guards running would constitute "mob rule". In fact, just the opposite. The guards in a prison are the people conventionally considered to have power in the situation. Them being in charge is expected. Them acting unjustly isn't mob rule, it's authoritarianism.
Please stop conflating the existence of a mob with the existence of "mob rule". They are not the same thing. Cancellation is not anything akin to mob rule. Once more: unless you believe that cancel culture is a literal threat to democracy, it is not comparable to mob rule.
> This is just another attempt to make an illegal move, like the sidestepping above. This time, it's implicit false dichotomy. Keep the good while eliminating the bad—that's what's in the argument to handle this without the chilling effect that cancel culture has.
I'm not clear on what you're saying. I'm saying that the value of cancel culture is greater than the flaws. So regressing is overall worse than reforming. There's no flaw or false dichotomy.
> Present an argument against those who acknowledge that the speech/actions are protected but should voluntarily be avoided rather than wielded.
Present an argument that acknowledges that they are protected but that they they should still be voluntarily avoided.
> Present an argument that acknowledges that they are protected but that they they should still be voluntarily avoided.
Sure, here: They are protected, but they should still be voluntarily avoided. I'm not sure what you're looking for here. (To walk into a grocery store and say something rude to the first person you see is protected. It's also to be avoided.)
> You don't think that sports mobs are "mob rule" do you?
Well, yeah. If this is something that we can't agree on, then that seems like a strong signal that we are going to be unable to agree on much of anything. (Maybe there's some confusion. I'm not talking about the mere existence of crowds at a sporting event. I'm referring to the instances of mob rule, resulting in violence, theft, sexual assault, etc.)
> Mob rule is characterized by the failure of the government in the face of the mob. And mob rule is a concern because of it's inability to protect minorities.
Sorry, this is just not an honest approach. I realize there's a little bit of "A implies B does not mean that A can't also imply C", but there's a rhetorical trick you're using to your benefit here whether you mean to or not. Mob rule is a concern for the reasons people find it concerning—e.g. instances of violence, theft, sexual assault, etc. Whether it's perpetrated on a minority or not isn't useful or interesting—it's the injustice that's of interest. To repeat: there's of course plenty of overlap between mob rule and the tyranny of the majority, but mob rule does not necessarily imply such a majority acting on a minority, and whether it does or not is the least remarkable thing about them, generally, because the observation about what it allows the majorities to do is trivial; it's well known.
And it looks like you're discounting instances of "mob rule" by simply defining "mob rule" to exclude the things you want excluded. That's where the begging the question comes in. Even if we grant that "mob rule" means what you want it to mean, and it excludes certain things, it's just not a very useful distinction to make wrt the context where the conversation began. (In any case, we're only talking about "mob rule" at this point because those are words you used in the comment I replied to.) Clearly the excluded referents are worth talking about, even if your definition of "mob rule" doesn't include them and they have no name. We can call them "glarck" for all it matters—and let's do if this conversation is going to continue, in order to avoid the pointless wordplay.
> Sure, here: They are protected, but they should still be voluntarily avoided. I'm not sure what you're looking for here
This is not a moral argument, it is a personal preference. We have moral arguments as for why you shouldn't insult people randomly (rule utilitarianism provides some good ones), but "hold people accountable when they do bad things" is usually considered to be laudable, so you're arguing from the other side: what is so unique about this form of speech that using it to hold people accountable when they do bad things should be voluntarily avoided?
> Well, yeah. If this is something that we can't agree on, then that seems like a strong signal that we are going to be unable to agree on much of anything. (Maybe there's some confusion. I'm not talking about the mere existence of crowds at a sporting event. I'm referring to the instances of mob rule, resulting in violence, theft, sexual assault, etc.)
No, you're talking about mobs, nothttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy, which is a form of government. For the 17th time, a mob is not the same as mob rule, they are distinct concepts. If you don't want to discuss mob rule, then you are free to just not mention it and talk about mobs but please stop trying to conflate a mob and mob rule, unless you actually mean mob rule. This is the point I was trying to get across to the prior person, and they didn't seem to understand. And the semantic distinction matters, because like I said, they aren't the same concept.
> what is so unique about this form of speech that using it to hold people accountable when they do bad things should be voluntarily avoided?
1. You're trying to bake bad things into the premise, without accounting for not-bad things that the mob considers (even temporarily) nonetheless to be something to speak up about
2. Even for bad things, proportionality matters. (I really, really think this is the disconnect, and is linked to your views on mob rule only being able to exist in certain configurations of majority/minority [i.e. set size], rather than it varying along imbalances of power, i.e. dealing with group strength.)
I don't consider this to be canonical, and even if we did consider it to be, my comments addressed this in depth. We're so far off into the weeds on a distraction in terminology at this point that I'm not going to say more about it. The subject here is supposed to be cancel culture and speech.
> 1. You're trying to bake bad things into the premise, without accounting for not-bad things that the mob considers (even temporarily) nonetheless to be something to speak up about
Not really, "insults" are something which, for the purposes of discussion, we agree are bad things. But for the purposes of cancel culture there's usually a disagreement about whether or not the thing was bad.
So some person does some act. I believe this act to be morally bad. You do not (or you do). Given this, you need to convince me that the danger of me speaking out is greater than the harm from the act going uncountered. This is fundamentally distinct from the question of whether or not insulting someone for no reason is moral. Relatively simple analysis would say that it's a net negative.
I'm not going to try to cancel someone over a thing that I don't think was bad, you don't need to try and convince me to not take part in that thing, so we can in fact bake a bad thing into the premise, because based on my moral frameworks, you can assume that I believe the thing someone has done to deserve cancellation is a bad thing.
(From your previous https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1268542647318261769 — sorry, no direct reference for where the "tone deaf" advice/lesson actually came from instead of the paraphrasing, but the conversation would be helped greatly if that stance could actually be nailed down on your end.)
> This is fundamentally distinct from the question of whether or not insulting someone for no reason is moral.
My grocery store quip was not about the morality of the insult. It was squarely on this topic. It was a statement about both the limits of protection and whole-picture pragmatism. An insult (or rebuke) that is not undeserved doesn't differ here wrt these two considerations.
Compared to the generic "woman at Google", I'd argue yes. But even if you disagree in that one case, that doesn't invalidate what I said. It allows upward facing action.
But it has a pretty bad record of targeting "upward" and those few 'upward' targets suffer much less than the many 'downward' targets. "Ineffective in the best case" is not a very compelling argument.
Does it? Consider the numerous celebrities, comedians, and even The New York Times.
If your argument is that powerful people land on their feet even when they face accountability, then yes that's true. But at least they're facing accountability and the value of powerful people actually having to face consequences when they do bad things can't be understated. It changes the culture of power.
Honestly you're making generic arguments in favor of mob rule. I get the appeal, but it's reprehensible and I can think of precious few things as boring as debating its merits. Let's just say we agree that cancellation is as good as mob rule and part ways.
I would describe having your name included in such a list and immediately recognizable by a huge percentage of the population as a seriously detrimental long term consequence.
Analyzing the consequences is only half the ethical story. Doing the right thing sometimes is different to what the consequences are. If you don't do the right thing in the first place regardless of the outcome, you let weaknesses in the system grow.
James damore's memo was created and went nowhere within google. It's some people fretting over the consequences who took it, spread it among the company and got a good engineer fired, sowing distrust in the community. Should have just left the memo to be forgotten in somebody's email account somewhere. A deontological ethic will come to bite back if you are determined to ignore the fact that sometimes you have to do the right thing regardless of the consequences.
> James damore's memo was created and went nowhere within google.
I'm not sure what your mean here, but this applies most readily to James himself. He posted the memo to larger and larger mailing lists until finally it spread.
No he discussed it with peers and it died in discussion
>"There was no outcry or charge of misogyny. I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored," he wrote, of the initial response to his document.
This is incorrect. I worked at Google at the time and commented on the original document. He posted it in a few small groups related to diversity. Nothing happened. Then he posted it in a relatively large public group unrelated to diversity. There was discussion in that group, and as part of that discussion it went viral (being linked elsewhere and posted around).
It was specifically because of the "mostly ignored" that he chose to escalate to a larger group where he felt he'd get more feedback and response (and agreement).
Regular as compared to a celebrity (well, I suppose he is a celebrity now on HN and tech places on Reddit), but being regular is no panacea agaianst criticism.
(I made this standalone comment somewhere else because of you so I might as well reply directly to you)
HN is filled with people who are hardly ever on the receiving end of abuse bemoaning "cancel culture". Yeah yeah, cry me a river.
People are really out here using Justine Sacco, who spoke about going to a country and getting AIDS and got rightfully attacked by the citizens of that country, as a poster child.
Lol it seems like a lot of you have lived lives without consequences for your actions and are suddenly surprised that this is how the real world works. I personally wouldn't cancel anyone but I hope cancel culture lives forever.
Can you explain what ideological warfare is according to the rules please? And how my comment is ideological warfare but not the people complaining about cancel culture?
I don't like definitions because every definition has loopholes and then people treat the loopholes as if they are sanctioned. Hacker News is supposed to be a spirit-of-the-law, not a letter-of-the-law place [1]
However, look at it this way: ideological battle is when people use HN to smite enemies rather than for curious exchange. Particularly, to smite enemies on hot topics. Those sorts of threads are predictable, tedious, and quickly turn nasty. They not only crowd out the quieter, more curious conversation this site is supposed to be for—they burn it to a crisp. For that reason we have no choice but to moderate it [2].
It always feels like the mods are against you; whoever your enemies are, I guarantee they feel just as strongly that we're against them [3]. This seems to be some sort of hard-wired bias. In reality people on both sides of the ideological divide get the same moderation messages. If someone was breaking the rules and we didn't moderate it, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here [4].
Accounts that have been created primarily for ideological battle are against the rules here and we ban them [5], so I banned this one. Please don't do that. As I said, it will eventually get your main account banned also.
Dan, you may be interested in Orwell's Notes on Nationalism, in which he attempts to tease out "smite enemies rather than for curious exchange." I certainly noticed some poor tendencies of mine[1] in his taxonomies!
[1] notably, what I would call "picking on hegemons" looks incredibly biased because the last two have been the US and the UK, and so Orwell would file it under "anglophobia". I need to broaden my criticism to the dutch, the spaniards and portuguese, the romans, etc. Unfortunately all of my lifetime, and most of recent history, has been under those first two...
In James Damore's case, at least, he engaged in the "problematic behavior" at the workplace - it wasn't like he was participating in a group outside of the workplace which then led to him being fired.
Regardless of what your beliefs are, harassing your coworkers about them isn't going to make your coworkers, or bosses, happy.
For a second, forget about the content. "Hey coworkers, your decision to use a NoSQL database is stupid, you VPs should change the way you're doing things" when not asked for comment and when the decision is well outside of your role is always risky, and can quite often lead to conversations where the targets of your rant can say "I can't deal with this person anymore, I'm ready to quit over this."
If that's what you think happened, you need to go look at the facts. No harassment occurred. There was no emotional outburst. Only a solemnly worded paper that was written in response to a request for feedback and wasn't even meant to be spread around as much as it did.
I did not mention harassment, or an emotional outburst.
The most controversial part of cancel culture is the blurred lines - is something in your private life grounds for you losing your job, is a tweet outside of the context of your job grounds for losing your job, etc.
If someone wants to boycott sellers of JK Rowling's books for her tweets about transgendered people, that is reasonably called cancel culture.
If someone wants to boycott sellers of JK Rowling's books based on hypothetical comments about transgendered people within the books themselves, that is something quite different.
This goes into the how, but to me the more interesting question is the 'why'.
Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?
I only have one example of why; I'm a genuinely curious and open person and I like having my beliefs tested, some of my beliefs are nuanced enough that I sometimes break down my current beliefs and my reasons into blog posts.
Things that I think are dangerous or damaging especially so, and those are usually the most controversial things so it's more difficult for people to engage with a nuanced opinion.
In one case in a job interview I had a person bring up a blog post (I believe it was "On the Merits of Meritocracy" where I actually gave good arguments pro and against) and he spent the entire time telling me why I was wrong and that meritocracy was bad, citing Caroline Ada Ehmke's piece(s).[0]
Which, ironically I had cited extensively and was the impetus for the discussion. Nonetheless the experience left me feeling icky, the interviewer had ascribed a set of beliefs to me which I did not hold because he disengaged completely with the article and read only the headline.
This is a good reason to blog anonymously in my limited opinion; you're free to engage openly.
People lose jobs for things said 30 years ago, and that were completely acceptable 30 years ago.
> Niel Golightly stepped down after an employee complained about an article he wrote in 1987 that said women should not serve in combat. He said those views do not reflect his opinion today.
It is pure ridiculousness indeed. Imagine holding people accountable for their actions... that would be personal responsibility and is 100% unacceptable to the current powers that be.
That isn't "holding people accountable for their actions". It's applying today's societal standards on historic commentary. That isn't fair, that isn't 'woke', it's retribution and it's wrong.
So here's the thing: people can and do lose jobs all the time over accusations that they've done something wrong. Often this happens pre-employment when background checks are happening the company finds old posts, or old arrests or whatever. Sure they don't fire you, they just never offer you the job. Other times people are fired over stuff like getting arrested even if it's a case of mistaken identity and the person is cleared, or a case where there are no charges brought. Lives are ruined over it, and it isn't new - it's been going on my whole life at least (b. 1980). The new thing is that it's being applied to people in prominent positions.
I agree that the whole concept is unfair. I disagree that this instance is particularly unfair - in fact I like the "new" cancel culture, because its very fair in the sense that it applies the same standards to public figures that are applied to everyone else. As the old saw goes "the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it strongly".
So you won't complain when you get fired for this comment in 20 years when I am president?
In what country were public figures ever above the law?
Pre-employment checks search for drug use and crimes, a facebook post should never be a firable or arrestable offence (outside of the 3.3k arrested in the UK).
> In what country were public figures ever above the law?
Is it considered to be “above the law” if victims never report violations, intimidated by abuser’s social capital?
All the issues with cancel culture, wokeness et al. considered, there are upsides to living in a culture where it is possible to call out a very public person who has used their publicity to cause harm to someone and not be ridiculed.
You cant call out anybody and not be ridiculed. Ridicule, criticism, opposition is the basis of western culture. The legal system, the government and respectful debate is built on disagreement.
You can make justice for victims more or less easy, more or less private if you so wish, but seeking retribution for percieved slights against victims that aren't even you, has personal power written all over it.
You don't describe the reasoning of someone who wants to help victims, you describe the reasoning of someone who wants retribution. What you like is social capital and punishment of disagreement. I dont want to live your way, it leads to horrific outcomes. Turn the other cheek to criticism.
If you happen to be horribly mistreated by someone with a lot of fame and power at some point, and you try to bring them to justice, I will support you and I hope you are treated seriously and not ridiculed by general public as well.
If it never happens to you (perhaps thanks to cancel culture serving as a sort of deterrent now?), all the better.
Do downsides of cancel culture outweigh the upsides? Up for a debate, but unless all participants are willing to acknowledge those upsides in the first place I don’t see how such a debate could have a point.
Did you just claim that cancel culture magically is responsible for lower all chances of victimhood? I can't even with this.
The point is I don't want your help, I expect ridicule and opposition, it's part of the west. I don't even argue the downsides and upsides of cancel culture because it's attacking an unassailable problem with the mask of compassion.
This is exactly why victims would choose to conceal abuse, thus enabling more of it and making public figures sometimes effectively above the law.
As a result of recent developments, knowing that they will receive support and compassion helps people who suffered through this in silence come out, raise public awareness and prevent a powerful person from perpetuating abuse.
I agree with the poster upthread that society is probably fairer and playing field is more level this way.
I think the two most common reasons for anonymity are:
* blogging from an oppressive regime
* to isolate yourself from online mobs
If you write something controversial these days, sometimes it catches a wider audience and you can find yourself under a lot of attention. A minority of those poeple will not be nice, and may send death threats or worse. Your experience is a tiny fraction of what this can be like. Being anonymous takes out some of the sting.
Offline mobs too. As a Japanese I completely don’t understand why most English speakers so casually disclose their identity so publicly.
If you post something in your real name, your colleagues WILL find it out and your boss WILL read it and your neighbors WILL scrutinize it no matter how woke your post may read. There WILL be consequences from being pointed at to losing your job and pension.
People using real names for app reviews, online comments, those are completely insane to me. Including shorthands like “John D.” Unless you are paid to do so that is.
Also blogging from a regime that may become oppressive in 5-10 years (at which point your blogging history about how great democracy is will come back to bite you in the ass).
3: to normalize anonymity so that people in groups 1 and 2 stand out less, have less peer pressure to compromise themselves, and so that attackers have to spend more resources than if they could focus their attacks on the few people they actually want to target (compare HTTPS Everywhere and other "Encrypt all the things!" efforts).
