[HN Gopher] Our digital pasts weren't supposed to be weaponized ...
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Our digital pasts weren't supposed to be weaponized like this
Author : rutenspitz
Score : 147 points
Date : 2021-05-29 23:58 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| cesarvarela wrote:
| This topic always reminds me of this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C31XYgr8gp0
| texaswhizzle wrote:
| Stop posting your life and thoughts on the internet! Privacy
| advocates have been screaming about this for years but no one
| seems to care until they have a gun in their face.
|
| The really sad thing is the children. Parents uploading their
| kids entire lives and the kids have absolutely no way to opt out.
| Permanently giving your kid an online identity before they can
| even talk. Horrible thing to do to your child.
| cik wrote:
| The lack of nuance on this issue, in society is shocking. We
| expect people to change and grow over time. People change
| opinions, political parties, perhaps even ideals, yet we crucify
| people in the public domain for opinions they once opined, and
| possibly still hold.
|
| At best this discourages dialogue. It discourages people from
| interacting in the public domain, vilifies their non-work lives,
| and unifies them in terrifying ways. Actions have consequences,
| and (from outside North America) it appears that the goal is to
| polarize society and then prosecute in the court of public
| opinion.
| emerged wrote:
| I've noticed society also tends to be surprisingly supportive
| of people who were once drug addicts, even in spite of any
| crimes they committed during that time. It's recognized the
| effort it takes to change and sometimes evens seems to be
| perceived as making you a better or more impressive person than
| someone who never took drugs in the first place.
|
| Maybe these things have to become so prolific that it touches a
| critical mass of society until we learn how to properly
| conceptualize people with a past and provide for a path of
| redemption.
| cik wrote:
| Does the question not become redemption from what? There are
| individuals who support X or support Y - but in the modern
| era to some group of people support for either of those
| letters is abhorrent.
|
| Today people are 'cancelled' for holding certain political
| views. Perhaps in the future they're cancelled for having
| eaten meat, or spending money in a communist country. What
| about holding stock in Nestle, or perhaps at one point in
| time supporting a (now disgraced) cleric. The nuance is
| rather important - the world is neither black, nor white.
| kragen wrote:
| Ironic that this is being posted by the NYT (though not as an
| editorial, I guess), who fired Quinn Norton within 24 hours
| because she'd embedded herself in Anonymous and consequently used
| the word "fag", years earlier. The mob framed her as anti-gay
| despite her having had an outspokenly bisexual life partner
| around that time.
| makomk wrote:
| It's pretty obvious that the reason the NYT is doing this is
| that someone was fired who they saw as being on the same side
| as them, for online speech they were extremely sympathetic
| towards, due to stuff dug up by Republican supporters. This
| particular issue is heavily tied to the US political divide:
| supporting Palestine is seen as a left-wing thing, and
| labelling those people as anti-Semites a right-wing tactic.
|
| Which, I think, probably says something about how likely it is
| that people genuinely believe the talking point invoked in this
| article that the right-wing is the real cancel culture. If it
| was, it wouldn't be so shocking that and news-worthy that it
| happened, and the sole other example in the article wouldn't be
| someone from 2004 who built a career in media thanks to the
| supposed cancellation - exactly the kind of thing the press
| would point to as proof "cancel culture" isn't real if the left
| were the ones calling for her head.
| [deleted]
| MikeUt wrote:
| > the sole other example in the article wouldn't be someone
| from 2004 who built a career in media thanks to the supposed
| cancellation - exactly the kind of thing the press would
| point to as proof "cancel culture" isn't real if the left
| were the ones calling for her head.
|
| I think we agree, but to elaborate further, here's an
| informative post on the topic:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-
| pop...
|
| One should also look at how the average person would see
| this. If after expressing an opinion, the only viable career
| left is that of a political commentator/provocateur (the
| market for which is limited), most people will stay silent.
| cornel_io wrote:
| Right, there are only three consistent positions here: 1) this
| type of firing is unfair and bad, 2) this type of firing is
| fair and good ("consequence culture"), or 3) "I'm a partisan
| who just wants my enemies to burn"
|
| Maybe 80% of the people that opine on this subject are in
| category 3), 19% are in 1), and only 1% actually believe this
| sort of thing is great even when it hits someone that's on
| their team. Unfortunately all of the category 3 hardcore
| partisans tell themselves that when they tear someone on the
| other side down it's different because they were _really_
| wrong.
|
| Here's a good test: if >50% of people on each of the left and
| the right would agree that someone has done something so
| egregious that they should face consequences, you're probably
| dealing with a real problem person and not a case of awry
| cancel culture. If more than half of either party would say
| that what a person has said is OK, you're probably dealing with
| a partisan cancellation.
|
| Edit: I should mention that I have more extreme feelings in
| favor of free speech than the above paragraph, in that I think
| even opinions that are outside the window for both parties
| deserve protection and shouldn't usually result in firings
| unless super duper out there and horrible. But my point is that
| at the very least, if something is a majority position in a
| major party, it's a mainstream position and it is extremely
| questionable (both morally and practically) to ever fire
| someone for expressing a common belief.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > if >50% of people on each of the left and the right would
| agree that someone has done something so egregious that they
| should face consequences
|
| Is that really achievable for people who are political
| figures? That is, for someone attributed to a "side", is it
| actually possible to get the two sides to agree on anything?
| We've seen the defense of some quite spectacular indefensible
| behavior lately. Attempts to investigate The Jan 6 incident
| have been filibustered.
|
| There's two aspects which really ought to be separated:
|
| 1) is this behavior bad?
|
| 2) has this person done that?
|
| Much of the partisan fighting over racism and homophobia
| disagrees at #1. Much of the disagreement over sexual assualt
| happens at #2; if an event happens and only the victim
| witnesses it, is that sufficient proof?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well that is the point. Consequences for "bad" behavior
| should not be equal in cases when 90 per cent of population
| agrees and when 40 per cent of population agrees.
|
| Let us stop thinking about racism and homophobia for a
| moment and think of marijuana legalization instead. This is
| precisely the case when an aggresive intolerant minority
| used to destroy people over nothing. Most legalization
| projects were pushed through by ballots, where the
| aggressive intolerant minority could not intimidate the
| voters into silence.
|
| Interestingly, the vote results usually did not align with
| the partisanship of the voters. There is much more
| ideological diversity within the parties than generally
| recognized.
|
| And, as a result, many people no longer "face consequences"
| for smoking weed that only a vocal minority considers
| taboo.
| pjc50 wrote:
| In the US marijuana legalization exists in a
| superposition: it's still illegal federally, just not
| enforced by the states. Sometimes it's also enforced by
| drug testing employers, even in places where it's legal
| by state law.
|
| > There is much more ideological diversity within the
| parties than generally recognized.
|
| Party discipline (yes, on both sides) aims to suppress
| that. e.g
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/16/republicans-who-
| vot...
| cornel_io wrote:
| I'm really thinking of normal folks in normal situations
| (Damore, Garcia-Martinez, Wilder), not people with massive
| political power and partisan sway like Trump or Clinton -
| those figures always get passes for the horrible things
| they do and say even when they break their own group's
| rules, but normal people actually do have to color inside
| the lines a lot more.
