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Social media has massively amplified the penalty for making a mistake or offhand remark. People used to make tasteless jokes all the time and it was treated as

Social media has massively amplified the penalty for making a mistake or offhand remark. People used to make tasteless jokes all the time and it was treated as it was, just a joke and life continued. Now anything out of the pale that catches the attention of some sort of influencer spells doom. Anyone caught at a bad moment on camera is pilloried, made out to be the anti christ and have people actively seeking out their employer in an attempt to cost them their job. No one is allowed to have a bad moment anymore where as before we were all acknowledged as flawed beings and that was ok. Publicly espousing an unpopular opinion now can be career suicide even if done outside of the work environment.

InitialLastName 5y ago
> Publicly espousing an unpopular opinion now can be career suicide Let's not pretend this is new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist The difference now is that visibility is more uniformly distributed across the population.
- mc32 5y ago
  No normal person will deny this. But there is no comparison to a small population being affected (ironically in the USSR, lots of artists and authors got not only blacklisted but sent to the Gulags --gee, I wonder if they wrote to Stalin on behalf of their brethren) to potentially anyone and everyone being a potential subject at any moment for something otherwise innocuous. What’s more this is much worse. It’s not about a singular subject (communist sympathizer) but just about anything at any moment. It's a shifting landscape so much so that there is internecine sniping among all groups. Today you can’t even make a genuine faux pas without the risk of someone coming down on you and risking your livelihood. That’s quite different. If Pelosi said off handedly, you know Trump did a couple of things right, or you know I don’t agree 100% with everything BLM she’ll be in trouble and she’s the top politician outside the president. Imagine a school teacher…
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Modern bidirectional communications tools make it easy to wide-cast a message and then have that message responded to by potentially millions of receivers. I think we don't respect the power we wield often enough. That's a terrible capability to provide via a system that also encourages you to blurt something out in 280 characters or less. Every single tweet is a shout from a mountaintop (and since it's time-stamped and on the timeline forever, that shout echoes perpetually). Additionally, that infrastructure incentivizes gravitation towards some flat-mass-"centroid" of acceptable cultural practice, and there's no particular guarantee that such a thing across the bulk of humanity is either possible or desirable.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    > But there is no comparison to a small population being affected to potentially anyone and everyone being a potential subject. If I may paraphrase... there's no comparison between oppressing a minority I don't belong to, and the entire population being subjected to the same risk.
    - mc32 5y ago
      It doesn't matter how you put it. If you say "tax the rich 95%." That's bad. "Tax everyone 95%" That's really bad. I don't understand how you cannot see that. The fewer people affected by something, the less evil it is even if it's evil. I mean, what are you saying, H-wood blacklisting was bad, therefore what we see in social media ostracizing is acceptable? That seems... strange. Of course not all sympathizers of communism also agreed with death camps, re-education, stifling of progress, etc., etc., but they tacitly contributed to to those bad things. A young person, or someone who thinks they are being funny or whatever caught in a bad moment is different from someone who knowingly supports tyrannical forms of government.
      - deleted 5y ago
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- ta1234567890 5y ago
  YC has a blacklist of people and companies. Not sure what will land you there, but I know they have it and use it.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    If there's an actual blacklist where YC employees can just arbitrarily ban founders from working with certain companies that's quite surprising and maybe pretty bad for YC's reputation. If you mean YC has a strong community of founders who share war stories of how people and companies were difficult to work with, and the other YC founders pay attention to those stories though, well, that's not a blacklist.
    - ta1234567890 5y ago
      There’s both. About the blacklist, I don’t know exactly how it works, who specifically has access to it or who can add entries to it, but I know it exists, I know people who have been affected by it, know people who have been told explicitly about it and know that at least some partners have access to it.
  - yepthetruth 5y ago
    Yep. If you say anything bad about Paul Graham or any YC people/companies, you’ll end up on this list. YC companies can and do also sic the network on rivals. There are also some YC partners with personal grudges and hurt egos that go out of their way to fight with people. Some will even pivot teams to compete with people who have bested them in the past. YC is a super shady org.
    - dang 5y ago
      I'm giving ta1234567890 the benefit of the doubt upthread, but this comment is definitely a false, substanceless smear.
      - youlyingsack 5y ago
