We gotta break this stuff into more detail.

If you look at say, the start of #metoo, you see Harvey Weinstein, a man so powerful that the ordinary justice system could not touch him until essentially a Twitter mob took him down.

Now, public accusation is a crappy way to settle bad behavior, it's easy to channel this stuff in any direction a manipulator might choose. But people choose that rout of desperation, when the ordinary justice and more broadly ordinary government processes fail.

If we look at the Minneapolis Police Department in particular, we see a department with such a long history of corruption and even murder that the entire group should be fired. And moreover, all of Minneapolis civic government out side the police would like to do that - but are in fact powerless to do that through a web of laws the police have protecting their interests.

And this is the thing. You have powerful, unaccountable men and women whose acts provoke anger in many parts of the population. Then you have an angry mob which actually can't impose any significant change and once they get going can inflict collateral damage themselves - and maybe get met by a counter-mob. But after the upsurge, any reform is thin and the stage is set for the next event.

So, I'd say mobs and counter-mobs are problematic but the root is permanent unaccountable powers that can ignore whatever material grievances different groups have.

I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the current mob mentality only came about because of unaccountable powers, or even if it did, that it will necessarily dissipate if those powers become and are held accountable. Some things are self-sustaining.

I don't think we can just look the other way because the negative behavior is caused by a feeling of rage and impotency. Should we try to fix the injustices that cause the feeling of rage and impotency? Yes. That doesn't mean we should also ignore the negative effects that rage and impotency results in, otherwise we'll be following a chain back forever.

I don't know who's "we" or who's looking the other way.

Everyone on every part of the political spectrum has one or more mob-tendencies they'd like to stamp out (or at least look like they're stamping out). And yet this situation continues. Indeed, it seems like the whole this different mobs gunning for each other.

It seems like one can't just take negative phenomena in isolation, say "that bad" and go get it. Or you can and everyone's doing it and things are still in a mess and you're part of the mess now.

You actually need positive, concrete alternatives to mob behavior. The problem in many ways is that the mob is also a lot of people, including other mobs, favorite enemy.

"We", as a societal group, whether that be "Americans" or "Westerners" or "Human beings". By looking the other way, I meant "assuming the problem will get better if the unaccountable powers are held accountable." People don't change their behavior overnight, even if it's unconsciously acting as a face in a mob they don't realize they're part of, and revolutions rarely result in a change that is positive in all aspects.

What if we trade unaccountable individuals (which sometimes were held accountable) for unaccountable mobs? I don't see one as necessarily better than the other, it's the prevalence and consequences of each that matter to me.

> Everyone on every part of the political spectrum has one or more mob-tendencies they'd like to stamp out (or at least look like they're stamping out). And yet this situation continues. Indeed, it seems like the whole this different mobs gunning for each other.

Yes, it's almost as if we've started identifying more with our subgroups than the larger group, and it's like multiple nations forced to coexist within the same borders of people we view as others. Like a digital Gaza Strip.

> It seems like one can't just take negative phenomena in isolation, say "that bad" and go get it. Or you can and everyone's doing it and things are still in a mess and you're part of the mess now.

Sure. That's the other end of the spectrum. I advocated for doing both. Address the root cause, also address the problem. If we accept that poverty increases crime, we shouldn't use that as an excuse to ignore crimes committed by the poor, and we shouldn't ignore that causal relationship and focus purely on policing and punishment.

> You actually need positive, concrete alternatives to mob behavior.

The whole point of my original comment is that I don't know what those are, but we need to find and/or advertise and explore any we can find because they are important.

kbenson:The whole point of my original comment is that I don't know what those are, but we need to find and/or advertise and explore any we can find because they are important.

Me: Well, all of the mechanism of modern democracy - a fair justice system, a congress representing the popular will, an executive branch primarily carrying out laws, a press that exposes flaws, etc are the ways modern democratic society has discovered for balancing interests.

In situations of imbalance, when things are not working, reforms within such a democratic capitalist society tend to come from elites because they hold power (with or without a popular mandate). We can see this in the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Civil Right Movement. Protests may get things going but those with power have to enact legislation.