|
| I agree about your distinction between "is this behavior
| bad?" and "has this person done that?". The important
| cancel culture debate to me is over the first, where it is
| 100% clear who said what, the only question is whether they
| should be fired/silenced/banned/attacked for it. The facts
| about what really happened matter deeply but to take an
| example, the Kavanaugh situation isn't really an issue of
| "cancel culture" being out of control because almost
| everyone agrees that _if_ he did it he should not have been
| appointed, it 's just that most Republicans really don't
| think he did it and most Democrats do. Something else is
| going on there that is very not good, but it's not the same
| as James Damore being fired for statements that most people
| in both parties find to be within the bounds of "speech you
| shouldn't be shitcanned for" (https://www.google.com/amp/s/
| thehill.com/policy/technology/3..., surprisingly the
| political divide on that one is only 10% but even Ds are
| 50/50 on it).
|
| Edit re: Kavanaugh: I'd also put good money that even if
| the accusations against him were 100% proven or disproven
| almost no minds on either side would actually change,
| despite people claiming allegiance to the truth. Instead,
| like Trump and his misdeeds, we'd start arguing about fake
| facts and then further retreating to discussions about
| whether his sins we're actually great enough, etc. But as
| things currently stand the ostensible argument is at least
| over the real facts.
| darkerside wrote:
| That's a very relativistic definition of morals. That's not
| too say it isn't valid, but there are tradeoffs to adopting a
| framework like that. One of them is that it inevitably shifts
| over time, making it more prone to abuse.
|
| On a separate note, I don't agree with your breakdown of
| people because I think it's possible to have principles that
| are not partisanship but are also orthogonal to "mob good" vs
| "mob bad".
| cornel_io wrote:
| A lot of people would say "consequence culture" is a valid
| viewpoint on this, that people just need to face the music
| for the things that they say, and that there's nothing
| nefarious about it. That's well and good to claim, but I
| have yet to hear one of these people be anything but angry
| when a lefty is torn down by a right wing mob, which has me
| lumping them in with the partisans.
|
| Maybe a charitable interpretation of the motivations fo
| that philosophy is "my mob is correct, your mob is not",
| but the end result is the same.
|
| While I guess it is possible to have another consistent
| view, I think they mostly boil down to the specifics of
| where to draw the "bad speech" line. And I think in reality
| the vast majority of people who don't take a hard free-
| speech-for-all (asterisk: except people whose words are so
| horrible that a huge number of people agree) stance on this
| set the line based on their own politics rather than any
| stable set of principles.
| darkerside wrote:
| > I have yet to hear one of these people be anything but
| angry
|
| That's because you don't "hear" people be silent.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Maybe 80% of the people that opine on this subject are in
| category 3)_
|
| Category 3 is actually "what's sauce for the goose is sauce
| for the gander"
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'm a bit baffled why were treating "cancel culture" as one,
| monolithic thing, when it's pretty clear that each case is a
| bit different.
|
| Someone losing their job for having a public melt down is not
| the same as a celebrity getting criticized, and that's not
| the same as someone clearly losing some sort of nasty office
| politics war. Treating this as a monolithic block is silly.
| mdoms wrote:
| Rich, coming from NY Times.
| bumbada wrote:
| The NYT is extremely sectarian. They have been doing exactly what
| they now critizice for people in their right for a long time.
|
| And it is impressive what we are seeing today with corona and
| Wuhan lab, all those media were basically calling lunatics to
| those that believed in the Wuhan lab hypothesis,licking the boots
| of their Chinese masters, now suddenly it is ok to believe that.
|
| It is a huge problem for them, when looking back you can see
| clearly how much they were lying:
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994
|
| Since facebook and google bankrupted press media taking their Ads
| money, you basically can't trust them anymore, they sell
| themselves to the biggest bidder.
| 0xy wrote:
| I want to point out that Vox only labeled the edits and tweeted
| about it after they were caught red handed stealth editing
| their deception.
|
| The other "usual suspects" were all attacking lab leak theory
| in 2020, including CNN, Washington Post and the NYT.
|
| Washington Post's chief fact checker called it "debunked".
|
| These people are quite literally controlling the flow of
| information, given their secret contracts with Facebook and
| their influence on Twitter, YouTube and other platforms.
|
| Corporate media needs to die before they get more people killed
| (NYT lied about WMDs in Iraq and thousands of innocent people
| died, nobody was fired).
| tobesure wrote:
| I think the situation is far more dire. The same types of
| political ideologues are taking over FAANG and other tech
| spaces, and other information outlets, like Wikipedia, where
| only "approved" or "authoritative" sources are typically
| accepted.
|
| Corporate and social culture have been hijacked by a sort of
| soft, insidious, growing authoritarianism and the
| consequences for the future of the west are severe,
| especially because these newly dominant voices are
| increasingly openly hostile to the [?]50% of the population
| whom they are effectively disenfranchising. Even fundraising
| for controversial figures who have anything remotely in
| common with right of center ideology is impossible between
| the fundraising sites and credit card companies. Something's
| got to give and it won't be pretty for anyone.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| Considering the Overton window, the argument could be made
| that today's "right of center" would have been considered
| dangerously extremist by the right a few decades ago, and
| that growing extremism is causing previously right leaning
| groups to apear to "change sides" and "ganging up" when
| they're not actually changing their stances at all, they're
| reacting to what they perceive as growing extremism. When a
| minority group gets more extreme, it appears to people in
| that group that everyone else is moving away, when in
| reality, it's them that are actually shifting beliefs.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > today's "right of center" would have been considered
| dangerously extremist by the right a few decades ago
|
| Extremist in what, supporting LGBTQ?
| kodah wrote:
| I don't think so. A decade ago was the tea party, that
| was effectively a Libertarian action by Democrats and
| Republicans. Libertarian being very "right of center" and
| combined support indicates some level of popularity. In
| my experience as formerly labeling myself Libertarian was
| the only shitty time to be one was around elections
| because Democrats and Republicans like to blame their
| failings on you.
| matwood wrote:
| How the lab leak theory was handled by the media was definitely
| botched, but at the time the full theory that I saw thrown
| around was more than an accidental leak. It also included items
| like purposely engineered to attack the west, and even included
| purposely releasing in order to attack Trump which afaik there
| has been zero evidence.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| You shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water though.
| The existence of outlandish claims should not render all
| unsupported claims invalid. Even if those outlandish claims
| manage to garner the support of the masses.
| matwood wrote:
| I agree, which is why I said the coverage was botched. But
| even the person I originally responded to said the 'Wuhan
| lab hypothesis'. Which hypothesis? I thought an accidental
| lab leak always seemed like valid avenue to explore (my
| version of the hypothesis), but depending on who you say
| hypothesis to it means different things.
|
| I think the whole situation highlights the challenges with
| communication in such a hyper us/them environment with the
| memeification of out of context quotes. The later is also
| commonly seen with experts who say something like "you
| don't need to do X, unless A, B, C occurs." The only thing
| shown to the masses is "You don't need to do X".
| dqv wrote:
| It seems like that association was _engineered_. The question
| went something like "did the virus leak from the WIV?" to
| which the mass media responded "no, the virus was not man-
| made!"
| crocodiletears wrote:
| There were multiple theories of various levels of conspiracy
| thinking.
