> How would you suggest these people are held accountable if it isn't through "cancel culture" which is basically just the modern equivalent of social shunning that various cultures have been doing for centuries?

Long-held traditions of social shunning, ostracization and extrajudicial bullying are widely understood to be terrible and have produced horrific injustices for centuries. What you're calling for is a regression of justice. It's precisely the disgusting consequences of vigilante justice that led us to develop the modern systems of justice that we rely on today.

Accountability quickly turns into a witch hunt when people start tearing down standards of proof and judicial restraints as "loopholes". When did we forget that?

Historical social shunning was the majority of people in society choosing to exclude people. Today's cancel culture is vocal minorities bullying monopolistic companies into excluding people.

For much of the history you are referencing there was no difference between the whims of society and the whims of the judicial system. We now have the separation of the two which opens the loophole I previously mentioned. Do you have any suggestion for how to address that loophole?

For example, imagine a scenario in which a loved one comes to you and says they were sexually assaulted two years ago. It happened long enough ago that there is no hope to recover any corroborating evidence. It will simply be the victim's word against the perpetrator and therefore there is almost zero hope of conviction. Do you tell this person "just trust the judicial system" or would you help them achieve some sort of punishment outside of the judicial system such as getting the perpetrator fired?

We have shifted from relying on the whims of society for justice to relying on the judicial system for justice. There isn't a "separation of the two" even now, there's only one recognized system for determining justice. Vigilante justice is illegal.

No, I absolutely would not help a loved one achieve some sort of extrajudicial punishment, I would instead strongly recommend against it. I would try to comfort and support them, responses that are helpful regardless of how good or badly I personally judge their case and related punishments. I would tell them that perhaps the justice system has failed them and no system is perfect, but vigilante justice is a terrible and unproductive response that breeds more injustice than it resolves.

The way you fix loopholes in the justice system is by fixing loopholes in the justice system. The justice system is governed by laws developed by deliberative bodies held accountable through democracy. It's not pretty and it's not satisfying, but after centuries of gross injustice we should know better than to trust mob justice.

> Do you tell this person "just trust the judicial system" or would you help them achieve some sort of punishment outside of the judicial system such as getting the perpetrator fired?

Nope. Neither. I may or may not stop associating with the perpetrator, all things relative to my perception of how bad the thing they’ve been accused of was. I might mention it to mutual acquaintances and let them decide how they want to deal without any judgement on my part.

Trying to get someone fired / hurting their livelihood in general seems quite childish.

I try to mind my own business. I don’t snitch on anybody if I see them doing something wrong. I don’t join online mobs or rage on anybody.

Your child comes to you and says a teacher raped them and your response would be you "might mention it to mutual acquaintances"? You wouldn't want to be a "snitch" and tell the school that employed the teacher?

That’s super extreme. Of course I’d call the cops the same day. It’s your job to protect your children.

If some adult I knew said “so and so made me feel really uncomfortable 2 years ago” or “so and so touched me 2 years ago” I’m not going to say “hey let’s get them fired!!!”

It’s not my place to be a vigilante. I wouldn’t get involved at all. If I had a good relationship with the accused I would probably even help them out, eg hire them, after someone “cancels” them.

Early American culture was designed to prevent this. Early pilgrims were persecuted by other Christian groups in Europe. So they built in ideas like religious freedoms to try to build a society that could accept differences of opinions. I'm not American but have a lot of respect for what they were trying to achieve.

By all means have your group of close contacts that you shun when they step out of line but doing that society wide causes too many injustices.

The idea that the Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom is mostly a fairy tale. But either way, there is a world a difference between shunning someone for exercising religious freedom and shunning someone who very likely committed sexual assault.

EDIT: This is being downvoted. I'm not sure if it is the Pilgrims comments, so I will point people to the Wikipedia article and the second sentence which notes that the Pilgrims "fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands." They spent over a decade in Holland. They didn't come to America due to persecution because they already had religious freedom in Holland.[1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims_(Plymouth_Colony)

I think we will have to agree to disagree on the history of the Pilgrims.

I don't think there is a world of difference between the two. You are shunning someone because it is very likely the did something wrong. If that is your close friend and you think they did it, then it's probably a good idea to shun them. The hope is that they will see they did something wrong, own up and change. This makes the world a better place.

Some person on the internet that has been accused of doing something wrong could be black listed from online life, but what does that achieve? We don't even know if they did it?

Then what happens when someone changes their ways and becomes a better person? Do we keep them blacklisted? This seems to be the way we are operating.

> Then what happens when someone changes their ways and becomes a better person? Do we keep them blacklisted? This seems to be the way we are operating.

Right. Twitter hands out lifetime bans. I was very encouraged this week by Justice Thomas’ opinions on monopolistic platforms. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...

There are plenty of sources that agree with me on the Pilgrims.[1][2][3]

Almost no one is "cancelled" permanently. Maybe they go away for a few months or years, but they almost always are able to resume some sort of normal life eventually. It is much less severe than a jail sentence. If they truly do reform and become a better person, that usually speeds up the process, but it is rarely an actual requirement.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the...

