Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/technology/emily-wilder-firing-ap.html

by rutenspitz • 5 years ago

169 162 5 years ago

nytimes.com

neonate• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/KlFqg

ksd482• 5 years ago

Giving server error constantly. Perhaps it will recover.

But here's an alternative: https://web.archive.org/web/20210530000441/https://www.nytim...

clouddrover• 5 years ago

This is the problem with all data collection. You can't predict who will use that data for what purpose in the future.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 5 years ago

Or at the very least, why hasn’t a fear of mutually assured destruction set in?

I think this is the mutually assured destruction phrase. A lot of the “cancel culture” has been deployed by the Left. The Right is now using it against people on the Left. This “cancel culture” will go away when both sides see that there is no net gain, only a grinder destroying people.

kragen3• 5 years ago

MAD doesn't work when the people who get destroyed aren't the people who launched the missiles. It isn't enough for them to be other people from the same faction.

When Kennedy was considering nuking Khrushchev, he had to face the reality that, if he did, his own family would die, and if he didn't, they probably wouldn't. Khrushchev, mutatis mutandis. If Kennedy had given the first-strike command, an individual colonel in a missile silo pondering whether to disobey wouldn't face a similar choice; he would know that, whatever he chose, hundreds of other colonels at other missile silos would launch their missiles, the Soviets would retaliate, and his family would die. So his only self-interest was not getting court-martialed for insubordination.

The difference with cancel culture is that there is no Kennedy and no Khrushchev who has the authority to not fire the missiles. Every missile silo independently decides whether to fire and who to fire at, but they compete with other missile silos on the same side to demonstrate greater viciousness. And, instead of killing a million people, every missile kills a ten-thousandth of a person. So it's more of a grinder, as you say, than a firestorm.

So, there's no net gain, but abstaining from the witch hunt is not a Nash equilibrium. It may even put you up at the stake next week when it's seen that you were insufficiently enthusiastic about today's Three Minutes Hate.

More concretely, if you choose not to fire your employee because there's a social media hate campaign directed at him, whether you're right or not, that won't provide you any protection at all when it comes out that twelve years ago you posted something anti-transgender. Or pro-transgender, depending on who's canceling you.

Your optimistic prediction would be true in a world where collective action was easy, and we had plenty of free software, no global warming, and no taxes, just volunteer work.

gus_massa• 5 years ago

I mostly agree, but Kennedy and Khrushchev families probably had bunkers to survive. On the other hand, the families of the Colonels were probably living in a military facility that was a primary target of the counterstrike...

Stanislav Petrov decided to ignore the official protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Ekaros• 5 years ago

One issue with MAD is that other side is moral where one isn't. That is right believes in free speech so there is much lower tendency of attacking the people on other side for what they have said...

kodah3• 5 years ago

These are untruths. Neither of you are moral.

plank_time• 5 years ago

I realized this back in 1997 when dejanews started up. From then on I never posted with my real name, and never will.

I only have a very limited internet presence with my real name and never post any of my opinions on it.

exo-pla-net• 5 years ago

Caution is still advised. ML identity-matching using your writing patterns/idiosyncracies will likely be a thing in the near future.

fuzxi• 5 years ago

I'm envisioning a browser extension that runs your posts back-and-forth through Google Translate and DeepL a few times, scrubbing your post of all personal markings (and nuance).

david_allison• 5 years ago

Stylometry is already a well-studied field, just not typically applied to online datasets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

Another place people never post with their real name: the voting booth. Hence the big shockers: "How did XXXX win?" It's because nobody who thought that way ever said so out loud.

Animats• 5 years ago

The big problem now seems to be thought policing by employers. Sometimes because they fear mobs, online or offine, coming after them.

The secondary problem is being forced off social media for more or less random reasons.

TakawaraJu• 5 years ago

Is the fear really justified though?

My first thought is to ignore them because they’re usually microscopic in terms of scale but I’d love to hear from someone who has had their business targeted by a mob and what effect it had on the bottom line and morale

makomk2• 5 years ago

Yeah, and I suspect that often what employers really fear is that publications like the New York Times will join the pile-on and a lot of the really aggressive, fire first and ask questions later approaches are attempts to get ahead of the story before they do so that the news headlines are about an ex-employee and it's clear what their stance is.

kragen3• 5 years ago

Ironic that this is being posted by the NYT (though not as an editorial, I guess), who fired Quinn Norton within 24 hours because she'd embedded herself in Anonymous and consequently used the word "fag", years earlier. The mob framed her as anti-gay despite her having had an outspokenly bisexual life partner around that time.

cornel_io3• 5 years ago

Right, there are only three consistent positions here: 1) this type of firing is unfair and bad, 2) this type of firing is fair and good ("consequence culture"), or 3) "I'm a partisan who just wants my enemies to burn"

Maybe 80% of the people that opine on this subject are in category 3), 19% are in 1), and only 1% actually believe this sort of thing is great even when it hits someone that's on their team. Unfortunately all of the category 3 hardcore partisans tell themselves that when they tear someone on the other side down it's different because they were really wrong.

