Comment by andrewzah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewzah | Hacker News Reader

I think what gets mixed up often in this debate is what the government can or cannot prevent us from saying (free speech) vs what we "can" or "can't" say on an online medium like twitter or a publication, etc.

We (the public at large) need to have a discussion about when a private entity like facebook, twitter, etc, become so big that they essentially -are- public discourse. A lot of people treat these private entities like they're public. But they are not. As long as they follow US law, twitter can do whatever it wants. Yet people are shocked when twitter starts hiding tweets, or when facebook chooses to do nothing at all.

"Cancel culture" has nothing to do with the government, nor free speech. Free Speech does not protect you from criticisms or ridicule by other citizens, regardless if you think that's correct or not.

I don't know what the solution here is to cancel culture, other than speaking with your wallet. I fully blame twitter for conditioning people to only digest things in 140 characters or less, which makes discussing contentious topics very difficult or straight up impossible. I blame controversy-averse businesses that have no spine, and dismiss employees over some people angrily tweeting, who will move onto something else in a few weeks anyway.

I also blame people who specifically look for these things in order to "destroy" someone, as if someone can never change their opinion. I think cancel culture has absolutely nothing to do with ending sexism, etc, because all it does is train people to be private with their thoughts. If you view someone being sexist, etc, as "being sick", then the "doctors" are telling them to go die alone, instead of tending to them. How does that achieve equality?

I specifically limit a lot of what I potentially talk about online because it's not worth someone digging through it looking for 1 or 2 out of context sentences and making a stink about it.

> "what the government can or cannot prevent us from saying (free speech)"

To my fellow Americans, please stop repeating this; it just makes us look uneducated. The First Amendment of the Constitution != freedom of speech; it's an subset of freedom of speech that happens to bind the United States government.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech:

"Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The term "freedom of expression" is sometimes used synonymously but includes any act of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used."

When Americans stop referring to things like social media banning, deplatforming and "cancel culture" as violations of their First Amendment rights, as does often happen, other Americans will stop needing to correct them.

A few people actually saying a thing does not prevent that thing from being a strawman. And invoking a sample as representative of a group escalates arguments instead of converging.

This is pedantic.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,

I don't see how my comment could be misconstrued.

Ok, so does the same logic apply to the other freedoms named in the 1st amendment? Specifically the rights of association and assembly?

Does Twitter (and the users of Twitter) not have the right to avoid association with people whose views they find distasteful? Should the government be compelling Twitter to associate with those people?

And, just to take this one step further, how is Twitter different from a private club (which affirmatively has the right to select and reject membership for individuals from the public, even--and I find this idea odious--based on membership in a protected class). Is it just the fact that members of the private Twitter club can choose to have their tweets broadcast to the world?

> "Does Twitter (and the users of Twitter) not have the right to avoid association with people whose views they find distasteful?"

Property owners tried the same freedom of association argument in courts a few decades ago because they wanted to deny POC and other protected classes equal opportunity in housing. The answer back then was the Fair Housing Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and/or national origin. Perhaps we need the equivalent today: a Fair Communications Act of 2020.

Twitter and other social media networks don't qualify for the private club exemption because they don't meet the criteria; they are quite clearly the online equivalent of, in legal jargon, "public accommodations".

(May I add that seeing progressives recycling discredited arguments used by bigots of various stripes in landmark legal cases to attempt to justify themselves in the present day strikes me as both deeply ironic and more than a little revealing.)

This is quite an interesting response. It feels a bit "law for thee, but not for me".

> (May I add that seeing progressives recycling discredited arguments used by bigots of various stripes in landmark legal cases to attempt to justify themselves in the present day strikes me as both deeply ironic and more than a little revealing.)

You apparently overlooked the spot where I explicitly called out that I find the idea of discrimination based on race, religion, and/or national origin "odious".

Nevertheless, you seem to have missed my point: Prior to passage of the FHA, the 1st amendment was viewed so expansively that it was seen as acceptable to discriminate against even skin color for housing (which is one of the most fundamental human needs). It took the FHA to change that. Further, not even the FHA protects political affiliation as class.