        You're lying. Next time you nuke one of my friends Show HNs off the front page, I'll send them a link to this comment so they can call you out publicly. YC partners don't hold grudges and work their network against people who have damaged their ego??? Bull fucking shit. I know YC companies call in hits all the time on people as they brag about it relentlessly. You have all kinds of levers to pull here and you pull them without hesitation. The YC network spreads false information about competitors all the time. They kill deals, focus companies against those they don't like and generally are one of the least ethical group of people operating in the tech space (and that's saying a lot). That you'll get on here and make an outright brazen lie saying that this doesn't happen is very par for the course.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  > The difference now is that visibility is more uniformly distributed across the population. And that you don't necessarily have to chase said visibility. Before, visibility was a goal very few people could attain. Now it's a bomb that can be thrown at you without warning.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  I think the extent matters as well. I am not sure if humans can exist without blacklists. Some people definitely have the instinct to create them. But nowadays it is fairly easy for every employer out there to check out whether there is a 'controversy' in your past or not, even if you are not a traditional celebrity. Being less employable in Miami is one thing. Being less employable in the entire Anglosphere is another.
- spectramax 5y ago
  This is a distraction and diversion from the original comment. Hollywood is not at the scale of the internet. Some privileged people got cancelled in Hollywood, who cares. When a hard working person gets cancelled by saying something stupid, the consequences are back breaking.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    Forget Hollywood. Imagine trying to build the career of your choice as a black person, or a woman or an out gay person in that same era. Society was casually blacklisting the literal majority of Americans from most professional realms.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      Yes, but that was the case for most of history, and America (and the world) at the time did it progressively less and less (first the abolition of slavery, then women right to vote, civil rights, de-seggregation, and so on). Whereas today it's a new phenomenon, that gets progressively worse even though the problems you've mentioned (regarding blacks, women, gays, etc) are at their historical lower point. So while America was progressing then, this is a regression now. And it also affects blacks, women, gays, lesbians, republicans, demoracts, old-style lefties, and so on -- all of those categories have had members cancelled or mob-attacked for wrong opinions... (even someone like Dave Chappelle, who is a comedian of all things, has been attacked on such grounds).
      - InitialLastName 5y ago
        > (even someone like Dave Chappelle, who is a comedian of all things, has been attacked on such grounds). Dave Chappelle, with his recent $8-figure deal with a prominent pop-culture/FAANG company, who keep publishing and promoting his specials, seems like he's actually a counter-argument to your point.
        coldtea 5y ago
        Not for lack of trying.
- everdrive 5y ago
  Except that I never had a chance of being on a hollywood blacklist in the first place. I don't even use social media, and it's still possible I could say something off-color somewhere and find myself canceled.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Or not say something. Refusing to join in can be an offense. Sort of a “join us or die” accept killing is not usually needed to shut someone down. Shunning is usually enough these days.
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      "Silence is violence" and "In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist".
      - treeman79 5y ago
        Logical fallacy that leads to oppression and genocide.
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  Poor kids couldn't get a job in Hollywood. Oh the humanity! What's going on now is being blacklisted by multiple industries. People who get marked as such never work in "normal" companies again and have to move continents to find work. You are comparing being blacklisted by a group of people to being blacklisted by society at large.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    > People who get marked as such never work in "normal" companies again and have to move continents to find work. Who? Maybe I'm just not paying attention to the news, but I somewhere missed the great wave of American software developers migrating to Europe for a better life for their families.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Let's not pretend this is new Let's not pretend the scale of the phenomenon today and mass surveillance capacity of today plus mass exposure and permanent public record of social media, web forums, even public spaces and events (e.g. with someone recording a video) is in any way comparable to the McCarthy era. Or the the "offenses" people get social-mob-attacked, pilloried, and fired are in any way comparable to the offenses (even if BS) people were prosecuted for in that day: being considered an enemy of the state working to overthrow the government.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Most of the people I'm seeing get actually cancelled are... being considered "an enemy of the state working to overthrow the government". I'm also seeing a lot of base-rate fallacy and availability bias issues (surprisingly, from many of the same people who complain about other people falling prey to the base rate fallacy w.r.t. Covid). That you can think of a few instances where people were loudly pilloried for, say, weaponizing the state use of force to racist ends, doesn't mean that it happens that often.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      The detrimental effect doesn't lie with thousands of people getting cancelled, it lies with thousands of people not speaking up anymore.
wussboy 5y ago