Here's a good test: if >50% of people on each of the left and the right would agree that someone has done something so egregious that they should face consequences, you're probably dealing with a real problem person and not a case of awry cancel culture. If more than half of either party would say that what a person has said is OK, you're probably dealing with a partisan cancellation.

Edit: I should mention that I have more extreme feelings in favor of free speech than the above paragraph, in that I think even opinions that are outside the window for both parties deserve protection and shouldn't usually result in firings unless super duper out there and horrible. But my point is that at the very least, if something is a majority position in a major party, it's a mainstream position and it is extremely questionable (both morally and practically) to ever fire someone for expressing a common belief.

pjc503• 5 years ago

if >50% of people on each of the left and the right would agree that someone has done something so egregious that they should face consequences

Is that really achievable for people who are political figures? That is, for someone attributed to a "side", is it actually possible to get the two sides to agree on anything? We've seen the defense of some quite spectacular indefensible behavior lately. Attempts to investigate The Jan 6 incident have been filibustered.

There's two aspects which really ought to be separated:

1) is this behavior bad?

2) has this person done that?

Much of the partisan fighting over racism and homophobia disagrees at #1. Much of the disagreement over sexual assualt happens at #2; if an event happens and only the victim witnesses it, is that sufficient proof?

darkerside2• 5 years ago

That's a very relativistic definition of morals. That's not too say it isn't valid, but there are tradeoffs to adopting a framework like that. One of them is that it inevitably shifts over time, making it more prone to abuse.

On a separate note, I don't agree with your breakdown of people because I think it's possible to have principles that are not partisanship but are also orthogonal to "mob good" vs "mob bad".

ashtonkem7• 5 years ago

I’m a bit baffled why were treating “cancel culture” as one, monolithic thing, when it’s pretty clear that each case is a bit different.

Someone losing their job for having a public melt down is not the same as a celebrity getting criticized, and that’s not the same as someone clearly losing some sort of nasty office politics war. Treating this as a monolithic block is silly.

goatinaboat2• 5 years ago

Maybe 80% of the people that opine on this subject are in category 3)

Category 3 is actually “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”

makomk2• 5 years ago

It's pretty obvious that the reason the NYT is doing this is that someone was fired who they saw as being on the same side as them, for online speech they were extremely sympathetic towards, due to stuff dug up by Republican supporters. This particular issue is heavily tied to the US political divide: supporting Palestine is seen as a left-wing thing, and labelling those people as anti-Semites a right-wing tactic.

Which, I think, probably says something about how likely it is that people genuinely believe the talking point invoked in this article that the right-wing is the real cancel culture. If it was, it wouldn't be so shocking that and news-worthy that it happened, and the sole other example in the article wouldn't be someone from 2004 who built a career in media thanks to the supposed cancellation - exactly the kind of thing the press would point to as proof "cancel culture" isn't real if the left were the ones calling for her head.

MikeUt• 5 years ago

the sole other example in the article wouldn't be someone from 2004 who built a career in media thanks to the supposed cancellation - exactly the kind of thing the press would point to as proof "cancel culture" isn't real if the left were the ones calling for her head.

I think we agree, but to elaborate further, here's an informative post on the topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-pop...

One should also look at how the average person would see this. If after expressing an opinion, the only viable career left is that of a political commentator/provocateur (the market for which is limited), most people will stay silent.

mahkeiro• 5 years ago

What is particularly stupid is thinking that people don’t change. And that’s especially true with things posted when you are a teenager. People judging someone through a post made when they were 14-16 year old (or even 25 years ago) should be the one fired.

tluyben2• 5 years ago

This is a difficult problem to solve unless you can remove stuff about yourself from Google and other platforms. Which won't happen as that would be expensive manual work for the platforms. I cannot imagine what happens to the gigs of info young people post online (about eachother and themselves) that will be mined in 10-20 years by companies and used for evil.

Since I said something in an interview to push a particular business agenda and had that used against me since then in all kinds of contexts, I make sure nothing more appears about me online. I cannot really understand how something I said or did (in this example: I was cto of a services company and in the interview I mention I like services more than products, which, at the time I did; this is no longer true) in a business setting 10 years ago is relevant to something I do now but clients and investors bring it up.

Makes it kind of weird how straight up criminals get positions and investments time and time again even when they have 100s or 1000s of news articles from actual reputable press against them...

xg15• 5 years ago

Isn't this more or lesss what the EU's "right to be forgotten" initiative was about? To my knowledge, GDPR also contains legal provisions that let you enforce deletion of your data.

How usable this is in practice when entire industries depend on preserving that data is another question...

3np• 5 years ago

There actually is a process to remove yourself from Google Search results.

https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/9685456?...

https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?...

codingdave• 5 years ago

Those are not describing a process you can go through - they are telling you manage your robots file and handle your own content security if you own a site, or talk to the site owner if you don't own the site, and then gives very narrow conditions about removal if you cannot get the site owner to control the content.

exabrial• 5 years ago

The word that doesn't exist in Silicon Valley; consent.

nojs• 5 years ago

Wow, this is a bit rich coming from the NYT. They are among the worst offenders.

ithkuil• 5 years ago

Don't weaponize their digital past! /s

bumbada• 5 years ago

The NYT is extremely sectarian. They have been doing exactly what they now critizice for people in their right for a long time.

