I think people are finally starting to understand that public speech in the 21st century and public speech in the 20th century are not the same thing at all.
Tweeting your opinion in 2020 is analogous to going on national television and airing your opinion in 1990.
Would you feel comfortable airing a controversial opinion on national television? Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job and your reputation after going in front of the nation and saying "I think interracial marriages should be illegal"? No? Then don't tweet it because that's basically the same thing.
> Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job and your reputation after going in front of the nation and saying "I think interracial marriages should be illegal"?
Don't you think that's a bit disingenuous? People aren't being canceled for having overt racist beliefs. They're being canceled for having polite (but political) disagreements.
The issue at play here is large-scale mob action. In the online space, it takes the form of bullying and cancel culture.
Terry Crews, for example, is in trouble for using the word "coon". But Terry Crews didn't call anyone a coon. He was called coon and made up an acronym that he felt could empower himself and others. Whether Terry's career is destroyed or not, the attempt to bully him out of the public eye is there and it sends a message.
> "Take what we give you."
> "You won't be given a charitable reading of anything you say."
> "Your beliefs will be stretched and twisted to the extreme."
> "And if they can't be then we'll attack you for what you didn't say."
> Don't you think that's a bit disingenuous? People aren't being canceled for having overt racist beliefs. They're being canceled for having polite (but political) disagreements.
I picked a controversial opinion. Your beef seems to be that mundane political opinions shouldn't be controversial. I agree with you, but that's not really relevant to the point I'm trying to make.
The point im trying to make is that some people treated Facebook or Twitter like a group of friends, when any digital post or recording can instantly become more like a nationally televised segment.
I understand your point but Terry Crew's probably understands his tweets reach millions of people. He uses it to advertise his TV shows.
And I have to have some sympathy for people who live their entire internet lives is absolute obscurity only to have their worst moment (or maybe just their most misunderstood) be promoted to a "nationally televised" level post-hoc.
> And I have to have some sympathy for people who live their entire internet lives is absolute obscurity only to have their worst moment (or maybe just their most misunderstood) be promoted to a "nationally televised" level post-hoc.
I do too. It should be known that the internet is not an obscure place. It is equivalent to a broadcast on national television. If nobody read your posts online it's because you were lucky, that's all.
Personally I took effort to go back and delete posts that I made in my youth. I hope others do the same.
In private conversation, you have a chance to clarify what you mean and some knowledge of your audience to anticipate how they will understand what you say. Online, your brief statement will be taken in isolation and interpreted by potentially thousands of different people with different perspectives. Have you noticed how there are no polite but political disagreements on national television? Talking heads either say things so uncontroversial that no one could complain, or they get into a fight with another talking head. This is not a coincidence. You might think your view is polite and reasonable, but there are plenty of people out there who would consider it overtly racist or otherwise bigoted.
You phrase this as if there was some secretive cabal actively trying to destroy Terry Crews when really there's just a small number of random people pissed off about a racial slur.
Which has been a staple of the news for many decades now, and will be for decades to come. Finding those niche views most people disapprove of and getting everyone's emotions up keeps them engaged.
It's more akin to publishing an obnoxious letter to the editor in a 20th century newspaper.
- The circulation was limited but everyone in the blast radius was aware of the affront. Just like today's echo chambers.
- It would generate a huge response from readership. Because people were aware and knew they could involve themselves.
- That could get someone fired. The opinion writer included.
- It could make the newspaper stop accepting any more submissions from the person, often because the paper felt social and economic pressure. Deplatforming!
- It could also focus attention on a problem and get a community involved. Just like social media today.
Communication in ye olde 20th century had roughly the same dynamics. Probably because it was among people.
You're trying to examine the morality of the mob. Obviously the mob doesn't have a consistent and justifiable moral stance; it's a mob.
My point is that when you post online, you're not publically speaking to your neighbors from the sidewalk. You're broadcasting nationally. Including to an angry mob.
So no, I wouldn't agree with "As long as you don’t tweet obviously racist things, you’ll be fine."
I would rather say, if you don't post online, don't have any recordings of yourself posted online, and otherwise manage to prevent yourself from having any significant online presence, you'll be fine.
That’s tantamount to saying as long as you don’t share your opinions, you’ll be fine. (That’s the conclusión people have reached, hence the article.) A huge amount of our communication is digital. Neighbors talk to each other over Nextdoor. Coworkers email, slack, and zoom. People whip out their phones to record strangers behaving badly/strangely/in an arbitrary way they don’t like. Any of that can and does get posted online and it doesn’t matter how irrelevant your online presence might have previously been.