|
| The 'deliberately released bioweapon' stance was niche by
| niche standards. It had a vocal base, and some initial
| inertia in January due to the HK protests. But the
| 'accidental lab leak' hypothesis always made more sense.
|
| It was the weakest version of the argument, and the existence
| of that bathwater in need of being tossed hardly necessitated
| defenestrating the clean baby lying next to the tub.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Twitter: a place where anything you say can, and will, be held
| against you in the court of public opinion _forever_.
|
| All for internet points.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I remember when a Brazilian teenager was killed after a stranger
| in front of him at a concert turned around suddenly and pointed
| at him saying he stole her phone.
|
| Before he knew what happened, he was stabbed to death by a mob
| while the real thief got away.
|
| Vigilante 'justice' continues to be a scourge of society; think
| of the stoning episodes of millenniums past.
|
| Social media removes the activation energy barrier to be a part
| of a mob - to feel the thrill.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| upofadown wrote:
| I think the root problem here is that some employers think that
| social media mobs somehow represent public opinion. They do in a
| trivial sense, but in the vast majority of cases just ignoring
| the whole thing is a reasonable course of action.
|
| There has to be more accountability here. It should be possible
| for a potential employee to see a company's past actions with
| respect to this sort of thing. In general a potential employee
| should know going in that an employer is so unprofessional that
| they might throw them under the bus for something as trivial as
| social media.
| spoonjim wrote:
| TROLOLOL!! The NYT has been one of the primary weaponizers of
| people's digital pasts for years and only now is beside itself
| because it happened to a fellow journalist on the "Blue Check
| correct" side of a hotbutton issue? Give me a break.
| nicbou wrote:
| I significantly scaled back my online presence this year. I
| deleted accounts, scrubbed information from my public profiles,
| and left many communities.
|
| Despite my very bening post history, I don't feel safe
| participating in the discussion anymore. I don't fear being
| cancelled, but I am terrified of Internet lynch mobs. They know
| no due process, no measure, and no limits.
|
| I've dealt with a lot of direct and personal harassment after
| being very active in a community. I pulled the plug when someone
| falsely accused me of sending them creepy PMs. It was quickly
| debunked by stellar mods, but it made the community way too
| dangerous to participate in.
| tjpnz wrote:
| I despise litigation but perhaps that's the best solution to
| solving this - especially when it also involves lies and
| blackmail. Maybe people will think twice if there are very real
| consequences involved.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Litigation is only for those who can afford the money, time,
| and aggravation required.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| The endgame will be that only rich people can afford justice
| once you need to finance the real consequences and the due
| process and everyone and every procedures involved. Really,
| sometimes, I believe the only winning move is not to play.
| nicbou wrote:
| That's not an option with throwaway accounts
| contriban wrote:
| What I've been doing is stop saying anything remotely
| controversial or specifically related to people or society
| and definitely I don't interact with tweets by socially-
| aggressive people.
|
| For everything else, I just use throwaways.
|
| And I hate that my name is traceable back to my time in
| 2007 because it was _so cool_ to use the same unique name
| everywhere. Nowadays Facebook, Instagram, LINE all are
| "serious" accounts but all have different IDs and lack my
| last name.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| What is particularly stupid is thinking that people don't change.
| And that's especially true with things posted when you are a
| teenager. People judging someone through a post made when they
| were 14-16 year old (or even 25 years ago) should be the one
| fired.
| clouddrover wrote:
| This is the problem with all data collection. You can't predict
| who will use that data for what purpose in the future.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Or at the very least, why hasn't a fear of mutually assured
| destruction set in?
|
| I think this is the mutually assured destruction phrase. A lot of
| the "cancel culture" has been deployed by the Left. The Right is
| now using it against people on the Left. This "cancel culture"
| will go away when both sides see that there is no net gain, only
| a grinder destroying people.
| kragen wrote:
| MAD doesn't work when the people who get destroyed aren't the
| people who launched the missiles. It isn't enough for them to
| be other people from the same faction.
|
| When Kennedy was considering nuking Khrushchev, he had to face
| the reality that, if he did, his own family would die, and if
| he didn't, they probably wouldn't. Khrushchev, _mutatis
| mutandis_. If Kennedy had given the first-strike command, an
| individual colonel in a missile silo pondering whether to
| disobey wouldn 't face a similar choice; he would know that,
| whatever he chose, hundreds of other colonels at other missile
| silos would launch their missiles, the Soviets would retaliate,
| and his family would die. So his only self-interest was not
| getting court-martialed for insubordination.
|
| The difference with cancel culture is that there is no Kennedy
| and no Khrushchev who has the authority to not fire the
| missiles. Every missile silo independently decides whether to
| fire and who to fire at, but they compete with other missile
| silos on the same side to demonstrate greater viciousness. And,
| instead of killing a million people, every missile kills a ten-
| thousandth of a person. So it's more of a grinder, as you say,
| than a firestorm.
|
| So, there's no net gain, but abstaining from the witch hunt is
| not a Nash equilibrium. It may even put you up at the stake
| next week when it's seen that you were insufficiently
| enthusiastic about today's Three Minutes Hate.
|
| More concretely, if you choose not to fire your employee
| because there's a social media hate campaign directed at him,
| whether you're right or not, that won't provide you any
| protection at all when it comes out that twelve years ago you
| posted something anti-transgender. Or pro-transgender,
| depending on who's canceling you.
|
| Your optimistic prediction would be true in a world where
| collective action was easy, and we had plenty of free software,
| no global warming, and no taxes, just volunteer work.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I mostly agree, but Kennedy and Khrushchev families probably
| had bunkers to survive. On the other hand, the families of
| the Colonels were probably living in a military facility that
| was a primary target of the counterstrike...
|
| Stanislav Petrov decided to ignore the official protocol
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
| kragen wrote:
| Kennedy's kids, yes. His parents, maybe. His aunts, uncles,
| and cousins?
|
| Petrov is indeed a notable hero -- but note that his self-
| interest was aligned with our collective survival in the
| same way Khrushchev's had been.
| miles wrote:
| > I mostly agree, but Kennedy and Khrushchev families
| probably had bunkers to survive.
|
| What sort of "survival" would even be possible in a post-
| apocalyptic world?
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| One issue with MAD is that other side is moral where one isn't.
| That is right believes in free speech so there is much lower
| tendency of attacking the people on other side for what they
| have said...
| kodah wrote:
| These are untruths. Neither of you are moral.
| rdiddly wrote:
| The Times has become one of the biggest online bullies. To be
| consistent the author would have to quit working there. Consider
| this article therapy, part of her process of working it out.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way
| vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be
| fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free
| speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up
| over a suspected crime.
|
| If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise
| it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice".
|
| That said, I think it's going to take at least a few more decades
| before such a ruling is made. I suspect it will come along the
| lines that internet history is protected speech, and so it's a
| protected work category and is illegal to fire a person over.
| Once companies can just point to the law and shrug, then they can
| ignore the online mob.
|
| Additionally, one would think cancelling should fall under libel
| and slander laws, and the accused would be able to go after the
| instigators.
|
| It's uncomfortable when it's "your side" that finds it's goals at
| odds with human rights, but in the end we're all better off with
| defending basic human rights. Policing morality is infinitely
| more difficult and oppressive, no matter how much it really feels
| good at the moment.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's really bizarre that you think this. Sexual preference
| still isn't a federally protected category. Neither is
| political affiliation. You're protected from the government
| arresting you for the views you express, but unless you have a
| separate contract or more protective local laws, a U.S.
| employer can fire you for being a Democrat or Republican.