And it is impressive what we are seeing today with corona and Wuhan lab, all those media were basically calling lunatics to those that believed in the Wuhan lab hypothesis,licking the boots of their Chinese masters, now suddenly it is ok to believe that.

It is a huge problem for them, when looking back you can see clearly how much they were lying:

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994

Since facebook and google bankrupted press media taking their Ads money, you basically can't trust them anymore, they sell themselves to the biggest bidder.

0xy• 5 years ago

I want to point out that Vox only labeled the edits and tweeted about it after they were caught red handed stealth editing their deception.

The other "usual suspects" were all attacking lab leak theory in 2020, including CNN, Washington Post and the NYT.

Washington Post's chief fact checker called it "debunked".

These people are quite literally controlling the flow of information, given their secret contracts with Facebook and their influence on Twitter, YouTube and other platforms.

Corporate media needs to die before they get more people killed (NYT lied about WMDs in Iraq and thousands of innocent people died, nobody was fired).

tobesure• 5 years ago

I think the situation is far more dire. The same types of political ideologues are taking over FAANG and other tech spaces, and other information outlets, like Wikipedia, where only "approved" or "authoritative" sources are typically accepted.

Corporate and social culture have been hijacked by a sort of soft, insidious, growing authoritarianism and the consequences for the future of the west are severe, especially because these newly dominant voices are increasingly openly hostile to the ≈50% of the population whom they are effectively disenfranchising. Even fundraising for controversial figures who have anything remotely in common with right of center ideology is impossible between the fundraising sites and credit card companies. Something's got to give and it won't be pretty for anyone.

matwood2• 5 years ago

How the lab leak theory was handled by the media was definitely botched, but at the time the full theory that I saw thrown around was more than an accidental leak. It also included items like purposely engineered to attack the west, and even included purposely releasing in order to attack Trump which afaik there has been zero evidence.

jimmydorry2• 5 years ago

You shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water though. The existence of outlandish claims should not render all unsupported claims invalid. Even if those outlandish claims manage to garner the support of the masses.

dqv• 5 years ago

It seems like that association was engineered. The question went something like "did the virus leak from the WIV?" to which the mass media responded "no, the virus was not man-made!"

crocodiletears• 5 years ago

There were multiple theories of various levels of conspiracy thinking.

The 'deliberately released bioweapon' stance was niche by niche standards. It had a vocal base, and some initial inertia in January due to the HK protests. But the 'accidental lab leak' hypothesis always made more sense.

It was the weakest version of the argument, and the existence of that bathwater in need of being tossed hardly necessitated defenestrating the clean baby lying next to the tub.

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

TROLOLOL!! The NYT has been one of the primary weaponizers of people's digital pasts for years and only now is beside itself because it happened to a fellow journalist on the "Blue Check correct" side of a hotbutton issue? Give me a break.

nicbou2• 5 years ago

I significantly scaled back my online presence this year. I deleted accounts, scrubbed information from my public profiles, and left many communities.

Despite my very bening post history, I don't feel safe participating in the discussion anymore. I don't fear being cancelled, but I am terrified of Internet lynch mobs. They know no due process, no measure, and no limits.

I've dealt with a lot of direct and personal harassment after being very active in a community. I pulled the plug when someone falsely accused me of sending them creepy PMs. It was quickly debunked by stellar mods, but it made the community way too dangerous to participate in.

tjpnz• 5 years ago

I despise litigation but perhaps that's the best solution to solving this - especially when it also involves lies and blackmail. Maybe people will think twice if there are very real consequences involved.

nicbou2• 5 years ago

That's not an option with throwaway accounts

johnchristopher• 5 years ago

The endgame will be that only rich people can afford justice once you need to finance the real consequences and the due process and everyone and every procedures involved. Really, sometimes, I believe the only winning move is not to play.

kwertyoowiyop• 5 years ago

Litigation is only for those who can afford the money, time, and aggravation required.

saargrin• 5 years ago

An organization that ran multiple exposes on people by digging thru their social media is suddenly worried about people digging thru their own past to find obviously antisemitic trash

websites420• 5 years ago

This was written by a person, not the editorial board of NYT. Could you please back your claims of antisemitism? That is a serious accusation that is unfortunately overused to apply to anyone who criticizes Israel.

captainmuon• 5 years ago

Instead of self censoring and deleting our past, we should solve the problem on the recipient's side, and harden ourselves against this kind of attack.

When someone is booted out of office for the wrong reasons (even though it is "the right person", i.e. someone who's views I don't agree with) I speak out against it. If I was a politician, I would pledge before elections to never step down due to anything that happend in my past; if I had a company I would consider adding something into contracts that we cannot fire people due to past controversial statements.

