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The power they have isn’t over us, it’s over institutions and businesses who seem to bend to the will of the mob. I’d like to see some data on whether a Twitte
by wepple 5y ago
The power they have isn’t over us, it’s over institutions and businesses who seem to bend to the will of the mob.
I’d like to see some data on whether a Twitter storm in a teacup has any measurable negative consequences for a typical large organization, and whether they need to listen as often as they do.
- version_five 5y agoThe more decoupled an organization's or its leaders' incentives are from the "market" - the more risk averse they become. Everything is about keeping your head down and avoiding controversy. The goal for many orgs now is not to make customers happy anymore, it's to avoid the ire of a small group, and keep rent seeking. As we move towards post-capitalism this will only get worse.
- hallway_monitor 5y agoNobody ever got fired for canceling a controversial speaker
- hanklazard 5y agoThis is basically the problem, as I see it. On one hand, keep the speaker. The potential downside: social media outrage that may escalate and get covered on MSM if it gets big enough. You and your dept / uni get a lot of bad press or if things go really sideways, your job could be on the line. The potential upside of this decision? People go to a talk and consider some issues, but it’s not like you (the committee / administrator / dean etc) get any real tangible incentive from this outcome. You basically just did your job, if you’re lucky, everyone just moves on. On the other hand, cancel the speaker. The upside: MSM will congratulate you or ignore it, but regardless, you’ll be seen as making the “right” decision by most people you interact with. Some free speech types (a dying breed it seems) might get upset but they don’t seem to have much power over the general public’s perception or decisions about firing made by the university. So the decision is obvious and it’s the one that gets made time and time again. And it’s the way the Twitter mobs continue to hold sway, especially because so much of the MSM lives on Twitter. A similar rubric occurs in a large corporation by the C suite. Once the mob forms, there is everything to lose and almost nothing to lose by taking a stand on an issue seen as unwoke. If this is to change, incentives need to change, mainly creating disincentives for cowardly execs / deans and incentives for those who make principled and/or courageous stands. (None of this is a carte blanche endorsement against activism, it’s just to say that there are reasons that no one stands up against Twitter mobs and we may want to explore ways to change this dynamic unless we desire a future ruled by mobs)
- coldtea 5y agoThey should.
- pessimizer 5y agoThey don't have any power, other than to annoy the institution. The only power here is the power that MIT has over the people they book to speak, and since MIT doesn't want to be annoyed, they canceled the speaker. The problem with cancel culture is a problem with bad employment law, and a problem with cultural institutions without any core ethical beliefs.
- AwaAwa 5y agoThe paradox of ethical relativism. Seems to run parallel with the paradox of tolerance.
- no-dr-onboard 5y agoI agree. Absolutionistic ethics, of which I am a proponent of, would largely throw out “the paradox of tolerance”. Cancel culture serves to highlight the inevitable orthodoxies that arise from proponents of “the paradox of tolerance”. Ultimately people need to ask themselves, “By what standard?”
- jwond 5y ago> They don't have any power, other than to annoy the institution. The only power here is the power that MIT has over the people they book to speak, and since MIT doesn't want to be annoyed, they canceled the speaker. The ability to get others to do what you want them to is absolutely a form of power.
- whatshisface 5y agoI can't believe that Twitter culture has this much power but they're using it all on cancelling MIT speakers and not even trying to improve US policy.
- abacadaba 5y agomobs aren't known for being logical
- 5y ago
- snek_case 5y agoIt would be good to pass laws that make it illegal to fire someone over a twitter mob (or any kind of mob action). Anti-mob or anti-bullying laws. And/or initiate class-action lawsuits against twitter for encouraging this kind of behavior or failing to prevent it, resulting in significant damage to people's careers. It's far from being the first time this happens, so there's definitely a case to be made that twitter has known for a long time that this is a problem. Edit: changed the choice of words.
- zimpenfish 5y ago> llegal to fire someone over a twitter mob [...] Anti-lynching laws Are you really comparing getting fired from your job to a lynching? Because one of them seems a whole lot less serious than the other...
- ewindal 5y agoWho told you that you can only compare things of equal severity? That would maje comparisons largely useless.
- beakerbreaker 5y agoNobody was lynched here so anti-lynching law would not apply. Given we're discussing mobs getting riled up over the wrongs of the "other", it also seems appropriate to place the actual outcome in a less exaggerated way.
- snek_case 5y agoKind of ironic that people are getting offended over my choice of words here, but we could call these anti-mob or anti-bullying laws instead. The point remains, it might make sense to make it illegal for institutions to fire people over the call of a mob.
- ResearchCode 5y agoYes, they are very comparable. One tries to kill you outright, one tries to kill you by starvation or drive you to suicide.
- Causality1 5y agoProbably not a large organization, but plenty for a small to medium one. The case of Tripwire Interactive is a good recent case study.
- api 5y agoInstitutions and especially businesses have always bent to the will of the mob when it is cheap or even profitable to do so. The only time they don’t is when it costs something.