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...
| ttt0 wrote:
| You're trying to apply current law to mere predictions of
| what the law might be in the future. He's saying that for
| example political affiliation might become a protected
| category. Nothing bizarre about it.
| username90 wrote:
| Firing people for cases like this is already illegal in most of
| the developed world. You need a cause and "people on twitter
| were angry" isn't one.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is an _astounding_ response: in reaction to people
| bullying each other on the Internet, you want to empower
| _everyone_ to use the force of the law to silence their
| critics? In what world is that either (1) a reasonable de-
| escalation of a social ill, or (2) a net win for free
| expression?
|
| I'm not very old, but I _am_ old enough to know the history of
| SLAPP lawsuits and anti-SLAPP legislation[1]. Barbara Streisand
| lost a SLAPP motion so hard that we named an entire effect in
| free expression after her! Do you really _want_ a world in
| which well-resourced parties can leverage the courts to silence
| dissent?
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i have a question. What about "right to be forgotten" ? if
| doxing would be illegal in future, would that mean the crony
| capitalists like google and facebook would decide declaring
| your old photos and "stupid" past as "too important" and just
| like your AFK history is written and unchangeable.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same
| way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be
| fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal
| (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating
| them up over a suspected crime.
|
| I'm incredibly dubious that you can write a law that
| accomplishes this that won't run afoul of the first amendment.
| And honestly, I think that literally jailing attempted
| "cancellers" would have way more of a chilling effect than
| whatever "cancel culture" causes.
|
| The solution for this is to change the culture, not to
| weaponize the power of the state to harm those you dislike.
| Please stop suggesting it, it will only make things worse.
| II2II wrote:
| If you walk up to someone and punch them, it is reasonable
| for that person to press charges even though the
| repercussions may only last a few minutes. The consequence
| will be more-or-less immediate, even if it starts and ends
| with a discussion with a police officer.
|
| If you slander someone, their recourse is to sue even though
| the repercussions may last for months or years. The
| consequence will not be immediate and the victim may not even
| have the means to pursue it.
|
| I don't know if there is a good solution to the problem. You
| are perfectly correct in pointing out that the proposed
| solution can weaponize the power of the state. On the other
| hand, speech can, and has been, weaponized.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I believe your proposal weaponizes speech even more; giving
| the ability of someone to accuse someone else of
| cancellation, which brings with it the threat of criminal
| action.
|
| It seems pretty obvious to me that this would make "cancel
| culture" markedly worse.
| II2II wrote:
| Just to be clear: I am making observations, not
| proposals. I see the current situation as a problem, but
| do not see a clear way to resolve it.
|
| It is difficult to understand why such an outcome is
| obvious. At one end of the spectrum, people are making
| claims that should be actionable through legal measures
| yet they choose to do make it actionable through speech.
| There are many reasons why this could be the case: lack
| of confidence in the legal system, expedience and
| perceived severity of punishment, or a lack of evidence
| to support the claims (assuming they are true).
| Regardless of why, I would classify it as vigilantism.
| Vigilantism has not place in a civil society that
| respects the process of law. In cases where the initial
| act was illegal, I find it difficult to call the threat
| of criminal action a tool of "cancel culture".
|
| Then there are allegations that many may considered as
| immoral, yet are legal. The people making the allegations
| cannot use the threat of criminal action to cancel
| someone, unless they resort to slander (e.g. make up a
| criminal act). That is pretty much the current situation.
| On the other hand, those on the receiving end would have
| more recourse against deliberately malicious acts. Since
| there would be due process, I find it difficult to think
| of it as a tool to cancel those making the allegations.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > At one end of the spectrum, people are making claims
| that should be actionable through legal measures
|
| Be precise. What claims are actionable? Provide examples.
|
| I think you might have a wildly inflated idea of what is
| and is not legally actionable, which is driving erroneous
| conclusions about what the law is, where it is going, and
| the limits of what is and is not possible in the courts
| under current jurisprudence.
| hooande wrote:
| Imagine you start a company and one of your employees says or
| does something reprehensible. Investors fear a boycott and
| threaten to pull out of a fundraising round. You either fire
| that one person, or the whole company goes under and everyone
| that works for you could lose their job (including you).
|
| If you make it illegal to fire that person, then any one
| employee could do considerable damage to dozens of other people
| and you'll have no recourse.
|
| It seems like a better system would be one where everyone is
| responsible for their own behavior.
| galtwho wrote:
| > If you make it illegal to fire that person, then any one
| employee could do considerable damage to dozens of other
| people and you'll have no recourse.
|
| well then the investors can't ask for the firing, they have
| to demand something else.
| mongol wrote:
| But if it is illegal, then all the people working for
| cancelling the employee will know it is hopeless.
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| They won't be able to get the person canceled, but they can
| still boycott the person's employer. Said employer will be
| economically harmed, with no way to end the pain.
|
| Companies don't like being harmed in this way, so they will
| most likely respond by digging very deeply into every job
| candidate's past to avoid hiring someone who may be
| "canceled" at a future date.
|
| Here's the thing: most people have done pretty shitty
| things in their past. However, most people don't rise to a
| level of prominence that it ever matters. They are able to
| live normal, productive, happy lives.
|
| Making "cancel mob" terminations illegal ends all that. Is
| this really the path we want to go down?
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal:
|
| Which actions exactly should be illegal? I assume you don't
| want to make me force watching movies from certain producers
| that I don't like anymore. At the same time in some countries
| retail stores basically have to cater to everyone and already
| can be made liable if they don't sell something that they
| advertised for as long as customers stick to terms and
| conditions.
|
| I rather think that excess cancelling and all that comes with
| it is a result of perceived injustices. Even if you come up
| with a very creative law unless these injustices are solved the
| symptoms will pop up elsewhere. That said, standards in society
| develop over time and probably the capacity for ambivalence is
| going to rise again. Also people tend to give more credit to
| things that have been worked for more than things that have
| been inherited.
| Udik wrote:
| > Which actions exactly should be illegal?
|
| Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response to a
| twitter mob.
|
| You are of course free to boycott whoever you want- but my
| impression is that those threatened boycotts won't really
| cause much damage to companies. People keep saying that
| firings are meant to "limit damage" but I have yet to see
| proof of this. To me it is mostly virtue signalling on the
| part of the involved businesses- it's not meant to prevent an
| economic damage but as a form of PR and advertising.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _my impression is that those threatened boycotts won 't
| really cause much damage to companies_
|
| It still boggles my mind to see multi-billion dollar
| multinational companies cowering in terror from what is
| probably no more than a few dozen Twitter users in each
| case, none of whom were customers anyway, they just have
| too much time on their hands
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response
| to a twitter mob.
|
| So, all I have to do is hire a few Twitter bots once in a
| while and I'm permanently unfireable?
