4 ms·

Depends on what you mean by "making that call". Imagine the situation: you work in a restaurant and somebody (falsely) published on the Internet that you have a

by smsm42 4y ago

Depends on what you mean by "making that call". Imagine the situation: you work in a restaurant and somebody (falsely) published on the Internet that you have a highly communicable infectious disease. People are calling your restaurant owner and demanding to fire you. Inspectors come to the restaurant to test you (after a week, test comes clean, but in the meantime the restaurant must be kept closed, just in case). Local politicians publish interviews in local newspapers and TV demanding to create legislation against people like you who do not care about public health (they don't care about you or whether or not it's true, they have an election coming in). The local bank demands from the restaurant owner to fix the situation, in any way of form, or they won't be providing credit to them anymore since it's become too risky and their regulatory profile does not allow them to credit institutions with high level of risk. Some idiot puts a brick through the restaurant window at night. Insurance pays it off and raises the premium, because it might happen again. Eventually, the owner takes you aside and tells you: "Dude, I know you are a good worker. I know all this internet stuff is complete lies. I have nothing against you. But I have a family to feed. I have loans. I spent decades building my business. Let's just part as friends?" In this situation, who took the decision to fire you? The owner? The bank? The bank regulators? The politicians? The people who called the restaurant, in fear for their health? The people who published the initial lie? Everyone participated a little, and by the end of it, there wasn't really any other possible choice. That's how it usually works.