I think we have a unified legal system for a reason, and would prefer if everything prohibited is handled there, after which you are considered innocent again. I don't like cases where someone is legally innocent but yeah he's an asshole and we don't give him a job anymore. You could argue different people have different standards, and it is a free market and people are allowed to choose who they work with and who they deplatform - but in practice, at least in the entertainment industry, the standards are rather monolithic. Companies don't want to offend anyone, and also don't want to get trouble with payment providers, so you get certain behavior. Don't kid yourself, the liberal Twitter bubble doesn't have the kind of power to "cancel" people on their own - big corporations and media companies decide what get's picked up, what get's scandalized, and what is acceptable. And I'd really rather have this decided democratically by some kind of parliament or council than by some companies.

jsiepkes• 5 years ago

if I had a company I would consider adding something into contracts that we cannot fire people due to past controversial statements.

It's not that people think you need to pay for your past "transgressions" (in their eyes). The problem is that people think they can extrapolate your future decisions, behavior, etc. based on a snippet from your past.

So it's not really about something that happened in the past. It's about something that people will think will happen in the future.

topspin• 5 years ago

The problem is that people think they can extrapolate your future decisions

People aren't that noble. You excuse what is callous brutalism as well intentioned error. People aren't guarding against dangerous influences. They're abusing mob power.

mhuffman• 5 years ago

It's not that people think you need to pay for your past "transgressions"

Well we disagree about this. It often seems to be a certain amount of glee involved when someone posts something from someone's online past that might not have been a big issue back then but is a hot-button issue now. Or something that they might have childishly or ignorantly said back then. Or something that they have completely changed their view on now.

But it doesn't matter. They all seem to be immediately followed by calls of some sort of "punishment" to fit the past "crimes".

Who knows what hot-button issues of the future might be?

freebuju2• 5 years ago

The moment Twitter finally went mainstream, that was the death knell for "free" speech. Your employer, government agencies, religious & community leaders are all now on Twitter. Self censorship is not obligatory, it is a requirement to use the platform. Same thing to those family Whatsapp groups.

I remember creating a Facebook account in my teenage years, most of my friends used nicknames on the account names. Why? Because the platform was so popular, the chances of your grandma finding your raunchy posts were also high. The same caution should apply to anyone before signing up for a social media account. Your misplaced, misunderstood caption/ viral post will reach your immediate social circles.

Can't turn back the tide of cancel culture. Believe me, you can't win this on a numbers level. You can only hope your ride is less bumpy. And wait for the wave to pick its next victim.

I think it is kind of stupid the whole world now lives on social media. People really do not understand what SM is at all.

pjc503• 5 years ago

Interesting argument because it implies that launching more "free speech" platforms (e.g. Parler) is actually worse for free speech.

Note that twitter still allows pseudonymity that you're talking about.

swiley• 5 years ago

Free speech isn't dead, you just need to segregate your online identities.

This has always been true even before the internet.

tomjen32• 5 years ago

I don't think the family whatsapp groups really fit in here, because by default they contain only things you want with your family. You can also join other groups that are different and have different focuses.

Anyway reddit is as mainstream as the others and they not only permit account names, basically nobody uses their real names. Heck alt accounts are encouraged too.

cesarvarela• 5 years ago

This topic always reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C31XYgr8gp0

sebow• 5 years ago

Coming from NYT or any other MSM outlet... ironic much?

The media has always been the source of weaponizing people's past, today with even less regard to their current status or any other factor.

comodore_• 5 years ago

Are the journos finally feeling the heat themselves?

journos are one of the worst offenders in this toxic climate.

Weaponizing tweets only loses its power in only two ways, either by every reasonable person and institution realizing that this is stupid, or by mutual assured destruction.

Unfortunately I think we're well past the point of no return, so I'm looking forward to the latter. So let the cancelations continue until moral improves.

cik2• 5 years ago

The lack of nuance on this issue, in society is shocking. We expect people to change and grow over time. People change opinions, political parties, perhaps even ideals, yet we crucify people in the public domain for opinions they once opined, and possibly still hold.

At best this discourages dialogue. It discourages people from interacting in the public domain, vilifies their non-work lives, and unifies them in terrifying ways. Actions have consequences, and (from outside North America) it appears that the goal is to polarize society and then prosecute in the court of public opinion.

emerged• 5 years ago

I’ve noticed society also tends to be surprisingly supportive of people who were once drug addicts, even in spite of any crimes they committed during that time. It’s recognized the effort it takes to change and sometimes evens seems to be perceived as making you a better or more impressive person than someone who never took drugs in the first place.

Maybe these things have to become so prolific that it touches a critical mass of society until we learn how to properly conceptualize people with a past and provide for a path of redemption.

cik2• 5 years ago

Does the question not become redemption from what? There are individuals who support X or support Y - but in the modern era to some group of people support for either of those letters is abhorrent.

Today people are 'cancelled' for holding certain political views. Perhaps in the future they're cancelled for having eaten meat, or spending money in a communist country. What about holding stock in Nestle, or perhaps at one point in time supporting a (now disgraced) cleric. The nuance is rather important - the world is neither black, nor white.

mdoms• 5 years ago

Rich, coming from NY Times.

secondcoming• 5 years ago

Twitter: a place where anything you say can, and will, be held against you in the court of public opinion _forever_.