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| You can still be fired for cause. But the company will
| have to do work to document that to demonstrate it wasn't
| for past statements.
| bjl wrote:
| So you're incentivizing being racist on the internet to
| make it harder to fire somebody.
| Udik wrote:
| This is silly. A twitter storm is a pretty well defined,
| public event. Do you seriously think it would be common
| to post racist stuff on the internet, and then organise a
| _permanent_ campaign against yourself, in order to become
| un-fireable for causes that are work related? A company
| that wants to fire you for your poor performance can do
| so, and if you sue them it 's not going to be hard for
| them to prove they have a legitimate cause which has
| nothing to do with your self-organised mobbing campaigns.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Firing an employee or terminating a contract in response
| to a twitter mob
|
| Weird way to end 'right to work' laws, but any port in a
| storm I guess.
| Udik wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean, can you elaborate?
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| Did you confuse _at-will employment_ (employer can fire
| for any reason) with _right to work_ laws (companies can
| 't have an agreement with a union that forces all
| employees to join or pay union dues)?
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| Assuming you meant "at-will employment" not "right to
| work", I unironically agree.
|
| The symptom is that accusations or out-of- context
| statements or actions can spark a brief but intense
| reaction on Twitter, and companies frequently fire their
| employees based on that Twitter reaction. And then those
| employees may lose access to healthcare or otherwise be
| in a very precarious position.
|
| So the issues are - The internet remembers forever. -
| Twitter mobs are self- amplifying and the size and
| intensity of the mob is not significantly correlated to
| the intensity of the perceived offense - Twitter mobs
| don't react based on the most correct information, but
| rather the most viral - Companies fire people based on
| Twitter mob actions because: - Companies can be liable
| for creating a "hostile work environment" for failing to
| act on things their employees did outside of work hours.
| - Companies can fire anyone for any reason _except_ being
| a member of a protected class - Healthcare is tied to
| employment, so getting fired is disruptive since you need
| to get new insurance, which in turn probably requires you
| to switch doctors, get your medical records transferred
| over, etc.
|
| The symptom of "people are having their lives massively
| disrupted by relatively minor things they did decades
| ago" could be approached from any of these angles. So
|
| 1. Fix Twitter (and it is specifically Twitter that is
| the bulk of the problem) to have a way to disprove of a
| message without further amplifying it 2. Fix the
| incentives for businesses so that the business is not
| responsible for what the employee does on their own time.
| 3. Fix the social safety net and healthcare system so
| getting fired is not ruinous. 4. Add more employee
| protections, making it harder to fire people without
| cause.
|
| I personally think any of the above would work, though
| I'm wary of 1 (the laws required to obligate this would
| probably have significant chilling effects elsewhere) and
| 4 (depends strongly on quality of legal implementation,
| and I don't have a lot of faith in our legislators to
| write well thought out laws). I personally favor 2 - as
| an employer if you're not paying someone for their time I
| don't think you should get to dictate what they do with
| that time.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Political speech, in particular, is supposed to be protected
| from this kind of treatment.
|
| Most importantly, accusations of bias are also not a valid
| reason to fire a journalist.
|
| There's also an intermingling of private and public sphere,
| and firing someone for private legal behavior because some
| internet hive mind started a smear campaign also should not
| be lawful. Of course, America has the coercive institution of
| at-will employment, ruining any attempt at fixing it this
| way.
|
| A good step would be filling class action defamation suit
| against a class running a smear campaign over barely public
| and irrelevant things. Consequences for setting up mobs.
| While platform is not liable, the users are. That could make
| some people think twice before doing it.
| dTal wrote:
| You're going to sue me for running, in my head, the program
| "if misbehave, then boycott"? Because that's all it takes
| to be a member of a "mob". Or you're going to sue me for
| passing on information of <misbehavior>, even if it's true,
| because you're afraid of being cancelled? That's a fairly
| horrifying dystopia you're painting.
|
| Nobody has to incite a mob. It just happens. It's
| collective action. There's no one to sue, unless you feel
| like suing everyone.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| I was discussing an individual being attacked for
| personal thoughts posted in the past. If a company
| supports things you don't, sure, just don't support that
| company. But when a group tries to get a person fired for
| something unpopular that they said in the past, then
| using a mob to get them fired is vigilante justice.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| But a group trying to get someone fired for what they did
| or said in the past is the individuals in the group
| exercising their own protected political speech. It's
| difficult to see how that can be made illegal without
| curtailing political speech itself.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| It is indeed difficult to see how cancelling can be made
| illegal without curtailing political speech itself.
|
| If there was an easy solution though, it would probably
| already be in place.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| If firing for speech is made illegal, then a boycott will
| be ineffectual and thus not happen. You don't have to
| outlaw the speech of the mob, just the ability for a
| company to fire someone over someone's past statements.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The effectiveness of the boycott is a function of
| relative power levels, not whether the corporation can
| take action to adjust the issue.
|
| If it's made illegal to fire people for speech, I doubt
| people would have any qualms (assuming they have the
| purchasing power and scale) with driving the corporation
| to bankruptcy. Another corporation will take its place.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| It's very hard to boycott a company into bankruptcy this
| way, and it never worked. Maybe a tiny startup, by
| scaring off backers. It's much easier to scare their PR
| HR to fire a person or do superficial changes. Companies
| have more power than a random employee, unless we're
| talking CEO level.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| The point isn't the power over the corporation, the point
| is the power over the individual. But if the law makes it
| so they have no power over the individual, the motive to
| boycott won't exist.
| dTal wrote:
| Companies fire such people pre-emptively, out of fear of
| such boycotts. This is the only thing giving
| "cancellation" any teeth - otherwise, how could a mob
| "get someone fired"? Why would any company bow?
| Udik wrote:
| > Companies fire such people pre-emptively, out of fear
| of such boycotts... Otherwise why would any company bow?
|
| Because firing someone is cheap. It's not "damage
| control", it's virtue signalling, as costly as it is for
| others to express their outrage on twitter.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > Political speech, in particular, is supposed to be
| protected from this kind of treatment.
|
| No, it is not. It is supposed to be protected from the
| government punishing you over it, any other requirements
| are purely made up.
|
| > There's also an intermingling of private and public
| sphere, and firing someone for private legal behavior
| because some internet hive mind started a smear campaign
| also should not be lawful
|
| So you would use the power of the state to suppress speech
| in the name of free speech? I don't think you've thought
| through the long term consequences of this.
| jhgb wrote:
| > any other requirements are purely made up.
|
| Protection from the government punishing you over
| political speech is "purely made up" as well. All laws in
| all countries are "purely made up", humans made them so.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's fairly obvious from the context that we're talking
| about the American tradition of free speech, and the
| jurisprudence around it. So in this case "made up" means
| "there is no case law to support your assertion about how
| the principle of free speech should work in American
| law". I find an attempt to assert that all laws are made
| up kind of lazy side stepping of bother the issue at hand
| and kind of annoying.
|
| Furthermore, even if one just decides to YOLO a few
| centuries of American jurisprudence on the matter, one
| will quickly find oneself either advocating for
| authoritarianism, or recreating our existing speech
| system from scratch. Those are the only two logical
| outcomes that can come from an assertion that one parties
| speech should be suppressed in order to "protect"
| (promote, imho) the speech of another group.
| jhgb wrote:
| > It's fairly obvious
|
| But why? Do people from other countries deserve to have
| their digital pasts weaponized? That was absolutely not
| obvious to me.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > But why?