This is one of the primary reasons I stay off of social media. There is not forgetting, no opportunity to learn and grow and change and develop.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  I just maintain an anonymous one and never comment. Lets me follow whatever topics I care about and no worries about anything coming back to bite me. I make sure to try and include people I disagree with as well to a certain extent as its a good way to see other points of view and also to reinforce why I disagree with them in the first place. Lets me know I am not in an echo chamber and at least 51% of my opinions are probably my own... maybe.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  I feel like this is obvious with a major caveat. You and I agree. Don’t use social media and this won’t be a problem. I think the disadvantages outweigh. But… what about when Hackernews or Reddit or Discord whatever formerly anonymous some-degree-of-social-network is made not so anonymous? I have a Reddit account that I’ve surely said things if someone was motivated they could make life hard for me - true things - but who cares about that anymore? It’s not the same thing, but we might not be sure in what ways they are similar.
  - 100011_100001 5y ago
    It depends what your risk appetite is. I see it as layers. So an organization with skill and motivation, like government agencies vs some specific person with a limited skillset and motivation Who are you trying to "hide" from? Simply having a different username for each website helps with that. Personally for Facebook / Linkedin I never list my current employer. Enough of a layer to make it harder to track my employer for the casual lookup, but not impossible given enough time/money/competency. I really like this graphic about what level of security you want vs who you are trying to protect from: https://anonymousplanet.org/media/image3.jpeg https://anonymousplanet.org/media/image3.jpeg
- dudul 5y ago
Goronmon 5y ago
Where do you draw the line though? Are we never allow to criticize someone for their opinions or "jokes", regardless of content or context? It's easy to just state "People should be able to make jokes or have a bad day." and while maybe that's true, I don't think we should be able to brush off all behavior by just labeling it a "bad day".
- imgabe 5y ago
  You draw the line at where it has an actual, measurable impact on other people. “Joe Schmoe has an opinion you don’t like” doesn’t impoverish anyone, it doesn’t prevent anyone from getting food or housing or any other need. It’s just a person having an opinion. Going into hysterics over trivial nonsense that ultimately doesn’t matter is not helping anyone. It’s not making the world a better place. Quite the opposite.
  - throwaway9980 5y ago
    If enough Joe Schmoes have bad opinions it does in fact impoverish people and prevent them accessing necessary goods like food and housing. Many ideas are in fact wrong and if widespread terribly dangerous.
    - 9980throwaway 5y ago
      There are two issues being discussed here: the ability to speak/censor opinions, and the ability to control unspoken opinions. First, every individual has what should be a rather obvious and fundamental right to think whatever thoughts and have whatever opinions they like. Nobody gets to decide what opinions an individual holds, except for that individual. Now, as for the spreading of those ideas: Power to censor is frequently used to silence good ideas and allow bad ones to flourish - see modern-day censorship in China, Russia, North Korea, India, and Australia, or older censorship around the Vietnam War and slave liberation (back when owning slaves was in fashion). The fact that someone is silencing an opinion has very little to do with whether or not that opinion is actively harmful - and, at the very least, those in power have a strong tendency to use their power (including censorship, if available) to gain more power, and those in the public realm will use their own speech and censorship (including via "canceling" aka mob justice) to benefit their own group, regardless of whether their cause is just or their tactics are fair. So, it's all well and good for you to say "this opinion is harmful", but that's not really well correlated to whether that opinion is actually harmful. Even when the majority of the country agrees that an opinion is harmful, that doesn't actually mean that it is - but, as a democracy, we choose an imperfect system that works most of the time. That system, however, involves passing laws that declare some speech harmful, based on representatives elected by majority vote of their constituents. Twitter-based outrage from a tiny fraction of the population defining "bad opinions" is so antithetical to the idea of democracy that it shouldn't even be considered in the first place. tl;dr we have an existing mechanism for controlling "harmful speech" and it's the government, not social media mobs.
baktubi 5y ago
There’s the other side of the spectrum as well: what the influencers seek to gain by amplifying criticisms for any odd remark. Just think of the whole anti-vaccine movements and the spread of misinformation. Folks come out of the woodwork and claim a myriad of side effects but they have no background to scientifically vet the published vaccine research. Influencers leveraging fear and confusion as a way to amplify bias and shame people making positive comments on a vaccine. And this generates them massive followings and potentially increases “social status”. Curiously I’m seeing somewhat of a proportional trend: as peoples ability to amplify misinformation increases, so does the value of censorship. This is kind of scary to be honest—to say that censorship has inherent value in our society. All it takes is one climate-science denier to change 50% of the population’s opinion. Or to convince the public that one pro-vaccine comment is the scourge of humanity. EDIT: Just got a downvote and reflecting on how the down-vote makes me feel; how should I proceed? Should I defend my comment? Do I want more social karma on this website? Am I being punished for my opinion. How’s that for some introspection…
- vibrato2 5y ago
  Misinformation doesn’t exist. Lies are real information.
k__ 5y ago
The problem is not, people making mistakes. The problem is, people making mistakes and saying they weren't mistakes. Or they give non-apologies.
- deleted 5y ago
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- wonderwonder 5y ago