I think it's interesting to take a look at history. Many famous writers used or use a nom de plume or published anonymously because they didn't want their identities to draw the attention away from their writing.
Few people know who Jean Baptiste Poquelin or François-Marie Arouet were. But Molière and Voltaire should ring a bell, right?
Ironically, here, we don't use our own name, but a digital handle when posting comments. This allows us to create this persona on HN which doesn't really have to converge with our real selves.
A primary reason you might want to read something written anonymously is because it provides important, actionable information that is not available elsewhere. And the reason that information is only provided anonymously is because that information helps me but harms some other powerful group.
If, for example, someone posts a video of human body parts being ground up to make sausage at Mr. Fred's Delicious Sausage factory, I would really like to know that before I make my breakfast selection at the grocery store. But Mr. Fred probably does not want me to know that, which is why it's likely to be posted anonymously to pretect the author from retaliation.
In a world where some powerful groups are happy to have harm come to others, anonymity is a critical tool to fight back.
Everything should have some form of skepticism. The more ridiculous thing being presented, the more skepticism you should apply. Skepticism does not mean disbelief, but rather that you shouldn't just take things at face value and put on your critical thinking and analyst hat. Or as someone much wiser than me put it
That valid concern applies equally to non-anonymous information too.
Certainly, knowing the author is a useful part of evaluating some information. But, of course, authorship can be faked too. There's no escape from the need to apply critical reasoning to the information you encounter.
It’s the same reason that many authors publish under a pseudonym.
A friend of mine is a teacher who has written a couple of books. He likes to publish them under a pseudonym because if a parent took exception with part of the story it could create an issue for him professionally.
In today’s climate, it’s hard to avoid offending somebody.
> In today’s climate, it’s hard to avoid offending somebody.
And importantly, offending someone today is much more likely to have serious consequences than it was 10 years ago (that's my perception, anyway). A decade ago if you wrote something innocuous (especially while having the wrong immutable characteristics) and someone wrote your employer demanding your termination on the grounds that your innocuous thing could be interpreted as 'hate' by virtue of some absurd mental gymnastics ("well if we change the definition of 'hate' in such a way as to encompass innocuous offenses, then voila, your employee is guilty of 'hate' and should be fired!"), your employer would likely have told that person to piss off.
Note also that a common use case for pen names was to establish credibility when one's identity (gender, race, etc) would be used against them. I don't know that many anonymous writers are trying to conceal their gender or race these days, but I certainly see many, many more rebuttals that are some variation of "the author is wrong because of their identity" or rather "the author is not only wrong but evil/hateful/racist/otherwise-deserving-of-cancelation because of their identity" than I did 10 or 20 years ago.
> "the author is wrong because of their identity" or rather "the author is not only wrong but evil/hateful/racist/otherwise-deserving-of-cancelation because of their identity"
Nitpick: this is not about the author's identity[1][2], but about incidental physical characteristics[0] or (charitably) aesthetic preferences[3].
0: ie, the person making the 'rebuttal' is themselves racist/sexist/etc.
> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?
> you're free to engage openly
This is what I was going to answer.
Sometimes I disagree with my own writing later. It's easier to distance from this writing when I have released it through a pseudonym so that when that old self dies because of a life event or transformation/initiation, I am able to more easily close that chapter of my life, instead of having this old self be connected to my new self.
I also don't think we've reached this stage of the awareness of 'evolving selves' yet in internet culture. That's why taking precautions, like using a pseudonym, go a long way for my personal peace of mind. I do treat most corporate services as compromised because of excessive surveillance/Snowden's NSA leaks, but I think individual data leaks will start happening (where these pseudonyms would be revealed through NSA [and thus Google, FB, Google] metadata) after the current power structures topple, and a Commons-based peer production paradigm emerges.
At the same time, my reluctance to embrace my old selves and their viewpoints also comes from a lifetime of having been told I was not 'smart' (i.e. in school). Now I am learning that my delayed development was actually due to insecure attachments to primary caregivers. Together with frequent moves around the world which disturbed the possibility of forming secure attachments to other adults, this hindered my cognitive development. This means I am behind in some areas, yet it also surprisingly drives my immense interest in adult education/lifelong learning, as well as Sudbury schools etc.
That is a very detailed list but I think it’s awkwardly missing “normal men”.
Cancels occurring to a normal, well paid, stable person into jobless of even into suicide aren’t negligible events. In fact isn’t it happening to university professors right now?
Identities without mob support is a universal weakness no matter your social protectedness/minority statuses.
Interesting example from print media: The Economist doesn't have author names. Critique and appreciation have both been expressed over this, but I don't think there's an answer that will convince you.
It's often said that nobody would read the Economist if they saw the kind of pimply faced recent graduates who actually wrote it.
My cynical side says that this is a way of preventing journalists who work there from accumulating a fanbase which would give them leverage over the magazine (since they could then viably threaten to take to different publications). It fits in with their neoliberalish philosophy.
I actually prefer pseudonyms (or the Economist's anonymity/column name policy) in print media.
It could be simple selection bias - perhaps better quality outlets tend to operate under pseudonyms, rather than pseudonyms themselves improving the quality of the publication.
But I speculate that operating under one's real name might increase the propensity to craft and cling to an "identity". That horrible concept of a "personal brand", if you will. You want people to remember you - which means constant soundbites, hammering the same dumbed-down points from the same angles.
There's no respite - it's under your real name, after all - so you slowly subsume yourself into this talking head that you've created. One day, you wake up, and you've completely lost any capacity for impartiality or objectivity.
Pseudonyms also allow multiple people to write the same column. I've long wondered if the Economist engages in this practice (not that I would be critical if they did, it's out of sheer curiosity).
While mobs have existed since eternity, the internet amplifies mob voices and makes everything you ever said available to a determined adversary. Since it isn't possible to predict what will be acceptable in society 10 years later, it makes sense to blog anonymously, lest the mob comes for you and even your loved ones who may not even share your opinions.
Given recent incidents I’m sure we’re all familiar with, I would never consider writing on any controversial topic under my real identity. Why would I leave my family’s economic security at the mercy of malicious, ignorant mobs?
There are links sprinkled all throughout the comments of instances of people having views erroneously attributed to them and the public pressure causing them to lose their jobs. Here's one I just read.[1] How prevalent these are, and whether they outweigh any positive effects of the behavior (or if you even believe there are positive effects) is probably a more nuanced question.
Even ignoring the erroneous attributions, I wan't the right to voice a controversial (or even wrong) opinion. Afterall, how else would I engage and learn that I am wrong.
It seems that the expectation is increasingly that the only evidence people should need to overturn their personal opinions is the fact that they are not in the majority.
Similarly, it seems that very little leeway is given to those who changed their minds, even before their controversial opinions came to light.
I thought that was a poorly-researched article. I'm most familiar with the Holy Land Deli situation, and actually talking to employees and customers results in articles like https://sahanjournal.com/news/as-holy-land-grocery-attempts-... It discusses some of the significant problems they had with pay disparity and treatment of Black customers; racism occurs in the Muslim community as in others.
Mounk indicates oh, American dream ruined because of spoiled daughter, while actual journalism exposes systematic pay disparities and unequal treatment of customers. Huh.
I hope that Holy Land can repair relationships with the community, change its ways, and do better going forward! If it can do that, then this was in fact a net positive for our community. Don't know whether that argues for or against blogging anonymously.
> Mounk indicates oh, American dream ruined because of spoiled daughter, while actual journalism exposes systematic pay disparities and unequal treatment of customers. Huh.
Not to defend the article too much, but does that really matter (I would say it depends on the timeline)? Whether the person persecuted is eventually found to have some reasons why some persecution may have been justified, that does not justify the original persecution. All it does is make people feel better about their past actions, even if those actions were not justified.
Punching a random person on the street is not justified because you later find out they are a horrible person. It may make you feel worse about punching the random person... but it really shouldn't.
> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?
so interesting, for me "throwing one's name" into things is definitely a negative. It's the content which matters, not the person :-) and hopefully I'm able to judge whether the content is good or not (else does it really matter that I read it anyways if I'm not even able to do that / fact check / etc. ?).
But then I come from a culture where the word "individualist" is an insult so maybe that has some influence.
Interestingly, I have a hyper-individualist background, and I similarly think that the tendency to care about pedigree over content is likely to mislead and misinform you. In theory, this means reading The New York Times with the same level of skepticism as Breitbart; in practice, the correlation is strong enough that I end up avoiding Breitbart, but the principle helps me pick out bad reporting from the Times _constantly_).
> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?
There are still quite some monarchies around in which you go to prison for speaking up against the rulers (in most you will be convicted for unrelated, made up charges).
> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?
Are you talking about opinion pieces? Because, if something is well-cited objective+factual content that doesn't bother to express any opinions, I wouldn't care about (or even look for) authorship.
What is your opinion on "The Meritocracy Trap:..." by Daniel Markovits? I was recently told this would be a good reading to question meritocracy, or at least to understand those who do.
You can listen to Sam Harris' podcast with Markovits for an introduction to the book [1], or Ezra Klein's [2]. I found his argument novel, thoughtful, and quite convincing and have put the book on my reading list.
The claim is that elites have instituted a caste system, more or less, with enormous inequality and very little social mobility, all under the guise of meritocracy which serves to legitimise it.
I want to write about my opinions on software but I'm nowhere near experienced enough to have good opinions and I don't want my blog posts to get attached to my professional persona.
I think there are plenty of reasons why. But if someone's arguments are good, it does not matter who they are. If someone doesn't want the limelight, that is fine. I mean look here, my handle isn't my name. Though I wouldn't call it exactly anonymous/secret either.
> it's more difficult for people to engage with a nuanced opinion.
It is more difficult, but recognize that a common fallacy is "my opinion is nuanced, and yours is simple."
Which you experience here
> ascribed a set of beliefs to me which I did not hold
There's a tactic that I've found that has a decent success rate. The key comes down to that language is messy and that it is difficult to capture someone's nuanced position quickly. Your brain fills in missing information and does the best it can to figure out what the other person is trying to say. There's three parts to communication: what you mean, what you say, and what is heard. So if you don't know that these things are different and that your brain is filling in stuff (that this goes both ways) you're going to have a difficult time communicating, especially in a divided time with extra tribalism. This is essentially why divide and rule/conquer tactics work, because we are actually unable to communicate with one another.
So if you recognize this and when it is happening, stop the conversation. Divert and establish a foundation. "Hey, I think we're having some miscommunication. When you mean x do you mean f(x) or g(x)?" Then you listen carefully and don't interrupt (I bet they will develop nuance, if not they will add more later). At some point it is natural for you to speak again and address the misunderstanding and explain your nuanced point. If they start interrupting calmly explain "Hey, I have a nuanced point and I do not feel like I'm being able to finish an idea and thus we won't be on the same page and both be frustrated. I would like to finish the idea first." Because you listened to them carefully before and gave them time they now feel obliged to do this. The whole conversation has slowed down but everyone is now speaking the same language and hostility is gone. The pace will naturally pick back up.
As an example I was talking with my roommate the other night and we were getting heated. I had to apply this method and basically say "Hey, we're throwing in too many things at once. I don't feel like I can finish an idea before I address a specific issue. It is impossible to for me to talk about 30 different and nuanced subjects at once." He did slow down. Mind you he also said "Well that's how <insert nationality> people speak, I guess we can just handle that many topics." Don't let that kind of thing phase you, because if you want to have a real conversation you have the be the better person. This is probably the hardest part (let someone make themselves the asshole and let them realize it, you don't always have to point it out).
When I taught, I blogged anonymously as did many of the other teachers who blogged at the same time as I did. It was a means of preserving our jobs and enabling us to speak candidly about the challenges we faced. Some of us knew each other's secret identities and I once had someone post a comment on the blog identifying me based on clues they were able to piece together from my posts (I immediately deleted the comment). I post this anonymously now because even though I no longer teach, the blog still exists and I'd still prefer not to have those posts connected with me.
ISP -> VPN -> Tor can be a good idea depending on your threat model, but if you're not completely sure that you need to do so, it's best to avoid it.
ISP -> Tor -> VPN is generally extremely stupid, as tor is doing absolutely nothing for you if your VPN subscription is tied to your true identity. If, on the other hand, your VPN subscription is completely isolated from your true identity, then this can be a good way to bypass restrictions imposed by sites that block Tor. I'm not aware of tor-friendly VPN services, but I am aware of at least one tor-friendly VPS provider, which should be just as good given that your VPS subscription would not be tied to your true identity. Would not recommend using this method more than absolutely necessary, because although you can keep your true identity secret if you're very careful, it does become substantially easier to track you and ultimately unveil you by studying correlations (for one example, if your VPN is only active on the network while your home internet is connected to a Tor relay, over time you could be singled out as the most like source of that traffic).
Because it shields the fact you're going through Tor. Tor network traffic alone is a red flag that you're doing something shady, even if it isn't sufficient proof.
A comical example is when a Stanford student used Tor to call in a bomb threat to get out of an exam. Turns out he was one of two people on the entire campus network using Tor. The police talked to him and he admitted to it.
(Side note: if you're going to do crimes don't admit to them when asked.)
> The most common rationale behind this setup is to hide Tor usage from an ISP or circumvent censorship of the Tor network. This is unnecessary as you can hide Tor usage and circumvent censorship by using bridges. You can either use the bridges that are included in Tor Browser for this, or request other bridges from in any of the ways described here. A bonus of bridges is that they don’t leave a money trail, which VPNs often do. [...] Even if you were to end up on a watch list, it would be a uselessly large list as Tor has more then 2 million daily users. It strikes me as very naive to imagine that someone powerful enough to trace you over the Tor network will be stopped by a $5 a month VPN service.
I ventured into this a while ago. After thinking about it, I decided that if Google or the Government decided they wanted to know who I was, they'd find me one way or another. I'd go insane trying to stop them. But they weren't really my threat model anyway - I just wanted to write political ideas without strangers tying their perceptions of those ideas to my real self.
I wasn't planning to write anything that could be perceived as illegal or close (eg, no inciting hate/violence/treason).
So I thought of a pen name, created a Gmail for it, then a Twitter with that, and a Medium account with that. I blogged on Medium.
I wasn't too worried about pissing off a rogue Medium/Twitter employee enough for them to try to doxx me, though it was the only thing to give me pause - and honestly, a run-of-the-mill VPN I only and always use for that probably would have been enough.
Ultimately, if an internet mob was going to get me, it'd be because of my writing style or facts of my life I allude to in my posts. But even there, plausible deniability is likely good enough unless I really piss a lot of people off and drop a lot of personally identifying hints - which would be my own damn fault.
For "casual bloggers who wish to keep their identities hidden from the general public", a good number of suggestions seem totally unnecessary, e.g. using a burner device, or avoid home/work networks (when you're already using Tor). What's the attack vector here? Someone hacking into wordpress.com servers and getting your OS/browser signatures (both pluggable)? Then what? And assuming they can hack into wordpress.com servers, your email alone would be a lot more valuable than aforementioned signatures.
Meanwhile, for people worried about nation state actors, using a free blogging service is probably not enough, since it's damn hard these days to sign up for popular services that don't eventually link back to you.
This is very incomplete advice for the given threat scenario of "fearful of government persecution".
> Snagging a cheap or used device is a good option
Cheap devices may well phone home and a used device may be tampered with. I was surprised when reflashing a burner Xiaomi device to see the bootloader contained a nod to the CCP.
> Navigate to WordPress.com and setup a free account with that new email address.
Certainly Wordpress is not an ideal platform here from a security standpoint. You want a blogging platform that is overwhelmingly dumb - raw html files with minimal formatting would be perfect.
> Feel free to use a VPN
Don't use a VPN without knowing who it is owned by and seeing audit reports and even then be skeptical.
This is good advice for people who are sufficiently safe to not face any repercussions, but sufficiently narcissistic to think anyone cares that much about what they have to write.
My personal interests are too varied and too niche to have much overlap with anyone else. The number of people interested in compilers, cryptography, radio electronics, trad climbing, bouldering, bird watching (I post checklists to Cornell eBird), marlinespike seamanship, knots in general (I'm in the International Guild of Knot Tyers), who play the Great Highland bagpipes, Irish traditional music (tin whistle & bodhran), Scottish Country Dancing (in the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society), and live near where those birding checklists get posted is probably 1.
Yet I'm likely to write about all of those interests. De-anonymizing me from that is probably not terribly difficult. The intersection of the RSCDS, IGKT, and IEEE member directories probably doesn't contain many people, so even knowing that is likely enough to narrow it down to a handful, if not be outright unique.
