4 ms·

"Deleted from social media" is a pretty weak definition of "being cancelled". Regardless of whether you agree or not "cancelling" is more about large scale boy

"Deleted from social media" is a pretty weak definition of "being cancelled". Regardless of whether you agree or not "cancelling" is more about large scale boycott of a person and the media or services associated with them. It's not "Just" about blocking someone on social media, and it often has significant impacts on the business or the individuals who are being cancelled.

_bfhp 5y ago
Tech giants deciding what political ideas are delete-worthy, in the places where most people get their information and hear political arguments, is not the same as boycotting... > In the digital age, we are nearing the point where an idea banished by Twitter, Facebook and Google all but vanishes from public discourse entirely, and that is only going to become more true as those companies grow even further. Whatever else is true, the implications of having those companies make lists of permitted and prohibited ideas are far more significant than when ordinary private companies do the same thing. [1] [1] hhttps://web.archive.org/web/20161012220046/https://theintercept.com/2014/08/21/twitter-facebook-executives-arbiters-see-read/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161012220046/https://theinterc...
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Cancelling a person is something with strong impacts on their professional and social lives. Blocking people's speech on social networks is a very different thing.
  - _bfhp 5y ago
    There's a difference for sure, though in some cases one follows the other. I agree that there should be consequences for powerful people who preach hatred, when the consequences don't require giving even more power to tech giants and employers (a good example might be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaBaby#Homophobic_remarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaBaby#Homophobic_remarks)
RajT88 5y ago
As near as I can tell, people complaining about being "cancelled" are being punished for violating the TOS of the social media platforms they are on. If you are spouting heresies in a respectful good-faith debate, the worst that generally happens is you get yelled at/laughed at, and usually by community members and not the mods.
- domador 5y ago
  That brings up the question of whether these social media platforms' terms of service are themselves censorious and intolerant to some degree. The first answer to that would be "yes", since otherwise terms of service wouldn't even exist and no one would ever be banned for anything they said or did in or out of the platform. The second answer would be "maybe", especially for platforms that pride themselves on being paragons of open discussion. (I think that "maybe" should be a permanently ongoing, self-reflective maybe.)
  - RajT88 5y ago
    Having frequented a few of the paragons of open discussion, I can tell you that they regularly ban users as well. My takeaway isn't necessarily hypocrisy (although a few of them are certainly full of that), it's that moderation is hard because of the never-ending wave of people trying to clog up public discourse for a variety of crappy reasons. Jeff Atwood (one of the founders of Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, developer of Discourse) has some pretty insightful things to say about community management.
- IE6 5y ago
  Yes. Anecdotally I have noticed (in real life and online) some people view being "cancelled" (deleted) from a Social Media as a badge of honour and will gladly enumerate the accounts they have had that were banned but their ever-important message that got them to boot is never mentioned. If you dig deeper it's usually some form of TOS or hate-speech.
  - noxer 5y ago
    There is no such thing as "hate-speech" there is just speech that (some) people hate and almost anything fall user that if it has some kind of complexity. That's one of the core problems with hate-speech laws and ToS. You can not moderate it fair because its entirely subjective.

_bfhp 5y ago

Tech giants deciding what political ideas are delete-worthy, in the places where most people get their information and hear political arguments, is not the same as boycotting... > In the digital age, we are nearing the point where an idea banished by Twitter, Facebook and Google all but vanishes from public discourse entirely, and that is only going to become more true as those companies grow even further. Whatever else is true, the implications of having those companies make lists of permitted and prohibited ideas are far more significant than when ordinary private companies do the same thing. [1] [1] hhttps://web.archive.org/web/20161012220046/https://theintercept.com/2014/08/21/twitter-facebook-executives-arbiters-see-read/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161012220046/https://theinterc...

marcosdumay 5y ago
Cancelling a person is something with strong impacts on their professional and social lives. Blocking people's speech on social networks is a very different thing.
- _bfhp 5y ago
  There's a difference for sure, though in some cases one follows the other. I agree that there should be consequences for powerful people who preach hatred, when the consequences don't require giving even more power to tech giants and employers (a good example might be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaBaby#Homophobic_remarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaBaby#Homophobic_remarks)

RajT88 5y ago

As near as I can tell, people complaining about being "cancelled" are being punished for violating the TOS of the social media platforms they are on. If you are spouting heresies in a respectful good-faith debate, the worst that generally happens is you get yelled at/laughed at, and usually by community members and not the mods.

domador 5y ago
That brings up the question of whether these social media platforms' terms of service are themselves censorious and intolerant to some degree. The first answer to that would be "yes", since otherwise terms of service wouldn't even exist and no one would ever be banned for anything they said or did in or out of the platform. The second answer would be "maybe", especially for platforms that pride themselves on being paragons of open discussion. (I think that "maybe" should be a permanently ongoing, self-reflective maybe.)
- RajT88 5y ago
  Having frequented a few of the paragons of open discussion, I can tell you that they regularly ban users as well. My takeaway isn't necessarily hypocrisy (although a few of them are certainly full of that), it's that moderation is hard because of the never-ending wave of people trying to clog up public discourse for a variety of crappy reasons. Jeff Atwood (one of the founders of Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, developer of Discourse) has some pretty insightful things to say about community management.
IE6 5y ago
Yes. Anecdotally I have noticed (in real life and online) some people view being "cancelled" (deleted) from a Social Media as a badge of honour and will gladly enumerate the accounts they have had that were banned but their ever-important message that got them to boot is never mentioned. If you dig deeper it's usually some form of TOS or hate-speech.
- noxer 5y ago
  There is no such thing as "hate-speech" there is just speech that (some) people hate and almost anything fall user that if it has some kind of complexity. That's one of the core problems with hate-speech laws and ToS. You can not moderate it fair because its entirely subjective.