  Why do they have to apologize to society for making a mistake in a local setting? Social media has created this bizarre environment where a simple interaction between a couple people offends the entire world and then the entire world crushes the transgressor, ends their employment and demands an apology? That is insanity. Normal people should never be thrust into the position where they are forced to apologize to society for a normal mistake or face complete annihilation. Additionally, its not like social media waits for their target to apologize before wreaking havoc on their ability to feed their family. They just attack and then the apology is used as an additional attack vector because no matter what the apology is never enough.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  I would prefer not to live in an apology economy, thanks though.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Looking at the scandals of the last decade, apology usually does not help the target at all. It is just part of the expected sick show before being fired or punished anyway. One day, we will wake up in a world where apology has died out because it was never rewarded by forgiveness.
ResearchCode 5y ago
Real countries don't have at-will employment and should start using anti-defamation laws against internet mobs.
devit 5y ago
Just don't express yourself online non-anonymously, and in real life don't go to places where cameras are allowed.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  This would translate to do not leave the bathroom in the US, or at least do not go outside your abode.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Ironically enough, A senatress from Arizona got accosted to a bathroom with video phone cameras in order to convince (bully) her into a position.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      What is the purpose of using a different word for a man senator and a woman senator?
      - Minor49er 5y ago
        To identify their gender. Like the differences between waiter/waitress, masseur/masseuse, actor/actress, and countless of other examples.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        >To identify their gender. The purpose of my question was to lead to the inevitable question of what the purpose of identifying a senator's gender was, at least in the context of the comment I was replying to. >Like the differences between waiter/waitress, masseur/masseuse, actor/actress, and countless of other examples. I would ask the same question for those, but at least those might be used simply because they are frequently used and it might be habit. But I have never seen the word "senatress" used in 30+ years of living in the US, and I read a ton of political news. Although, I id not know about masseur and masseuse. I thought all people who gave massages were masseuses. But I am not familiar with the massage scene. I can see a possible purpose for clarifying a woman performing massages versus a man performing massages since someone might prefer a massage from one rather than another.
cm2187 5y ago
And the worst is kids. If you think you can go off track and say dumb things as an adult, think of the 14yo self. I thank God I was a teenager before the modern internet. There is no forgiveness. The doors of college education can be shut on a whim for a bad joke. Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment to apply.
- andrepd 5y ago
  > Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment to apply. And... is this the case today? Do universities exclude your application or scrutinise your political beliefs?
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    I have heard from interns that colleges want to see engagement for social justice or diversity causes during the application process. I have also heard that for research grants you need to show “diversity and inclusion” efforts. One guy I talked to from a Nevada school said these are often won by rich colleges who are almost purely white but know how to talk diversity whereas poorer colleges that are actually way more diverse don’t rate well on the diversity and inclusion scale.
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      > I have heard from interns that colleges want to see engagement for social justice or diversity causes during the application process. It's been 15 years since I did the college admissions dance, but I do remember that most of the superstitions about the application process don't apply if you score above a 33 on the ACT (perhaps you'd need a perfect score to have the velvet rope lifted if you're applying for MIT). All the rules of thumb about taking at least three years of a foreign language and balancing between 2–4 extra-curricular activities are for the students who won't be immediately offered merit scholarships.
tstrimple 5y ago
> People used to make tasteless jokes all the time and it was treated as it was, just a joke and life continued. Except it was only ever "just a joke" for the perpetrators. What we're seeing more of now is the voice of the previously unheard and ignored, and it turns out they don't like being the butt of racist or sexist or bigoted "jokes". This is the same energy as dismissing sexual harassment as "boys will be boys". "We can't give girls a friendly pat on the ass and compliment anymore. The liberals have taken over and ruined everything!"
- legostormtroopr 5y ago
  Thank you for proving the parent comments point. He said "People used to make tasteless jokes all the time" and you equated it to "why can't we physically assault girls anymore". There are shades of gray to all huuman interaction, and thanks to behaviour like yours where people jump to prove they are good, anything can be considered "bad".
  - tstrimple 5y ago
    Why should people in position of power get to choose what others should and shouldn't be offended by? Both with physical and verbal abuse, minorities and women have been told by people in positions of power to toughen up. All we're seeing now is the repercussions of those marginalized folks getting their voice. I'm sorry you don't like it when they complain about being abused, but telling them to just toughen up is absolutely the losing position to take here.

