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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

Except its not I have seen people called Neonazis just for being Republican or siding with Trump whether or not they are "Trump supporters" on issues. Even saying the name "Trump supporter" is evidence alone that there is an element of cancel culture. A woman was rejected from a college recently for posting a MAGA video on Tik Tok. Some developer is being called a Neonazi for protesting against an open source org that banned someone from a conference for wearing a MAGA hat.

I say this too often on HN: today they silence the voice of those you disagree with, tomorrow its your voice.

Not to mention: master-slave throughout tech, master branch in git, are all examples of absurd cancel culture. Meanwhile minorities shake their head.

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It's not any different from republicans calling liberals libtards, antifa and communists whenever someone talks about medicare for all. Both sides do it to each other, right wingers just complain about it more because the majority of people who control social media platforms tend to be left leaning.

In general, people only want free speech for things they want to say, but not for things they disagree with.

Yes, but has an open Antifa supporter ever been denied college entrance or attending a conference because of that support? Or lost their job?

Not quite Antifa but here's an example of a Harvard grad losing her consulting job due to threatening violence against people who say "all lives matter" [1]

https://nypost.com/2020/07/01/harvard-grad-claira-janover-lo...

Yes, but you have to admit all the vast majority of firings lately are for people not having the proper left wing viewpoint.

Threatening violence, yes that will get you in trouble (hopefully). A little different than just minding your business wearing a MAGA hat.

You mean like Trump saying he could shoot someone and not lose voters in 2016? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTACH1eVIaA

We've all heard this, but did he actually go out and shoot someone and do it? He was talking out of his *ss about how confident he was about his supporters. English isn't even my first language and I could tell that's what he meant.

Did the girl who threatened to stab "all lives matter" people actually go out and do it? No, but she got fired anyway.

Free speech does not mean that your words have no consequences.

Yes naming calling is very different from an organized effort to up end someone life.

Calling someone a "libtard" is not the same as 1,000 angry mob members calling a persons work place to get them fired

Companies aggressively take action against its employees who are pro-union, pro-labor, or anti-corporate. Example amazon 2 months ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-fires-warehouse-worke...

Has any individual faced consequences for refusing to rename a branch? Are you saying that cancelling a word is a thing, and a dangerous one?

At this point people are diluting the phrase "cancel culture" to mean "thing I don't like that is vaguely related to politics or political correctness". That's not a useful concept. It's just a thing to be angry about.

That's not what cancel culture is, but it's usually the precursor to it. People who are upset over things that are not yet causing negative side-effects know that they eventually will because already what's happened is a bit much in many cases. You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

> You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

Why not? And are you claiming that this is simply a moral standpoint, or do you want to legally prevent employers from firing employees for off-work behavior?

There's plenty of companies that don't fire employees for the things they do outside of work, it's been like this for ages, why should this become a normal standard all of a sudden? Just to appease the ever changing feelings of others? Unless I actually breach my company contract in some fashion I don't understand why what I do outside of work has anything to do with my company, in fact, unless I'm some executive, it shouldn't ever matter.

That's not what I asked. You stated companies shouldn't do this. Just because some entities have chosen to act in a certain way doesn't mean that it is morally correct for all entities to act in that way.

Certain companies have been founded based on religious beliefs forever, that doesn't mean that it is morally correct for every company to have religious foundations. If you want to run your company that way, you're absolutely welcome to, but upon what reasoning do you claim it is wrong for me to act differently than you choose to?

If what someone does, does not actually affect a company negatively aside from a few emails or calls, I don't see why it should fire somebody. People will find someone that disagrees with them in virtually every single company.

Again, that's fine for you to act that way. But what you stated was the rule:

> You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

Which would presumably apply to all companies. Under what ethical basis is this a good rule? What if I want to fire someone for what they did outside of work? Why shouldn't I be allowed to do that? Why should your belief about how you would run your company affect how I run mine?

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