Having gotten my start on the internet mid 90's it always amazes me the number of people that attached their offline identities to their online identies
This was just something that was unheard of back then. It was an extension of "Stranger Danger" that you did not reveal who you were to the wide internet, sure some of your close friends may have known your online name but it was not openly broadcasted
Fast forward to face book and their failed attempt to "Real names" under the assumption that it would make discourse less extreme we now know that was 100% wrong, and had the polar opposite effect
I dont know if everyone needs to go to the extreme of protecting their ID from State Actors, though maybe we do. Everyone however should at minimum end the concept of "Real names" policy
The issue with emerging and easily accessible technology is that in 2020, especially for the younger folks venturing into their first jobs - at least some kind of social media presence is a pre-requisite. Our school's career center gave a presentation where this issue was raised.
What if a student wants to not associate his/her political thoughts lest they create a hindrance for a future employer digging through the candidate's social media history. The solution offered was simple - never post anything remotely political on your 'real' profiles. But, we were asked to create them regardless and were told to be mildly active. A ghost profile seems a red flag, as such a non-existent one. Which to many people raises concerns about an individual.
We were simply asked to bifurcate our online personas into two - one that was professional and one that was like you mentioned - anonymous.
I think the context was of soon to be college graduates trying to get their first job. Which somewhat makes sense given how little information employers have to go off for those hires to begin with. Once you have your first job I can’t imagine most employers caring too much unless you work in a field like marketing where public perception is part of the job. (And connections to others in the industry are generally a better way to get good jobs anyway if you can swing it)
It seems to be something field dependent. Having a social media presence is an "occupational hazard" for marketing related fields compared to others where it is a don't care.
> Having gotten my start on the internet mid 90's it always amazes me the number of people that attached their offline identities to their online identies
> This was just something that was unheard of back then.
This is not entirely true. I remember many people using their real names on Usenet, or on mailing lists.
Often first name (linus), initials (rms, esr, jwz), first + last initial (marca, billg, dang), initial(s) + last (dmarti, cdibona), first @ last (bruce@perens.org), etc.
Real names, or a version of them, weren't unheard of, but were usually at least somewhat indirected. Of current HN users, I can think of two somewhat notable accounts using the same names now as in the 1990s. One is a nickname, the other first initial + last name. Neither is impenetrable.
I became distinctly uncomfortable with Real Name use by the late noughts, and have used a set of pseudonyms (some more than others) since.
This is an incredible tour de force of rhetoric/writing quality backed up with concrete, technical information. I've only read a few sections, but so much of it sounds like it could have been written this week, right down to the first sentences:
"Privacy and anonymity have been eroded to the point of non-existence in recent years. Our personal, private information is stockpiled and sold to the highest bidder like so much inventory at a warehouse."
The fact that such a trove of knowledge is published anonymously makes the work itself even more mysterious and compelling. This is the kind of WWW experience I want more of. Imagine all the countless other products of mad geniuses lurking out there beyond the meticulously maintained facades of social media and Medium-style blog platforms, styled with base HTML without a script, ad, or tracker in sight.
Another way to blog anonymously (depending on how you connect to the service) is to use telegra.ph: telegram's minimal blogging tool that doesn't require an account.
I think this is a great first stab at the problem, but for two reasons I think a robust solution needs more work:
- The first is that, as someone else pointed out, Google is almost certainly logging your translation queries.
- Secondly, even if you do it offline (as someone else suggested) the approach itself might not work. Success in linguistic forensics isn't based (as we might naively assume) on catching obscure words that a particular individual has a tendency to overuse. It's based on subtle shifts in the relative frequency of functional words. Depending on the proximity of the source and target language, round-trip machine translation might not change this.
In forensic linguistics you typically measure a lot of metrics, not just word frequencies, use of punctuation and whitespace, sentence lengths and structures etc. Attribution also isn't the only use of forensic linguistics. You can also look at influences, deas, people, publications etc. For instance in order to infer something about the reader, analyze influence networks etc.
I got interested in forensic linguistics many years ago when an article in a somewhat shady publication mentioned me. I got curious and started reading anything I could find on the topic. I was eventually able to identify the author, but mostly by tricking him to admit it after I had a ranked list of candidates. He was second on a list of about 4-5 people (out of a candidate set of perhaps 300). Not half bad for the rather crude methods I used. I was rather pleased with myself.
I've used similar techniques later to look at influence networks in companies.
Translation history will soon only be available when you are signed in and will be centrally managed within My Activity. Past history will be cleared during this upgrade, so make sure to save translations you want to remember for ease of access later.
I guess you could skirt around this by using something to tag the various parts of speech in your original text (using something like Python's NLTK) and replace them with randomly picked synonyms from a thesaurus?
Pretty sure it would obscure the original writer although possibly at the cost of obscuring the original meaning.
I think what we’re concluding here is that using Google to obscure the linguistic style is flawed, because a state actor could obtain the original linguistic style from Google records, or from their own records of snooped traffic.
In other words: the blog should find a way to obscure linguistic style offline.
Years ago I recall something with a name like anonyblog [Edit: invisiblog.com -- Thanks!] which accepted account creation and posts by--and only by--pseudonymous email. You remember--that crazy Mixmaster/PGP signed and forwarded stuff? Seemed really powerful for the 'publication' side, but still fragile regarding the hosting side. Admittedly 95% of the pages were various flavors of "OMG IT WORKED!" but that says more about pseudonymous email than anything.
ps. Regarding censorship resistant hosting, the rabbit hole regarding e.g. Freenet is very deep and frankly leads to a hive of villainy.
Is it even possible to create a Protonmail account with Tor? I thought it asks for your phone number if you do that? (And we all know hopefully by now, handing over your phone number is a big no-no if you want to be anonymous)
Somehow the instruction that "Don't connect to your home/work WiFi" is down 3 lines before the end (Point 8 of "Notes"). I'd expect it to be between points 1 and 2 of Instructions.
Just as a mental exercise, it seems going to a local coffee shop would make me easily spottable on CCTV, especially if they can correlate visits and posting times...
> it seems going to a local coffee shop would make me easily spottable on CCTV
Depends if Tor has done its job and concealed the IP address you're posting from.
Right now it's 10:30am in Iceland and 10:30pm in New Zealand so the fact you're posting at this time of day, and drinking coffee at this time of day, probably doesn't uniquely identify you.
Indeed, I'd say always post at the same time of day, rather than posting at random times when coffee shops are open, as the former does a better job of concealing your timezone.
(Obviously, if you're some Dread Pirate Roberts type and Tor doesn't do its job, it's game over.)
We could keep playing this game forever. Really you'd want a self-hosted site running from an anonymous VPS paid using a cryptocurrency like Monero (these exist) and your domain would use a similar service (say Njalla) or be TOR-exclusive. Alternatively you could go a more classic route and host with SDF (à la http://voidnull.sdf.org/).
Or, if you're really paranoid, you'd give up on the whole thing. Maybe you'd still write but you'd keep it to yourself. As I see it, any interaction is a risk of exposure even if very small.
One thing this doesn't address is how to build an audience anonymously. I have occasionally considered creating a pseudonymous blog, but I don't know how to acquire readers without leaking information about my existing social network. I feel like anonymous submissions to stuff like reddit and HN rarely get traction.
> Never use a custom domain name - these require some of your personal information when being registered. Even with whois privacy protection, certain law enforcement can demand for these credentials.
Not just law enforcement, shady companies like FB all try to get their greasy hands on that info. Panopticon is one closed circle.
> Run your articles through multiple translation converters. Edit minor mistakes afterwards. This avoids engines and tools picking up on your writing style.
Sounds like a good opportunity for a tool that will do this for you -- send it through a bunch of different converters in a feed pipeline. Would be fun to see the results.
Tangential to the content of the blog, I’m always weary of anything being labeled “anonymous” if it contains a lot of text that you personally wrote. Stylometry is a thing and it apparently works (I do need a citation, but on mobile and don’t have time - a quick Google search will return some results). I can see a future or even present where all it takes is a snippet of text that somebody knows is yours, and then a model to provide the probability that any given text off the internet (comments, blogs, etc) is written by you. People write and speak in very unique ways. As you increase the amount of your text, it becomes even more unique, like a blog.
Some time ago, for anonymous blogging there was a pretty good solution called freenet. Dunno if it is still around but it was really interesting technologically speaking
Depends on which language pairs you try. Google does a very good job with several European languages. English to Norwegian and back often returns almost the same as the original.
For instance the text above became:
Avhenger av hvilke språkpar du prøver. Google gjør en veldig god jobb med flere europeiske språk. Engelsk til norsk og tilbake returnerer ofte nesten det samme som originalen.
Which returned this English text:
Depends on which language pair you are trying. Google does a very good job with several European languages. English to Norwegian and back often returns almost the same as the original.
Use a book? You can probably remember "Page 32, Line 7" is the passphrase for site N and you've got oodles of data to work with for generating the passphrase. You can probably even mark the passphrase itself if you have a lot of other marked passages in the book as if you were doing research. Probably want to carry 2-3 other marked books as well to avoid highlighting any specific one as "valuable".
(Disclaimer: I am not a spy, take advice from real spies before me.)
Or one could post exclusively about one's interests and nothing even remotely political. That's what I have in my blog.
Of course, not the same applies to my twitter and facebook accounts. I've never posted anything really controversial, but there are some political posts. I remain optimistic, though, maybe I won't have to delete them. Hopefully.
This is a terrible idea. Anonymity online encourages people to be highly inflammatory, and in the US, this has led to a massive cultural divide (not the only cause, though).
Human social pattens and behaviors have led humans to correct bad social behavior through a mechanism based on reputation. If you say/do terrible things (what the group disagrees with), your reputation suffers, which discourages saying/doing those things. However, with anonymity, we become victim to the dopamine feedback loops available in online patterns. In the case of anonymous blogs, the stronger signal will be traffic on the blog, regardless of why that traffic is there. Unfortunately, saying inflammatory (prejudiced) things will generate traffic. Othering will generate traffic. Being reasonable and nuanced with drive traffic away in an online environment that provides dopamine hits for much less effort than understanding a complex topic.
This means online anonymity for the masses is largely a bad thing for society as a whole, which is evident with a cursory glance at the anonymous parts of the internet (4chan, for example). It's also evident in less anonymous, but still anonymous places like Reddit, which sees nearly as much trolling as 4chan, but reputation is part of the Reddit system, and Hacker News system as well (just the reputation of your account instead of your real identity).
I should qualify my opinion here: I don't think anonymity is always bad, but in aggregate online, I think it's causing more damage to our society than good. People in a functional society need to be help accountable to the society for their actions, and anonymity removes that social accountability.
Anonymity is an important part of free speech. That which is unpopular can still be truthful. Just because an angry mob descends on you doesn't mean your words are incorrect.
Being inflammatory doesn't mean being prejudiced or wrong. There was a time when speaking for trans rights was "inflammatory".
I'm kinda unfamiliar with the real situation on the western internet. What are top-3 things that could happen if I start writing things that are uncomfortable to the loud minority?
> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?
We currently live in a "there is only one correct opinion, all others must be canceled" culture. They've already come for anyone who showed even the faintest trace of dissent from the mindlessly woke mob's narrative. Next they'll come for those who have stayed silent. Failure to project virtue signaling will soon be used to deny employment and participation in other aspects of society. Just you wait.
Anonymity is a risk mitigation technique that speaks to the very real desire to keep speech free. If speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free.
Just like every thing else, this too was amplified by the internet.
If you said something controversial 40 years ago at a grocery shop, shop owner might be mad and refuse to service you, and might even put a bad word for you across the town. In the worst and rarest case, you might have had to leave town.
Now, anyone can record the interaction, put it in front of more people on twitter than the front-page of a big newspaper. And this amplifies things. Not to mention that it remains there forever for the whole wide world.
At this point in many places, you will be more quickly forgiven for taking cash from a shop's register than saying something which is not the prevalent opinion.
It's not new. It was huge when religion was more prevalent, for example, but it was becoming less of a problem as society became more educated and secular. Now there's a new wave riding on top of social media like Twitter, and as it gains more popularity it's becoming more about flaming vs virtue signalling than making actual progress.
> but it was becoming less of a problem as society became more educated and secular
The last generation of control freaks had figured out how to use religion as a medium for their desires. They were caught flat-footed by new internet media like everyone else.
The next generation have now learned how to use twitter. The basic tactics probably haven't changed that much but the details of the message are new. I doubt education was a driving issue as this is more an issue of personality types.
We all can get caught up in to some degree. Some of the change is great, but the snowballing effect of social media leads to some mistakes that get easily out of hand. Education hasn't been able to adapt fast enough to technology and has left people unprepared for this sort of thing. It's not that it's a driving issue but it hasn't been of help when ideally it would have.
> It was huge when religion was more prevalent, for example, but it was becoming less of a problem as society became more educated and secular.
Secularism vs religion is a red herring. Society became freer because people began to value (classically) liberal ideals--i.e., people came to value freedom as a principle. Liberalism is secular but secularism isn't liberal (nor is it inherently illiberal), and there have been many illiberal secular ideologies not only in theory, but in practice (e.g., practical communism of the 20th century wherein people were literally executed, imprisoned, exiled, etc for their free speech). And of course what we see today.
Anonymity solves the issue for the individual, and for the most part I believe it works. The problem is, this current culture of irrational, non-engaging echo-chamber woke cancellations is further propelled to the forefront when those unwilling to partake in the culture are either shamed or silenced.
Platforms like Twitter and Facebook don't make for constructive debate, discussions. There is an option to shore up support through likes, but not much the other way around. I think this explains the diaspora from the latter to the former, and says a lot about the future of Twitter itself (hint: people will move on.)
I do believe one day people will be more rational in handling beliefs and opinions positioned against them, and there are a multitude of valid reasons for one to assume anonymity, but we'd all benefit if we confronted the deeper problem instead, I feel.
Good grief. What happened to "Democrats are coming for your guns"? At least that one sorta made sense. Can you name three significant ideas whose debate has been suppressed online? Because I'll bet that for each of those I can find a 200+ comment flame war on this very site.
> They've already come for anyone who showed even the faintest trace of dissent from the mindlessly woke mob's narrative
It's an unhelpful exaggeration to suggest that speech is being suppressed in the conventional sense that the threat or use of coercion is being employed to restrict speech.
But we care not only about whether debate is suppressed. We also care about the quality of debate, the culture, values and practices through which we engage with one another in the public sphere.
The concern over 'cancel culture' would be, I think:
(1) certain arguments are beyond the pale of legitimate debate
(2) those arguments should not be engaged with, or their proponents persuaded, but should be met with opprobrium and abuse
(3) we can safely infer that someone has a malignant character if they make an individual statement which is considered illegitimate
(4) if someone makes an illegitimate statement then we should ostracise them, deplatform them, and agitate their employer to fire them
Obviously 'cancel culture' is internally varied, and this list presents some of its worst aspects, while ignoring what can be said in favour of it. But my point is that we can reasonably argue over several of its features. The problem as I see it is how to criticise unreflective and exclusionary discourses, while engaging in debate, persuading rather than abusing, avoiding heavy-handed retributivism, and thinking for ourselves.
It is also worth asking whether cancel culture is more of a problem online that it is offline because it is encouraged by the design of several platforms, most egregiously Twitter.
Not "someone like" David Shor. David Shor. He was fired. One guy. And that was wrong[1]. But one guy doesn't an epidemic make.
If you want to talk about individual instances of injustice, I'm there with you. If you want to paint a whole culture of internet progressives on the basis of a tiny handful of spiteful retributions, I think you aren't arguing in good faith.
[1] FWIW: it's been half reported and intimated that maybe he was really fired because the rest of the staff already hated him and this was an excuse. We don't know. But the public reason given for his termination was garbage.
Are those list items really that bad, though? Paraphrasing #4: you're saying that we need to welcome, broadcast and hire people who we genuinely think are vile and awful?
Where's the middle ground. If we can't fire, say, violent racists, and we can't escape their words, and we can't avoid them socially, what can we do?
I think the answer to that, if you look at it carefully, is going to be pretty much isomorphic to what we're already doing. There are excesses and mistakes (David Shor shouldn't have been fired), but that's true of all things.
What I don't see is a definition of "cancel culture" as a "problem" that isn't basically a defense of conservative opinions.
I agree that its implicit values are generally egalitarian, or at least aspire to be egalitarian, but I don't think there's a clear left-right split. My concern is not that we shouldn't be egalitarians. I'm a socialist; my avatar is named after a famous anarchist. It's that there is a culture of debate - 'cancel culture' - that betrays several flaws.
Should we value debate and engage with those we disagree with or ignore their arguments and ostracise them? Should we persuade those we disagree with or tell them they're horrible people? Should we address ourselves to the causes of prejudice and small-mindedness, or retributively punish those who misstep? Debate, persuasion, and opposition to retributive justice - those are scarcely values that are the monopoly of the right, and indeed, the last one runs counter to the right.