|
| Because the top article is a NYT article, and this forum
| is largely American in composition. There are interesting
| discussions about free speech rights in other countries,
| but in this case it's reasonable to assume an American
| context.
|
| > Do people from other countries deserve to have their
| digital pasts weaponized
|
| I'll remind you that presuming good faith is a rule here,
| this is a nakedly bad faith interpretation of what I
| said.
| monkeydreams wrote:
| > In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same
| way vigilante justice is illegal now.
|
| Will it be illegal at the point of expressing an opinion
| online?
|
| Will it be illegal at the point of agreeing or liking an
| opinion expressed online?
|
| Will it be illegal at the point where one is purchasing a
| product or service and determines where their money will go
| based on an opinion they hold?
|
| People are allowed to have, express and hold opinion. They are
| allowed to make decisions based on these opinions.
|
| > Additionally, one would think cancelling should fall under
| libel and slander laws, and the accused would be able to go
| after the instigators.
|
| Good news! These laws exist.
|
| > It's uncomfortable when it's "your side" that finds it's
| goals at odds with human rights, but in the end we're all
| better off with defending basic human rights.
|
| When "your side" starts advocating that people should not have,
| hold or act on opinions, you might start wondering who you're
| on side with.
| rolandog wrote:
| Well, I recently was permanently suspended on Reddit, but
| I've been unable to determine why (also, no previous
| announcement).
|
| I haven't been permanently banned from any subreddit (no
| message in my 14 year old history indicated this)... but I've
| been unable to get any human to tell me what exactly I did
| was against the Reddit Content Policy.
|
| The curious thing for me was that my alt account (the one I
| use to try to have some semblance of free speech) was also
| permanently suspended.
|
| This, to me, felt like I may have been censored in some way
| (though I really don't know the motive; maybe I was too
| outspoken against an oppressive government?).
|
| It certainly has had a chilling effect on my online activity.
| ghusbands wrote:
| From what you're saying, it's likely that you did/said
| something 'questionable' on your alt account and Reddit
| banned all of your accounts that they could identify.
| Having an alt account doesn't prevent you as a person being
| held responsible for what you do/say.
| [deleted]
| monkeydreams wrote:
| > Well, I recently was permanently suspended on Reddit, but
| I've been unable to determine why (also, no previous
| announcement).
|
| > The curious thing for me was that my alt account (the one
| I use to try to have some semblance of free speech) was
| also permanently suspended.
|
| That sucks, especially as there are few ways to appeal
| these bans.
|
| Perhaps you were banned for upvoting your own content from
| another account? This will result in a ban for both
| accounts. If not, it could be a number of other reasons
| that have nothing to do with cancellation or governmental
| criticism.
| ben_w wrote:
| While I agree that the status quo isn't stable and must change,
| I don't think what you're suggesting will be stable either.
|
| The internet is one place where 99.9% compliance with a social
| norm or law isn't good enough to prevent the remaining 0.1%
| from causing enough damage to be un-ignorable, even if you
| manage to get worldwide agreement on updating the law.
| (Consider that e.g. the UK does not have American freedom of
| speech, and if anything considers the American way of doing
| things to be strange and somewhat anarchic).
|
| I sometimes wonder it would help if social media posts had to
| be deleted after a short period, perhaps a few months or a few
| years? (The pre-internet social media, being conversations and
| _occasionally_ letters, was probably >99% forgotten in hours,
| and most of the rest was hearsay).
|
| Or it would help, or make things worse, if it became easy for
| people to change identity?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Is there a standard way to convert an encryption key into a
| human readable name?
|
| Because then we could have a service where you signed
| everything with your key and then you were know as whatever
| the hash of that key is - and you can create a new identity
| with a new key, but your name won't be linked to any real
| world identity.
|
| I barely use Facebook or Twitter compared to reddit, and I
| suspect it is because of the real name issues, that makes
| those places just not as much fun.
| swebs wrote:
| That sounds like the tripcode system you see on imageboards
| like 4chan.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageboard#Tripcodes
| kodah wrote:
| This is called PGP
| ttt0 wrote:
| GPG?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| They mention Eric Schmidt's thoughts on the topic from 11 years
| ago in the article.
|
| Schmidt had a habit as Google CEO of saying true things in the
| least palatable way. That was the same interview where he said
| "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe
| you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." People interpreted
| it as a flippant dismissal of privacy, but what he was trying to
| express was this era was coming... The modern web was going to
| make hiding one's past behavior extremely difficult.
| mlloyd wrote:
| A couple of things that I've learned about the country as I've
| watched the Cancel culture war:
|
| 1)Many believe having freedom of speech means having freedom from
| consequences of your speech. And not just governmental
| consequence but all consequence. That's wrong and always has been
| wrong, if rarely enforced. Speech has always had consequences but
| those consequences weren't cancellation. Not for white folks
| anyway.
|
| 2)White people can't live in the same world with the same rules
| that they've created for other people. Cancel culture is very
| much a thing and has been a thing used against Black folks and
| other minorities in America for decades. The list of things we
| get canceled for far exceeds exercising our freedom of speech.
| Here's a short list:
|
| A)Our names. Got an ethnic name? Expect to get less interview
| callbacks.
|
| B)Hair. We've had to lobby for laws to protect our right to wear
| our hair in 'natural' or 'ethnic' styles.
|
| C)Actual Freedom of Speech. Try and bring up racism or
| discrimination practically anywhere and see what happens to you.
| See Colin Kaepernick.
|
| D)Skin Complexion. Light-skinned privilege is a thing. Google
| 'colorism'.
|
| E)Accent and use of language. Google 'code switching'.
|
| You get the point. If the only thing you have to worry about is
| if you actually said something dumb in your past and if it's
| going to come up, then you have it good. Other folks are getting
| canceled just how they exist, from traits they can't change, and
| they have been for decades.
|
| And even with all that, I still think Cancel culture is pretty
| shit because the mob is a broadsword, not a scalpel - h/t "The
| Siege". It doesn't stop at Trump, it keeps going to folks like
| AGM. But I'd love it if those fighting against cancel culture
| also fight for those who aren't white men complaining about it on
| Twitter and Hacker News. Fight also for those who have been
| victimized by cancel culture before it had a catchy name and
| impacted the white and powerful. Probably won't win until you do
| anyway.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| This is a difficult problem to solve unless you can remove stuff
| about yourself from Google and other platforms. Which won't
| happen as that would be expensive manual work for the platforms.
| I cannot imagine what happens to the gigs of info young people
| post online (about eachother and themselves) that will be mined
| in 10-20 years by companies and used for evil.
|
| Since I said something in an interview to push a particular
| business agenda and had that used against me since then in all
| kinds of contexts, I make sure nothing more appears about me
| online. I cannot really understand how something I said or did
| (in this example: I was cto of a services company and in the
| interview I mention I like services more than products, which, at
| the time I did; this is no longer true) in a business setting 10
| years ago is relevant to something I do now but clients and
| investors bring it up.
|
| Makes it kind of weird how straight up criminals get positions
| and investments time and time again even when they have 100s or
| 1000s of news articles from actual reputable press against
| them...
| 3np wrote:
| There actually is a process to remove yourself from Google
| Search results.
|
| https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/9685456?...
|
| https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?...