[2] - https://www.history.com/news/why-pilgrims-came-to-america-ma...

[3] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history...

Well, they were eventually “persecuted” in Holland the same way they were “persecuted” in England: They weren’t allowed to impose their religious rules on others. That’s the “persecution” they “fled.”

> Society. Don't like it, pick a new society like the two commenters you responded to you are considering.

I guess you can move out from the US and that's probably a very good decision to make, however: first of all, those corporations are not local to the US, but global, world-wide. Furthermore they are willing to work with authoritarian governments, like Google working with the Chinese government to spy on their citizens. Second, corporations and Western governments are actively trying to remake the rest of the world in US image, project their problems on us and force everyone to make the same mistakes they did. You can run from the problem, but it's not going to solve anything and it will eventually get you too. As far as I'm considered, America falling apart would be an acceptable outcome for me personally, if it wasn't for the fact that you're trying to drag the rest of the world down with you.

No, it's not society. That makes it sound like everyone has a say.

It's only a very small minority of people are the ones that decide who gets punished and excluded.

It's not society, its the powerful.

This is how you have people getting banned for supporting a national politician who won election with ~49% of popular vote. Those 49% clearly didn't get a say in who gets punished and excluded. Only the powerful get that say.

I'm willing to bet there are a significant number of people who didn't vote for him who would be opposed to an individual getting banned for supporting him. This pushes the percentage of individuals who are opposed to this punishing/excluding over 50%. "The powerful" that you are referring to would also be a minority if your numbers are correct.

Agreed - it is a minority.

By this study it's about 8%:

https://hiddentribes.us/

>Society. Don't like it, pick a new society like the two commenters you responded to you are considering.

Society changes, get over it. These changes are going to ruin platforms and people will dislike it and move to other platforms, yet they will still be in the same society.

>The justice system is purposely setup in a way to make it difficult to punish people. This is good. We don't want the government throwing people in jail with flimsily excuses.

This is literally what happens all day every day in the justice system which is nothing more than a formalized social shunning process that requires fewer people to ruin your life and profit off of it indirectly.

'Society' by how thick a margin? 80%? 50.1%? Less?

What if the decision-makers at twitch represent 'society' less than they think they do?

There is no set percentage, but if the decision makers at Twitch don't represent society, there is nothing stopping a Twitch competitor from sprouting up that is more in line with society's morals.

I'd submit for your consideration that there's quite a lot stopping someone from just starting a twitch competitor.

Even beyond the tech challenges, there are thousands of posts out there describing the network effect and trend towards winner-takes-all in a given social networking market.

I'm honestly curious about the mindset that leads one to just say 'nothing stopping you, make your own twitch, no biggie'. Is it lack of sympathy for those cast out? Idealistic belief in free markets and meritocracy? Genuine belief that it's easy? What's the underlying angle?

Remember your hypothetical started with Twitch's morals being out of line with society's morals. That represents a huge demand for a competitor.

I would compare it to when Reddit started cracking down on immoral content. That created demand of competitors. Multiple ones popped up. However they weren't able to sustain themselves or grow demand because society was on Reddit's side and not the side of Voat and the like.

The reason it is currently difficult for Twitch competitor to gain traction is because people are largely fine with Twitch. Even so, there are still plenty of other streaming options including those with sizable userbases even if they are targeting different market segments like Facebook and Youtube.

Now you're moving the goal posts from "able to broadcast yourself" to "starting a twitch competitor.

Then you're moving the goal posts from "streaming yourself" to "reaching as many people as possible and/or making the most money from it".

You can say what you want on the internet, but people don't have to listen and companies don't have to broadcast you, promote you or pay you.

Alex Jones still does his show, but if you accuse the victims of a mass shooting of being actors in a conspiracy for gun control, you might not get to have people subscribe to you on youtube.

I didn't open up the "just go start your own twitch" line, I was responding to someone.

> You can say what you want on the internet, but people don't have to listen and companies don't have to broadcast you, promote you or pay you.

That sounds good in a vacuum, but what about when it's a handful of companies doing all of the broadcasting? If this were the internet of the 2000s, with a widely distributed network of self-hosted blogs and BBs, I'd be right there with you, but that's not where we're at.

Alex Jones is big enough to bring his noxious show anywhere. What about the little guy? What if it's the historically persecuted who continue to be persecuted when this all shakes out?

> That sounds good in a vacuum, but what about when it's a handful of companies doing all of the broadcasting?

... are there not enough giant companies doing this thing that didn't exist a few years ago?

You realize you can pay for a VPS for $10 a month and broadcast to hundreds of people right?

> If this were the internet of the 2000s, with a widely distributed network of self-hosted blogs and BBs

Pretty sure all that stuff can still be done. Do you not realize you can rent a server and buy your own domain name? You can even rent a VPS with 40 gigabit internet and 10 terabytes of upload for around $20 a month.

> What about the little guy? What if it's the historically persecuted who continue to be persecuted when this all shakes out?

Lol, who are the historically persecuted that aren't able to stream video games because they can't help but violate twitch's TOS. I have a hard time believing this is even a serious conversation.