> Somehow modern democracy (de)evolved from "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" to current cancel culture.
Brendan has a right to express his opinion. Mozilla has a right to fire him for it. There's nothing totalitarian here.
Personally I'm not OK with rule by lynch-mob, and I hope you see how allowing such a culture to take hold may one day backfire, also on the things you hold dear.
Cancel culture is probably toxic to public discussion. But what is the alternative if people want to vote with their feet? If people want to make choices based on their morals, that seems awesome to me.
It's only if people are bluffing things into being canceled that I see an issue here.
At one point you could get away with refusing service to black people. Pressure from the markets and community changed that. Every change we've gotten is because someone fought back some way.
You can't want unfettered capitalism (looking at the right/libertarians), and then cry when capitalist companies bow to pressure from the masses online and cancel shit.
Privatize them, go dictator/socialist then the state/constitutions can say how a business is ran, and they maybe censorship is banned, or maybe they only censor whatever the state wants to censor...as long as there's 'at will employment' and businesses are free to censor content on their platforms, (which I approve of, personally), nobody should be able to complain about being silenced.
Go start a facebook competitor, or your own company and compete (ironically that's what he did with Brave browser).
We can force people to provide service to customers. We can't force customers to demand service from certain vendors. Especially with culture (comedians, pundits, writers).
<x> is unacceptable is a typical totalitarian pattern. In free societies all views deserve a place, even those that you personally don't like.
By "free speech" I mean not being arrested or physically harmed for saying something.
Is it possible that by "free speech" you in contrast mean being entitled to be invited, keeping your job, and/or remaining uncontradicted?
Around the same time the San Fransisco morning/lunch shift kicked in?
You’re only allowed to have such “controversial” discussions here in European time-zones it seems ;)
Here’s the obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/
If you claim to be 'tolerant', but do not tolerate those who aren't, you are not really tolerant. Period. What a truly tolerant person should do with those who aren't, is to find ways to persuade them to change their ways. It is not impossible. Civil rights movements in 1960s or suffrage movement achieved success not by scaring 'white racists' or 'male supremacists' into submission, but by persuading a sufficient number of them that segregation or discrimination based on sex is bad.
See the paradox kicking in?
No paradox.
Tolerating people being themselves and living their own lives independent of you VS tolerating specific hate speech and allowing it to thrive online are TWO totally different things. There is no comparison betwixt the two.
> What if somebody runs on that very platform issue for congress -- legalizing the murdering of jews?
There's nothing illegal about wanting to change the law to make something which currently illegal into something legal. All major changes in society the last century has happened by doing so. Think about cannabis-legalization if you need a slightly less morbid, but more recent example.
If I understand your point of view correctly (and I hope I don't), by your logic it should be illegal to argue legalization of anything which is currently criminalized. That would IMO be conflating legality with morality, a common error, especially among the conservatives.
Obviously anyone should be allowed to argue that there are reasons for why killing jews (or Canadians, or white people, whatever) should be legal. And we should, as a mature society, be there and be prepared to tell them why they are wrong.
I 100% agree that we as a mature society, should be there and be prepared to tell them why they are wrong. But I think you are overlooking the possibility that they shrug and start killing. We should be prepared for that too.
If it comes to judging „what a truly tolerant person should do“ you make an absolute normative, hence moral claim.
This strikes me as rather inconsistent and therefore unconvincing.
On being 'confronted' with the question about legalizing genocide. Well, if there ARE people with such ideas, it's not like making the ideas illegal will stop such people from having them. So open discussion about it and democratic voting will have just 2 outcomes: nazis will be either reduced to nothing and their political base will dissolve, or they'll get to power and a genocide will happen. However, I believe that a society that will openly vote for genocide is beyond saving, whether you criminalize some ideas or not.
In tech and almost every other aspect of life.
> and this particular thing was one of the manifestations of sexism in tech
How? He wore a shirt his wife bought him. He was never accused by his coworkers of anything.
> I can't blame the people reacting to this when they face this kind of culture
I can blame them. That was unjust character assassination. It was objectively wrong and UNjust that's the opposite of the second letter in sjw.
And that's the core issue with this thinking. I am right even when I am wrong as long as I fell like i am fighting against evil.
It’s hardly an “SJW witch-hunt” when your boss is donating thousands of dollars for the explicit purpose of ensuring you don’t have the same rights as other people.
That action seems very much at odds with being an effective leader. You must take care of your team.