> However, the increasingly aggressive presence of internet mobs saying "fire this person or we'll make a terrible fuss!" over minor matters is absurd, getting

> However, the increasingly aggressive presence of internet mobs saying "fire this person or we'll make a terrible fuss!" over minor matters is absurd, getting worse, and is being abused by people of all political identities. This is how free markets work, though. The beliefs of the customers drive their purchase decisions. It's completely rational for a customer to say "I don't want to support a company that employs someone who behaves like this". Threatening to take their money elsewhere is their sole recourse, and one that is effective only in large groups. > I hope companies learn that picking sides by firing someone does not resolve the matter and just pisses off more people. It's really simple from an economic perspective: does firing this person result in more lost customers than being silent? I strongly suspect the answer to this is "no", and firing the employee is the better path. After all, the whole purpose of hiring an employee is to generate more value than they cost. In this case, the employee's actions were a large net negative. > Hopefully that tones down their response and then makes the internet mobs less aggressive because they don't get as much satisfaction out of it. I really don't see this ever happening. Even if the vast majority of companies decided to adopt a policy of turning a deaf ear to customer feedback, the only result would be new companies stepping up to fill the void.