mongol 4y ago
This is an enlightning example but not how I have seen most cases play out. I am thinking of the brick through the window, the regulatory closure etc. Your example takes it further than "just" cancelling although taken to its extreme it can probably go this far. Most cases I have seen have more been about loss of business and fear of loss of reputation. Basically, in your example, the manager would have the talk with the employee after just the social media storm. Perhaps the manager's fear are all the other things, but the cancelling happens before it ever goes that far.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Perhaps the manager's fear are all the other things, but the cancelling happens before it ever goes that far. As expected. If you find yourself at risk of something bad happening to you, you'll make steps to mitigate that risk before it materializes. The question of how real is that risk extends beyond "cancel culture" - it sits at the core of the public relations and reputation management industries. Whether it makes sense or not, companies tend to be quite aggressive at protecting their reputation in certain contexts. This is an empirical fact. Cancelling someone is mostly about exploiting that - it's an art of causing harm to a person by making them a target of their employers' PR immune system, which starts acting before any real harm comes to the company itself. It's been demonstrated to work, the mechanism of action is clear and obvious, and it's quite easy to use. When done properly, there isn't a single person or group that could be specifically blamed for destroying the victim's life. You can't fine the company for trying to proactively protect their business deals or shield themselves from potential liability. You can't fine the crowd for being idiots. The original instigators have plausible deniability. And everything happens so fast that it doesn't matter whether the allegations about the victim are true, or complete fabrication. That's why people are so afraid of it.
- smsm42 4y ago
  The brick sometimes comes as online abuse. But sometimes in a very physical form, especially in academia. Talks shut down, venues trashed and property set on fire, people physically hurt, that kind of stuff. Threats of course are routine, though 99% of them is lies, but not everyone is willing to risk it. 1 crazy out of a million is enough (see example of a guy recently who planned to murder supreme court judges). But loss of business is bad enough. And usually the business manager would rather fire the trouble maker than risk hurting ten or hundreds or thousands of people that depend on this business. That's why it is so effective.
jonathankoren 4y ago
A rather elaborate hypothetical, but since cancel culture is purportedly rampant, can we have a real world example?
- bombolo 4y ago
  https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    So what happened in the end? RMS returned to the FSF board in March 2021, where he remains. In other words, a return to the status quo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    I read through the first quarter or so of this article and man — despite the author’s best efforts, it makes RMS look real bad. Here’s a particularly awful direct quote: > Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Isiands. Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      It gets worse. I actually came here to say pretty much the same thing — happy you did. Before I get into that, I do want to counterbalance it by saying that I agree with Stallman in that specific context. The context being key. The question is whether a 17yo can morally consent to having sex (not legally). Unless one truly believes that a switch flips the day you turn 18, you’ll be hard-pressed to form an argument that a 20yo having sex with a 17.99yo is not merely illegal, but also immoral. But the problem of course is that Stallman has a room temperature social IQ. I hate to phrase it so bluntly, because it’s like staring into my future when I’m 60. I bet I’ll run my mouth one too many times and get into some hot water, and it’s all too easy to take potshots at someone who’s willing to risk saying controversial-but-true things. And yet. > It seems that [Stallman’s] general points are two. > 1. … > 2. And that, depending on the context, what is technically child pornography didn't cause anyone harm. >> This child pornography might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. > He then says that the mere possession of child pornography does not harm anyone. I assume he is implying that only the production of child pornography harms people. >> But even when it is uncontroversial to call the subject depicted a child, that is no excuse for censorship. Having a photo or drawing does not hurt anyone, so and if you or I think it is disgusting, that is no excuse for censorship. > I would disagree with that, but it's his personal blog. He is not speaking for MIT or the free software foundation. “Disagree” is a rather benign term for the emotions one tends to feel at that sentiment. It’s an interesting experience to consciously try to override one’s own tendency to raise a “conversational exception”. (From http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html, “Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used: to end a discussion.”) Yes, it’s technically true that possessing CSAM does not physically harm anyone. And that’s worth pausing to consider the implications. For example, I’ve spent a lot of time considering whether AI models should be allowed to generate CSAM. After all, isn’t it tempting to think you could train one Final Model on Forbidden Content, with the justification of “See, now no one needs to go and produce this training data anymore; we have an endless supply that harms nobody”? It’s at least worth considering, if only to disagree with it. Then you get into the really weird questions. If you train a model to produce loli hentai porn (which 4chan is actually doing), is it morally reprehensible? (Turns out, it’s often illegal.) After all, it’s just drawings. No real people were even involved. How do you even argue against that from a moral standpoint? Yet all of this context seems completely lost on Stallman, who spends two seconds to type two paragraphs and clicks “reply” without pausing to consider how it might sound. It’s so frustrating to see someone bring up so many valid points in a way that’s not merely tone deaf, but existing in a universe absent of undertones and nuance. At times like these, I like to reread http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html: > If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. I despise AI safety filters, but they exist because we can’t afford to ship a Richard Stallman model out to the real world and have it generate an endless list of reasons why child porn doesn’t hurt anybody. We’d have no time left to do actual research, because we’d have to spend it all defending ourselves for the decision to release such a model.
pjc50 4y ago
> somebody (falsely) published on the Internet Note that with AI the process of producing a huge volume of false "information" about someone can now be automated.

by smsm42 4y ago

mongol 4y ago

This is an enlightning example but not how I have seen most cases play out. I am thinking of the brick through the window, the regulatory closure etc. Your example takes it further than "just" cancelling although taken to its extreme it can probably go this far. Most cases I have seen have more been about loss of business and fear of loss of reputation. Basically, in your example, the manager would have the talk with the employee after just the social media storm. Perhaps the manager's fear are all the other things, but the cancelling happens before it ever goes that far.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Perhaps the manager's fear are all the other things, but the cancelling happens before it ever goes that far. As expected. If you find yourself at risk of something bad happening to you, you'll make steps to mitigate that risk before it materializes. The question of how real is that risk extends beyond "cancel culture" - it sits at the core of the public relations and reputation management industries. Whether it makes sense or not, companies tend to be quite aggressive at protecting their reputation in certain contexts. This is an empirical fact. Cancelling someone is mostly about exploiting that - it's an art of causing harm to a person by making them a target of their employers' PR immune system, which starts acting before any real harm comes to the company itself. It's been demonstrated to work, the mechanism of action is clear and obvious, and it's quite easy to use. When done properly, there isn't a single person or group that could be specifically blamed for destroying the victim's life. You can't fine the company for trying to proactively protect their business deals or shield themselves from potential liability. You can't fine the crowd for being idiots. The original instigators have plausible deniability. And everything happens so fast that it doesn't matter whether the allegations about the victim are true, or complete fabrication. That's why people are so afraid of it.
smsm42 4y ago
The brick sometimes comes as online abuse. But sometimes in a very physical form, especially in academia. Talks shut down, venues trashed and property set on fire, people physically hurt, that kind of stuff. Threats of course are routine, though 99% of them is lies, but not everyone is willing to risk it. 1 crazy out of a million is enough (see example of a guy recently who planned to murder supreme court judges). But loss of business is bad enough. And usually the business manager would rather fire the trouble maker than risk hurting ten or hundreds or thousands of people that depend on this business. That's why it is so effective.