You are focusing on 'easy cases'. You write, 'you're saying that we need to welcome, broadcast and hire people who we genuinely think are vile and awful?' But that presupposes the precise crux of the debate: whether most people targeted by 'cancel culture' really are, as you say, 'vile and awful'.
You say we should encourage the firing of 'violent racists'. I think that's a reasonable option, depending on the context. But that's an easy case. The kind of problems I highlighted are found arrayed against people of all political stripes, often for minor offences or errors.
I was reading a large number of people abuse a Guardian journalist this morning for including the owner of a Pizzeria in a write-up of how working-class life has been affected by COVID - a mistake, for sure, even a humorous one, but not one that should be met by abuse. The owner in question was being doxxed, and his restaurant down-voted on review sites. To me, this kind of case is entirely typical of cancel culture, not anti-fascism.
Clearly we should value debate. Clearly we "should" persuade people we disagree with. The question is whether we should be forced to.
If I'm an employer, should I be forced to hire people who I personally find unpersuadably vile? That's the "anti-cancel" position, right? I can't fire you, even if you're an asshole.
If I run a forum (like HN, or Reddit), I can't ban people even if they're "debating" in a way that is disruptive and driving off users? That too, is the "anti-cancel" position as far as I can see.
How do you square this? Be specific. Tell me the rule you want to enforce so that no one gets "cancelled" but we aren't swamped by garbage in online forums.
> But that presupposes the precise crux of the debate: whether most people targeted by 'cancel culture' really are, as you say, 'vile and awful'.
It absolutely does. Because if you can't cite me[1] someone who got "cancelled" who isn't "vile and awful", then doesn't it mean the whole "problem" doesn't exist?
Your position is that all my woke buddies are wrong and need to change. So show me the evidence.
[1] And let's be real: you can't, except for a tiny handful of notable cases. No one gets "canceled" here on HN (good grief, just look at the downvotes I'm quite sucessfully enduring!). No one gets "canceled" for being a republican. And most importantly: being argued with is not the same thing as being "canceled" no matter how hard you try to make that case.
> 'Clearly we should value debate. Clearly we "should" persuade people we disagree with. The question is whether we should be forced to.'
So you agree with the criticisms I made of cancel culture?
> 'If I'm an employer, should I be forced to hire people who I personally find unpersuadably vile?'
I don't think this is a helpful example, for two reasons. First, it is generally accepted that employers should have more latitude in the grounds on which they hire, than the grounds on which they fire. This reflects the fact that we are generally more concerned with actions of commission (e.g. killing someone) than omission (e.g. failing to give someone life-saving drugs). If we ask instead, 'Should you fire someone because they believe transgender women shouldn't be admitted into female sports', or 'Should you fire someone because they believe in the aggressive extradition of illegal immigrants', or 'Should you fire someone because they watch Fox news', it's much less clear-cut.
Secondly, and more to the point, what is at issue is rarely cancel culture among employers, but the way in which cancel culture pressures employers to fire people.
> 'If I run a forum (like HN, or Reddit), I can't ban people even if they're "debating" in a way that is disruptive and driving off users? That too, is the "anti-cancel" position as far as I can see. How do you square this? Be specific. Tell me the rule you want to enforce so that no one gets "cancelled" but we aren't swamped by garbage in online forums.'
I haven't thought about it, but my initial answer: I think the rules on large community websites like Reddit and HN should be to sanction abuse, hate speech (understood roughly along the lines of current British law), and various activities which undermine the aim of the website - e.g. persistent trolling, systematic lying, spamming adverts.
> 'It absolutely does. Because if you can't cite me[1] someone who got "cancelled" who isn't "vile and awful", then doesn't it mean the whole "problem" doesn't exist?'
You seem to think that the only evidence of cancel culture is the complete destruction of the lives of individuals. But those only the most extreme of cases. I just gave you a less extreme but far more representative case: the Guardian journalist that I read being harassed this morning (her name is Helen Pidd). Every time I go on Twitter I see a constant stream of tribalism, abuse and retributivism - these are not rare occurrences, they are omnipresent.
Take a more prominent case: J.K. Rowling's post on transgenderism. I disagree with 90% of what she wrote in that post. But I think her arguments should be engaged with, people should try and persuade her and those like her, that we should not abuse and deplatform her, and I don't think she is evil or malignant because of what she wrote.
With all respect, you seem to be retreating here. I don't think I disagree with any of your remedies, they sound fine. They also sound like pretty much the way our society and internet culture already work.
So I can't tell what you're arguing against. If "cancel culture" isn't the giant problem you originally jumped into argue against, and our existing protections are already in place... what are you arguing against?
I'm not saying that people aren't jerks on the internet. I'm saying that (1) it does happen at anything like the scale people like to think of (i.e. there is not Great and Terrible Woke Conspiracy), and (2) the excesses that are happening, at the scale they're happening at, are just not something we can "fix" via any remedy.
And the Rowling thing seems like a complete misinterpretation on your part. HUGE quantities of ink have been spilled at this point (including on this very site) explaining why the trans-exclusionary position is hurtful and counterproductive to modern feminism. Don't tell me she wasn't engaged with productive discourse. Rowling herself did like half a dozen interviews on the subject! You're acting like no one was willing to listen to her, when that's absolutely not the case.
You're saying that because someone was an asshole that means the rest of us are too? J. K. Rowling wasn't "canceled" in any way that matters. She was just wrong.
> 'With all respect, you seem to be retreating here.'
Nothing I said in my last post with inconsistent with the letter or spirit of my foregoing posts.
I didn't set out any 'remedies'. You asked me about about two relatively narrow issues. As I have repeated, I take 'cancel culture' to be, in the first instance, a cultural problem. The fundamental remedy is, therefore, cultural. Abolishing Twitter would help, though I don't see that happening.
If you don't know what I'm arguing against, return to my first post.
> 'And the Rowling thing seems like a complete misinterpretation on your part.'
You seem to be implying someone can only be negatively affected by cancel culture when: (i) their lives are destroyed; (ii) everyone who engages with them is participating in cancel culture. Why?
Obviously not everyone who engaged with Rowling disagreed, and not everyone who disagreed exhibited the pathologies that I attributed to cancel culture. But there was a very large -certainly the majority of voices on Twitter - contingent of people who didn't engage with Rowling's arguments, had no interest in persuading Rowling or those who sympathised with her, castigated her as evil and hateful, and called for a boycott of her books, and on authors writing for her publishing house to terminate their contracts.
'In any way that matters'. Rowling's entire profile has been shaped by the debate. This will define her life and career, and how she is remembered for the rest of history. Of course, she is a billionaire, and lives comfortably. But the point is that this is merely one (prominent) case representative of the very tendencies you deny exist.
The consequences are the degradation of the conversation in the public sphere, and of the willingness and ability of people to debate and think for themselves. Given that I share many of the broad goals of 'cancel culture' - i.e. curbing prejudicial and exclusionary discourses - I also worry that this kind of toxic approach will preclude the coalition-building and persuasion necessary to long-term hegemonic change. It also creates an avoidable blowback, i.e. most people feel condescended to, others take up the same style of politics on the right.
Read the Atlantic piece linked to above - there are many less prominent cases of individuals have been 'cancelled', often with little cause. I see this happening every time I log on to Twitter, in all directions.
Again, you just seem slippery here. I'm not denying that people are mean on the internet. I'm not denying that people get harmed by it. I'm denying that it's a huge problem, thus my attempts to pin you down on What Exactly Is Wrong, and How Do You Propose to Fix It. And you keep moving the goalposts!
Basically, this is what I keep hearing: "OK, these people weren't harmed, exactly. But countless others were who I haven't named. And why do you demand evidence of "harm" anyway? Aren't there other ways of being harmed?"
I mean... people are jerks. We can't fix that. Twitter surely can't fix that. If employers are routinely firing people[1] based on what jerks say on Twitter, then that's a problem. But it's something employers are going to have to address on a case-by-case basis.
[1] They aren't. Seriously, they aren't. It's happened in the past. It's not "happening". Far more people get fired for far worse reasons and we don't freak out at HN over it.
You claim I am 'slippery' and 'moving the goalposts'. You said in your last post that I was 'retreating'. Yet you have not even tried to show how anything I have said in my later posts is inconsistent with my earlier posts. Absent that, those claims are not helpful.
You say 'I'm not denying people are mean on the internet. I'm denying people get harmed by it'.
There are two simple problems here. The first is that we are not talking about whether people are 'mean', we're talking about the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of a specific subculture: 'cancel culture'. I have set out what I take to be the pathologies of that subculture. Why are you ignoring those pathologies, and talking as if 'cancel culture' didn't exist, and if this was just people being generically mean?
The second is that you protest that cancel culture is harmless. I just set out why I take it to be harmful: it degrades the public sphere, inhibits thought and debate, undermines hegemonic change, and threatens a blowback. Why have you not engaged with any of those arguments?
Finally, you raise the issue of 'employers' again. I have already said I take this to be peripheral to cancel culture. The main harm of cancel culture, as I see it, is on the public sphere. A few extreme cases end in firing - and that's significant for those people - but it's a relatively small harm compared to the effect it has on the public sphere.
> we're talking about the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of a specific subculture: 'cancel culture'. I have set out what I take to be the pathologies of that subculture. Why are you ignoring those pathologies, and talking as if 'cancel culture' didn't exist
Yeah. This is the disconnect. You're asserting without evidence that "cancel culture" exists as "a thing" worth discussing. I assert it doesn't, it's just a bunch of jerks, and ask for evidence about its impact.
And you don't want to engage on that. Which tells me that maybe this isn't really "a thing" worth discussing, just something that you're personally upset about.
> 'You're asserting without evidence that "cancel culture" exists as "a thing" worth discussing. I assert it doesn't, it's just a bunch of jerks, and ask for evidence about its impact.'
Your original response was that the listed pathologies 'were not that bad', but that they were only found in response to people who were genuinely 'vile and awful'. Now you're saying those pathologies are invented. Which is it?
You say I haven't provided evidence of its impact. In three of the four responses since my original post, I've given examples: Helen Pidd, J.K. Rowling, and The Atlantic piece linked to upthread. I could go on citing endless individual cases, but as I have tried to emphasise, the problem as I see it is a collective one: a culture degrading the public sphere.
You write in another of your replies: 'If you want to talk about individual instances of injustice, I'm there with you. If you want to paint a whole culture of internet progressives on the basis of a tiny handful of spiteful retributions, I think you aren't arguing in good faith.'
If individual cases can't prove anything, what evidence will you accept?
> 'Just something that you're personally upset about'.
I have to tell you, I am not the only person to notice the existence of a new 'cancel' culture, or to object to it. There was a prominent Harper's letter circulated on exactly this subject just a few days ago:
The definition of vile is getting ridiculous. Today its seems anyone is a "violent racist" if they don't agree 100% with BLM's mission statement. I'm sorry, you have to live in a world where there are people who have different opinions.
Read that, and you tell me: was Blake Neff canceled? Sure seems like it. Mainstream journalists found "vile" material in his online history, showed it to his employer, he's canned (well, resigned it seems like, technically).
So are you going to defend Neff? Please do. Or if you won't, please tell me why your carefully curated worries about "cancel culture" somehow don't apply to this case.
Because I can tell you why: because "vile".
So now tell me why your personal, entirely subjective definition of "vile" is more important that those of other people with different priorities. Because that's the only difference here.
This article from The Atlantic[1] does a much better job explaining the issue. It contains more than a handful of examples of people getting fired for really benign opinions, also this is just in the last few months.
No, he was fired because he very loudly and publicly contradicted his employers' stated policies[1]. His ideas didn't "lose", not in the free speech sense everyone is yelling about. There's not a poster here who doesn't know what he said (we spent A LOT more than 200 comments on that one!).
Nor was he suppressed: he's still speaking, on the same subject! Hell, he's surely making more now as a right wing martyr than he ever was as a low level hacker for Google.
[1] I mean, people get fired for this all the time, like those folks Amazon canned a few months back for union organizing with employer resources. You only care about this one guy because he happens to play for Your Team.
What he posted was on an internal message board specifically for employees to discuss controversial subjects. It was only public because another google employee got upset and made it public.
I probably should have said "broadly", I guess. But I still don't see how that differs from the union folks, who used an internal messaging system to notify other employees about their rights.
Again, I can't help but think what you people really want is the inalienable right, not to "free speech", but to be Offensive Without Consequence. And again, Damore is a genuine celebrity now, he's a very bad example of the kind of repressive woke hegemony you're invoking.
It doesn't matter if being offended is a protected class. Offending someone isn't. And I. Our society we give individuals and groups broad powers to associate with only the people they choose to.
You can offend whomever you want, your right is protected! But if people don't like you, they're under no obligation to deal with you.
the previous poster presented it as a binary set of options but i agree with what you're saying - i think its safe to say we have all, at some point and in some scenario, been both victims and perpetrators. for me the answer is to simply move along with my life and associate with those who seem to be well intentioned and have positive world views. but going up a few comments relating to the cancel culture issue, for some that is simply not enough. they must become the enforcer, alert the world of the offender, until the offender is ostracized from society (judge jury and executioner perhaps). its hard for me to understand the motive but alas here we are.
You raise an interesting question. Why not ignore people?
Let me start by pointing out that this applies in both directions. When I post on twitter saying, for example, that "@FSF, you should fire Richard Stallman because he is a bad man", I am simply exercising my ability to speak.
The FSF can choose to ignore me. Why doesn't the FSF just move on and ignore the tweet? Before we move on I really want you to consider that question. I'm curious what yours is. Here's mine:
The people speaking out have power. The FSF is influential because people trust it to act ethically. If people no longer trust the FSF to act ethically around women, can they it to act ethically around software freedom? What about when software freedom intersects with the issues of marginalized peoples (think, for example, ML ethics or signal's value to marginalized groups). If people stop listening to the FSF it loses its influence, which (from the FSF's perspective) is a bad thing for its mission. But from the perspective of me, a person tweeting, I'm not necessarily looking to "punish" Stallman, but to hold people to high ethical standard.
To be clear, I'm not saying that there's never a punitive aspect to cancellation. What I am saying is that it's wrong to believe that there must be.
So I hold other individuals accountable to my values (or actually in some cases their own values). I "vote with my feet" and part ways with organizations that don't uphold the values I feel are important. When enough people do that, collectively, the force behind it becomes powerful enough that even relatively entrenched organizations have to pay some attention. In other words, decentralized collective action has power and ignoring it carries some risk for organizations.
This represents a shift in power and influence in a few ways. Some random individual is able to start a movement that picks up lots of steam very quickly. There's danger to this (think Reddit and the Boston Bomber), but there's always been a danger from what power can do (think Donald Trump taking out a full page NYT advertisement to enforce the death penalty against the Central Park Five).
Similarly, "blacklists" and "old boys clubs" have existed since forever and are harmful to people. My claim is that those will never go away. So empowering the previously unempowered is probably a good thing.
There's questions about harm in individual cases, but those need to be balanced against harms prevented and existing systems, which also systematically fail certain peoples. The question shouldn't be "is cancel culture perfect", but "does it cause less harm than existing structures for handling criticism and accountability".
Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences of that speech. What planet do you live on that you think everyone else should have to both listen to what you say, and then not "punish" you for it? If you tell your wife she looks fat, she's probably not having sex with you that evening. If you call someone a racial slur, they're probably both going to tell everyone they know about what you said, and refuse to interact with you unless forced to.
What you're talking about isn't freedom of speech, it's freedom FROM responsibility. I don't think you're going to find very many people that want to sign up for: HNThrowaway262 can do whatever he wants and you just have to take it. That's a dictatorship or a monarchy, you might want to live in that society but I don't.
Your words and actions have consequences and SHOULD.
And who shall be the judge of what is right and what is wrong? An internet mob? If an unknown woman issues a public twitter statement that she's been abused, is it OK to get the alleged offender cancelled before a court trial? What if they are innocent? How do you un-cancel somebody?
You don't. That's why the cancel culture is ridiculous and needs to end.
Would you like to judge how limited my speech should be?
For example, if someone feels me up, should I be allowed to post on Facebook detailing the encounter? Am I allowed to name them? Can I tag their employers?
If I read about someone claiming that they've been felt up, can I forward it to my friends? Can I notify my employer if they're working at the same company as me?
Essentially, can you determine a line where my freedom to speak ends?
Yeah it ends when you make a statement about someone that accuses them of a crime or otherwise libels them, in the UK at least. If someone has committed a crime, we have courts. We've been doing this for centuries.
> Yeah it ends when you make a statement about someone that accuses them of a crime
Why should I avoid talking about something because it pertains to a criminal proceeding? If I get sexually assaulted, should I avoid reaching out to anyone for support? If a person cheated me out of money during a business transaction, should I avoid calling them out on it? If someone punches me, and the police decide not to press charges, do I avoid warning anyone?