All for internet points.

commandlinefan2• 5 years ago

If ever there was a better example of why the internet needs anonymity, I can’t think of it.

JackMorgan3• 5 years ago

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime.

If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice".

That said, I think it's going to take at least a few more decades before such a ruling is made. I suspect it will come along the lines that internet history is protected speech, and so it's a protected work category and is illegal to fire a person over. Once companies can just point to the law and shrug, then they can ignore the online mob.

Additionally, one would think cancelling should fall under libel and slander laws, and the accused would be able to go after the instigators.

It's uncomfortable when it's "your side" that finds it's goals at odds with human rights, but in the end we're all better off with defending basic human rights. Policing morality is infinitely more difficult and oppressive, no matter how much it really feels good at the moment.

blablabla123• 5 years ago

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal:

Which actions exactly should be illegal? I assume you don't want to make me force watching movies from certain producers that I don't like anymore. At the same time in some countries retail stores basically have to cater to everyone and already can be made liable if they don't sell something that they advertised for as long as customers stick to terms and conditions.

I rather think that excess cancelling and all that comes with it is a result of perceived injustices. Even if you come up with a very creative law unless these injustices are solved the symptoms will pop up elsewhere. That said, standards in society develop over time and probably the capacity for ambivalence is going to rise again. Also people tend to give more credit to things that have been worked for more than things that have been inherited.

AstralStorm2• 5 years ago

Political speech, in particular, is supposed to be protected from this kind of treatment.

Most importantly, accusations of bias are also not a valid reason to fire a journalist.

There's also an intermingling of private and public sphere, and firing someone for private legal behavior because some internet hive mind started a smear campaign also should not be lawful. Of course, America has the coercive institution of at-will employment, ruining any attempt at fixing it this way.

A good step would be filling class action defamation suit against a class running a smear campaign over barely public and irrelevant things. Consequences for setting up mobs. While platform is not liable, the users are. That could make some people think twice before doing it.

Udik4• 5 years ago

Which actions exactly should be illegal?

Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a twitter mob.

You are of course free to boycott whoever you want- but my impression is that those threatened boycotts won't really cause much damage to companies. People keep saying that firings are meant to "limit damage" but I have yet to see proof of this. To me it is mostly virtue signalling on the part of the involved businesses- it's not meant to prevent an economic damage but as a form of PR and advertising.

ben_w2• 5 years ago

While I agree that the status quo isn’t stable and must change, I don’t think what you’re suggesting will be stable either.

The internet is one place where 99.9% compliance with a social norm or law isn’t good enough to prevent the remaining 0.1% from causing enough damage to be un-ignorable, even if you manage to get worldwide agreement on updating the law. (Consider that e.g. the UK does not have American freedom of speech, and if anything considers the American way of doing things to be strange and somewhat anarchic).

I sometimes wonder it would help if social media posts had to be deleted after a short period, perhaps a few months or a few years? (The pre-internet social media, being conversations and occasionally letters, was probably >99% forgotten in hours, and most of the rest was hearsay).

Or it would help, or make things worse, if it became easy for people to change identity?

tomjen32• 5 years ago

Is there a standard way to convert an encryption key into a human readable name?

Because then we could have a service where you signed everything with your key and then you were know as whatever the hash of that key is - and you can create a new identity with a new key, but your name won't be linked to any real world identity.

I barely use Facebook or Twitter compared to reddit, and I suspect it is because of the real name issues, that makes those places just not as much fun.

2Gkashmiri• 5 years ago

i have a question. What about "right to be forgotten" ? if doxing would be illegal in future, would that mean the crony capitalists like google and facebook would decide declaring your old photos and "stupid" past as "too important" and just like your AFK history is written and unchangeable.

monkeydreams3• 5 years ago

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now.

Will it be illegal at the point of expressing an opinion online?

Will it be illegal at the point of agreeing or liking an opinion expressed online?

Will it be illegal at the point where one is purchasing a product or service and determines where their money will go based on an opinion they hold?

People are allowed to have, express and hold opinion. They are allowed to make decisions based on these opinions.

Additionally, one would think cancelling should fall under libel and slander laws, and the accused would be able to go after the instigators.

Good news! These laws exist.

It's uncomfortable when it's "your side" that finds it's goals at odds with human rights, but in the end we're all better off with defending basic human rights.

When "your side" starts advocating that people should not have, hold or act on opinions, you might start wondering who you're on side with.

rolandog5• 5 years ago

Well, I recently was permanently suspended on Reddit, but I've been unable to determine why (also, no previous announcement).

I haven't been permanently banned from any subreddit (no message in my 14 year old history indicated this)... but I've been unable to get any human to tell me what exactly I did was against the Reddit Content Policy.

The curious thing for me was that my alt account (the one I use to try to have some semblance of free speech) was also permanently suspended.