Nothing about internet broadcasting is new. We’ve been doing that for decades. People were already talking on forums and Usenet in the 90s, which could be easily shared with a link or televised. In 2010 Facebook had been open to the public for 4 years and Twitter had millions of tweets each day. We didn’t see this same type of mass mob behavior back then. Diversity of opinion was far more tolerated, and the majority of internet users today developed an online presence of some kind in this environment.
Now in 2020, even those past posts can incite the mob, regardless of whether they were controversial or not at the time.
You can be frustrated with internet mobs all you want. I am as well. I've had people I care about cancelled over nothing.
But let's not deny reality. The world and the internet is VASTLY more connected, in the mainstream sense, than it was 10 or 30 years ago. My grandma is on Facebook and my employer pays top dollar to curate their businesses' online presence.
The internet has never been a more dangerous place to share your real opinions with your real name attached, and people need to recognize this. There's no reason to believe it's going to get better from here, and there's all the reason to believe it's going to get worse.
> Obviously the mob doesn't have a consistent and justifiable moral stance; it's a mob.
Problem with that is that one mob is given unhindered support for venting their spleen, whereas whereas the opposing mob is deplatformed, doxxed, etc. etc.
I don't even need to say which side is which, do I? We all know.
Sure, I mean it's basically tautological, but the populist mob enforces the popular opinion.
I'm sure someone's gonna chew me out for this opinion, but even though i disagree with "mob justice" on principle at the same time i DO feel good when I see mob justice taken on someone who, in my gut, I feel really deserves it.
I acknowledge that feeling is the problem. I'm aware of that.
For a probably not-too-controversial example, I hate Scientology. And way back when, Anonymous/4chan took on Scientology, and maybe didn't completely take it down but certainly made a good effort. And I cheered the whole way, because I hate Scientology.
But I don't agree with mob justice.
I don't know, it's a contradiction logically but that's definitely a thing.
You're backpedaling. Now you're acting as if you were giving self-preservation advice in the face of a mob, whereas in your original comment you were supporting said mob. What is your stance?
I see, I misunderstood what you meant by "Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job". I now see that you probably meant it as "Would you feel confident that you still have your job". I originally thought you meant "Would you feel comfortable with a world in which people would still have their job if ...". My apologies.
I actually care far more about potential employers and governments scraping through my history for inconvenient opinions than any mob.
The odds of being noticed by a mob are like getting hit by lightning, the odds of some lowest bidder contractor building a tool to detect inappropriate twitter hearts are almost certain.
>Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job and your reputation after going in front of the nation and saying "I think interracial marriages should be illegal"?
That's not what people are getting fired for, though. People always do this- argue for speech limitations by using examples like "we should kill all the X", while the people they then ban have said things like "I think diversity decreases social trust and that there are biological differences between men and women".
There is now only a single safe way to exist in the public sphere:
- Anonymously over the Internet.
A private text, a public tweet, a personal blog post or video, anything caught by a camera without your consent or awareness. All are susceptible of being used to ruin your life if a large enough group of people are willing to.
The last half of that sentence, which is pretty important, is "and you do something offensive enough to a large enough group of people that they want to ruin your life."
The examples of people "accidentally" ruining their own lives with a racist or sexist tweet is a pretty short list.
"Offensive" is both in the eye of the beholder and changes as time goes on.
An innocuous and innocent opinion today could be, in 10 years, considered extremely offensive. Anyone can drag that "now offensive" comment out of the past to nail you.
I can think of jokes I made 20 years ago that were not even slightly offensive at the time, that would get me instantly fired today. Good thing I didn't post them on a medium like the Internet that is infinitely achievable and searchable.
Yes. This is the worry. "Airplane" is considered one of the funniest movies ever made and most of the jokes would probably never see the light of the day today.
Most people recognise this. There was that incident with the Canadian prime minister wearing blackface 20 years ago. The tabloids tried to blow it up but ultimately no one cares because it was a long time ago.
I have not once, in all the years of hand-wringing over "cancel culture," seen a rich person made poor, or a famous person made obscure, by "the mob" finding old tweets and publicizing them.
Not once. For all the power the mob has to ruin lives, you'd think there would be lives ruined -- not mildly inconvenienced or temporarily embarrassed.
Some people have lost their jobs over a tweet. Rich people and celebrities are the most visible but it isn't as if little people haven't been swept up on occasion.