No, it's not, and saying it is is trivializing lynching. Which, given the political alignment of the people usually arguing the loudest against cancel culture, is unsurprising.
> Falsely calling people you don't like evil to cause them harm or for you own economic gain should result in jail time and compensation for the victim.
False speech isn't protected. Also, the parent comment made no claim that the statements made were true or false, just that there were accusation. I don't think that "people shouldn't knowingly lie" is a particularly hard stance on free speech.
It is to the extent that it isn't prosecuted as a matter of policy.
> Also, the parent comment made no claim that the statements made were true or false, just that there were accusation
And I'm saying "No, I think we ought to appropriately punish people who do make false claims" in response to the original question Would you like to judge how limited my speech should be?
If you want to have a separate conversation on whether false speech is prosecuted in the United States, we can do that. But this isn't really relevant to the discussion at hand, which is how is "cancel culture" at odds with "free speech."
> And I'm saying "No, I think we ought to appropriately punish people who do make false claims" in response to the original question "Would you like to judge how limited my speech should be?"
Okay, but then you aren't disagreeing with me; just posting a tangential point. In the example posted:
> If an unknown woman issues a public twitter statement that she's been abused, is it OK to get the alleged offender cancelled before a court trial?
There's no indication that the claims are false, and if they are false, that the people making the claims aren't punished. All it asks is "is it okay to share information about an accusation, even if you aren't certain it's true?"
I wasn't trying to disagree with you. I just think the issue is oversimplified into forum sized bites and needs to be approached holistically.
> If you want to have a separate conversation on whether false speech is prosecuted in the United States, we can do that. But this isn't really relevant to the discussion at hand, which is how is "cancel culture" at odds with "free speech."
False speech being 'protected' in the sense that it doesn't result in any harm to person committing the act is, in my opinion, extremely relevant. Free speech isn't free if those who would cause you harm are free to do so at the slightest provocation, and without fear of punishment.
> All it asks is "is it okay to share information about an accusation, even if you aren't certain it's true?"
My answer is "Yes, if you're willing to accept an appropriate punishment for libel/slander/defamation in the event you were wrong." One added thought though, what if the person accused can no longer afford a decent lawyer because they got canceled? That could result in catastrophic harm to an innocent person, just like the [0]4% of death row inmates that are supposedly innocent.
> Free speech isn't free if those who would cause you harm are free to do so at the slightest provocation, and without fear of punishment.
It seems like what you're going for is that freedom of speech requires responsibility for consequences of speech, which I'm all for. I'm more worried about understanding how far those consequences stretch; if you share an article about race statistics that prompts a riot, are you responsible?
> My answer is "Yes, if you're willing to accept an appropriate punishment for libel/slander/defamation in the event you were wrong."
Do you believe that if someone unknowingly published something that turns out to be false, they should be held legally liable for it? For example, if I share a news article that turns out to be false, I should bear liability?
> One added thought though, what if the person accused can no longer afford a decent lawyer because they got canceled? That could result in catastrophic harm to an innocent person, just like the [0]4% of death row inmates that are supposedly innocent.
That would be a causality of free speech. At some point, some group of people are going to be hurt by speech or lack thereof, and it's more a matter of deciding what tradeoffs we'll make.
> if you share an article about race statistics that prompts a riot, are you responsible?
Entirely depends on if the statistics and any stated conclusions are true, and to what extent the article actually prompted the riot vs other factors.
> Do you believe that if someone unknowingly published something that turns out to be false, they should be held legally liable for it? For example, if I share a news article that turns out to be false, I should bear liability?
If you unknowingly repeat that someone is a pedophile just because it seems popular, it seems reasonable that you share some portion of the blame for whatever harm befalls that person.
In the news article example it is the publication and/or the author that is responsible. Of course this gets into a grey area regarding the content of the article and whether it's possible to know the content is false or defamatory.
> At some point, some group of people are going to be hurt by speech or lack thereof, and it's more a matter of deciding what tradeoffs we'll make.
In my (based on the downvotes I'm receiving) unpopular opinion, I don't think we should give up any speech whatsoever under any circumstances. If people say evil things that cause harm (go kill this person, this person is a nazi, let's get this guy fired, etc), go after them for the harm.
> If people say evil things that cause harm, go after them for the harm.
You'll need to define what an "evil thing" is. For example, in the race statistic example, you make it clear that depending on exactly what was said, you may or may not be responsible for the harm.
You'll also need to define "cause." In cancel culture, no one "forces" companies to fire people, they just put companies under economic pressure, much like boycotting.
I think the key issue is what you mentioned earlier:
> whether it's possible to know the content is false
Where there's some threshold of belief whether something is true or not; for example, it might be fair game to share a New York Times article, knowing that they're generally true. But someone on Twitter?
Also thanks for talking in good faith, it's refreshing to talk to someone who genuinely engages in discussion as opposed to trying to win.
If someone says something false with the intent of harming someone (getting them fired, ostracized in their community, harming their personal relationships, etc) I would say that's a reasonable definition of evil.
A good example is when some people try to call Joe Rogan, a liberal comedian who liked Bernie for president, a Nazi or alt-right. It's clearly untrue and it's intended to de-platform him because they don't like the politics or message of some of his guests.
> You'll also need to define "cause."
I look at this from a rather extreme perspective. If I put a gun to someone's head and tell them to do something, it's coerced. I didn't 'make them' do the thing. They did it willingly to avoid harm.
The same is true when a horde of people call someone's boss and say 'X is a Nazi so either fire him or we'll organize a boycott and you'll go out of business'
> Where there's some threshold of belief whether something is true or not
This is the hardest part to sort out. Hitting like or retweet on something isn't the same as publishing an article yourself. That said, intentionally signal boosting 'X is a nazi' or similar does cause harm. I think this requires a case-by-case review.
> Also thanks for talking in good faith, it's refreshing to talk to someone who genuinely engages in discussion as opposed to trying to win.
Likewise! Although it does seem that public opinion doesn't like my point of view much, I'm glad there's still folks willing try working through a topic together rather than jumping into a jousting match.
I think the issue arises due to the nature of the internet being such an amplification tool. In-person social networks are on the order of 100s or 1000s.
What I'm really afraid of is reaching an audience of hundreds of millions, and having them potentially inadvertently take my words out of context. Doxing is a hard problem to solve, but I'd really prefer a SWAT team not show up at my door. Statistically, you're much more likely to reach those few bad apples with an internet-sized megaphone.
I think disagreements are fantastic to work through and how we better ourselves, but some people react pretty horribly to them.
>Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences of that speech.
It is though, it's just that we as a society define which consequences you are free from as the speaker (ex. some legal consequences). The internet, and social media in particular, has profoundly changed how we think about the topic. In my opinion we'd be better off as a whole if we reevaluated our perspectives when presented with new information rather than avoiding discourse entirely in favour of dogma.
>and then not "punish" you for it? If you tell your wife she looks fat, she's probably not having sex with you that evening
This isn't a punitive action, it's a personal choice of your wife. AFAIK you are not entitled to sex with your wife whenever you so choose. A scenario in which a contract is terminated based on something said on social media (when there's no clause in the contract covering that particular thing) is fundamentally different, for example.
> What planet do you live on that you think everyone else should have to both listen to what you say, and then not "punish" you for it?
No one is forcing you to listen to anything. I'm sure you've never been forced to read r/TheDonald, or watch Alex Jones talk. If any friends on social media links you to a paper on psychological differences between the sexes being rooted in biology, you are free to ignore the link or block them all-together. If a coworker or employee starts talking about immigration restriction in a way that sounds vaguely xenophobic, you're free to ask them to keep that kind of political talk out of the workplace.
This is about the freedom that the rest of us have to choose to listen to others' speech, and to be free to engage with it and come to our own conclusion about it.
> If you tell your wife she looks fat, she's probably not having sex with you that evening. If you call someone a racial slur, they're probably both going to tell everyone they know about what you said, and refuse to interact with you unless forced to.
"Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences of that speech"
That's not true, it doesn't even really make sense. Freedom of anything is freedom from consequences for it. If I say I believe in freedom to have an abortion, noone would reasonably be said to agree if they said they also believe in freedom to have an abortion, and then immediate execution by the state afterwards.
Freedom of speech in the constitution is freedom from reprisal by the government
Freedom of speech as used idiomatically in speech generally means a certain level of freedom of reprisals from employers and society.
Directed racial slurs is a straw man, almost noone believes in absolutist freedom of speech when it comes to directed harrassment, they normally believe in freedom to discuss topics in the abstract.
It's not a monarchy if someone has the freedom to speak, that doesn't make them a king just a citizen.
I've noticed a trend with the woke side of the debate to get into like high-school level semantics - redefining words or misinterpreting statements in a nakedly disingenuous way - does anyone understand why this seems to be a trend?
>Freedom of speech as used idiomatically in speech generally means a certain level of freedom of reprisals from employers and society.
"a certain level" implies the existence of an acceptable level of consequence, unless by that you mean "absolute." If so, why not simply state that?
>Directed racial slurs is a straw man, almost noone believes in absolutist freedom of speech when it comes to directed harrassment, they normally believe in freedom to discuss topics in the abstract.
You're just moving the goalposts around the definition of "speech" so that it conveniently doesn't include the contradictions to your premise. Racial slurs and directed harassment are obviously speech. If you believe there should be consequences for that, then you believe freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
It's not moving the goal posts, you seem to be creating a false dichotomy between:
"support free speech" -> must support lack of reprisals for all free speech, including directed racial slurs
"do not support free speech" -> must accept the current level and form of reprisals.
Where most people who say they support free speech are, is this statement:
"support free speech without reprisals, excluding directed harrassment, with some level of acceptable reprisals in employment and socially, depending on the context, but at a much lower level than is currently the case, with less arbitrary application of mob justice and employer discrimination"
It's not catchy but nor is it inherently contradictory. It's what I imagine JK Rowling, Chomsky et al would say if you spoke to them about their letter.
I really think it would be useful if the anti-free-speech side of the debate stopped with this semantics and straw men about freedom from reprisals, monarchies, directed racism. I think that a person should be free to discuss eg. spaces for trans vs non-trans women and where to draw the line on sports etc, to what level the BLM is a useful movement, the relative weight of cultural vs economic vs discrimination in explaining different outcomes across ethicities and genders, positive discrimination, without being fired, cancelled or becoming unemployable. That's what most free speech people think, and all these semantic points, false definitions and straw men are kind of a waste of time
You seem to believe the phrase "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" implicitly justifies all possible consequences. It doesn't, it merely implies that speech doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that the consequences of speech often, themselves, are as much a manifestation of free expression as the original speech.
Your own counterclaim, however, that "freedom from anything means freedom from the consequences of that thing" does not even allow for the reasonable, non-arbitrary consequences you're supporting, here.
You, I and tw04 are actually in violent agreement, but it seems your politics doesn't allow you to concede the possibility that the "other side" can hold a reasonable opinion.
It's not clear that you and zimablue are in agreement unless you agree that the level consequences people are currently experiencing is excessive.
For a lot of us here, the phrase "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" comes across (not unreasonably) as support for firing trump supporters or people who question system racism (etc.) which is both unjust and foolish for a number of reasons.
We also need to consider whether it is just to fire someone for something offensive (but not illegal) they did offline that was surreptitiously recorded and uploaded to the Internet to feed mob outrage.
> It's not clear that you and zimablue are in agreement unless you agree that the level consequences people are currently experiencing is excessive.
I actually would agree with that, but I disagree that any consequence is always excessive.
>For a lot of us here, the phrase "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" comes across (not unreasonably) as support for firing trump supporters or people who question system racism (etc.) which is both unjust and foolish for a number of reasons.
I think it is unreasonable, or at least uncharitable, to assume the most extreme interpretation possible of a phrase simply because you disagree with the politics of the people using it.
That's exactly the sort of thing "a lot of us here" accuse progressives or "the left" of doing to them.
> I actually would agree with that, but I disagree that any consequence is always excessive.
Fair enough.
> I think it is unreasonable, or at least uncharitable, to assume the most extreme interpretation possible of a phrase simply because you disagree with the politics of the people using it.
I disagree that it was unreasonable or extreme. "Free speech doesn't mean freedom of consequences" is mutually exclusive of the statement "free speech does mean freedom from at least some consequences". You cannot logically support both statements.
It's also the slogan that is very commonly used to justify these cancellations. I think it's worth point out that the initial comment by wGeF7H8Z59y985y (not zimablue) was clearly framing things in the context of people losing their jobs over their political opinions.
The implication that "abstract" discussion is acceptable seems to condone dog whistling, especially given that protesting much of that speech could be considered "redefining words or misinterpreting statements in a nakedly disingenuous way", as that coded redefinition by the speaker is literally what dog whistles require, but seems disingenuous outside of that context.
That's true and the nature of language is such that there are constantly evolving dog whistles and methods of expression, but dog whistles aren't directed harrassment so I would basically allow them. Feel free not to vote for a dog whistling politician but I don't think one should not employ/fire/cancel someone for dog whistling that they believe some unfashionable or objectionable view.
> Feel free not to vote for a dog whistling politician but I don't think one should not employ/fire/cancel someone for dog whistling that they believe some unfashionable or objectionable view.
I mean, that's literally what not voting for someone is - choosing to not hire them. But that's semantics.
I'm not sure how you draw the lines on all this - if someone is spending all day tell their Jewish co-worker they need to stop the "international bankers", is that OK? Is speaking hatefully in the abstract about a group of people acceptable?
"Jew bankers" is a nasty slur. But is it a slur because It's unfair to Jews to call bankers Jews, or to call Jews bankers, or unfair to bankers to call bankers Jews, or to call Jews bankers?
If you attack a person or a race by accusing them of misbehaviors, that doesn't mean it's wrong to oppese misbehaviors!
But that's not the dog-whistle - that's too overt. There's apparently a line here when things switch, when things switch from "direct harassment" to simply "objectionable". I'm curious as to where that is.
I think that elected representatives are a special category in this, whilst technically you employ them they’re operating democracy not capitalism, so it’s different in many ways- it’s more reasonable to judge their character, the power imbalance is in their favor, positive discrimination for elected representatives seems more reasonable etc etc.
The lines will always be a little blurred, but international bankers isn’t a synonym for Jews, it might be a dog whistle but it would only be a problem for me if they know the colleague is Jewish and do this day in day out after being asked to stop.
I think so much of this discussion is wasted, and we’d be more productive just to pick a few examples and argue on them about whether we shift the line.
Eg. For me Damore shouldn’t have been fired and that’s when I realized that the woke thing wasn’t a right wing straw man, it really was running big Corp America
There are connections between the two though, annoyingly often. Advocating for a policy change that will ruin some people's lives. Advocating for a status quo that will ruin some people's lives. Advocating for some group of people to be fired. It doesn't make sense to see speech just as a consequence-less thing, in both directions.
You have to draw the line somewhere, right? Otherwise you get into slippery slope territory where eg. you can argue anyone who's not protesting for BLM are implicitly supporting the cops, and therefore are ruining black people's lives.
Sure. Not everything warrants a reaction, impact of speech highly depends on the speaker and context and reactions can be not proportionate. But I don't think a blanket "speech shouldn't have consequences" really works, because it will often have them, and often is intended to have them.
But speech and opinion-forming plays naturally a large role in it, especially in a democratic system. Lots of speech does have consequences (and lots of it is intended to have consequences that aren't just speech without further consequences). Speech shouldn't have consequences just doesn't work as an absolute position IMHO, and if it isn't then it's harder to explain that counter-speech isn't allowed to have consequences. (I'm explicitly not saying that every consequence is acceptable or justified)
Alright you guys when the conversation goes to "It's absolutely nonsense" followed by "which rock have you been under", you're forfeiting the right to have this argument on Hacker News. Please read the site guidelines until you see that this is exactly what they ask you not to do here, regardless of how wrong the other person is, how right you are, or how right you feel you are.
Maybe you don't owe the person you're arguing with better, but you owe this community much better if you're posting to it. The idea here is to have a place on the internet that doesn't destroy itself with flames and screams... or at least to stave that fate off a while longer. That's getting harder lately, and we need you to help haul in the right direction and not push it off a cliff.
Freedom of speech has to do with freedom from government control over speech. However, what people who only talk about enshrined rights forget about is the American spirit. It is not in the spirit of America to destroy a life because of the least charitable interpretation of what they said. Much as the rules of Hackernews include engaging with the most charitable interpretation of someones post, so is common etiquette. We don't want to focus so much on the law that we forget who we are and how we should act. When you walk into an interview and call everyone "cunts" there isn't a charitable way to take that. When someone makes an OK symbol, there definitely is. Its true that you don't have to associate with anyone you don't want to, and I personally thing that should actually be a stronger right than it is currently interpreted as, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to work with people you don't like. If they say they want to kill you, re-evaluate, but if they don't like your political candidate, maybe take a step back and realize we're all Americans and all working together in the big picture.