This, to me, felt like I may have been censored in some way (though I really don't know the motive; maybe I was too outspoken against an oppressive government?).

It certainly has had a chilling effect on my online activity.

Zuider4• 5 years ago

Will it be illegal at the point where one is purchasing a product or service and determines where their money will go based on an opinion they hold?

But we are not talking of a personal choice to boycott, or even to persuade others to boycott. That action is passive in nature and falls entirely within an individuals liberty to withdraw consent.

Cancel culture involves aggressive mobs that will use covert and unethical means such as targeting a company's advertisers, clients and suppliers, or relentlessly harassing the HR department in order to induce them to fire somebody.

As the OP in this thread noted, this is comparable to vigilantism.

Good news! These laws exist.

Libel laws are hard to use against anonymous callers and letter writers calling you a 'Nazi.' It is most unlikely that the recipient of such a call will be persuaded you are a literal Nazi, but they will be influenced and intimidated by the strong hostility and disapproval expressed. It would be hard to prove in court that you had actually been libeled, even if you could bring that person to court, but you will still have been damaged.

When "your side" starts advocating that people should not have, hold or act on opinions, you might start wondering who you're on side with.

But cancel culture is intolerant of other's right to freedom of conscience, and it goes beyond mere disapproval to active personal destruction.

ashtonkem7• 5 years ago

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime.

I’m incredibly dubious that you can write a law that accomplishes this that won’t run afoul of the first amendment. And honestly, I think that literally jailing attempted “cancellers” would have way more of a chilling effect than whatever “cancel culture” causes.

The solution for this is to change the culture, not to weaponize the power of the state to harm those you dislike. Please stop suggesting it, it will only make things worse.

II2II2• 5 years ago

If you walk up to someone and punch them, it is reasonable for that person to press charges even though the repercussions may only last a few minutes. The consequence will be more-or-less immediate, even if it starts and ends with a discussion with a police officer.

If you slander someone, their recourse is to sue even though the repercussions may last for months or years. The consequence will not be immediate and the victim may not even have the means to pursue it.

I don't know if there is a good solution to the problem. You are perfectly correct in pointing out that the proposed solution can weaponize the power of the state. On the other hand, speech can, and has been, weaponized.

hooande• 5 years ago

Imagine you start a company and one of your employees says or does something reprehensible. Investors fear a boycott and threaten to pull out of a fundraising round. You either fire that one person, or the whole company goes under and everyone that works for you could lose their job (including you).

If you make it illegal to fire that person, then any one employee could do considerable damage to dozens of other people and you'll have no recourse.

It seems like a better system would be one where everyone is responsible for their own behavior.

mongol• 5 years ago

But if it is illegal, then all the people working for cancelling the employee will know it is hopeless.

galtwho• 5 years ago

If you make it illegal to fire that person, then any one employee could do considerable damage to dozens of other people and you'll have no recourse.

well then the investors can't ask for the firing, they have to demand something else.

nonameiguess• 5 years ago

It's really bizarre that you think this. Sexual preference still isn't a federally protected category. Neither is political affiliation. You're protected from the government arresting you for the views you express, but unless you have a separate contract or more protective local laws, a U.S. employer can fire you for being a Democrat or Republican.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...

ttt03• 5 years ago

You're trying to apply current law to mere predictions of what the law might be in the future. He's saying that for example political affiliation might become a protected category. Nothing bizarre about it.

username90• 5 years ago

Firing people for cases like this is already illegal in most of the developed world. You need a cause and "people on twitter were angry" isn't one.

woodruffw• 5 years ago

This is an astounding response: in reaction to people bullying each other on the Internet, you want to empower everyone to use the force of the law to silence their critics? In what world is that either (1) a reasonable de-escalation of a social ill, or (2) a net win for free expression?

I'm not very old, but I am old enough to know the history of SLAPP lawsuits and anti-SLAPP legislation[1]. Barbara Streisand lost a SLAPP motion so hard that we named an entire effect in free expression after her! Do you really want a world in which well-resourced parties can leverage the courts to silence dissent?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...

TechnoTimeStop• 5 years ago

Except that its in the China Russia KGB CCP interest to hurt American industry wherever and whenever they can. Who actually goes around sifting through all of these peoples content? Its honestly pathetic. Fix social media now. We're all under attack!

webmobdev2• 5 years ago

Right to Privacy - specifically, the Right to Be Forgotten ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten ) - is also very important here. Americans are certainly behind EU on this aspect, as many European countries have successfully passed legislation that a person has the right to get his personal information deleted from internet services (mainly search engines).

texaswhizzle• 5 years ago

Stop posting your life and thoughts on the internet! Privacy advocates have been screaming about this for years but no one seems to care until they have a gun in their face.

The really sad thing is the children. Parents uploading their kids entire lives and the kids have absolutely no way to opt out. Permanently giving your kid an online identity before they can even talk. Horrible thing to do to your child.

emptyparadise• 5 years ago

Don't you miss anonymity online?

h0p3• 5 years ago

Anonymity comes in degrees and kinds, and, alongside radical decentralization, it can improve our ability to solve some problems of justice for which there are no other solutions. However, there are limits to what it buys us, and huge costs, too.

