Davies wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2020 8:36 am
Except that being published is not a right, but a privilege, and so denying it to someone ("cancelling them" in your vulgar idiom) is not a crime.
RainOnTheSun wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2020 11:28 am
It's so, so weird to me when some people treat "canceling" someone as a nuclear option when all it really means is that people on the internet don't like you.
The problem here is that it what "Cancel Culture" can basically be classified as a combination of "Targeted Harassment", "Deplatforming" and "Trying to Get Someone Fired". It's a group of people (either a legitimately large group or a small group with using various means to appear like a large one) using social media to target a specific person, their family or their place of employment, and try to make their lives objectively worse than they were before. I mean, "people on the internet not liking you" is what some people have gone before the UN to describe as a constant barrage of negativity that affects their lives. People who advised them that they should mute people that act that way, get "thicker skin", told "don't feed the trolls" and such were condemned as horrible people denying the existence of those being harassed.
So the difference between "Cancel Culture" and "Online Harassment" largely seems to be whether you agree or not with the person being targeted. Except, again, this is actually affecting people's livelhoods. We have people combing through 5, 8 or 10 year old social media posts looking for ammunition to cost people their jobs. We have people willing to make false allegations against others that have cost the accused work, or who were brought in specifically to try and deny someone the right to a position.
There's a reason why things like Tortious Interference and Wrongful Termination exist, after all.
What muddles the waters even further is that not all offenses are treated equally. Several payment processors and crowdfunding platforms have shown a willingness to not only deplatform people for offenses, but also choose to enforce the rules by which they do so arbitrarily. Some people have been kicked off of a platform for their word choices said off the platform, while others have used those same words on the platform itself and not been banned. Social media is okay with statements made towards one group, but when someone simply changed the name of the group to a different one, they got banned for it. And in an age where some industries make use of social media, online payment platforms and similar things for what they do, being denied access to them CAN be a nuclear option.
If the terms of service for these platforms were being enforced equally, it wouldn't be an issue. But it's clear that they aren't, and that's a dangerous precedent, because it shows that some biases are okay.
The idea of someone losing their job also shouldn't be treated lightly. Being locked out of your career for things you might not have done or for things that aren't illegal is no small thing. That's a person's livelyhood. That's how they maintain their home, get fed, and potentially provide for their families.
Being against online harassment yet being okay with cancel culture is a contradictory position, essentially stating that you're okay with some people being bullied while others need to be protected.
The traditional way you got someone fired was simply by not buying their product, leaving a single bad review of said product, and letting the market decide their fate. If they haven't done anything actually illegal, and if they haven't violated policies of their workplace that are enforced equally to everyone, then they should be allowed the same work opportunities as everyone else.