Today, it may sound harsh but America's elites allowed American institutions become something like a dumpster fire because the situation didn't bother them. I mentioned the Minneapolis city council, theoretically the representatives of the city, would like to fire the police but cannot. (Nearly) "everyone" have some solutions but they aren't able to exercise them.

At this point, I'd look at Ralph Nader's Only The Super Rich Can Save Us. Because everything points to the very rich having decisive power and this quite willing to let things fall to hell. We can hope these people realize that triumph over a flaming ruin might not actually help as much as they're imagine.

Well, I would say it didn't bother them initially, and it changed so fast that by the time it did bother them (if it does), it was too late. We're talking about a decade or less of time here, since that's about the period of time that social media has had major usage by a majority of people, and while there were less efficient precursor networks (such as radio and television), nothing really compares to the current immediate feedback look of of the current systems, where time for info to permeate a platform and then regurgitates and eaten again can be measured in minutes in some cases, but often in just a few hours.

I doubt even the people that "saw it coming" really understood where it would get to, and there's no concrete indication that we're at the peak (there's pushback, but that can be steamrolled for while).

Elites have more power, and can get stuff done because there's a purity of intent and will expressed by one person with power that's hard to match with many people pooling power... but then again, we're dealing with runaway feedback loops, so who knows what the public can do if a good meme is found.

> At this point, I'd look at Ralph Nader's Only The Super Rich Can Save Us. Because everything points to the very rich having decisive power and this quite willing to let things fall to hell. We can hope these people realize that triumph over a flaming ruin might not actually help as much as they're imagine.

I'd much rather have the stability of the 1990s or 2000s that what we seem to have now when considering my own situation, but I'm white middle class, and I imagine people that have felt disenfranchised their whole lives may see the balance of good and bad happening now a bit differently, and I'm not willing to say they are better off as they were in the 1990s or 2000s. I dunno.

It seems like you imagine that out-of-control social media is happening in a vacuum or can be fixed in a vacuum. It's not and it cannot.

I'm sure almost everyone would prefer not be (hopefully) living through a era in which things fall apart on a multitude of levels. But hey, we should try to do something and if we can't do something immediately, at least analyze it.

What are the various mobs you refer to?

I don't know that mobs are rational. Sometimes, I'm sure they will be pointing to a genuine injustice, but just as often as not, they're going to be a rampaging mob. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about this next claim, but I wonder that it's simply an accident when they get it "right."

Nonetheless, even the worst among us deserve representation and due process protections: which a mob cannot (and will not) give.

Either you're in favor of free speech or you're not. Republicans, Democrats, and, yes, Hacker News all participate in cancel culture in one way or another.

Sure there are bots, provocateurs, and anonymous trolls who have no intent on changing their beliefs. But, please, let the American people have enough credit to make decisions for themselves and see racists for who they truly are.

I don't want racist and white supremacists spreading their rhetoric, so I want societal pressure to continue to work as it does against those people. At the same time, I don't want merely unpopular opinions getting the full weight of societal pressure causing problems for people that merely want to discuss what are actually open questions.

Reducing this to simply a matter of free speech or not is missing the point. This is a matter of figuring out how to deal with the negative effects of free speech when we care enough about free speech that limiting it in some way is not on the table.

That ship has sailed.

> At the same time, I don't want merely unpopular opinions getting the full weight of societal pressure causing problems for people that merely want to discuss what are actually open questions.

Free speech isn't just about who gets to speak what, it's about who decides who gets to read/listen/watch what they want. That's basically the crux of censorship, right? I don't want mob induced censorship any more than I want government censorship.

In the end, cancel culture is people who choose not to use free speech to push their agenda, but instead threatens other's livelihood or shame critics of an unpopular position into silence.

That's called "living in a community". It's impossible to interact with other people without providing some level of acceptance or rejection of what they are doing, whether on purpose or accident, whether they interpret you correctly or not.