I guess you could give pause and think that the spirit of America is more accurately reflected in so called “cancel culture” than the romantic idyll of it you suggest. From an outside perspective the idea that it’s not in the spirit of America to destroy a life based on uncharitable interpretation doesn’t really square with things like the Iraq war, the death penalty and the very visible actions of the police over the past few weeks.
In the last year I've seen 3 collegues fired and 2 have to issue public apologies on twitter.
For publically supporting trump.
Which then got turned into "I dont feel safe working with this person."
This is all pushed by the stasi level initiatives that comes out of our D&I team. Its hell to work under but I dont feel like chucking my career over it.
Alright you guys when the conversation goes to "It's absolutely nonsense" followed by "which rock have you been under", you're forfeiting the right to have this argument on Hacker News. Please read the site guidelines until you see that this is exactly what they ask you not to do here, regardless of how wrong the other person is, how right you are, or how right you feel you are.
Maybe you don't owe the person you're arguing with better, but you owe this community much better if you're posting to it. The idea here is to have a place on the internet that doesn't destroy itself with flames and screams... or at least to stave that fate off a while longer. That's getting harder lately, and we need you to help haul in the right direction and not push it off a cliff.
Do you think that political engagement is a game with no consequences, or do you think that there is a point where it would be reasonable to feel unsafe around someone with particular political views?
If your "political engagement" is slandering someone to their employer with the express goal of having them terminated, then I think that should come with consequences. But I wouldn't materially punish someone for simply having these kinds of abhorrent beliefs. In other words, if you believe it's okay to harass people for wrongthink you shouldn't be punished, but if you actually do harass people for wrongthink, you should be punished.
Clearly I need to spell this out more clearly. Do you believe that support of Trump should be without consequences? I don't have the details of the three cases discussed above, but the lack of detail is exactly the problem: It paints politics as a game that we can supposedly play with no real-world results. I object to that framing (as well as the framing that any degree of "support" for a candidate is equally damning).
They apply to everyone, regardless of political stance.
Articles 12, 20, 21, 23, 29.
You do realise that while not a blanket prohibition on treating you differently, employment, wellbeing and political leanings are expressly covered for obvious reasons.
But I never suggested that Trump supporters should have their employment or wellbeing threatened for their support of Trump... I am merely making the point that support for Trump could reasonably be part of making one's colleagues feel unsafe. Additionally, the fact that political opinion is protected does not mean that a person's politics can be ignored.
There are absolutely people who I would feel unsafe around because of their political views!
But politics is the process whereby we negotiate our competing beliefs and interests in a society. I can make an effort to silence the folks who make me feel unsafe, but that doesn't make those people go away. Even if they no longer work at my company, they still have a vote. Acting to assuage your immediate concerns without consideration for the long impact on the political discourse is foolish.
Let's also remember that "unsafe" and "uncomfortable" are not the same thing. Unless that person is actually posing a threat to me through harassment or violence, I would much rather engage with them in a civil manner.
> Acting to assuage your immediate concerns without consideration for the long impact on the political discourse is foolish.
On the other hand, deplatforming people and removing their resources does work in some cases. Others may disagree and consider it wise to assuage their immediate concerns. Your belief in its foolishness is valid, but cannot on its own be the guideline for wider social norms.
> Let's also remember that "unsafe" and "uncomfortable" are not the same thing.
Of course.
> I would much rather engage with them in a civil manner.
Civility fetishism is an entirely different conversation. Suffice it to say that I think it's distinctly less valuable than commonly portrayed.
They reduce the ability of extremists to radicalize young people, for example. On a platform level, banning certain actors makes my life better because less fake news will show up in my feed.
ETA: It also denies people some amount of income in many cases, now that platforms are often monetized.
> One could say the same about the fetishism of "safety".
Yes, you could. But I believe that acting to protect one's safety is more justifiable than acting to protect "civility". Both are subjective, but the former is more personal.
> They reduce the ability of extremists to radicalize young people, for example.
Hm... I'm not going to say the problem of radicalization isn't real, it most certainly is, but I think we need to have a clear definition of what qualifies as radicalization.
> On a platform level, banning certain actors makes my life better because less fake news will show up in my feed.
That's a problem of filtering tools and suggestion algorithms.
> ETA: It also denies people some amount of income in many cases, now that platforms are often monetized.
I don't see that as a terminal goal.
> Yes, you could. But I believe that acting to protect one's safety is more justifiable than acting to protect "civility". Both are subjective, but the former is more personal.
Acting against legitimate threats to one's safety does absolutely override concerns of civility. But there are standards for determining whether an alleged threat is credible. Claiming that one's safety is threatened by a coworker merely because they voted for Trump (the initial example that waheoo provided) is absolutely ludicrous.
> Hm... I'm not going to say the problem of radicalization isn't real, it most certainly is, but I think we need to have a clear definition of what qualifies as radicalization.
Goodluck with that, the only side radicalizing anyone right now is the left.
I would not feel unsafe around someone who voted for Trump, though I might question their morals.
I would not feel unsafe around someone who voted for Hillary, though I might question their judgment.
I would feel unsafe around someone whose political views were that you should be fired if you voted for Trump. (I would also feel unsafe around someone whose political views were that you should be fired if you voted for Hillary. However, such people are few, and they currently have no traction with the HR department.)
Do you grant that some people may feel differently about the politics of Trump, or should we shape our cultural norms (after all, that's what we are talking about when we mention "cancel culture") around what YOU think is reasonable or unreasonable politics?
You seem to be implying that we can't shape our cultural norms about what I think is reasonable. That's fair. But we also can't shape them around what people think is reasonable who feel threatened by Trump.
I get that some people feel differently about Trump's politics. (Hey, I feel mighty concerned about his politics.) That's why the standard of what's "reasonable behavior" can't be shaped by how everybody feels. Otherwise, it just turns into a contest to see who can proclaim that they feel what they feel more strongly than the other side.
At some point, some element of determining what is rationally justified by the circumstances has to come into play. But that's hard, because everyone has radically different ideas of what "the circumstances" actually are.
Failing that, the only thing left is existing norms of behavior. And getting someone fired for their politics is well outside of that.
Do I think it is reasonable to feel unsafe around someone just for supporting the candidate that 63 million people supported in the last election? No, no I don't.
Nope, but I believe there are a lot of horrid people who supported Trump. Providing these three supposed anecdotes serves only to muddy the conversation and peddle the "cancel culture" myth. Do people get fired for stupid reasons? Of course. Some of them even get fired because of stupid reasons that Twitter dug up. But that's a problem with labor rights, not a cultural shift.
Something ironic about your post being downvoted or cancelled depending on your point of view.
I think to an extent we seem to be heading towards a thought police society as evident by people losing their jobs over things they do or say that go viral online (if you need references I'll be happy to pull some up, but here in the USA at least its happened a number of times), this is often called cancel culture. We see it on HN all the time, sometimes I get downvoted to oblivion without a single response as to why. I come to HN for discourse and yet its too easy to shun out people without any consequence. I don't say things because I think every little thing I say is fact, I say it to share my view which now and then is unpopular so it holds me back from posting on HN a good amount of the time, I can assume there's other users with the same issue.
Society has always, always had social norms which entailed consequences if countered. And often times in the past, the norms were strict and dissent was punished by jail, torture, or death.
Today, we've much improved. If you express an opinion that is contrary to the norms, you get made fun or or ostracized by the community, you don't get killed. Which is how it should be, say what you want, but people are completely within their rights to shut you out, ignore you, or boo so loudly as to drown you out.
Freedom of speech protects you from people who attempt to silence you by jailing, torturing, or killing you. It doesn't mean people are forced to put up with your stupid and unpopular opinions.
Complaining about 'cancel culture' screams of entitlement to me. If you want to be heard, say something worth listening to.
> Society has always, always had social norms which entailed consequences if countered. And often times in the past, the norms were strict and dissent was punished by jail, torture, or death.
> Today, we've much improved. If you express an opinion that is contrary to the norms, you get made fun or or ostracized by the community, you don't get killed.
"Things are better now than they were at some point in the past" does not mean that we should stop trying to improve, since things have already improved by a nonzero amount. If I said "Deaths due to infectious disease now are much lower than they were 100 years ago and therefore we shouldn't worry about infectious disease now", my faulty logic would immediately be spotted and called out.
The general environment for free speech is much better today than it was in years past. There are, however, specific worrying trends now that did not exist in the past, and I think people are right to point them out. I'm not a huge fan of the term "cancel culture", because it implies a lot more intentional group behavior than I think happens, but the term does point to a real phenomenon where certain controversial speech gets amplified to absurd degrees, and a very small fraction of the people who see it and disagree with it try to cause disproportionate harm to the speaker (e.g. lying to their employer to try to get them fired, calling in false reports to try to get a highly armed SWAT team sent to their place of residence, sending death threats, etc.).
Complaints about "cancel culture" are not so much about people complaining about not being heard as people complaining about having something they said taken out of context and amplified to millions of people, and the consequences of the consequent rage of millions and actions of the most extreme dozens of people out of those millions.
Losing your job and getting death threats is an improvement over being jailed, tortured, or killed, but it's still not ideal, and we're still allowed to want better.
> Freedom of speech protects you from people who attempt to silence you by jailing, torturing, or killing you. It doesn't mean people are forced to put up with your stupid and unpopular opinions.
You (like many) misunderstand the debate. "Free speech" proponents aren't advocating for a prohibition of criticism--to the contrary, criticism is free speech. Rather, free speech proponents are arguing against intimidation (e.g., harassment, doxxing, petitioning one's employer to fire them for wrongthink or false allegations, etc).
Anyway, you concede that things have improved in the past, but you criticize people for opposing regression to a more limited-speech state. This seems remarkably overtly inconsistent.
If I inform a corporation that I will not do business with them while a person is in their employment, am I oppressing that person or am I using my freedom of speech?
If I say "it would be unfortunate if something happened to your job", am I issuing a veiled threat or am I using my freedom of speech? It's possible that I'm not making a threat, but we know it's unlikely. Technically it amounts to intent (do you intend to ruin someone's livelihood or are you just making a bizarre statement for indecipherable reasons?).
I did. I said it technically depends on intent; however, in practice it's implausible that you weren't issuing a threat, and threats don't constitute free speech.
Ok I'm confused so can you please help me? My example was absolutely a "threat" in the sense that yes, I in that example would be serious about voicing my opinion and my intention to not voluntarily do business with that imaginary corporation while they employed that person. I would be "threatening" to do something which is entirely my freedom to do; to vote with my wallet.
But if I understand you correctly, this would be going outside my freedom of speech. Which implies that I do not have the choice to not do business with them. As in, I am obligated to purchase goods and services from them.
I am clearly misunderstanding this because that can't be right. Where did I go off track?
I'm still confused. I am completely free to choose whether or not to do business with them, but I am not allowed to tell them about my choice? Or am I not allowed to speak about it at all, regardless of who listens?
Issuing threats is not free speech. You're still free to choose with whom you do business. Terribly sorry, but I don't know how to make it simpler than that. Good luck in your pursuits.
Ah yes, and of course whether or not something is a threat depends on intent. And who could be a better judge of intent than ... throwaway894345. Who I'm sure has an incredibly nuanced way of determining intent that doesn't boil down to "SJWs have bad intent".
This would be hard to legally call extortion, since consumers are free to do business with who they please, and there is a strong history of boycott activity. Also if it were illegal, then many negotiating tactics become extortion. Is threatening to leave a company unless you get a raise now illegal extortion? Is demanding a lower cable bill or else you'll go to a competitor now illegal extortion?
I would consider these more ultimatums than extortion. Also extortion always includes quid pro quo, but not all quid pro quo is illegal. Context matters.
That freedom, like many others, is limited. You may also be dismayed to find that you aren't free to tell someone that you will do business with her on the condition that she sleeps with you. This is quid pro quo harassment.
I'm not dismayed at all, and would appreciate it if you could refrain from painting pictures of what you think my state of mind might be. Thanks.
Are you saying that I am breaking the law by telling a company that I will not do business with them as long as they employ some person? Just to head off future misunderstandings on my part I'd like to get this clear first.
It was a hypothetical. I wasn't speaking about you specifically. Anyway, I've explained in another thread as simply as I'm able. Good luck on your educational endeavors.
It sounds like you will protect free speech by suppressing certain forms of free speech?
I would not necessarily be against anti-harassment/doxxing laws, and stronger employee protections around firings. However, also stronger hate speech laws around protected classes. It's a double edged sword.
Threats and intimidation don't constitute free speech, even when veiled. Note that I don't think anyone is advocating for more/harsher laws to protect free speech (although these might be welcomed by some), only appealing for a cultural shift away from cancellation and toward free-speech values.
I believe free speech does not cover "true threats". I don't think a consumer complaint threatening to not do business is going to be considered a "true threat" against a company.
Free speech doesn't cover any kind of threats. We tolerate "veiled threats" to the extent that we can't confirm that they are threats, and they are difficult to confirm by design and definition. They exploit our presumption of innocence.
Threats of all kinds are made every day, and often in completely legal contexts. Threats of violence are often less tolerated, but even in some contexts protected under freedom of speech.
I understand your point but can't get on board with it.
The main issue I have is that people make organized attempts to cause harm to others as part of the 'canceling' rather than a personal choice. Not wanting to work with me is one thing, trying to convince the whole world not to work with me might cause me to become homeless.
The second issue is that the "reasons" for canceling people are so often petty or outright not true. For example, the people that call Joe Rogan a Nazi or alt-right. Either they know nothing about National Socialism and the alt-right or they know nothing about the person they want to cancel.
And third, canceling people is outright stupid. You don't want people with evil ideas and intentions hiding in the dark and invisible to you. You want their bad ideas as visible as possible so you can avoid them or shine a light on them. Sending everyone with a bad idea to another website only serves to embolden them and gives them a way to say 'see, we really are persecuted!'
And this is completely skipping over the de-banking people. That goes into a whole new level that I think people don't fully appreciate.
On your third point, I want to reiterate something I've said before: Nazi's aren't stupid. They take advantage of people who want unrestricuted free speech without consequences and use it as a recruiting tool to radicalize more nazis. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23722215)
Kicking them off of a site raises the threshold for someone to be exposed to radicalizing factors. We have evidence that this is actually, really, effective at reducing rates of radicalization.
I don't really see how the example you've given of being downvoted can be equated to cancel culture.
You had and clearly still have the ability to express your views on this website so in what sense are you "cancelled"?
If people don't like what you say they're free to downvote it. It can be helpful if someone gives you some feedback on why they downvoted you, but its certainly not an obligation
I agree with this. I detest cancel culture, but downvoting isn't cancel culture. Cancel culture is about fostering a climate of fear that chills speech (specifically fear of harassment a la a concerted effort to petition one's employer to have one terminated). Downvoting is an expression of disagreement at worst, and it's perfectly consistent with free expression ideals.
Being downvoted is not being cancelled. If people don't agree with what you're saying, they're welcome to exercise their own right to speak and tell you so.
No, its visibility gets reduced. It's not invisible. You can see that it's there, it's slightly harder to read.
Flagging a comment can make it invisible, and even then, only if you haven't set your account to show dead comments. Flagging and down voting are different, and flagging a comment because you disagree with but is otherwise not breaking any rules it is considered inappropriate here, while down voting is not.
There's often a confusion between this. Disrespecting and disagreeing is not canceling.
downvote = disagree
flag = attempt to cancel
Which there are good reasons to flag: trolling, breaking rules, doxing, etc. Does flagging also get abused? Yes! The same is with "cancel culture." Do we boo people off stage that say stupid stuff? Yes. Do people try to prevent trolls from speaking at a school? Also yes, who needs someone intentionally antagonizing others? Do people abuse it? Yes. Do we also feature the abuse more than the good? Yes. In fact, your brain is also hard wired to remember those better too. But it is also important to remember that flagging is a form of speech too. You have the right to disagree. You have the right to say "this is inappropriate." But that doesn't mean you are right or that the person you are disagreeing with or flagging doesn't also have the right to say those things. I.E. you have the right to say racist and xenophobic things on Hacker News. Dang has the right to remove your comment too, because that is what we've agreed to here. If you disagree, well there are other communities with different rules. So you can work to get them changed here or go to a different community. (Please don't try to get racism allowed here)
> But it is also important to remember that flagging is a form of speech too.