InitialLastName 5y ago

> Publicly espousing an unpopular opinion now can be career suicide Let's not pretend this is new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist The difference now is that visibility is more uniformly distributed across the population.

mc32 5y ago
No normal person will deny this. But there is no comparison to a small population being affected (ironically in the USSR, lots of artists and authors got not only blacklisted but sent to the Gulags --gee, I wonder if they wrote to Stalin on behalf of their brethren) to potentially anyone and everyone being a potential subject at any moment for something otherwise innocuous. What’s more this is much worse. It’s not about a singular subject (communist sympathizer) but just about anything at any moment. It's a shifting landscape so much so that there is internecine sniping among all groups. Today you can’t even make a genuine faux pas without the risk of someone coming down on you and risking your livelihood. That’s quite different. If Pelosi said off handedly, you know Trump did a couple of things right, or you know I don’t agree 100% with everything BLM she’ll be in trouble and she’s the top politician outside the president. Imagine a school teacher…
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Modern bidirectional communications tools make it easy to wide-cast a message and then have that message responded to by potentially millions of receivers. I think we don't respect the power we wield often enough. That's a terrible capability to provide via a system that also encourages you to blurt something out in 280 characters or less. Every single tweet is a shout from a mountaintop (and since it's time-stamped and on the timeline forever, that shout echoes perpetually). Additionally, that infrastructure incentivizes gravitation towards some flat-mass-"centroid" of acceptable cultural practice, and there's no particular guarantee that such a thing across the bulk of humanity is either possible or desirable.
- klyrs 5y ago
  > But there is no comparison to a small population being affected to potentially anyone and everyone being a potential subject. If I may paraphrase... there's no comparison between oppressing a minority I don't belong to, and the entire population being subjected to the same risk.
  - mc32 5y ago
    It doesn't matter how you put it. If you say "tax the rich 95%." That's bad. "Tax everyone 95%" That's really bad. I don't understand how you cannot see that. The fewer people affected by something, the less evil it is even if it's evil. I mean, what are you saying, H-wood blacklisting was bad, therefore what we see in social media ostracizing is acceptable? That seems... strange. Of course not all sympathizers of communism also agreed with death camps, re-education, stifling of progress, etc., etc., but they tacitly contributed to to those bad things. A young person, or someone who thinks they are being funny or whatever caught in a bad moment is different from someone who knowingly supports tyrannical forms of government.
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ta1234567890 5y ago
YC has a blacklist of people and companies. Not sure what will land you there, but I know they have it and use it.
- onion2k 5y ago
  If there's an actual blacklist where YC employees can just arbitrarily ban founders from working with certain companies that's quite surprising and maybe pretty bad for YC's reputation. If you mean YC has a strong community of founders who share war stories of how people and companies were difficult to work with, and the other YC founders pay attention to those stories though, well, that's not a blacklist.
  - ta1234567890 5y ago
    There’s both. About the blacklist, I don’t know exactly how it works, who specifically has access to it or who can add entries to it, but I know it exists, I know people who have been affected by it, know people who have been told explicitly about it and know that at least some partners have access to it.
- yepthetruth 5y ago
  Yep. If you say anything bad about Paul Graham or any YC people/companies, you’ll end up on this list. YC companies can and do also sic the network on rivals. There are also some YC partners with personal grudges and hurt egos that go out of their way to fight with people. Some will even pivot teams to compete with people who have bested them in the past. YC is a super shady org.
  - dang 5y ago
    I'm giving ta1234567890 the benefit of the doubt upthread, but this comment is definitely a false, substanceless smear.
    - youlyingsack 5y ago
      You're lying. Next time you nuke one of my friends Show HNs off the front page, I'll send them a link to this comment so they can call you out publicly. YC partners don't hold grudges and work their network against people who have damaged their ego??? Bull fucking shit. I know YC companies call in hits all the time on people as they brag about it relentlessly. You have all kinds of levers to pull here and you pull them without hesitation. The YC network spreads false information about competitors all the time. They kill deals, focus companies against those they don't like and generally are one of the least ethical group of people operating in the tech space (and that's saying a lot). That you'll get on here and make an outright brazen lie saying that this doesn't happen is very par for the course.
