It's an unhelpful exaggeration to suggest that speech is being suppressed in the conventional sense that the threat or use of coercion is being employed to restrict speech.

But we care not only about whether debate is suppressed. We also care about the quality of debate, the culture, values and practices through which we engage with one another in the public sphere.

The concern over 'cancel culture' would be, I think:

   (1) certain arguments are beyond the pale of legitimate debate

   (2) those arguments should not be engaged with, or their proponents persuaded, but should be met with opprobrium and abuse

   (3) we can safely infer that someone has a malignant character if they make an individual statement which is considered illegitimate

   (4) if someone makes an illegitimate statement then we should ostracise them, deplatform them, and agitate their employer to fire them

Obviously 'cancel culture' is internally varied, and this list presents some of its worst aspects, while ignoring what can be said in favour of it. But my point is that we can reasonably argue over several of its features. The problem as I see it is how to criticise unreflective and exclusionary discourses, while engaging in debate, persuading rather than abusing, avoiding heavy-handed retributivism, and thinking for ourselves.

It is also worth asking whether cancel culture is more of a problem online that it is offline because it is encouraged by the design of several platforms, most egregiously Twitter.

At the moment I can't see any of it's features when someone like David Shor is fired for publishing facts of a study looking at types of protest. https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1271166899666079744?lang=e...

Not "someone like" David Shor. David Shor. He was fired. One guy. And that was wrong[1]. But one guy doesn't an epidemic make.

If you want to talk about individual instances of injustice, I'm there with you. If you want to paint a whole culture of internet progressives on the basis of a tiny handful of spiteful retributions, I think you aren't arguing in good faith.

[1] FWIW: it's been half reported and intimated that maybe he was really fired because the rest of the staff already hated him and this was an excuse. We don't know. But the public reason given for his termination was garbage.

Are those list items really that bad, though? Paraphrasing #4: you're saying that we need to welcome, broadcast and hire people who we genuinely think are vile and awful?

Where's the middle ground. If we can't fire, say, violent racists, and we can't escape their words, and we can't avoid them socially, what can we do?

I think the answer to that, if you look at it carefully, is going to be pretty much isomorphic to what we're already doing. There are excesses and mistakes (David Shor shouldn't have been fired), but that's true of all things.

What I don't see is a definition of "cancel culture" as a "problem" that isn't basically a defense of conservative opinions.

I think you're making a false dichotomy. You can avoid ostracising and deplatforming people without welcoming and broadcasting them.

Perhaps I can, but can twitter?

I agree that its implicit values are generally egalitarian, or at least aspire to be egalitarian, but I don't think there's a clear left-right split. My concern is not that we shouldn't be egalitarians. I'm a socialist; my avatar is named after a famous anarchist. It's that there is a culture of debate - 'cancel culture' - that betrays several flaws.

Should we value debate and engage with those we disagree with or ignore their arguments and ostracise them? Should we persuade those we disagree with or tell them they're horrible people? Should we address ourselves to the causes of prejudice and small-mindedness, or retributively punish those who misstep? Debate, persuasion, and opposition to retributive justice - those are scarcely values that are the monopoly of the right, and indeed, the last one runs counter to the right.

You are focusing on 'easy cases'. You write, 'you're saying that we need to welcome, broadcast and hire people who we genuinely think are vile and awful?' But that presupposes the precise crux of the debate: whether most people targeted by 'cancel culture' really are, as you say, 'vile and awful'.

You say we should encourage the firing of 'violent racists'. I think that's a reasonable option, depending on the context. But that's an easy case. The kind of problems I highlighted are found arrayed against people of all political stripes, often for minor offences or errors.

I was reading a large number of people abuse a Guardian journalist this morning for including the owner of a Pizzeria in a write-up of how working-class life has been affected by COVID - a mistake, for sure, even a humorous one, but not one that should be met by abuse. The owner in question was being doxxed, and his restaurant down-voted on review sites. To me, this kind of case is entirely typical of cancel culture, not anti-fascism.

Clearly we should value debate. Clearly we "should" persuade people we disagree with. The question is whether we should be forced to.

If I'm an employer, should I be forced to hire people who I personally find unpersuadably vile? That's the "anti-cancel" position, right? I can't fire you, even if you're an asshole.

If I run a forum (like HN, or Reddit), I can't ban people even if they're "debating" in a way that is disruptive and driving off users? That too, is the "anti-cancel" position as far as I can see.

How do you square this? Be specific. Tell me the rule you want to enforce so that no one gets "cancelled" but we aren't swamped by garbage in online forums.

> But that presupposes the precise crux of the debate: whether most people targeted by 'cancel culture' really are, as you say, 'vile and awful'.