Even just walking away communicates something.this isn't always bad, it's how we enforce norms that are not laws. Lie or act in a way I do not approve of and I can choose to stop or limit my interactions with you, and I can express my opinion to others. I this way I am censoring you in a small way. It's how humans interact, and it's useful and good when used in moderation for good causes.

When not used in moderation, and when a million people jump on a single person and express enough displeasure to cause severe ramifications for relatively small offenses, then it's not good.

I don't want to see racist rhetoric in the same way I don't want to see poor behavior at others expenses. That is, I want it allowed, but for people to face somewhat appropriate ramifications for the offense, to discourage them from spouting it everywhere people do t want to see it. To be clear, I mean it in the literal, bit colloquial sense, in that it's a preference, not a call to censor others be preventing it entirely, as overreactions are what I'm arguing against.

Except cancel culture is anything but community driven. It's social media driven -- which in itself is a platform to get more views to sell you more ads. The more the platform can draw your ire, the more ads it sells, the more ire the platform spreads, etc.

The problem is that words aren't which we argue our politics by anymore. It's now who has the biggest weapon to personally destroy those that speak out.

> The First Amendment does not guarantee consequence-free speech.

Civics 101. My right to through my fist stops at your face. Simple. Yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, etc. etc.

Political speech, ie, expressing ones viewpoint, is and has always been protected by the First Amendment -- even if it's false or racist speech.

> I would add that after a decade of watching the First Amendment cited almost exclusively to protect hate speech from psychopaths...

What would you replace it with? Seriously. Are you going to punish people for lying? Lock them up for something just slightly racist? Who do we trust to make these judgements? Republican appointed judges? What?

> Are you going to punish people for lying?

We punish people for lies that cause harm all the time. Though a bad example to use (because it is dicta unsupported by the law at the time in a particularly repugnant case suppressing core political speech that was later overturned, so that the quote at issue was never part of the substantive case law itself, wasn't particularly supported by the substantive case law, and was issued in a case now widely recognized as having been wrongly decided), the quote you wave your hand in the vague direction of about falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater is also an odd one to raise if you are going to turn around and sneer at that idea.

It's certainly true the left can have illiberal tendencies, and there's some indication that's on the rise, and that's worrisome. But when people yell "cancel culture" in a crowded online letter, it's always worth asking how many people have been "cancelled" and to what degree. Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss have never been denied an audience and will almost certainly continue to have huge ones. J.K. Rowling, for all of the articles about her "cancellation" over the past couple of months, turns out to still be a multibillionaire author who still has a book contract. Yes, every day brings us complaints from prominent conservatives about how Twitter is stifling their voice -- complaints generally tweeted to their millions of Twitter followers who like and retweet them in support.

In any case, while I'd be loathe to carve out explicit exceptions to the First Amendment, I'd also be loathe to invoke it too cavalierly. Would I lock someone up for "something just slightly racist"? No, but in practice that's very rarely what we're arguing about when we argue about cancel culture: you mentioned it was a social media phenomenon in another comment here. Would you demand that social media networks not be allowed to make decisions about what content they're willing to carry? How about employers? Firing someone for that "something just slightly racist" is harsh, but do we want to say that HR departments are no longer allowed to make those calls? If so, who is?

I mean, if you don't have protected free speech, you have regulated speech. If you can't say "I believe in X because .... " where X might be racism, then it's no longer freedom, and therefore subject to potential criminal legislation. See John Adams and the sedition act.

> But when people yell "cancel culture" in a crowded online letter...

Bari Weiss made it clear it was the anger from the Tom Cotton essay where she felt her career at the times became untenable.

When did we decide that an essay by Tom Cotton was too dangerous to be published? That his speech was so dangerous that the core ideas could not just have been countered with... wait for it... more speech.

And no one said that freedom of speech never meant freedom of jobs. Nor did freedom of speech ever mean that people would buy your product after your ugly ideas came to light.

So what is cancel culture? It's this. Specifically this article:

https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2019/9/25/20883697/cancel-cu...

And he advocated using force against protesters ... which is speech.

There was someone with a throwaway account that replied with the argument that "Free speech need not be absolute", and then started getting voted down.