BobbyJo 5y ago
> The difference now is that visibility is more uniformly distributed across the population. And that you don't necessarily have to chase said visibility. Before, visibility was a goal very few people could attain. Now it's a bomb that can be thrown at you without warning.
inglor_cz 5y ago
I think the extent matters as well. I am not sure if humans can exist without blacklists. Some people definitely have the instinct to create them. But nowadays it is fairly easy for every employer out there to check out whether there is a 'controversy' in your past or not, even if you are not a traditional celebrity. Being less employable in Miami is one thing. Being less employable in the entire Anglosphere is another.
spectramax 5y ago
This is a distraction and diversion from the original comment. Hollywood is not at the scale of the internet. Some privileged people got cancelled in Hollywood, who cares. When a hard working person gets cancelled by saying something stupid, the consequences are back breaking.
- standardUser 5y ago
  Forget Hollywood. Imagine trying to build the career of your choice as a black person, or a woman or an out gay person in that same era. Society was casually blacklisting the literal majority of Americans from most professional realms.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Yes, but that was the case for most of history, and America (and the world) at the time did it progressively less and less (first the abolition of slavery, then women right to vote, civil rights, de-seggregation, and so on). Whereas today it's a new phenomenon, that gets progressively worse even though the problems you've mentioned (regarding blacks, women, gays, etc) are at their historical lower point. So while America was progressing then, this is a regression now. And it also affects blacks, women, gays, lesbians, republicans, demoracts, old-style lefties, and so on -- all of those categories have had members cancelled or mob-attacked for wrong opinions... (even someone like Dave Chappelle, who is a comedian of all things, has been attacked on such grounds).
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      > (even someone like Dave Chappelle, who is a comedian of all things, has been attacked on such grounds). Dave Chappelle, with his recent $8-figure deal with a prominent pop-culture/FAANG company, who keep publishing and promoting his specials, seems like he's actually a counter-argument to your point.
      - coldtea 5y ago
        Not for lack of trying.
everdrive 5y ago
Except that I never had a chance of being on a hollywood blacklist in the first place. I don't even use social media, and it's still possible I could say something off-color somewhere and find myself canceled.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Or not say something. Refusing to join in can be an offense. Sort of a “join us or die” accept killing is not usually needed to shut someone down. Shunning is usually enough these days.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    "Silence is violence" and "In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist".
    - treeman79 5y ago
      Logical fallacy that leads to oppression and genocide.
bingohbangoh 5y ago
Poor kids couldn't get a job in Hollywood. Oh the humanity! What's going on now is being blacklisted by multiple industries. People who get marked as such never work in "normal" companies again and have to move continents to find work. You are comparing being blacklisted by a group of people to being blacklisted by society at large.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  > People who get marked as such never work in "normal" companies again and have to move continents to find work. Who? Maybe I'm just not paying attention to the news, but I somewhere missed the great wave of American software developers migrating to Europe for a better life for their families.
coldtea 5y ago
>Let's not pretend this is new Let's not pretend the scale of the phenomenon today and mass surveillance capacity of today plus mass exposure and permanent public record of social media, web forums, even public spaces and events (e.g. with someone recording a video) is in any way comparable to the McCarthy era. Or the the "offenses" people get social-mob-attacked, pilloried, and fired are in any way comparable to the offenses (even if BS) people were prosecuted for in that day: being considered an enemy of the state working to overthrow the government.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Most of the people I'm seeing get actually cancelled are... being considered "an enemy of the state working to overthrow the government". I'm also seeing a lot of base-rate fallacy and availability bias issues (surprisingly, from many of the same people who complain about other people falling prey to the base rate fallacy w.r.t. Covid). That you can think of a few instances where people were loudly pilloried for, say, weaponizing the state use of force to racist ends, doesn't mean that it happens that often.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    The detrimental effect doesn't lie with thousands of people getting cancelled, it lies with thousands of people not speaking up anymore.