People lose their jobs over all sorts of things all the time. Before "cancel culture," people could lose their jobs over a complaint from a single angry customer, or a joke or comment that got elevated to HR, or any reason at all.
That doesn't ruin lives, it's a relatively common occurrence, particularly in the modern day. People are only equating it to Orwellian dystopia and Stasi oppression because politics has become involved. But it's not cancel culture's fault that at-will employment exists entirely at the whim and mercy of the employer, or that political activism (which cancel culture is) is clearly free speech. It's always been the case that if someone can convince your boss to fire you, you can be fired.
Usenet was a thing in 1990, and people absolutely did post their opinions there. It was nothing like going on national TV, even though it was quite possible for a Usenet post to go "viral" (resulting in months-long threads with many hundred replies, sometimes cross-posted elsewhere on the internet).
> Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job and your reputation after going in front of the nation and saying "I think interracial marriages should be illegal"?
Funny choice there, since that used to be conventional wisdom well into the 1960s and later, at least in some places. You'd get in trouble for saying the opposite!
I think the number of people that tweet these specific things is vastly exaggerated, a mob tries to attach these opinions to certain groups to have an excuse to hate them, completely neglecting the reality that there isn't a group that justifies a prosecution complex that dictates that certain people should be removed from the public sphere by association. This is why we have this article.
That TV is loosing its audience is no accident and tangentially related.
>Us troops were actively trying to stop schools with little girls from getting blown up
By blowing up other schools, hospitals, weddings, and countless of civilians?
War crimes are war crimes. And it's not like we don't know that the US is primarily interested in middle eastern oil, and not actually spreading peace in the region.
> the US is primarily interested in middle eastern oil
This is a very vague phrase. The US does things which seem to drive up the price of oil, and things that seem to drive it down. The US economy also involves consuming a lot of oil and producing a lot of oil. So I don't know how you relate foreign policy in the mideast to that. "Interest in oil" can explain anything, anything that raises the price and anything that lowers it, and therefore nothing. Blaming the defense industry makes more sense to me, except that the US defense industry can and does sell arms worldwide, so why do they particularly need the US to be involved in a war?
Depends, if I could go on National Television in a hoodie and mask and air out a list of grievances I have with the wretched society and what should be done about it, maybe I would.
Some things are acceptable in California, but are not elsewhere. Some things are unacceptable in California, but are elsewhere.
For instance, Germans have a vastly different cultural and legal stance on when it's acceptable to film strangers. The same can be said about nudity, free speech, borders, and perception of historical events.
Globalist is a misnomer. It's US-centric. The call on what is acceptable shouldn't be left to a somewhat homogenous group of Californian middle-class employees.
> Society defined controversial, as it always has, and always will.
You honestly think there aren't powerful opinion shaping efforts underway? If so I wish I lived in your world - I cannot get away from the incessant politics on any media platform whatsoever.
> And "globalist" as opposed to what, exactly?
Are you seriously suggesting there's no alternative? And seriously questioning the legtimacy of the term globalist by putting it in double quotes? If so that's the end of the conversation from my side.
Excellent non-answer to what a globalist is. Who are some prominent globalists? What are their agendas? What do they look like? What is the opposite of a globalist? What are some links from balanced and fairly researched news sources that can tell us about your views on globalists?
Because in it's best interpretation, "globalist" is a thinly veiled insult for "person even slightly more liberal than I am, who I don't like," even though if you look up the actual definition, everyone with a functioning brain should be a globalist:
> noun a person who advocates the interpretation or planning of economic and foreign policy in relation to events and developments throughout the world.
I don't know many people who think we shouldn't take world events and developments into account with regard to our economic and foreign policy. So any time someone uses globalist as an insult or pejorative term, I have to wonder what they really mean. Because it's always code for something else.
Let me give it a try: Under globalism, the concept of national sovereignty with respect to economic policy is effectively banned, and this ban is enforced by international agencies such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund.
For examples, see the international spread of excessive copyright, anti-circumvention laws, "free trade" agreements that include criminal enforcement of trade secrets, and require governments to submit to investor-state dispute settlement, effectively subjugating their laws to unelected international arbiters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlem...
Then there's the chilling effect on lawmaking. It cost Australia $39 million to defend their tobacco plain packaging law [1], the USA was forbidden from enforcing country-of-origin labeling on beef [2] (despite politicians at the time lying the free-trade agreement wouldn't impact sovereignty), and Canadian and Mexican governments are known to severely restrict their environmental law-making to avoid getting sued under NAFTA [3]. Other impacts of free trade as dictated by globalist organizations such as the WTO are also far from clearly positive [4].