What's truly ironic I feel is that in my world view, his speech would just sit there as an alternative viewpoint, read and disagreed with.

But in his world his viewpoint could made illegal (or in the HN world downvoted), based upon what might be perceived as the popular rhetoric of the day.

I'm actually fine with such views not being made illegal though - but I'm not fine with the premise that there should never be any social consequences at all for any ideology or viewpoint regardless of its nature or intent to do harm. Nor do I believe that the right to free speech means everyone must be forced to hear, seriously consider, host or publish that speech.

There are 300,000,000 million Americans each with his or her own free will and ability to determine right from wrong. So you're saying they are just sheep and do things blindly?

The real changes, the ones that lasted generations, the things that made America truly great, were done because free speech convinced people to change their minds.

No. Not only did I not say that, there's no reasonable way to infer that from my comment, and your doing so demonstrates an unwillingness on your part to argue in good faith.

That people are influenced by more than purely logical, didactic arguments should be self evident, nor does that fact make people sheep, it's simply human nature. We're not compilers, after all, we're primates with countless irrational biases hard wired into our brains. Anti-vaxxers, COVID-denialists, flat-earthers, conspiracy theorists of all stripes, the resurgence of discredited white supremacist and anti-semitic ideology under the politically correct guise of "racial realism" and the phenomenon of fake news spread by social media should be enough to demonstrate that falsehood can be more compelling than fact, and that facts alone are not sufficient to dissuade such people from their false beliefs, or stop their influence.

>The real changes, the ones that lasted generations, the things that made America truly great, were done because free speech convinced people to change their minds.

No they weren't. They were accomplished with speech and consequence, often long, violent, ugly protests and frequently civil unrest. America has only ever granted its inalienable rights to white Christian men by default - everyone else has had to fight tooth and nail for their seat at the table and for every scrap of human dignity they could take from the cornucopia of American liberty.

Women's suffrage was earned with speech and blood. African American rights were earned with speech and blood. LGBT rights were earned with speech and blood. Even recently, few outside of the black community really cared about systemic racist violence among the police, despite the black community speaking at length about it for years until they also started taking to the streets and burning shit down... then suddenly everyone else noticed and started listening.

Speech without the force of consequence is as useless as a toothless guard dog.

You argued:

  A: Unfortunately, in your world, the racists and white
     supremacists take over

  B: In a democracy a majority of the people have to agree
     that white supremacy should be the dominant principle for
     governmental rule.

> No they weren't. They were accomplished with speech and consequence, often long, violent, ugly protests and frequently civil unrest.

Rosa Parks didn't throw a brick through a window. She refused to sit in the back of the bus. That started a boycott of the bus system, and it worked without bloodshed.

Sure blood was spilled in the civil rights marches but not because the people marching wanted it to be.

I Rosa Parks was radical whole her life. She was not proponent of super peaceful activism, she at the moment thought fighting would he strategically bad idea.

Had she been meek lady, there would be no protests.

She did lived at violent place at the time, did dealt with lynchings, beatings and legal protests up to that point. She did not had philosophy of peaceful activism above all.

While she was not violent, she was not proponent of peaceful above all protesting. That was Kings philosophy and even he was up to breaking law.

It's quite straightforward to draw this conclusion from the following portion of your previous comment:

>Unfortunately, in your world, the racists and white supremacists take over

How does a community 'take over' without expanding to at least a dominant minority? And how does the point being argued, allowing them to speak freely, enable that unless we're to assume that simply being exposed to that worldview will grow their ranks?

And the world would be a worse place without those laws. Any real discussion about free speech starts with the premise that not all speech can be free and the real questions is in the details of what speech should be free.

The innocent explanation is more often right than the guilty one.

No one is arguing this. This is a strawman position no one actually holds.

Enforced tolerance is the only thing that is keeping really bad people comfortable at expressing their badness. (Suprisingly - the anti-discrimination applied to private businesses is the reason why people like Alex Jones can safely say whatever he wants and then get a free upgrade at Ramada)