Is a bullet a form of speech as well? Because flagging will essentially kill your account if done often enough, that's the same on every platform, that's why there's coordinated flagging. First you will get limited ("can only post once an hour"), then you'll get timed out ("can't post for a week"), then you get (shadow) banned: your posts are flagged by default, but you can't tell as long as you're logged in. All of this is pretty straight unless you have a hand protecting you in the form of moderators rejecting flags, but you don't want to rely on that, because political opinions of both you and the moderators might change - a modern state based on law is much more reliable than staying on the good side of the local war lord.
"But others can theoretically still read it if they set showdead=true, so you're not rally deplatformed" isn't a valid argument against it. You can theoretically generate your own electricity and get your water delivered by truck etc if the local utility companies decide that they don't want to do business with you because of arbitrary reasons. But we've pretty much all decided to ignore those "well, technically you can [but practically you can't]" and just force the utility companies to not discriminate.
But it's not you being canceled, it's the comment. The equivalent on HN would require a bunch of people getting mad at a comment you made a year ago, and then downvoting all your future comments so they get buried regardless of their content. While there's probably people who do that, it's not applicable to your average grey comment.
As another commentor said, once you have enough downvotes your comment disappears therefore my statement stands that it is technically cancelled. I think after 2 negative downvotes it should really be required to respond to a comment to downvote any further if they are in the negative.
Cancel culture is not about removing individual messages on a web forum, though. Someone who has lost their living, their home or their friends can start taking about being “cancelled”. Having ONE of your messages made harder to read is not “being cancelled”.
I downvote posts that are capriciously off-topic or intellectually lazy. People who post those kind of things regularly don't belong on HN in my opinion. Your post seems like an interesting view, especially given the argument that others share it.
We have decided that there are limits to freedom of association, though, for example when it comes to discrimination. Forcing people to interact with others whose opinions they disagree with seems plausibly less imposing than forcing someone to interact with others whose religion they disagree with. I'm not sure this as clear-cut as you make it sound.
And I think it's quite the strawman to suggest that anyone believes that someone should be able to direct profanity at an interviewer and get hired, and I also don't think it's productive to equate "profanity" with "views that someone disagrees with."
>We have decided that there are limits to freedom of association, though, for example when it comes to discrimination.
Yes, we have. And that's a good thing. But why should the same not apply to speech?
I think it's unhealthy to view rights in an absolutist manner, be that freedom of expression, freedom of association or the right to privacy.
All rights interact and are often in opposition to one another, they need to be balanced.
>And I think it's quite the strawman to suggest that anyone believes that someone should be able to direct profanity at an interviewer and get hired, and I also don't think it's productive to equate "profanity" with "views that someone disagrees with."
Perhaps. It was an attempt as reductio ad absurdum but I may have missed the mark.
After all the comment I was replying to asserted that "If speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free."
As you say, the rights are often in opposition, and I would say that your proposed limit on speech in favor of association would actually require undoing limits on association that are arguably more fundamental. If a person can be fired for holding objectionable opinions, how far are we away from firing them because they talk about unionizing or because of their religion? Or will those things be on a list of "Things You're Allowed to Have an Opinion About"?
And I agree that the quoted sentence is too absolute, but I don't think the spirit is wrong, in the sense that behavior can be circumscribed by society in a way that that completely prevents it without it having been made illegal, and it's not convincing (to me, anyway) to suggest that the behavior isn't prohibited because it is, in fact, legal.
>> We currently live in a "there is only one correct opinion, all others must be canceled" culture.
> We really, really aren't.
Perhaps it would be better to say that there is a lot of powerful people who are working very hard to create such a culture, but they haven't yet fully achieved their mission. There's no clear definition for when something becomes "a culture of cancellation", but a lot of people are reporting that they are afraid to run afoul of the progressive party line for fear of repercussions. There are of course plenty of people who don't have this fear because they are better protected from progressive reach (either because their industry isn't overwhelmingly progressive or because they have enough power to be okay if the mob comes for them).
> I can't go in to a job interview and call the panel a bunch of cunts and then expect to be hired. That's a consequence of speech "administered outside the law". Does this mean there's no free speech? No, of course it doesn't.
Of course no one is talking about "calling your interviewer a cunt and not getting hired" when they talk about "cancel culture". Name one prominent instance wherein this happened and it was widely condemned as "cancel culture". This seems highly disingenuous.
When people talk about "cancel culture", they're talking about things like:
* a journalist is forced to repent for interview a black person who is happy about the BLM movement but wishes there was more concern about the daily non-police-perpetrated violence in his community
* a data scientist loses his job because he cited a prominent (black) academic's research about the efficacy of nonviolent and violent protests
* a utility company employee loses his job for accidentally making the "OK sign" without even knowing that the left was trolled into considering it to be a white power symbol
> I find it interminably frustrating that people (moreso on the right, and moreso in America, but neither exclusively) hold free speech above pretty much everything else. People have more than ONE right.
“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”
—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut
Association is a form of expression. To uphold the freedom of expression is to uphold others' right to stop associating with people. To "cancel" them, if you will.
That's not what "cancelling" means in this context--we're talking about concerted efforts to have people's employment terminated (or to dox them or send them explicit threats or etc). I don't see how this is anything other than harassment and intimidation, but even if it isn't, hate speech also falls under the rubric of "free expression", but it doesn't mean we can't (or oughtn't) use our own free speech rights to criticize and protest it.
> but it doesn't mean we can't (or oughtn't) use our own free speech rights to criticize and protest it.
I agree. But this goes in both directions. You can't claim to support free expression while saying that certain forms of speech are unacceptable. It is self-contradictory. Yet that's what harper's does. It criticizes certain forms of speech (criticism) while claiming to uphold the mantle of free expression. You can't have it both ways.
> You can't claim to support free expression while saying that certain forms of speech are unacceptable.
I'm not making this claim; I'm claiming that it's inconsistent with free speech ideals. I'm not working to prevent anyone from expressing speech which isn't consistent with free speech ideals, and I'm certainly not trying to get anyone fired for their anti-free-speech ideals.
Which ideals? The ideal that speech should be free from criticism is self-contradictory. Criticism itself is speech, and so the claim that speech should be free from criticism is itself a condemnation of forms of speech.
All we can settle for is that no speech is unlawful. Because of that, I don't claim to support any particular "ideal of free speech". None of them are resolvable without contradiction.
> and I'm certainly not trying to get anyone fired for their anti-free-speech ideals.
I don't believe I've seen anyone fired solely for their abstract support for free expression. Care to give examples.
> Which ideals? The ideal that speech should be free from criticism is self-contradictory.
The ideal that we don't try to suppress speech we disagree with, but rather we encourage it to debate it.
> Criticism itself is speech, and so the claim that speech should be free from criticism is itself a condemnation of forms of speech.
You're confusing an idea with its expression. There's no inconsistency between free speech ideals and criticizing the idea that speech should be restricted. However, it would be inconsistent to suggest that someone oughtn't express that idea and especially to try to actively prevent someone from expressing it. In other words, anyone welcome to express a belief that censorship is a good thing, but I'm not violating free speech ideals by expressing disagreeing with them; quite the opposite!
> joshuamorton 25 minutes ago | parent | on: Blog Anonymously
Which ideals? The ideal that speech should be free from criticism is self-contradictory. Criticism itself is speech, and so the claim that speech should be free from criticism is itself a condemnation of forms of speech.
All we can settle for is that no speech is unlawful. Because of that, I don't claim to support any particular "ideal of free speech". None of them are resolvable without contradiction.
> I don't believe I've seen anyone fired solely for their abstract support for free expression. Care to give examples.
You misunderstood my post. I was certainly not arguing that anyone has been fired for expressing abstract support for free speech. Rather, I was saying criticizing the idea of restricting speech is not inconsistent with free speech ideals, but rather trying to stop someone from expressing their desire for speech restrictions (and especially by trying to get them fired) would be inconsistent with free speech ideals. However, no one is trying to stop anyone from expressing their preferences for speech restrictions and certainly no one is trying to get anyone fired for expressing those preferences.
> Rather, I was saying criticizing the idea of restricting speech is not inconsistent with free speech ideals
Restricting in what way though? Formal restrictions: laws, assuredly this is inconsistent. But if the "restriction" not a formal restriction, but instead a reaction to criticism, then this is a meta-criticism of criticism, and that is counter to those ideals, because criticism itself is speech.
> For example, Adam could refuse to do business with Bill after learning that Bill has a contract or business relationship with an organization that Adam finds morally distasteful. Adam knows that his business is worth more to Bill than the other organization's and that his refusal to deal is substantially certain to cause Bill to terminate his contractual or business relationship with the other organization. Since his motivation is not improper, Bill's actions would not satisfy a claim of tortious interference by the other organization.
Not in all cases necessarily, but just read the next line:
> On the other hand, if Adam means to punish the other organization or put them out of business by taking the advantages of their relationship with Bill away, it is more likely that a tortious interference has occurred.
That's an anticompetitive practice. Which makes sense in the context of a tortious interference claim between two businesses.
But you can't sue <the collection of 20,000 twitter users> for collectively boycotting a business for doing a thing they disapprove of. If Sleeping Giants is immune to Tortious Interference claims, so is pretty much everyone else in this context.
There's no evidence that Adam and the targeted business are in competition. Having intent to harm is sufficient to be a relevant factor.
> But you can't sue <the collection of 20,000 twitter users> for collectively boycotting a business for doing a thing they disapprove of. If Sleeping Giants is immune to Tortious Interference claims, so is pretty much everyone else in this context.
That's also not an example of cancellation that we've been talking about in this thread, so that's irrelevant.
>Perhaps it would be better to say that there is a lot of powerful people who are working very hard to create such a culture, but they haven't yet fully achieved their mission.
I don't even think that is true. In fact in the overwhelming number of cases cited that I have seen the power dynamic seems to be the other way around.
In other words, it's about holding people with more power/privilege/status to account.
>There's no clear definition for when something becomes "a culture of cancellation"
I agree, which is why I think it's wrong to say that we do live in such a culture.
>but a lot of people are reporting that they are afraid to run afoul of the progressive party line for fear of repercussions.
I have (some) sympathy for that feeling, but I think most of the time it's unjustified. Like there's some "woke mob" who's coming to cancel you for not realising you're using the wrong pronouns to refer to somebody or something. That... just doesn't happen.
>Of course no one is talking about "calling your interviewer a cunt and not getting hired" when they talk about "cancel culture". Name one prominent instance wherein this happened and it was widely condemned as "cancel culture". This seems highly disingenuous.
I'm not saying that has actually ever happened. It's an absurd scenario - that was the point - but I concede I may have gone too far.
The person I was replying to asserted that "if speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free". Insulting an interview panel is an example of where it would be entirely reasonable for there to be consequences administered outside the law.
>“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”
>
>—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut
That just re-enforces my point. Instead of appealing to authority, can you explain WHY is it the matrix of nearly every other form of freedom. HOW is it the matrix for nearly every other form of freedom?
In Europe we have a comprehensive rights framework in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights[0]. The Convention includes, amongst others, the right to life (Article 2), the right to a respect for a private and family life (Article 8), and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14).
None of these strictly have a dependency on freedom of expression (Article 10).
One of the principles of the ECHR is that rights should not be wielded as to undermine the others (Article 17) and courts must balance rights against each other if they're naturally in competition with each other.
I think the American "free speech over everything else" fundamentally stems from the fact that the US doesn't really have (m)any other fundamental rights. When all you have is a hammer...
> I can't go in to a job interview and call the panel a bunch of cunts and then expect to be hired. That's a consequence of speech "administered outside the law".
I think there is a distinction between speech as an insult directed at specific people and speech that tries to argue for a general idea or opinion (for example see "fighting words").
> Free association is also a right that needs to be protected.
But we already limit it. For example, unless you are a religious institution hiring for a specific religious role, you cannot use "free association" to hire only members of your preferred religion. A church can require that it's pastor be a Christian. In-n-Out Burger cannot require that the cashier be a Christian.
If you look at the struggle for equality in the United States and elsewhere, the oppressed have relied on the right and principle of free speech to call attention to and better the injustice. The people in power, have heavily relied on the right of free association to preserve their privilege: for example clubs that only admitted men, or excluded Jews or Black people.
I find it interesting that in this time when we are so concerned about privilege, the right that has been used by the privileged ("Free Association") is being elevated while the right that has actually been used by the oppressed ("Free Speech") is coming under a lot of criticism.
So a culture that respects free speech something like this would occur
---
Person A: I think we should have strong border protection and limited immigration for these reasons ......
Person B: Well I understand and respect your position however I disagree because of these reasons.....
---
Now a society with out a respect for free speech it would go
--
Person A: I think we should have strong border protection and limited immigration for these reasons ......
Person B: You are a racist nazi, i am going to call your employer and tell them you are a racist nazi, and I will post on social media to get 1,000's more people to call you a racist nazi, i will also have news stories written telling the world what a racist nazi is, and after you are fired I am going to follow you to any new employer to make sure they know what a racist nazi you are...
-----
Cancel Culture, aka the twitter verse is option B today.
I think this is a compelling hypothetical, but I can't think of a single person who only said they were in support of strong border protection and limited immigration and was subject to anything like what you're saying. Could you provide an example of what you mean?
Here are examples of people who were cancelled without even saying anything [1]. One was due to a misunderstanding. Another was due to something a family member said.
I hadn't heard these stories, thank you! Sounds like we need bipartisan legislation for protecting political speech in the workplace, with some sensible limits.
JK Rowling is a good example of middlebrow views getting you and anyone who can be associated with you in trouble.
She has widely-held opinions like trans-women should be respected, but they are different from women. But if you log on to Twitter, she's vilified so much as a "transphobe" that people have been attacked for merely signing the same open-letter that she signed.
For people that have been aware of her it's entirely obvious that Rowling is not engaging in the issue in good faith.
For example, before she published under her own name she published under the pen-name of "Robert Galbraith".
So far so what, right?
Well that's the name of an infamous psychologist who experimented on gay people - often people in the criminal justice system who did not or could not consent to treatment - in order to try and convert them to heterosexuality.
Rowling has also been a vocal defender of Maya Forstater who lost a case at the Employment Tribunal in a case about how she described trans people for "[violating] their dignity and/or [creating] an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment". That's not the view of some random trans rights campaigner, that's a judge who must take in to account freedom of expression as provided for in the European Convention on Human Rights.
There's much more when you scratch the surface of Rowling's transphobia.
> She has widely-held opinions like trans-women should be respected
Um no. She has admitted to being part of the known trans hate group GenderCritical.
Edit: not sure why I am getting downvoted. She uses talking points from the GenderCritial group when she writes and even mentions them by name and that group was banned by reddit for being a hate group.
This is the sort of vague "argument"-crafting I expect on Twitter but not on HN where you have unlimited words to make a point and add understanding to the world.
I googled "jk rowling gender critical" and all I see is a great google query if you want to find articles about how supposedly transphobic she is (without explaining what was specifically transphobic about what she said). If you're going to say someone has admitted to being part of a hate group, why not help us out and provide us some links?
JK Rowling is a good example of quite the opposite — someone who uses flowery language to insinuate pretty heinous things about trans people, and then pretend she’s said something innocuous. At any rate, you can’t cancel a multi-millionaire.
You'd have to be more specific about the rest of your post. What exactly is heinous?
But the litmus test for whether cancel culture exists isn't whether you can cancel a millionaire, but to see how people react to what she said. Like writing a public letter to your employer to express disapproval for a coworker who signed the same Harper letter.
“I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.
So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman—and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones—then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”
I could annotate her most recent post (and all of them) pointing out all of the dogwhistles, but this paragraph is pretty demonstrative of the style I was referring to. She starts from a defense of trans women, one that rings false because of all of the qualifications she makes which anti-trans activists will pick up on -- "Like women" "Natal girls and women" etc. etc., and then transitions seamlessly into harmful and dangerous tropes (men in dresses are coming to molest YOUR daughters!) from half a century ago. And of course, all of this is an overstated panic, and the solution of gender neutral bathrooms has been working just fine in the Bay Area and elsewhere. To be honest, that isn't even the most offensive dogwhistle in this article: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...
As far as Paul goes, I wonder who exactly he sees to be the powerless? To circle back to Rowling, is it the multi-millionaire author? Or trans people in the U.K.? These wealthy folks are not simply advocates, they're partisans. And not for a generic free speech, but simply the speech they believe is right.
> As far as Paul goes, I wonder who exactly he sees to be the powerless?
Why are only millionaires your candidates for who people who could be powerless in this situation instead of the vast majority of the non-millionaire population?
As for JK Rowling's essay, it's one of those things everyone should read for themselves. The vast majority of people reading it will not come to the conclusion that Rowling is anti-trans, and they will probably agree with her. Rather, there seems to be a lot more smoke than fire when you read it after hearing how anti-trans Rowling obviously must be.