In fact, anti-globalism used to be extremely well represented by the political left [5,6]. But somehow, all that opposition faded away. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Now is there any other extremely well documented and reported-upon term you'd like to pretend to be ignorant of?
Edit: I committed the same sin as my sibling comment. Defining globalist as "a person who advocates the interpretation or planning of economic and foreign policy in relation to events and developments throughout the world" is a much too broad definition (since it describes almost everyone, including die-hard nationalists). Similarly, the definition that I gave is much too narrow. To qualify as globalism, sovereignty in economic matters wouldn't have to be 'banned', as I wrote. 'Significantly reduced' would be enough.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization#Criti...Some prominent skeptics cite the example of El Salvador. In the early 1990s, they removed all quantitative barriers to imports and also cut tariffs. However, the country's economic growth remained weak. On the other hand, Vietnam which only began reforming its economy in the late 1980s, saw a great deal of success by deciding to follow the China's economic model and liberalizing slowly along with implementing safeguards for domestic commerce. Vietnam has largely succeeded in accelerating economic growth and reducing poverty without immediately removing substantial trade barriers. [..] Economist Ha-Joon Chang himself argues that there is a "paradox" in neo-liberal beliefs regarding free trade, because the economic growth of developing countries was higher in the 1960-1980 period compared to the 1980-2000 period even though its trade policies are now far more liberal than before.
Did it? Maybe some particular group of people deemphasized anti-globalism when it was picked up by the right wing more. Maybe the others are still around.
Or, maybe some particular group of people is "reality based" as they say, and updated their opinions due to evidence, as one does.
Or, maybe some people feel that relative priorities have changed due to what the opposition is doing.
None of those alternatives refute the 'fading away' in any way.
And I gave plenty of examples - feel free to point out which someone that's "reality based" would consider no longer relevant, or debunked by evidence. Maybe the environmental crisis is over? Have consumer rights triumphed over DRM? Has corporate transparency become so well-established that we can afford to criminalize revealing trade secrets without fear of stifling whistleblowers? Did the food industry become so conscientious that we can loosen labeling requirements?
>None of those alternatives refute the 'fading away' in any way.
The purpose of my examples was to show I can imagine the opposition not fading away, but people selectively ignoring it. So, if you feel confident in making the characterization that anti-globalization has been de-emphasized in a coordinated way, please explain how you know it's gone.
"Globalist" in the context of this thread about cancel culture was conflated with "leftist." No one is discussing international trade here.
And yes, the term "globalism" as an anti-leftist pejorative originates (as most anti-left rhetoric does) in anti-semitic prejudice and along with terms like "cultural Marxism" (a literal anti-semitic conspiracy theory) and "New York liberal" is often employed as a dog-whistle by the racist right. That's simply fact.
You could take most anti-leftist/anti-cancel culture screeds on HN and replace the politically correct words with "Jew" and it would fit right in in 1940s Germany, up to and including the insidious conspiracy that controls politics and the media and is even willing to kill to further its dark, society destroying agenda.
Now, does this mean that literally anyone who uses those terms or that conspiratorial rhetoric about the "leftist/globalist" agenda is automatically an anti-semite? No. It does mean that those who aren't may be unintentionally signal-boosting for those who are.
Isn’t it also that many people conflate the freedom to speak with the freedom from consequence?
The government isn’t cracking down on people for what they say. But if you broadcast something that goes against your employer’s values (whatever they may be) you can probably expect some blowback—for example.
And you nailed it when you said tweeting is akin to broadcasting, because it is. It is not akin to having a discussion with a group of people. It just doesn’t feel like broadcasting maybe—so people have a false sense about it.
I think the word you are looking for is "retaliation" and not "consequences". E.g. when you tell a waiter you want to order chicken and get chicken or you tweet that you hate Python and stop being solicited for Python jobs or you defraud somebody and get sued etc. you suffer consequences i.e. the logical effects of your actions[1], speech in this case.
However, when you tweet that you support a presidential candidate and lose your job or when you expose some shady dealings as a journalist and your house is attacked by a mob or you state your opinion about anything and get death threats - these are not consequences of your speech. These are examples of revenge or retaliation. We do mean that freedom to speak is freedom from retaliation. We actually have laws against retaliation in specific cases and, yes, even against retaliation by private parties.