| codingdave wrote:
| Those are not describing a process you can go through - they
| are telling you manage your robots file and handle your own
| content security if you own a site, or talk to the site owner
| if you don't own the site, and then gives very narrow
| conditions about removal if you cannot get the site owner to
| control the content.
| xg15 wrote:
| Isn't this more or lesss what the EU's "right to be forgotten"
| initiative was about? To my knowledge, GDPR also contains legal
| provisions that let you enforce deletion of your data.
|
| How usable this is in practice when entire industries depend on
| preserving that data is another question...
| exabrial wrote:
| The word that doesn't exist in Silicon Valley; consent.
| fitzie wrote:
| we have weaponized outrage against our neighbors and it is
| absurd. weve gotten to the point where a hangman's noose is
| racist as is the OK hand sign, and it is now common for such
| simple displays to escalate to a federal case. we want kids to
| stop bullying each other in school, but ridicule, harassment,
| name calling, and ostracization are perfectly acceptable ways to
| settle disputes. if this is to change, we will have to tone it
| down, not pretend that someone is evil because of a single
| harmless thing that they said, and business leaders will have to
| steer their companies away from encouraging this childish outrage
| culture.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Don't you miss anonymity online?
| h0p3 wrote:
| Anonymity comes in degrees and kinds, and, alongside radical
| decentralization, it can improve our ability to solve some
| problems of justice for which there are no other solutions.
| However, there are limits to what it buys us, and huge costs,
| too.
|
| I hold anonymous giving and anonymized trust in high regard,
| nomad. Quite fallibly, I put my skin in the game on the wire
| like few ever have. I hope we learn to wear the Ring of Gyges
| without being unduly affected by it. Let us be the change we
| want to see in the world
| (https://philosopher.life/#Contact%20h0p3). Some say I'm a
| madman out here in the desert. It's a pleasure to meet you.
| Zealotux wrote:
| "We must become the pitiless censors of ourselves." - Alain
| Badiou
| sebow wrote:
| Coming from NYT or any other MSM outlet... ironic much?
|
| The media has always been the source of weaponizing people's
| past, today with even less regard to their current status or any
| other factor.
| scrps wrote:
| In a weird way I think cancel culture/doxxing/call out culture
| has given a massive boost to privacy awareness at least for
| people who aren't in highly visible jobs.
|
| Over the past couple of years but especially 2020 I've had more
| non-tech family members, friends and friends of friends ask me
| for advice on preserving their privacy and anonymity and
| political speech seems to usually be in the top 5 reasons when I
| ask them.
| plank_time wrote:
| I realized this back in 1997 when dejanews started up. From then
| on I never posted with my real name, and never will.
|
| I only have a very limited internet presence with my real name
| and never post any of my opinions on it.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Another place people never post with their real name: the
| voting booth. Hence the big shockers: "How did XXXX win?" It's
| because nobody who thought that way ever said so out loud.
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| Caution is still advised. ML identity-matching using your
| writing patterns/idiosyncracies will likely be a thing in the
| near future.
| david_allison wrote:
| Stylometry is already a well-studied field, just not
| typically applied to online datasets
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry
| fuzxi wrote:
| I'm envisioning a browser extension that runs your posts
| back-and-forth through Google Translate and DeepL a few
| times, scrubbing your post of all personal markings (and
| nuance).
| [deleted]
| throwaway512793 wrote:
| I recently went on trying to delete my old Facebook posts and the
| amount of hurdles and steps necessary and errors involved leads
| to the thought that without doubt Facebook does not want you to
| do this.
|
| In order to delete the posts you have to manually click on each
| and every one and then click on delete. Sometimes it throws an
| "unexpected error" and then you have to click on everything
| again, but then it often throws the error again.
|
| Another way is to "mark all" but that only marks 50 posts at
| once. If you scroll down then it adds another 50 posts, at the
| cost of about 20 seconds per scroll, so when you scroll down far
| enough you can accumulate a lot of posts that will be available
| for "mark all". But, mind that Facebook doesn't like you to batch
| remove all of your history. So after 150 or 200 posts (the amount
| is changing apparently randomly) accumulated and clicking on
| delete, they throw a "Challenge required" error. With trial and
| error you find out that this error appears always after you
| accumulated too much, so you'd naturally think, let me just go
| back one step and scroll a couple of time less to generate a new
| and smaller list. But it's not possible to generate that list of
| posts again for some reason, as going away from the activity
| monitor and back into it again just shows again the >200 posts
| list nicely prefetched for you. I found the only way to "reset"
| this view is to log out of Facebook and log in back again, then
| the activity monitor starts at 50 posts again.
|
| Hopefully when you then batch delete 150-200 posts, there isn't a
| special post in between which brings another error when trying to
| delete from the activity monitor in batch or manual. It seems
| that this error only appears when you deleted too many posts in a
| specific time frame. What you need to do is to find that post in
| the haystack of at minimum 50 posts, click on it's time such that
| you get on the posts individual page (better open in another tab
| or you might get insane eventually, if not already) and then
| delete the post from there by using the menu button.
|
| Hopefully it allows you to delete and you can continue to batch
| delete the rest in batches of 150-200. Otherwise you will have to
| wait for a couple of hours you receive a new delete allowance.
|
| Lastly, even if you at first think posts were deleted, you might
| have to revisit and see again, as some posts just reappear again.
| You don't find them necessarily inside the activity monitor again
| but e.g. when you use the search, or even worse, when others use
| the search on these posts.
| aboringusername wrote:
| It's a disgrace the GDPR has not made it easier to delete
| content as easy as it is to generate it. I also think
| hackernews is a disgrace too, as you cannot edit nor delete
| your posts here and dang should immediately fix this (or
| whomevers responsible)
|
| If I want to delete every piece of data from a companies
| storage (including backups, caches et al) I should be able to
| do that.
|
| If it is _ever_ proven that data still exists on an individual
| whose requested full deletion the CEO should be imprisoned for
| a minimum of one year.
|
| But of course that will never happen and the GDPR is an
| absolute failure that has done more harm than good.
| throwaway512793 wrote:
| Well you can delete your Facebook profile, which takes 30
| days until all data is removed. But then you also delete your
| Friend List, the chats, the list of sites you subscribed to,
| the groups, the events and your Ad profile.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I actually find it useful sometimes to
| receive targeted ads. It worked for me often enough such that
| I noticed products, events or groups that really are
| interesting to me and which I otherwise probably wouldn't
| have found. I recently started browsing YouTube logged in
| with my profile again and the recommended videos are much
| better than when I have an incognito browser.
|
| Nevertheless, it must be possible to at least delete your
| public interactions with one click. I don't see any business
| reason for Facebook and Twitter to keep year old posts
| public.
| RONROC wrote:
| Probably an unpopular take but cancelling _typically_ occurs in
| domains that either deserve the maximum amount of public scrutiny
| such as politics and show business (the reasoning here is that
| the people who operate in these domains have, always will, and
| _should_ be held to account for the simple reason that they
| wouldn't be in these positions without the inverse, ie. positive
| public perception---if you're not useful, you're replaceable) or
| in industries that have a inherently corrosive framework whose
| success is predicated on extracting a disproportionate amount of
| value from the those who are doing the cancelling such as big
| tech and media (no normal person will weep for these people and
| with good reason).