wussboy 5y ago

This is one of the primary reasons I stay off of social media. There is not forgetting, no opportunity to learn and grow and change and develop.

wonderwonder 5y ago
I just maintain an anonymous one and never comment. Lets me follow whatever topics I care about and no worries about anything coming back to bite me. I make sure to try and include people I disagree with as well to a certain extent as its a good way to see other points of view and also to reinforce why I disagree with them in the first place. Lets me know I am not in an echo chamber and at least 51% of my opinions are probably my own... maybe.
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I feel like this is obvious with a major caveat. You and I agree. Don’t use social media and this won’t be a problem. I think the disadvantages outweigh. But… what about when Hackernews or Reddit or Discord whatever formerly anonymous some-degree-of-social-network is made not so anonymous? I have a Reddit account that I’ve surely said things if someone was motivated they could make life hard for me - true things - but who cares about that anymore? It’s not the same thing, but we might not be sure in what ways they are similar.
- 100011_100001 5y ago
  It depends what your risk appetite is. I see it as layers. So an organization with skill and motivation, like government agencies vs some specific person with a limited skillset and motivation Who are you trying to "hide" from? Simply having a different username for each website helps with that. Personally for Facebook / Linkedin I never list my current employer. Enough of a layer to make it harder to track my employer for the casual lookup, but not impossible given enough time/money/competency. I really like this graphic about what level of security you want vs who you are trying to protect from: https://anonymousplanet.org/media/image3.jpeg https://anonymousplanet.org/media/image3.jpeg
dudul 5y ago

Goronmon 5y ago

Where do you draw the line though? Are we never allow to criticize someone for their opinions or "jokes", regardless of content or context? It's easy to just state "People should be able to make jokes or have a bad day." and while maybe that's true, I don't think we should be able to brush off all behavior by just labeling it a "bad day".

imgabe 5y ago
You draw the line at where it has an actual, measurable impact on other people. “Joe Schmoe has an opinion you don’t like” doesn’t impoverish anyone, it doesn’t prevent anyone from getting food or housing or any other need. It’s just a person having an opinion. Going into hysterics over trivial nonsense that ultimately doesn’t matter is not helping anyone. It’s not making the world a better place. Quite the opposite.
- throwaway9980 5y ago
  If enough Joe Schmoes have bad opinions it does in fact impoverish people and prevent them accessing necessary goods like food and housing. Many ideas are in fact wrong and if widespread terribly dangerous.
  - 9980throwaway 5y ago
    There are two issues being discussed here: the ability to speak/censor opinions, and the ability to control unspoken opinions. First, every individual has what should be a rather obvious and fundamental right to think whatever thoughts and have whatever opinions they like. Nobody gets to decide what opinions an individual holds, except for that individual. Now, as for the spreading of those ideas: Power to censor is frequently used to silence good ideas and allow bad ones to flourish - see modern-day censorship in China, Russia, North Korea, India, and Australia, or older censorship around the Vietnam War and slave liberation (back when owning slaves was in fashion). The fact that someone is silencing an opinion has very little to do with whether or not that opinion is actively harmful - and, at the very least, those in power have a strong tendency to use their power (including censorship, if available) to gain more power, and those in the public realm will use their own speech and censorship (including via "canceling" aka mob justice) to benefit their own group, regardless of whether their cause is just or their tactics are fair. So, it's all well and good for you to say "this opinion is harmful", but that's not really well correlated to whether that opinion is actually harmful. Even when the majority of the country agrees that an opinion is harmful, that doesn't actually mean that it is - but, as a democracy, we choose an imperfect system that works most of the time. That system, however, involves passing laws that declare some speech harmful, based on representatives elected by majority vote of their constituents. Twitter-based outrage from a tiny fraction of the population defining "bad opinions" is so antithetical to the idea of democracy that it shouldn't even be considered in the first place. tl;dr we have an existing mechanism for controlling "harmful speech" and it's the government, not social media mobs.

baktubi 5y ago

There’s the other side of the spectrum as well: what the influencers seek to gain by amplifying criticisms for any odd remark. Just think of the whole anti-vaccine movements and the spread of misinformation. Folks come out of the woodwork and claim a myriad of side effects but they have no background to scientifically vet the published vaccine research. Influencers leveraging fear and confusion as a way to amplify bias and shame people making positive comments on a vaccine. And this generates them massive followings and potentially increases “social status”. Curiously I’m seeing somewhat of a proportional trend: as peoples ability to amplify misinformation increases, so does the value of censorship. This is kind of scary to be honest—to say that censorship has inherent value in our society. All it takes is one climate-science denier to change 50% of the population’s opinion. Or to convince the public that one pro-vaccine comment is the scourge of humanity. EDIT: Just got a downvote and reflecting on how the down-vote makes me feel; how should I proceed? Should I defend my comment? Do I want more social karma on this website? Am I being punished for my opinion. How’s that for some introspection…

vibrato2 5y ago
Misinformation doesn’t exist. Lies are real information.

k__ 5y ago

The problem is not, people making mistakes. The problem is, people making mistakes and saying they weren't mistakes. Or they give non-apologies.