On top of that federal law, specifically the Civil Rights Act specifically exempts (and again, I think this is horrible) private clubs (and religious organizations) from the protections against discrimination, even for discrimination based on protected classes (like race).

It's true that we put limits on the freedom of association (and for good reason!), but political affiliation has never had the same level of protections as other classes (such as skin color or sex). In fact, only a few states (and "progressive" ones at that, like California and New York!) make it illegal to discriminate against employees for political affiliation.

So, to recap:

1. Political affiliation is not protected the same way as race, religion, national origin

2. Not even race, religion, and national origin are fully protected (i.e., as protected as I think they should be) against discrimination by private clubs.

As a result:

1. I'm not sure why you would expect the Fair Communications Act of 2020 to protect political affiliation--it's not generally seen as a protected class, especially in conservative areas.

2. Even if political affiliation became a protected class, private clubs may be exempted. You've asserted that Twitter is a public accommodation, but not said what makes them such.

3. It's hard to take seriously the idea that conservatives are concerned about political affiliation-based discrimination in one forum when they haven't bothered to extend those protections in many others.

> I don't know what the solution here is to cancel culture

AMENDMENT XXVIII

The protections of rights in Amendment I apply to employees for any conduct not directly related to their employment.

That's ridiculous; absolutely not. Businesses should be allowed to fire employees if they say something that the business doesn't agree with. We may as well as make it impossible for any business to fire people for any reason, then. -Should- a business easily fire people? I think not, but having a job isn't a right.

If you don't like how a company conducts itself, don't support it financially. Creating heavy-handed legislation isn't going to solve the human problem. Not that an amendment will ever get created again, most likely.

The protections I am talking about are already somewhat present for public employees, you can't fire a public employee for some random Twitter comment they made unless you show it is interfering with their ability to do their job, so I don't think the proposal is ridiculous at all.

As for your argument that, "We may as well as make it impossible for any business to fire people for any reason, then", I don't see how that follows from what I am proposing. Firing people for reasons that relate to their work makes sense, firing someone for making an OK sign to someone on the highway does not. Someone says "Studies show that violent protests decrease support for the protestors' cause" at work, feel free to walk them out the door for their hate speech. If they say it on Reddit, maybe that's not the hill to die on.

I don't think whether a job is a right or not is the question we should be asking. People have obligations, both to their families, and to society. Someone can't get a job because of something they said on the internet and now they contribute nothing to society even though they are perfectly capable of being productive. That doesn't make sense. I pay more taxes now because they aren't working?

You're going to tell some kid, "Your mom doesn't get child support anymore because your dad said something mean on the web"? How does that even make sense?

"firing someone for making an OK sign to someone on the highway does not [make sense]"

If they're employed in an at-will state, they can be fired for something like that. No sense needed. The issue lies with the company.

And I disagree. Firing someone for making the OK sign -can- make sense, because it can be a racist dog-whistle. That's the entire point of co-opting an ubiquitous symbol. It may be perfectly fine, it may not; the context matters.

"now they contribute nothing to society even though they are perfectly capable of being productive"

That is simply not the responsibility of a business. The fired person can find another job at a different company if it was such a trivial comment.

"You're going to tell some kid, "Your mom doesn't get child support anymore because your dad said something mean on the web"?"

(If it was really just a mean comment): "Your parent was fired because their employer is irrational. Sucks, but that's life sometimes. <Child>, this is a reminder that getting work is a privilege, not a right, and you should save money just in case you get laid off as well. Companies are not loyal to you."

(If it was actually bigoted / hate speech): "Your parent was fired because they put out bigoted statements online, and their employer didn't want to keep them on their payroll. <Child>, this is a reminder that getting work is a privilege, not a right, and you should save money just in case you get laid off as well. Companies are not loyal to you."

If a company fires people like this, they'll get flak and probably burn out as the smart/talented people move to more stable companies, etc. Making people much harder to fire will just make companies worse; I really don't want to have regular jobs function like government ones where terrible people stay around because it's too hard to fire them.

> If they're employed in an at-will state, they can be fired for something like that. No sense needed.

Exactly, that's the whole argument here. When you are talking about destroying people's lives, harming society, harming innocent people, I think sense should be needed.

I get your argument, I used to be more libertarian than I am now, things have changed.

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