I hold anonymous giving and anonymized trust in high regard, nomad. Quite fallibly, I put my skin in the game on the wire like few ever have. I hope we learn to wear the Ring of Gyges without being unduly affected by it. Let us be the change we want to see in the world (https://philosopher.life/#Contact%20h0p3). Some say I'm a madman out here in the desert. It's a pleasure to meet you.

upofadown• 5 years ago

I think the root problem here is that some employers think that social media mobs somehow represent public opinion. They do in a trivial sense, but in the vast majority of cases just ignoring the whole thing is a reasonable course of action.

There has to be more accountability here. It should be possible for a potential employee to see a company's past actions with respect to this sort of thing. In general a potential employee should know going in that an employer is so unprofessional that they might throw them under the bus for something as trivial as social media.

shadowgovt3• 5 years ago

They mention Eric Schmidt's thoughts on the topic from 11 years ago in the article.

Schmidt had a habit as Google CEO of saying true things in the least palatable way. That was the same interview where he said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." People interpreted it as a flippant dismissal of privacy, but what he was trying to express was this era was coming... The modern web was going to make hiding one's past behavior extremely difficult.

throwaway5127932• 5 years ago

I recently went on trying to delete my old Facebook posts and the amount of hurdles and steps necessary and errors involved leads to the thought that without doubt Facebook does not want you to do this.

In order to delete the posts you have to manually click on each and every one and then click on delete. Sometimes it throws an “unexpected error” and then you have to click on everything again, but then it often throws the error again.

Another way is to “mark all” but that only marks 50 posts at once. If you scroll down then it adds another 50 posts, at the cost of about 20 seconds per scroll, so when you scroll down far enough you can accumulate a lot of posts that will be available for “mark all”. But, mind that Facebook doesn’t like you to batch remove all of your history. So after 150 or 200 posts (the amount is changing apparently randomly) accumulated and clicking on delete, they throw a “Challenge required” error. With trial and error you find out that this error appears always after you accumulated too much, so you’d naturally think, let me just go back one step and scroll a couple of time less to generate a new and smaller list. But it’s not possible to generate that list of posts again for some reason, as going away from the activity monitor and back into it again just shows again the >200 posts list nicely prefetched for you. I found the only way to “reset” this view is to log out of Facebook and log in back again, then the activity monitor starts at 50 posts again.

Hopefully when you then batch delete 150-200 posts, there isn’t a special post in between which brings another error when trying to delete from the activity monitor in batch or manual. It seems that this error only appears when you deleted too many posts in a specific time frame. What you need to do is to find that post in the haystack of at minimum 50 posts, click on it’s time such that you get on the posts individual page (better open in another tab or you might get insane eventually, if not already) and then delete the post from there by using the menu button.

Hopefully it allows you to delete and you can continue to batch delete the rest in batches of 150-200. Otherwise you will have to wait for a couple of hours you receive a new delete allowance.

Lastly, even if you at first think posts were deleted, you might have to revisit and see again, as some posts just reappear again. You don’t find them necessarily inside the activity monitor again but e.g. when you use the search, or even worse, when others use the search on these posts.

aboringusername• 5 years ago

It's a disgrace the GDPR has not made it easier to delete content as easy as it is to generate it. I also think hackernews is a disgrace too, as you cannot edit nor delete your posts here and dang should immediately fix this (or whomevers responsible)

If I want to delete every piece of data from a companies storage (including backups, caches et al) I should be able to do that.

If it is ever proven that data still exists on an individual whose requested full deletion the CEO should be imprisoned for a minimum of one year.

But of course that will never happen and the GDPR is an absolute failure that has done more harm than good.

throwaway5127932• 5 years ago

Well you can delete your Facebook profile, which takes 30 days until all data is removed. But then you also delete your Friend List, the chats, the list of sites you subscribed to, the groups, the events and your Ad profile.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually find it useful sometimes to receive targeted ads. It worked for me often enough such that I noticed products, events or groups that really are interesting to me and which I otherwise probably wouldn’t have found. I recently started browsing YouTube logged in with my profile again and the recommended videos are much better than when I have an incognito browser.

Nevertheless, it must be possible to at least delete your public interactions with one click. I don’t see any business reason for Facebook and Twitter to keep year old posts public.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

I remember when a Brazilian teenager was killed after a stranger in front of him at a concert turned around suddenly and pointed at him saying he stole her phone.

Before he knew what happened, he was stabbed to death by a mob while the real thief got away.

Vigilante ’justice’ continues to be a scourge of society; think of the stoning episodes of millenniums past.

Social media removes the activation energy barrier to be a part of a mob - to feel the thrill.

scrps• 5 years ago

In a weird way I think cancel culture/doxxing/call out culture has given a massive boost to privacy awareness at least for people who aren't in highly visible jobs.

Over the past couple of years but especially 2020 I've had more non-tech family members, friends and friends of friends ask me for advice on preserving their privacy and anonymity and political speech seems to usually be in the top 5 reasons when I ask them.