It absolutely does. Because if you can't cite me[1] someone who got "cancelled" who isn't "vile and awful", then doesn't it mean the whole "problem" doesn't exist?

Your position is that all my woke buddies are wrong and need to change. So show me the evidence.

[1] And let's be real: you can't, except for a tiny handful of notable cases. No one gets "canceled" here on HN (good grief, just look at the downvotes I'm quite sucessfully enduring!). No one gets "canceled" for being a republican. And most importantly: being argued with is not the same thing as being "canceled" no matter how hard you try to make that case.

> 'Clearly we should value debate. Clearly we "should" persuade people we disagree with. The question is whether we should be forced to.'

So you agree with the criticisms I made of cancel culture?

> 'If I'm an employer, should I be forced to hire people who I personally find unpersuadably vile?'

I don't think this is a helpful example, for two reasons. First, it is generally accepted that employers should have more latitude in the grounds on which they hire, than the grounds on which they fire. This reflects the fact that we are generally more concerned with actions of commission (e.g. killing someone) than omission (e.g. failing to give someone life-saving drugs). If we ask instead, 'Should you fire someone because they believe transgender women shouldn't be admitted into female sports', or 'Should you fire someone because they believe in the aggressive extradition of illegal immigrants', or 'Should you fire someone because they watch Fox news', it's much less clear-cut.

Secondly, and more to the point, what is at issue is rarely cancel culture among employers, but the way in which cancel culture pressures employers to fire people.

> 'If I run a forum (like HN, or Reddit), I can't ban people even if they're "debating" in a way that is disruptive and driving off users? That too, is the "anti-cancel" position as far as I can see. How do you square this? Be specific. Tell me the rule you want to enforce so that no one gets "cancelled" but we aren't swamped by garbage in online forums.'

I haven't thought about it, but my initial answer: I think the rules on large community websites like Reddit and HN should be to sanction abuse, hate speech (understood roughly along the lines of current British law), and various activities which undermine the aim of the website - e.g. persistent trolling, systematic lying, spamming adverts.

> 'It absolutely does. Because if you can't cite me[1] someone who got "cancelled" who isn't "vile and awful", then doesn't it mean the whole "problem" doesn't exist?'

You seem to think that the only evidence of cancel culture is the complete destruction of the lives of individuals. But those only the most extreme of cases. I just gave you a less extreme but far more representative case: the Guardian journalist that I read being harassed this morning (her name is Helen Pidd). Every time I go on Twitter I see a constant stream of tribalism, abuse and retributivism - these are not rare occurrences, they are omnipresent.

Take a more prominent case: J.K. Rowling's post on transgenderism. I disagree with 90% of what she wrote in that post. But I think her arguments should be engaged with, people should try and persuade her and those like her, that we should not abuse and deplatform her, and I don't think she is evil or malignant because of what she wrote.

With all respect, you seem to be retreating here. I don't think I disagree with any of your remedies, they sound fine. They also sound like pretty much the way our society and internet culture already work.

So I can't tell what you're arguing against. If "cancel culture" isn't the giant problem you originally jumped into argue against, and our existing protections are already in place... what are you arguing against?

I'm not saying that people aren't jerks on the internet. I'm saying that (1) it does happen at anything like the scale people like to think of (i.e. there is not Great and Terrible Woke Conspiracy), and (2) the excesses that are happening, at the scale they're happening at, are just not something we can "fix" via any remedy.

And the Rowling thing seems like a complete misinterpretation on your part. HUGE quantities of ink have been spilled at this point (including on this very site) explaining why the trans-exclusionary position is hurtful and counterproductive to modern feminism. Don't tell me she wasn't engaged with productive discourse. Rowling herself did like half a dozen interviews on the subject! You're acting like no one was willing to listen to her, when that's absolutely not the case.

You're saying that because someone was an asshole that means the rest of us are too? J. K. Rowling wasn't "canceled" in any way that matters. She was just wrong.

> 'With all respect, you seem to be retreating here.'

Nothing I said in my last post with inconsistent with the letter or spirit of my foregoing posts.

I didn't set out any 'remedies'. You asked me about about two relatively narrow issues. As I have repeated, I take 'cancel culture' to be, in the first instance, a cultural problem. The fundamental remedy is, therefore, cultural. Abolishing Twitter would help, though I don't see that happening.

If you don't know what I'm arguing against, return to my first post.

> 'And the Rowling thing seems like a complete misinterpretation on your part.'

You seem to be implying someone can only be negatively affected by cancel culture when: (i) their lives are destroyed; (ii) everyone who engages with them is participating in cancel culture. Why?

