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That's always been true? If you say something your boss hates, your boss has always been free to fire you. If you're a cashier and all the customers hate you, y

That's always been true? If you say something your boss hates, your boss has always been free to fire you. If you're a cashier and all the customers hate you, you're also getting fired.

systemvoltage 5y ago
I don’t think this is a matter of liking someone. Replace political views with religion and we provide protections against discrimination of someone based on their religion. Let me spell out the problem more clearly, it’s not as simple as your boss not liking you. 1) Coworker gets to find out someone doesn’t share their political beliefs. 2) They try to get moral superiority over the person … because disagreeing with their wokeness is immoral and it’s escalated from a minor disagreement to full blown moral superiority campaign. 3) Publicly denounce them. Unleash the Twitter mob. 4) Eventually it gets to the top management chain and they’re gonna fire this person who just a few years ago would have just been involved in a minor disagreement about politics in the coffee room. If hope you can agree this is a problem, IMO has profound implications for the society.
- nickelpro 5y ago
  I don't see how what your upset about is new or connected to social networks. McCarthyism existed two decades before the first networked computers and was the exact same thing as what you're describing. I agree, people are shitty, but trying to legally limit the speech of people you don't like is exactly opposite the values of free ideas that we usually try to support. Or at least the ones that I support.
  - esyir 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree. Let's rescind all protected classes ASAP.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      Protected classes were supposed to be about things that are innate, like skin color or ancestry, not about your ideas or speech. Obviously religion is sort of borderline here.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        Religion is not any more borderline than gender. Neither is strictly innate, but we're not OK with people being forced to change their gender for the sake of some abstract social equality. And gender, like religious values, is something that's deeply felt as one's personal expression. But this is also true wrt. many political stances.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  The first three points seem like normal human behavior, we used to call it “the marketplace of ideas”. The problem comes in with the weak willed company management who decides to fire the person. Let’s put the blame where it belongs, here, not with the Twitter mob.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    The weak willed company management is weakened because of the mob. It's a full circle. Company management would be on the chopping block of they try to disagree with the mob. It would destroy the company into absolute dust. So, they comply.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      > It would destroy the company into absolute dust. I honestly don’t think it would. The Twitter mob is a bunch of loud voices, that’s all. A bunch of people using online. I doubt they could arrange an actual effective boycott.
      - stevenicr 5y ago
        I believe this mostly as well - I'm sure there could be a few exceptions - but generally I don't see major impact on real world sales from twitter mobs of the week being a thing - I do wonder if anyone has put together stats on this to show that once [any-twitter-outrage]-reaches X number of tweets/retweets - then some companies act, with y number os tweets/retweets Y number of companies react.. To discern, how many people you need to become a twitter mob for thing Z - to get a public statement/apology.. firing.. whatever cancelling. I started to research this a bit some time ago and have not found a memorable chart or anything - surely someone has done this (?) I've been seeing some trends of vocal minority cause change - even when majority don't even know there is a discussion of said changes - and it's often more powerful than it should be imho.

That's always been true? If you say something your boss hates, your boss has always been free to fire you. If you're a cashier and all the customers hate you, you're also getting fired.

systemvoltage 5y ago

I don’t think this is a matter of liking someone. Replace political views with religion and we provide protections against discrimination of someone based on their religion. Let me spell out the problem more clearly, it’s not as simple as your boss not liking you. 1) Coworker gets to find out someone doesn’t share their political beliefs. 2) They try to get moral superiority over the person … because disagreeing with their wokeness is immoral and it’s escalated from a minor disagreement to full blown moral superiority campaign. 3) Publicly denounce them. Unleash the Twitter mob. 4) Eventually it gets to the top management chain and they’re gonna fire this person who just a few years ago would have just been involved in a minor disagreement about politics in the coffee room. If hope you can agree this is a problem, IMO has profound implications for the society.

nickelpro 5y ago
I don't see how what your upset about is new or connected to social networks. McCarthyism existed two decades before the first networked computers and was the exact same thing as what you're describing. I agree, people are shitty, but trying to legally limit the speech of people you don't like is exactly opposite the values of free ideas that we usually try to support. Or at least the ones that I support.
- esyir 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Let's rescind all protected classes ASAP.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Protected classes were supposed to be about things that are innate, like skin color or ancestry, not about your ideas or speech. Obviously religion is sort of borderline here.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Religion is not any more borderline than gender. Neither is strictly innate, but we're not OK with people being forced to change their gender for the sake of some abstract social equality. And gender, like religious values, is something that's deeply felt as one's personal expression. But this is also true wrt. many political stances.
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
The first three points seem like normal human behavior, we used to call it “the marketplace of ideas”. The problem comes in with the weak willed company management who decides to fire the person. Let’s put the blame where it belongs, here, not with the Twitter mob.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  The weak willed company management is weakened because of the mob. It's a full circle. Company management would be on the chopping block of they try to disagree with the mob. It would destroy the company into absolute dust. So, they comply.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    > It would destroy the company into absolute dust. I honestly don’t think it would. The Twitter mob is a bunch of loud voices, that’s all. A bunch of people using online. I doubt they could arrange an actual effective boycott.
    - stevenicr 5y ago
      I believe this mostly as well - I'm sure there could be a few exceptions - but generally I don't see major impact on real world sales from twitter mobs of the week being a thing - I do wonder if anyone has put together stats on this to show that once [any-twitter-outrage]-reaches X number of tweets/retweets - then some companies act, with y number os tweets/retweets Y number of companies react.. To discern, how many people you need to become a twitter mob for thing Z - to get a public statement/apology.. firing.. whatever cancelling. I started to research this a bit some time ago and have not found a memorable chart or anything - surely someone has done this (?) I've been seeing some trends of vocal minority cause change - even when majority don't even know there is a discussion of said changes - and it's often more powerful than it should be imho.