|
| The only exception here is the cancelling of people with
| relatively small followings/influence who receive heavy-handed
| negative attention (like the Reddit bomber or people in academia
| like the N-word professor) but instances like these are fewer and
| far between and will probably decline over time as boomers leave
| the discourse (die).
|
| I used to work at a few big media companies in a position that
| required a decent amount of public facing and had brushes with
| this sort of behavior in the past (people tweeting death threats
| at me, which I just brushed off because I understood what I
| signed up for and am not naive). These days I work for myself in
| a "blue collar" industry and mostly ignore social media, so I
| can't really be cancelled.
|
| I guess the point i'm trying to make is, if this is something
| you're actually worried about, just
|
| 1; go work in an industry that lacks the highly educated,
| overstimulated, and mostly out of touch people that dominate 99%
| of the discourse but speak for 1% of the population
|
| 2; learn how to read the room (ie. listen more and talk less)
|
| Big tech wanted everyone to have a voice and now they do. :)
| nojs wrote:
| Wow, this is a bit rich coming from the NYT. They are among the
| worst offenders.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Don't weaponize their digital past! /s
| saargrin wrote:
| An organization that ran multiple exposes on people by digging
| thru their social media is suddenly worried about people digging
| thru their own past to find obviously antisemitic trash
| websites420 wrote:
| This was written by a person, not the editorial board of NYT.
| Could you please back your claims of antisemitism? That is a
| serious accusation that is unfortunately overused to apply to
| anyone who criticizes Israel.
| Animats wrote:
| The big problem now seems to be thought policing by employers.
| Sometimes because they fear mobs, online or offine, coming after
| them.
|
| The secondary problem is being forced off social media for more
| or less random reasons.
| TakawaraJu wrote:
| Is the fear really justified though?
|
| My first thought is to ignore them because they're usually
| microscopic in terms of scale but I'd love to hear from someone
| who has had their business targeted by a mob and what effect it
| had on the bottom line and morale
| makomk wrote:
| Yeah, and I suspect that often what employers really fear is
| that publications like the New York Times will join the pile-on
| and a lot of the really aggressive, fire first and ask
| questions later approaches are attempts to get ahead of the
| story before they do so that the news headlines are about an
| ex-employee and it's clear what their stance is.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/KlFqg
| ksd482 wrote:
| Giving server error constantly. Perhaps it will recover.
|
| But here's an alternative:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210530000441/https://www.nytim...
| comodore_ wrote:
| Are the journos finally feeling the heat themselves?
|
| journos are one of the worst offenders in this toxic climate.
|
| Weaponizing tweets only loses its power in only two ways, either
| by every reasonable person and institution realizing that this is
| stupid, or by mutual assured destruction.
|
| Unfortunately I think we're well past the point of no return, so
| I'm looking forward to the latter. So let the cancelations
| continue until moral improves.
| captainmuon wrote:
| Instead of self censoring and deleting our past, we should solve
| the problem on the recipient's side, and harden ourselves against
| this kind of attack.
|
| When someone is booted out of office for the wrong reasons (even
| though it is "the right person", i.e. someone who's views I don't
| agree with) I speak out against it. If I was a politician, I
| would pledge before elections to never step down due to anything
| that happend in my past; if I had a company I would consider
| adding something into contracts that we cannot fire people due to
| past controversial statements.
|
| I think we have a unified legal system for a reason, and would
| prefer if everything prohibited is handled there, after which you
| are considered innocent again. I don't like cases where someone
| is _legally_ innocent but yeah he 's an asshole and we don't give
| him a job anymore. You could argue different people have
| different standards, and it is a free market and people are
| allowed to choose who they work with and who they deplatform -
| but in practice, at least in the entertainment industry, the
| standards are rather monolithic. Companies don't want to offend
| anyone, and also don't want to get trouble with payment
| providers, so you get certain behavior. Don't kid yourself, the
| liberal Twitter bubble doesn't have the kind of power to "cancel"
| people on their own - big corporations and media companies decide
| what get's picked up, what get's scandalized, and what is
| acceptable. And I'd really rather have this decided
| democratically by some kind of parliament or council than by some
| companies.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| > if I had a company I would consider adding something into
| contracts that we cannot fire people due to past controversial
| statements.
|
| It's not that people think you need to pay for your past
| "transgressions" (in their eyes). The problem is that people
| think they can extrapolate your future decisions, behavior,
| etc. based on a snippet from your past.
|
| So it's not really about something that happened in the past.
| It's about something that people will think will happen in the
| future.
| topspin wrote:
| > The problem is that people think they can extrapolate your
| future decisions
|
| People aren't that noble. You excuse what is callous
| brutalism as well intentioned error. People aren't guarding
| against dangerous influences. They're abusing mob power.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >It's not that people think you need to pay for your past
| "transgressions"
|
| Well we disagree about this. It often seems to be a certain
| amount of glee involved when someone posts something from
| someone's online past that might not have been a big issue
| back then but is a hot-button issue now. Or something that
| they might have childishly or ignorantly said back then. Or
| something that they have completely changed their view on
| now.
|
| But it doesn't matter. They all seem to be immediately
| followed by calls of some sort of "punishment" to fit the
| past "crimes".
|
| Who knows what hot-button issues of the future might be?
| freebuju wrote:
| The moment Twitter finally went mainstream, that was the death
| knell for "free" speech. Your employer, government agencies,
| religious & community leaders are all now on Twitter. Self
| censorship is not obligatory, it is a requirement to use the
| platform. Same thing to those family Whatsapp groups.
|
| I remember creating a Facebook account in my teenage years,
| most of my friends used nicknames on the account names. Why?
| Because the platform was so popular, the chances of your
| grandma finding your raunchy posts were also high. The same
| caution should apply to anyone before signing up for a social
| media account. Your misplaced, misunderstood caption/ viral
| post will reach your immediate social circles.
|
| Can't turn back the tide of cancel culture. Believe me, you
| can't win this on a numbers level. You can only hope your ride
| is less bumpy. And wait for the wave to pick its next victim.
|
| I think it is kind of stupid the whole world now lives on
| social media. People really do not understand what SM is at
| all.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I don't think the family whatsapp groups really fit in here,
| because by default they contain only things you want with
| your family. You can also join other groups that are
| different and have different focuses.
|
| Anyway reddit is as mainstream as the others and they not
| only permit account names, basically nobody uses their real
| names. Heck alt accounts are encouraged too.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Interesting argument because it implies that launching more
| "free speech" platforms (e.g. Parler) is actually worse for
| free speech.
|
| Note that twitter still allows pseudonymity that you're
| talking about.
| freebuju wrote:
| You may have misunderstood my argument. My contention is
| that a mainstream platform and free speech cannot co-exist.
| You can only choose one of the two options.
|
| About Twitter allowing pseudonyms, it is out of the scope
| in this context as you cannot cancel a faceless person.
|
| Am pro-free speech as I truly believe this was the original
| intention of the www and the communities that formed it. If
| the answer to this return in ideology is in more "free
| speech" platforms, then am personally more-than-ready to
| embrace the idea. No one should be policed in or victimized
| for sharing their opinions on the internet. I find it is so
| backward and cringy.
| swiley wrote:
| Free speech isn't dead, you just need to segregate your
| online identities.
|
| This has always been true even before the internet.
| [deleted]
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