Obviously not everyone who engaged with Rowling disagreed, and not everyone who disagreed exhibited the pathologies that I attributed to cancel culture. But there was a very large -certainly the majority of voices on Twitter - contingent of people who didn't engage with Rowling's arguments, had no interest in persuading Rowling or those who sympathised with her, castigated her as evil and hateful, and called for a boycott of her books, and on authors writing for her publishing house to terminate their contracts.

'In any way that matters'. Rowling's entire profile has been shaped by the debate. This will define her life and career, and how she is remembered for the rest of history. Of course, she is a billionaire, and lives comfortably. But the point is that this is merely one (prominent) case representative of the very tendencies you deny exist.

The consequences are the degradation of the conversation in the public sphere, and of the willingness and ability of people to debate and think for themselves. Given that I share many of the broad goals of 'cancel culture' - i.e. curbing prejudicial and exclusionary discourses - I also worry that this kind of toxic approach will preclude the coalition-building and persuasion necessary to long-term hegemonic change. It also creates an avoidable blowback, i.e. most people feel condescended to, others take up the same style of politics on the right.

Read the Atlantic piece linked to above - there are many less prominent cases of individuals have been 'cancelled', often with little cause. I see this happening every time I log on to Twitter, in all directions.

Again, you just seem slippery here. I'm not denying that people are mean on the internet. I'm not denying that people get harmed by it. I'm denying that it's a huge problem, thus my attempts to pin you down on What Exactly Is Wrong, and How Do You Propose to Fix It. And you keep moving the goalposts!

Basically, this is what I keep hearing: "OK, these people weren't harmed, exactly. But countless others were who I haven't named. And why do you demand evidence of "harm" anyway? Aren't there other ways of being harmed?"

I mean... people are jerks. We can't fix that. Twitter surely can't fix that. If employers are routinely firing people[1] based on what jerks say on Twitter, then that's a problem. But it's something employers are going to have to address on a case-by-case basis.

[1] They aren't. Seriously, they aren't. It's happened in the past. It's not "happening". Far more people get fired for far worse reasons and we don't freak out at HN over it.

You claim I am 'slippery' and 'moving the goalposts'. You said in your last post that I was 'retreating'. Yet you have not even tried to show how anything I have said in my later posts is inconsistent with my earlier posts. Absent that, those claims are not helpful.

You say 'I'm not denying people are mean on the internet. I'm denying people get harmed by it'.

There are two simple problems here. The first is that we are not talking about whether people are 'mean', we're talking about the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of a specific subculture: 'cancel culture'. I have set out what I take to be the pathologies of that subculture. Why are you ignoring those pathologies, and talking as if 'cancel culture' didn't exist, and if this was just people being generically mean?

The second is that you protest that cancel culture is harmless. I just set out why I take it to be harmful: it degrades the public sphere, inhibits thought and debate, undermines hegemonic change, and threatens a blowback. Why have you not engaged with any of those arguments?

Finally, you raise the issue of 'employers' again. I have already said I take this to be peripheral to cancel culture. The main harm of cancel culture, as I see it, is on the public sphere. A few extreme cases end in firing - and that's significant for those people - but it's a relatively small harm compared to the effect it has on the public sphere.

> we're talking about the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of a specific subculture: 'cancel culture'. I have set out what I take to be the pathologies of that subculture. Why are you ignoring those pathologies, and talking as if 'cancel culture' didn't exist

Yeah. This is the disconnect. You're asserting without evidence that "cancel culture" exists as "a thing" worth discussing. I assert it doesn't, it's just a bunch of jerks, and ask for evidence about its impact.

And you don't want to engage on that. Which tells me that maybe this isn't really "a thing" worth discussing, just something that you're personally upset about.

> 'You're asserting without evidence that "cancel culture" exists as "a thing" worth discussing. I assert it doesn't, it's just a bunch of jerks, and ask for evidence about its impact.'

Your original response was that the listed pathologies 'were not that bad', but that they were only found in response to people who were genuinely 'vile and awful'. Now you're saying those pathologies are invented. Which is it?

You say I haven't provided evidence of its impact. In three of the four responses since my original post, I've given examples: Helen Pidd, J.K. Rowling, and The Atlantic piece linked to upthread. I could go on citing endless individual cases, but as I have tried to emphasise, the problem as I see it is a collective one: a culture degrading the public sphere.

You write in another of your replies: 'If you want to talk about individual instances of injustice, I'm there with you. If you want to paint a whole culture of internet progressives on the basis of a tiny handful of spiteful retributions, I think you aren't arguing in good faith.'

If individual cases can't prove anything, what evidence will you accept?

> 'Just something that you're personally upset about'.

I have to tell you, I am not the only person to notice the existence of a new 'cancel' culture, or to object to it. There was a prominent Harper's letter circulated on exactly this subject just a few days ago:

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

The definition of vile is getting ridiculous. Today its seems anyone is a "violent racist" if they don't agree 100% with BLM's mission statement. I'm sorry, you have to live in a world where there are people who have different opinions.