You're not free from all retaliation, especially if those laws are only in specific cases.
For example, there are laws for retaliation, even. You can say whatever you want, but if that speech happens to be untrue and directed at some party you could be subject to a defamation suit. That is not the government punishing you for your speech, but it is a legal retaliation for what was said.
Obviously we are not free from all retaliation just as we are not free from all murder. I am addressing the position "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences!" where "consequences" is actually "retaliation". It totally does. It's not about 1A or laws, it's about moral judgment. We (majority of Americans) don't want retaliation for any speech. If you need laws to stop this - we will bring them onto you. We actually have enough laws to fight cancelers right now but the judicial system appears too corrupt (though just few days ago, a lawsuit against WaPo trying to cancel a kid had been successfully settled).
And in your example it's not a retaliation - you can only successfully sue if you have actual damages so if the speech caused damages then the lawsuit is a consequence (just like in the similar example in my previous post about fraud).
I don't have time today to engage in this discussion again but you seem to be taking a lot of over-stepping inconvenient aspects to your own argument. You didn't really explain any further, you just kind of said "no". I'm curious to hear the real distinction because I'm not seeing it. I don't think your rulings over what is "retaliation" versus "legal retaliation" versus "consequence" are correct.
Sure, not all can be predicted but we don't predict when we judge between retaliation and consequences. It has already happened so no prediction is necessary.
Hiding behind the word "consequence" doesn't fool anybody, you know. It's well understood that it refers to doxxing, intimidation, and attempts to injure the subject's livelihood by inducing their employer to terminate them without cause, none of which is legal.
Terminating someone without cause is certainly legal (in the US, anyway), and usually the safest way to avoid wrongful termination suits.
But the GP is actually right - people misunderstand that "freedom of speech" means "freedom [from government interference in my] speech [except under very specific circumstances]." Any other interpretation has no basis in law or reality. Like the scene from Liar, Liar, my employer can compel me to say that the blue pen is actually red, and fire me if I don't. Me taking the pen to court and showing it to the judge won't prove anything, won't get my job back, etc.
Picking obviously abhorrent things like anti-miscegenation makes the argument easier. If a coworker was vocally against interracial marriage I would expect and demand that my employer terminate them, but I would be against the government making it a crime to speak out against interracial marriage.
> "If a coworker was vocally advocating that abortion is legal I would expect and demand that my employer terminate them, but I would be against the government making it a crime to speak out in favor of allowing abortion to be legal."
See the problem now? Anything that one side makes permissible can be used by others political movements for their own ends in ways you might not like.
Moreover, it's not really clear that coordinated efforts to induce an employer to terminate someone are legal, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference You use an example for a co-worker but most often these terminations are caused by external pressure.
The thing about free speech is the content is irrelevant. You changed the message and political leaning of the statement, which is fine, but if that changes your opinion about the speech you're not a free speech advocate. Whether it's a pro-choice or anti-choice argument is irrelevant. You're free to say it, and your employer is free to take whatever action they see fit from it - from nothing, to promoting you, to terminating you.
> Any other interpretation has no basis in law or reality.
Err, if you say something, the government also protects you from other citizens attacking you physically, not just the government. They often fail, but there's no hint of "if you say something and somebody is upset, they're free to punch you".
Whether or not they are free to punch you has no basis in whether or not your speech is protected in that instance. And sometimes they are free to punch you.
If you say you're going to kill me (not protected speech), and a reasonable person would believe you, I can hit you in self defense (affirmative defense for criminal battery).
Not if your speech is protected, that's the point. And that's also what cancel culture, doxxing etc is about. They're not going after people announcing plans to kill the President or shoot up a school.
Free speech without the government enforcing the physical integrity of the speaker is meaningless.
> Not if your speech is protected, that's the point.
Actually, the point is that your speech is protected from the government (and with certain specific exceptions). Your speech is specifically, emphatically not protected from non-government actors.
> It's well understood that it refers to doxxing, intimidation, and attempts to injure the subject's livelihood by inducing their employer to terminate them without cause, none of which is legal.
All of them are legal, except some forms of “intimidation”. And, actually, it's “inducing their employer to terminate them with a cause ThrowawayR2 doesn't like” not “without cause”.
Tweeting your opinion in 2020 is analogous to going on national television and airing your opinion in 1990.
Would you feel comfortable airing a controversial opinion on national television? Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job and your reputation after going in front of the nation and saying "I think interracial marriages should be illegal"? No? Then don't tweet it because that's basically the same thing.