deleted 5y ago
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wonderwonder 5y ago
Why do they have to apologize to society for making a mistake in a local setting? Social media has created this bizarre environment where a simple interaction between a couple people offends the entire world and then the entire world crushes the transgressor, ends their employment and demands an apology? That is insanity. Normal people should never be thrust into the position where they are forced to apologize to society for a normal mistake or face complete annihilation. Additionally, its not like social media waits for their target to apologize before wreaking havoc on their ability to feed their family. They just attack and then the apology is used as an additional attack vector because no matter what the apology is never enough.
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I would prefer not to live in an apology economy, thanks though.
inglor_cz 5y ago
Looking at the scandals of the last decade, apology usually does not help the target at all. It is just part of the expected sick show before being fired or punished anyway. One day, we will wake up in a world where apology has died out because it was never rewarded by forgiveness.

ResearchCode 5y ago

Real countries don't have at-will employment and should start using anti-defamation laws against internet mobs.

devit 5y ago

Just don't express yourself online non-anonymously, and in real life don't go to places where cameras are allowed.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
This would translate to do not leave the bathroom in the US, or at least do not go outside your abode.
- mc32 5y ago
  Ironically enough, A senatress from Arizona got accosted to a bathroom with video phone cameras in order to convince (bully) her into a position.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    What is the purpose of using a different word for a man senator and a woman senator?
    - Minor49er 5y ago
      To identify their gender. Like the differences between waiter/waitress, masseur/masseuse, actor/actress, and countless of other examples.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        >To identify their gender. The purpose of my question was to lead to the inevitable question of what the purpose of identifying a senator's gender was, at least in the context of the comment I was replying to. >Like the differences between waiter/waitress, masseur/masseuse, actor/actress, and countless of other examples. I would ask the same question for those, but at least those might be used simply because they are frequently used and it might be habit. But I have never seen the word "senatress" used in 30+ years of living in the US, and I read a ton of political news. Although, I id not know about masseur and masseuse. I thought all people who gave massages were masseuses. But I am not familiar with the massage scene. I can see a possible purpose for clarifying a woman performing massages versus a man performing massages since someone might prefer a massage from one rather than another.

cm2187 5y ago

And the worst is kids. If you think you can go off track and say dumb things as an adult, think of the 14yo self. I thank God I was a teenager before the modern internet. There is no forgiveness. The doors of college education can be shut on a whim for a bad joke. Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment to apply.

andrepd 5y ago
> Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment to apply. And... is this the case today? Do universities exclude your application or scrutinise your political beliefs?
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I have heard from interns that colleges want to see engagement for social justice or diversity causes during the application process. I have also heard that for research grants you need to show “diversity and inclusion” efforts. One guy I talked to from a Nevada school said these are often won by rich colleges who are almost purely white but know how to talk diversity whereas poorer colleges that are actually way more diverse don’t rate well on the diversity and inclusion scale.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    > I have heard from interns that colleges want to see engagement for social justice or diversity causes during the application process. It's been 15 years since I did the college admissions dance, but I do remember that most of the superstitions about the application process don't apply if you score above a 33 on the ACT (perhaps you'd need a perfect score to have the velvet rope lifted if you're applying for MIT). All the rules of thumb about taking at least three years of a foreign language and balancing between 2–4 extra-curricular activities are for the students who won't be immediately offered merit scholarships.

tstrimple 5y ago

> People used to make tasteless jokes all the time and it was treated as it was, just a joke and life continued. Except it was only ever "just a joke" for the perpetrators. What we're seeing more of now is the voice of the previously unheard and ignored, and it turns out they don't like being the butt of racist or sexist or bigoted "jokes". This is the same energy as dismissing sexual harassment as "boys will be boys". "We can't give girls a friendly pat on the ass and compliment anymore. The liberals have taken over and ruined everything!"

legostormtroopr 5y ago
Thank you for proving the parent comments point. He said "People used to make tasteless jokes all the time" and you equated it to "why can't we physically assault girls anymore". There are shades of gray to all huuman interaction, and thanks to behaviour like yours where people jump to prove they are good, anything can be considered "bad".
- tstrimple 5y ago
  Why should people in position of power get to choose what others should and shouldn't be offended by? Both with physical and verbal abuse, minorities and women have been told by people in positions of power to toughen up. All we're seeing now is the repercussions of those marginalized folks getting their voice. I'm sorry you don't like it when they complain about being abused, but telling them to just toughen up is absolutely the losing position to take here.