And Right On Cue, here's a great counter example: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/media/tucker-carlson-writer-b...

Read that, and you tell me: was Blake Neff canceled? Sure seems like it. Mainstream journalists found "vile" material in his online history, showed it to his employer, he's canned (well, resigned it seems like, technically).

So are you going to defend Neff? Please do. Or if you won't, please tell me why your carefully curated worries about "cancel culture" somehow don't apply to this case.

Because I can tell you why: because "vile".

So now tell me why your personal, entirely subjective definition of "vile" is more important that those of other people with different priorities. Because that's the only difference here.

This article from The Atlantic[1] does a much better job explaining the issue. It contains more than a handful of examples of people getting fired for really benign opinions, also this is just in the last few months.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/perils-us-...

James Damore certainly lost.

No, he was fired because he very loudly and publicly contradicted his employers' stated policies[1]. His ideas didn't "lose", not in the free speech sense everyone is yelling about. There's not a poster here who doesn't know what he said (we spent A LOT more than 200 comments on that one!).

Nor was he suppressed: he's still speaking, on the same subject! Hell, he's surely making more now as a right wing martyr than he ever was as a low level hacker for Google.

[1] I mean, people get fired for this all the time, like those folks Amazon canned a few months back for union organizing with employer resources. You only care about this one guy because he happens to play for Your Team.

What he posted was on an internal message board specifically for employees to discuss controversial subjects. It was only public because another google employee got upset and made it public.

I probably should have said "broadly", I guess. But I still don't see how that differs from the union folks, who used an internal messaging system to notify other employees about their rights.

Again, I can't help but think what you people really want is the inalienable right, not to "free speech", but to be Offensive Without Consequence. And again, Damore is a genuine celebrity now, he's a very bad example of the kind of repressive woke hegemony you're invoking.

It doesn't matter if being offended is a protected class. Offending someone isn't. And I. Our society we give individuals and groups broad powers to associate with only the people they choose to.

You can offend whomever you want, your right is protected! But if people don't like you, they're under no obligation to deal with you.

the previous poster presented it as a binary set of options but i agree with what you're saying - i think its safe to say we have all, at some point and in some scenario, been both victims and perpetrators. for me the answer is to simply move along with my life and associate with those who seem to be well intentioned and have positive world views. but going up a few comments relating to the cancel culture issue, for some that is simply not enough. they must become the enforcer, alert the world of the offender, until the offender is ostracized from society (judge jury and executioner perhaps). its hard for me to understand the motive but alas here we are.

>its hard for me to understand the motive but alas here we are.

Some personality types probably just like having the feeling that they hold power over other people.

You raise an interesting question. Why not ignore people?

Let me start by pointing out that this applies in both directions. When I post on twitter saying, for example, that "@FSF, you should fire Richard Stallman because he is a bad man", I am simply exercising my ability to speak.

The FSF can choose to ignore me. Why doesn't the FSF just move on and ignore the tweet? Before we move on I really want you to consider that question. I'm curious what yours is. Here's mine:

The people speaking out have power. The FSF is influential because people trust it to act ethically. If people no longer trust the FSF to act ethically around women, can they it to act ethically around software freedom? What about when software freedom intersects with the issues of marginalized peoples (think, for example, ML ethics or signal's value to marginalized groups). If people stop listening to the FSF it loses its influence, which (from the FSF's perspective) is a bad thing for its mission. But from the perspective of me, a person tweeting, I'm not necessarily looking to "punish" Stallman, but to hold people to high ethical standard.

To be clear, I'm not saying that there's never a punitive aspect to cancellation. What I am saying is that it's wrong to believe that there must be.

So I hold other individuals accountable to my values (or actually in some cases their own values). I "vote with my feet" and part ways with organizations that don't uphold the values I feel are important. When enough people do that, collectively, the force behind it becomes powerful enough that even relatively entrenched organizations have to pay some attention. In other words, decentralized collective action has power and ignoring it carries some risk for organizations.

This represents a shift in power and influence in a few ways. Some random individual is able to start a movement that picks up lots of steam very quickly. There's danger to this (think Reddit and the Boston Bomber), but there's always been a danger from what power can do (think Donald Trump taking out a full page NYT advertisement to enforce the death penalty against the Central Park Five).

Similarly, "blacklists" and "old boys clubs" have existed since forever and are harmful to people. My claim is that those will never go away. So empowering the previously unempowered is probably a good thing.

There's questions about harm in individual cases, but those need to be balanced against harms prevented and existing systems, which also systematically fail certain peoples. The question shouldn't be "is cancel culture perfect", but "does it cause less harm than existing structures for handling criticism and accountability".