I'm not a fan of the "dogwhistle" accusation. I just see it as a fashionable way to accuse someone of saying something that they didn't say. Like people claiming the Harper letter is clearly anti-trans when the only "trans" in it is "transgression": https://twitter.com/LLW902/status/1280547024014905346/photo/...
Evaluating words without context doesn't work. You have to evaluate the words people say in the context in which they say them. Language is socially constructed and the meanings of words change over time. "We must secure the existence of our people" doesn't really sound particularly ominous on its own, but I want to avoid someone who says that because there's a nonzero chance that association with them will put me in actual, physical, danger.
> Why are only millionaires your candidates for who people who could be powerless in this situation instead of the vast majority of the non-millionaire population?
> As for JK Rowling's essay, it's one of those things everyone should read for themselves. The vast majority of people reading it will not come to the conclusion that Rowling is anti-trans, and they probably agree with her.
That's the exact purpose of the language she uses. Morality is not as simple as gentle and convincing rhetoric, designed to play on the fears and sympathy of people who know nothing about trans people. The rhetoric that China uses to describe the Uighur population to the rest of the Chinese populace is quite similar.
> I'm not a fan of the "dogwhistle" accusation fad. I just see it as a fashionable way to accuse someone of saying something that they didn't say. Like people claiming the Harper letter is clearly anti-trans when the only "trans" in it is "transgression".
The claims that the letter itself is transphobic are people over-reacting and over-extrapolating. But what precisely do you think Rowling signed the letter in service of?
> 1. allow all men to enter the same bathrooms as women, but stop calling them "women's bathrooms"
Are you planning to enter a women's bathroom any time soon? Do you plan to "self-identify" as a woman solely to go into a bathroom?
There's a great TikTok that makes fun of this concept, that goes a little something like this:
Would you be afraid if a man who identified as a woman was in the bathroom with you?
Why would I know?
Well you wouldn't, and that's the problem. There could be a penis nearby and you wouldn't know it!
So then why should I care?
Ultimately yes there are other solutions, such as having only gender-neutral restrooms, but the reasoning here only makes sense if you assume that either trans people are predators, or that there are enough people masquerading as trans people who are predators that the danger outweighs trans people's rights. Neither of those things appear to be true, and the whole "you assume trans people are predators" as part of the reasoning is important, it's the same kind of reasoning that was used against gay (usually men) for decades. "Trans bathroom danger" scares is this generations "gay men are going to come after your kids".
"People who will use this access in an abusive fashion do not exist in significant numbers" is a valid rebuttal. "We can just add gender-neutral bathrooms" is either saying that the trans-rights folks "win" (situation #1) or that JK Rowling's side "wins" (situation #2), which is IMO not a valid rebuttal. (since it's either saying that changing labels will make things magically work, or conceding the point and saying that women and trans women should not share bathrooms)
I don't have a horse in this race, but I dislike "that's a dogwhistle" getting used more and more to end arguments.
Well, I think the washrooms should be gender-neutral. That way, if one of them is full (or out of order), you can use another one. And if they only have one customer, then they don't need more than one washroom.
Ah, then I'd clarify that gendered restrooms based on self-identification are a different option distinct from calling all existing restrooms gender neutral.
Well, of course! But the two scenarios were due to the upthread (GGP? something) suggestion that adding gender-neutral restrooms like SF did would resolve Rowling's complaints.
> You've called this a dogwhistle, a "harmful and dangerous trope from half a century ago". Do you have an actual, substantial response that isn't "this person is secretly a wrongthinker!", though?
Sure. Trans bathroom panic is a ridiculous fiction that ignores how bathrooms and access to them really works. Restrictive bathroom legislation would also be completely unenforceable in any way that wasn't also incredibly invasive. Rather than focusing on punitive policies as a result of transphobic panics, we should write legislation that actually protects all vulnerable people in substantive ways.
> You seem to offer one of "it works if you just make the bathrooms gender neutral like in SF", but to me that says either 1. allow all men to enter the same bathrooms as women, but stop calling them "women's bathrooms" or 2. make a separate category of bathrooms for trans women, which we call "gender neutral bathrooms". I think JK Rowling would say that #1 is not actually a solution, and many trans people and activists would call #2 an unacceptable difference in treatment.
There's a lot here. The biggest thing I would say to you is that you've built up an idea of trans politics in your head that is not realistic. My guess is that you've been spending a lot of time on Twitter or listening to celebrities or otherwise.
Second, in the Bay Area I've seen mostly four kinds of bathroom setups:
1. Traditional mens and womens bathrooms. These are definitely in the minority amongst places I frequent.
2. A "hybrid" format, where there is a mens bathroom, a womans bathroom, and a gender neutral bathroom. This is by far the most common setup I've seen in both offices and restaurants etc. Anecdotally, at most places I've worked, the gender neutral bathrooms are the "most desired" bathrooms -- my guess is that it is because they're usually more private. Usually mostly stalls. Trans people I've spoken to are not always a fan of this precisely because everyone loves to use them so much, which makes it more difficult for them to be used by trans folks.
3. Only gender neutral bathrooms, single use. This is the second most common setup I've seen. There can be a throughput problem here, but these are my most favorite style of bathroom by far. It's also most common to how bathrooms work in most folks households (which is what the stall is meant to emulate as scale, remember).
4. Only gender neutral bathrooms, multi use. These are extremely uncommon in my experience, but I haven't been to every bathroom in the city. They're more awkward to use in my opinion, but I've never personally seen or heard of much controversy stemming from actions done in them.
In the world outside of the Bay Area, the overwhelming majority of the world uses 1, 2 or 3. But Rowling and her ilk only talk about number 4. Why is that? Because the concern is not about what is safe for most people -- remember, trans people are often physically unsafe entering the bathrooms of their birth genders. Instead, it's concern trolling. An extreme rhetorical point meant to reinforce that trans women Are Not Like Us And Should Not Be Around, and to garner the support of those who are afraid and uneducated. I'd imagine Rowling herself was indoctrinated in exactly this way, although that may be too generous (or patronizing, depending on your view).
>>> remember, trans people are often physically unsafe entering the bathrooms of their birth genders
I have really never understood how this position could be squared with the position of JK is "concern trolling"
If bathrooms are safe places, and I believe they are, why are trans-people in mortal danger if they us the one of their birth sex, where other people are not in mortal danger in the inverse situation?
These positions do not see logically contestant to me
The claim isn't that bathrooms are in general safe spaces. That doesn't make sense. Bathrooms aren't magical.
The claim is that the risk of a trans woman being forced to use the mens restroom puts them at great risk in some places (and especially in the places that would enforce such a rule). The risk that cis women face from trans women using the bathroom is nil. And the risk that cis women face from cis men masquerading as trans women to get into a women's bathroom is not large (I'm aware of exactly one sort-of example, and it's not actually clear whether the person is a person masquerading as trans, or simply a predator who also happened to be trans).
As a result, excluding trans women from women's restrooms doesn't appear to make anyone safer.
Is there data to back these claims, either that Tran-Women are at great risk in men's rest rooms, or that cis women are in no risk in
Absent from this conversation it seems in Trans-men, are they not in any danger at all if so why?
I live in deep red area, a place where you would stereotype as "places that would enforce such a rule" my interactions in the Men's bath room are silence, awkward, and everyone wants to get out as fast as possible.
Men do not socialize in the bath room and I do not see where the danger comes into play, but I am open to being wrong
To be clear, I dont see any reason to have a law to enforce this issue, use what ever bathroom you want I dont care.
My lack of understanding is from the claim of danger on both sides. I do not see it...
> I live in deep red area, a place where you would stereotype as "places that would enforce such a rule" my interactions in the Men's bath room are silence, awkward, and everyone wants to get out as fast as possible.
Do you often interact with trans people in your area (no blame here, it's unlikely not because of you, but because many people are very private about this).
Now imagine that someone who you assumed was a
> Is there data to back these claims, either that Tran-Women are at great risk in men's rest rooms, or that cis women are in no risk in
I'm not saying great risk in the restroom specifically, but more broadly for being outed. Buck Angel using the woman's restroom would be a spectacle in the way that him using the men's restroom wouldn't be.
Trans people do face discrimination for being trans, so forcing that spectacle to happen puts them in danger in general.
As for the data on cis women: I leave that to you. Can you find a documented example of a trans woman, or a man masquerading as a trans woman, entering a woman's bathroom and doing something nefarious?
> Absent from this conversation it seems in Trans-men, are they not in any danger at all if so why?
Trans men do face violence, but there is less (or at least there is less popular) concern among cis-men about biological females being in men's restrooms.
Not to mention the replies on his tweet are full of people arguing nonsense like "it seems you have something to hide" , and "cancelling means shutting down voices", not realising that people would be much less angry if cancellation meant twitter account cancellation and not losing one's jobs.
Well, first of all I disagree that her defense of trans women is disingenuous. Her points are well thought out. She points to specific situations where trans women are vulnerable. Just because she has another concern doesn't invalidate her concern for trans women being vulnerable.
So her heinous viewpoint is she has concern for girls in restrooms and locker rooms? Why is she not allowed to have this concern? The rest of the country/world is not San Francisco. Where I live I've never seen anything other than Men and Women restrooms. Sure adding a gender neutral bathroom could help with the issue but they don't exist in the vast majority of locations in the US. I have two high school daughters - one with autism. I'm sorry if its a dangerous trope from half a century ago - but my wife and I would be concerned with a trans woman sharing the locker room with them. Certainly my non-autistic daughter would feel uncomfortable. My daughter with autism wouldn't care because she has trouble with boundaries and being appropriate which makes it more concerning.
So now you'll say I don't care about the fate of trans people. Nope. It's possible to have concern for them and concern for non-trans people.
Those opinions are currently stigmatized as “racist dogwhistles” and “white supremacy”. I’m generally pro-immigration myself, but I believe it’s possible to advocate for limited immigration without being a racist.
To be fair, that sounds a lot more reasonable. A CEO represents their company and their actions leading to people boycotting their company is just people voting with their wallet. People have boycotted small businesses due to the opinion of the business owner's children, even after persistent apologies by the business owner. In this case I don't even think there is anything significantly wrong. This isn't much different than a company sanctioned advertisement gone wrong.
While people are free to Boycott for any reason they want
A person that has respect for the concept of Free Speech WOULD NOT boycott a business simply because the CEO of that business supports the current president of the US.
That is simply NOT a reasonable reaction to learning of said support.
So no it does not "sound a lot more reasonable", it sounds like a perfect example of society losing respect for free expression
Except its not I have seen people called Neonazis just for being Republican or siding with Trump whether or not they are "Trump supporters" on issues. Even saying the name "Trump supporter" is evidence alone that there is an element of cancel culture. A woman was rejected from a college recently for posting a MAGA video on Tik Tok. Some developer is being called a Neonazi for protesting against an open source org that banned someone from a conference for wearing a MAGA hat.
I say this too often on HN: today they silence the voice of those you disagree with, tomorrow its your voice.
Not to mention: master-slave throughout tech, master branch in git, are all examples of absurd cancel culture. Meanwhile minorities shake their head.
Has any individual faced consequences for refusing to rename a branch? Are you saying that cancelling a word is a thing, and a dangerous one?
At this point people are diluting the phrase "cancel culture" to mean "thing I don't like that is vaguely related to politics or political correctness". That's not a useful concept. It's just a thing to be angry about.
That's not what cancel culture is, but it's usually the precursor to it. People who are upset over things that are not yet causing negative side-effects know that they eventually will because already what's happened is a bit much in many cases. You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.
> You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.
Why not? And are you claiming that this is simply a moral standpoint, or do you want to legally prevent employers from firing employees for off-work behavior?
There's plenty of companies that don't fire employees for the things they do outside of work, it's been like this for ages, why should this become a normal standard all of a sudden? Just to appease the ever changing feelings of others? Unless I actually breach my company contract in some fashion I don't understand why what I do outside of work has anything to do with my company, in fact, unless I'm some executive, it shouldn't ever matter.
That's not what I asked. You stated companies shouldn't do this. Just because some entities have chosen to act in a certain way doesn't mean that it is morally correct for all entities to act in that way.
Certain companies have been founded based on religious beliefs forever, that doesn't mean that it is morally correct for every company to have religious foundations. If you want to run your company that way, you're absolutely welcome to, but upon what reasoning do you claim it is wrong for me to act differently than you choose to?
If what someone does, does not actually affect a company negatively aside from a few emails or calls, I don't see why it should fire somebody. People will find someone that disagrees with them in virtually every single company.
Again, that's fine for you to act that way. But what you stated was the rule:
> You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.
Which would presumably apply to all companies. Under what ethical basis is this a good rule? What if I want to fire someone for what they did outside of work? Why shouldn't I be allowed to do that? Why should your belief about how you would run your company affect how I run mine?
It's not any different from republicans calling liberals libtards, antifa and communists whenever someone talks about medicare for all. Both sides do it to each other, right wingers just complain about it more because the majority of people who control social media platforms tend to be left leaning.
In general, people only want free speech for things they want to say, but not for things they disagree with.
Not quite Antifa but here's an example of a Harvard grad losing her consulting job due to threatening violence against people who say "all lives matter" [1]
We've all heard this, but did he actually go out and shoot someone and do it? He was talking out of his *ss about how confident he was about his supporters. English isn't even my first language and I could tell that's what he meant.
Conversations like these don't happen in a vacuum. There's the immediate context of the conversation and there's the historical context of people A and B.
And that's even assuming that the real meaning is in the text of the conversation rather than the subtext.
"All lives matter" is a good example. As a point divorced from any context it's an entirely correct and virtuous statement to make. But in the context of BLMthe subtext of the statement makes it a radically different one, and pointedly offensive, one.
Religion is also a protected class, and that's not unchangeable. Political affiliation is also a protected class in California, and it's certainly possible that it could be made so at the national level.
But in any case, the comment by M2Ys4U was making an argument based on the idea of freedom of association. I'm generally for that freedom, but making an argument from freedom of association without addressing anti-discrimination laws can at least appear opportunistic and cynical (though it may not be).
You've never heard of religious conversions? Or people losing their faith?
I think it is easier to change our beliefs about some things than others, but that has more to with how that belief relates to our other beliefs. If a particular belief is not just something we believe to be true, but is also a framework we use to make sense of the world, then new information is rarely sufficient to contradict it. With any worldview/religion/ideology, you're going to run into facts that are difficult to explain in light of it.
> You've never heard of religious conversions? Or people losing their faith?
Are these conscious though? I always assumed faith was spontaneous. You don't just read a holy book and become a believer right? Faith stems from one's upbringing and/or deeply felt religious experiences. Whereas a non-religious book that gave you new facts about a particular topic could potentially convince you to change your mind.
I think you're right that opinions are harder to change the more fundamental to one's worldview they are.
I see the change in belief as always being a two-step process:
1. Receiving and understanding new information
2. Processing and integrating that new information.
When the belief you are updating is a relatively unconnected node in the graph of beliefs, that second processing step takes almost no time. If it's heavily connected, the processing takes longer. That's why conversions often seem "spontaneous": your subconscious has been busily reworking the web of beliefs to integrate the new information, and eventually everything clicks into place and you have an epiphany.
I don't see faith as some special category of per se. To my mind, faith is simply another word for trust. The implication is simply that it is a belief you are willing to act on.
The cancel culture debate is about free speech ideals, not actual laws. Moral rights, not legal rights (these are not the same thing and the latter is not a perfect subset of the former).
>Free association is also a right that needs to be protected.
Does hiring process enjoy the right for free association? I'm pretty sure for employment specifically there's a huge chunk of legislation that governs it.
>Does hiring process enjoy the right for free association? I'm pretty sure for employment specifically there's a huge chunk of legislation that governs it.
Yes it does, and yes there is.
I'm not arguing that the right to free association should be absolute.
Both freedom of association and freedom of speech MUST be qualified if society is to function well.
"Anonymity on the internet. People can say whatever they want without attaching their name, face and self-pride. This creates extremely unproductive conversations without consequences. Platforms such as Twitter propel this behavior to new heights. When it was local, you'd lose friends for being unpleasant, you'd lose credibility in your community for being inflammatory." [0]
The problem is that for most of us, we find some actual truths unpleasant and inflammatory. It's unfortunate that we're not all adept at accepting opposing ideas with more equanimity. But sometimes hearing difficult or poorly conveyed ideas can be helpful and healthy.
Think of how many racists didn't want to hear about social justice and would have gladly used any means possible to ostracize those challenging the status-quo. Some civil-rights activists lives might have been saved had they been able to work anonymously.
We should all be talking about how we can better manage our emotions in the face of trolls and opposing ideas -- rather than how to make all such discomfort disappear from view.
To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media.
This article seems more focused on situations in which you are concerned about government action, but I think here in the West we've found that "cancel culture" and the like is more insidious and far-reaching in its own way.