jonathankoren 4y ago

A rather elaborate hypothetical, but since cancel culture is purportedly rampant, can we have a real world example?

bombolo 4y ago
https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  So what happened in the end? RMS returned to the FSF board in March 2021, where he remains. In other words, a return to the status quo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  I read through the first quarter or so of this article and man — despite the author’s best efforts, it makes RMS look real bad. Here’s a particularly awful direct quote: > Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Isiands. Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    It gets worse. I actually came here to say pretty much the same thing — happy you did. Before I get into that, I do want to counterbalance it by saying that I agree with Stallman in that specific context. The context being key. The question is whether a 17yo can morally consent to having sex (not legally). Unless one truly believes that a switch flips the day you turn 18, you’ll be hard-pressed to form an argument that a 20yo having sex with a 17.99yo is not merely illegal, but also immoral. But the problem of course is that Stallman has a room temperature social IQ. I hate to phrase it so bluntly, because it’s like staring into my future when I’m 60. I bet I’ll run my mouth one too many times and get into some hot water, and it’s all too easy to take potshots at someone who’s willing to risk saying controversial-but-true things. And yet. > It seems that [Stallman’s] general points are two. > 1. … > 2. And that, depending on the context, what is technically child pornography didn't cause anyone harm. >> This child pornography might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. > He then says that the mere possession of child pornography does not harm anyone. I assume he is implying that only the production of child pornography harms people. >> But even when it is uncontroversial to call the subject depicted a child, that is no excuse for censorship. Having a photo or drawing does not hurt anyone, so and if you or I think it is disgusting, that is no excuse for censorship. > I would disagree with that, but it's his personal blog. He is not speaking for MIT or the free software foundation. “Disagree” is a rather benign term for the emotions one tends to feel at that sentiment. It’s an interesting experience to consciously try to override one’s own tendency to raise a “conversational exception”. (From http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html, “Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used: to end a discussion.”) Yes, it’s technically true that possessing CSAM does not physically harm anyone. And that’s worth pausing to consider the implications. For example, I’ve spent a lot of time considering whether AI models should be allowed to generate CSAM. After all, isn’t it tempting to think you could train one Final Model on Forbidden Content, with the justification of “See, now no one needs to go and produce this training data anymore; we have an endless supply that harms nobody”? It’s at least worth considering, if only to disagree with it. Then you get into the really weird questions. If you train a model to produce loli hentai porn (which 4chan is actually doing), is it morally reprehensible? (Turns out, it’s often illegal.) After all, it’s just drawings. No real people were even involved. How do you even argue against that from a moral standpoint? Yet all of this context seems completely lost on Stallman, who spends two seconds to type two paragraphs and clicks “reply” without pausing to consider how it might sound. It’s so frustrating to see someone bring up so many valid points in a way that’s not merely tone deaf, but existing in a universe absent of undertones and nuance. At times like these, I like to reread http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html: > If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. I despise AI safety filters, but they exist because we can’t afford to ship a Richard Stallman model out to the real world and have it generate an endless list of reasons why child porn doesn’t hurt anybody. We’d have no time left to do actual research, because we’d have to spend it all defending ourselves for the decision to release such a model.

pjc50 4y ago

> somebody (falsely) published on the Internet Note that with AI the process of producing a huge volume of false "information" about someone can now be automated.