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I disagree that organizations like the ones Musk is railing against are “telling that person someone did something bad” I mean that in the sense that a group o

I disagree that organizations like the ones Musk is railing against are “telling that person someone did something bad” I mean that in the sense that a group of thugs might show up to a business and mention “this is a bad neighborhood, it would be a shame if someone were to break your storefront window” They might argue they were just letting the business owner know a fact. They may even claim to be proponents of free-speech in an absolutist sense. But they are being manipulative and their claim to inform is an implied threat. Further, the threat’s being made to Twitter’s advertisers aim to materially harm Musk, not to address or counter the bad thing he is claimed to have said. I actually believe people have the legal right to do this. They often have a defensible moral reason. I just dislike that they obfuscate their tactics behind euphemism.

eapressoandcats 3y ago
The implied threat was… that they wouldn’t buy from those companies anymore? While I guess that’s slightly worse than just casually notifying a company of bad behavior, it’s not much worse. The whole point of this kind of criticism is to exhort behavior change so I’m not really convinced it’s misleading… and I think that’s Popehat’s point.
- zoogeny 3y ago
  No, the implied threat is that the brands name will be conspicuously dragged through the mud using every tool they have in the national media. Brands don’t care if a small group of activists boycott their product. They are terrified of being featured negatively. But at this point you’re just off in the weeds. This is all well-known tactics. Believe it or not tactics I don’t have much issue with. It just isn’t merely “criticism”. It’s an active and devastating campaign aimed to do as much harm as possible to bludgeon their adversary into the ground. It’s meant to inflict maximum damage to the recipient to induce fear in anyone who might consider following their example. But hey, I guess if they call it “criticism” then we can’t criticize them for doing it. Otherwise we’re just being hypocritical.

eapressoandcats 3y ago

The implied threat was… that they wouldn’t buy from those companies anymore? While I guess that’s slightly worse than just casually notifying a company of bad behavior, it’s not much worse. The whole point of this kind of criticism is to exhort behavior change so I’m not really convinced it’s misleading… and I think that’s Popehat’s point.

zoogeny 3y ago
No, the implied threat is that the brands name will be conspicuously dragged through the mud using every tool they have in the national media. Brands don’t care if a small group of activists boycott their product. They are terrified of being featured negatively. But at this point you’re just off in the weeds. This is all well-known tactics. Believe it or not tactics I don’t have much issue with. It just isn’t merely “criticism”. It’s an active and devastating campaign aimed to do as much harm as possible to bludgeon their adversary into the ground. It’s meant to inflict maximum damage to the recipient to induce fear in anyone who might consider following their example. But hey, I guess if they call it “criticism” then we can’t criticize them for doing it. Otherwise we’re just being hypocritical.