From the companies perspective, the harm done by an employee talking trash about products is very similar to the harm done by an employee talking about unions or employee conditions.

And the law generally recognize this. It is not protected to intentionally harm the company if the intention is purely to cause harm. It is protected if the intent is to warn the public about a harmful product (Whistleblowing), or to protect fellow employees for harm. When those cases do end up in court, what judges and juries will focus on is on intent as the deciding factor once harm has been agreed/established.

I guess I don’t really see what your point is then. If you’re going to the point where we are getting into civil disputes, then how isn’t “employee became the center of controversy on social media and caused damage to company X’s reputation” not covered under this rubric? Because that is essentially what “cancel culture” is.

Those oft repeaters should talk to a real lawyer? Libel, slander, the occasional tortious interference with contract?

A real lawyer would know about Lloyd corp v tanner and be able to contextualize the fact that most of this controversy exists because it is legal to limit speech in the ways we are debating all over the internet.

People saying “we should limit it to what the law says” don’t make a ton of sense… because the law says that Twitter limiting speech is perfectly acceptable.

The first amendment doesn’t even apply in civil cases. Everything you listed aren’t exceptions to free speech, they are positive constructions as to the kinds of speech that you can make a civil claim of injury over. As such, they are not exhaustive.

Real lawyers don't necessarily know every case citation. Real law students and googlers might. You get a general sense of how things work.

I guess what I should have said was that they’d have a sense of the operative case law in the area they were speaking on. I don’t think that is too high of an expectation. That case wasn’t something I had to google and I’m not in school currently.

If that's their area of the law. Being a lawyer isn't about memorizing everything. It's about knowing how things work more broadly. Writing memos about the current law is for law students and junior associates unless it's your narrow focus area.