Zealotux• 5 years ago

"We must become the pitiless censors of ourselves." – Alain Badiou

RONROC• 5 years ago

Probably an unpopular take but cancelling typically occurs in domains that either deserve the maximum amount of public scrutiny such as politics and show business (the reasoning here is that the people who operate in these domains have, always will, and should be held to account for the simple reason that they wouldn’t be in these positions without the inverse, ie. positive public perception—-if you’re not useful, you’re replaceable) or in industries that have a inherently corrosive framework whose success is predicated on extracting a disproportionate amount of value from the those who are doing the cancelling such as big tech and media (no normal person will weep for these people and with good reason).

The only exception here is the cancelling of people with relatively small followings/influence who receive heavy-handed negative attention (like the Reddit bomber or people in academia like the N-word professor) but instances like these are fewer and far between and will probably decline over time as boomers leave the discourse (die).

I used to work at a few big media companies in a position that required a decent amount of public facing and had brushes with this sort of behavior in the past (people tweeting death threats at me, which I just brushed off because I understood what I signed up for and am not naive). These days I work for myself in a “blue collar” industry and mostly ignore social media, so I can’t really be cancelled.

I guess the point i’m trying to make is, if this is something you’re actually worried about, just

1; go work in an industry that lacks the highly educated, overstimulated, and mostly out of touch people that dominate 99% of the discourse but speak for 1% of the population

2; learn how to read the room (ie. listen more and talk less)

Big tech wanted everyone to have a voice and now they do. :)

rdiddly• 5 years ago

The Times has become one of the biggest online bullies. To be consistent the author would have to quit working there. Consider this article therapy, part of her process of working it out.

mlloyd• 5 years ago

A couple of things that I've learned about the country as I've watched the Cancel culture war:

1)Many believe having freedom of speech means having freedom from consequences of your speech. And not just governmental consequence but all consequence. That's wrong and always has been wrong, if rarely enforced. Speech has always had consequences but those consequences weren't cancellation. Not for white folks anyway.

2)White people can't live in the same world with the same rules that they've created for other people. Cancel culture is very much a thing and has been a thing used against Black folks and other minorities in America for decades. The list of things we get canceled for far exceeds exercising our freedom of speech. Here's a short list:

A)Our names. Got an ethnic name? Expect to get less interview callbacks.

B)Hair. We've had to lobby for laws to protect our right to wear our hair in 'natural' or 'ethnic' styles.

C)Actual Freedom of Speech. Try and bring up racism or discrimination practically anywhere and see what happens to you. See Colin Kaepernick.

D)Skin Complexion. Light-skinned privilege is a thing. Google 'colorism'.

E)Accent and use of language. Google 'code switching'.

You get the point. If the only thing you have to worry about is if you actually said something dumb in your past and if it's going to come up, then you have it good. Other folks are getting canceled just how they exist, from traits they can't change, and they have been for decades.

And even with all that, I still think Cancel culture is pretty shit because the mob is a broadsword, not a scalpel - h/t "The Siege". It doesn't stop at Trump, it keeps going to folks like AGM. But I'd love it if those fighting against cancel culture also fight for those who aren't white men complaining about it on Twitter and Hacker News. Fight also for those who have been victimized by cancel culture before it had a catchy name and impacted the white and powerful. Probably won't win until you do anyway.

fitzie• 5 years ago

we have weaponized outrage against our neighbors and it is absurd. weve gotten to the point where a hangman's noose is racist as is the OK hand sign, and it is now common for such simple displays to escalate to a federal case. we want kids to stop bullying each other in school, but ridicule, harassment, name calling, and ostracization are perfectly acceptable ways to settle disputes. if this is to change, we will have to tone it down, not pretend that someone is evil because of a single harmless thing that they said, and business leaders will have to steer their companies away from encouraging this childish outrage culture.

ergot_vacation• 5 years ago

There are pages of comments here now debating all the intricacies of this situation: Where free speech begins and ends, when firing is justified or not, how and if it's possible to solve the issue with the courts or congress.

The cold reality is that the solution to all of this is very simple:

1. Stop using your real name (and personal information) online.

2. Stop using social media sites (as they revolve around sharing personal information).

In situations when you MUST use real life identity online, only post the most bland, inoffensive things possible. The multitude of protests to this position are irrelevant: anonymity online is not an option, it is a NECESSITY because of the way the Internet works.

Clever people understood this from the beginning: this advice was mainstream Internet 101 in the 90s. But as time went on profit seeking companies brainwashed everyone into a new norm where we all go around with our clothes off and our dicks out. This is not a safe or sustainable situation. The net isn't like real life. It has MEMORY, vast and sticky. It's searchable. On the net, information is a weapon, and if you go around handing out loaded weapons to everyone you meet, eventually bad things will happen.

Reams of digital ink have been spilled in this comment section debating how best to keep people from firing the weapon at you. This misses the point. Stop giving it to them in the first place. If you do, you have no room to complain.

happynacho• 5 years ago

Ironic

Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

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