It’s fine to fire people who say horrible, horrible things; it’s not fine to fire people for saying things that aren’t horrible, horrible.
I still don’t get what’s so difficult about this concept.
And no one will fire Laura Loomer for her Tweet celebrating the murder of George Floyd because, apparently, Floyd deserved it.
I’m fine with people getting fired for most reasons. Could be my culture - in my state (and probably a lot of others) you can be fired for any reason not explicitly forbidden by the Civil Rights Act. The employer is not required to provide an explanation. You can also quit your job for any reason at any time. We call this “At-will employment.”
We can debate the pros and cons of at-will employment elsewhere. My point is that personally, I am used to the idea that firings can happen for any reason, and it doesn’t bother me. The latter situation, where a corporation is forced to suffer the hit of employing someone who is harming their reputation - I mean I’m probably the last person you’d expect to stand up for corporations but I think they have a point there.
What I’m generally against is the mob doxxing and stuff which is an attempt to make the business’ decision for them.
Sure, but what’s horrible is all in the eyes of the beholder. If an employer thinks abortion is baby murder, should they fire all pro-choice employees?
It’s the arbitrary and subjective nature of what is “horrible, horrible” that is the problem. How is this not obvious?
You can’t even appeal to consensus here, because you can post something that everyone around you finds unexceptional, or at least understandable, and then someone from a completely different social group picks it up and amplifies it, and suddenly a bunch of strangers are complaining to your employer that you said something horrible and ought to be fired.
Nor do the complainers have to actually be that numerous. Employers are risk-averse, so a dedicated group of activists can have an outsize effect, distorting a national conversation for their own benefit. Enough of such groups all pulling in different directions can significantly limit the public conversation.
I think there is a huge benefit in a free exchange of information, and allowing people to speculate and push the boundaries of the acceptable. I believe the unusual freedom and openness in the West is what has allowed us to progress so far as a civilisation, both technologically and socially, and this is what I see threatened by current movements towards authoritarianism, cancel culture and censorship, both on the left and - in the US to a much greater extreme - the right.
Fair play for supporting both, I guess. I can understand the arguments on both sides for individual firings, but the slope here is very slippery indeed, and in my view it’s better to stay well away from it.
I have been seeing conservatives make similar statements on Twitter, so I suppose they are also accustomed to at-will employment.
Quite. It would be highly detrimental to society if everyone followed this norm.
Of course! Is this a mystery to some people? I don’t understand why this seems so complicated to some of you.
It’s good to do good things, bad to do bad things. Nevertheless, sometimes people will still do bad things.
There’s no mystery here (or at least there shouldn’t be). Whether we like it or not, people can respond to speech with other speech and, sometimes, even professional consequences. There’s no way to stop this and there never will be. The only thing to do is to advocate for good things for good behavior, and negative consequences for bad behavior, at the appropriate level depending on the severity.
Also, for those who still don’t seem to understand, I am not the law. If I say something is bad, or good, I am expressing my opinion. My opinion is not binding for others. Others are free to ignore it. I am not advocating that my opinion on whether things are bad or good, and what consequences they should face, should become binding law.
I can’t believe how many times I have to restate stuff like this.
I agree ………..what bothers me about this whole “cancel culture” discussion is people framing it in terms of the First Amendment and free speech.
in my opinion, the First Amendment is about limiting the reach of government, not about the right of assholes to spout off stupid offensive speech without consequence. While there is a debate to be had about that subject, it’s disingenuous to pretend you’re debating free speech and the First Amendment.
No one should ever have to fear GOVERNMENT retaliation for speech, and no one should lose their life or liberty for exposing a viewpoint, even if it is extremely offensive. But free speech works in both directions…..if I think your viewpoints are so offensive you have no place in polite society, I’m free to tell you and everyone you meet, and to tell your employer I think they should fire you.
But the government needs to stay out of it completely, and one thing I find concerning about the current political climate is I don’t trust the government not to coerce employers into firing the people they want fired.
When you combine the reality of At Will Employment with the fact that most American workers are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t handle a 1000 dollar emergency, and that we have an extremely weak social safety net, I think firing people from their job is a cruel tactic. I’d only endorse it for the most extreme cases (like openly advocating for genocide or to make the USA an authoritarian One Party State). And only then because our First Amendment makes it impossible to implement my preferred policy option: outlaw the speech, but penalize it under a restorative justice system that focuses on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Because this attitude is incompatible with maintaining a diverse, open, and tolerant society - particularly a religiously diverse one - something that AFAIK, you claim to support. Without tolerance of ideological differences, the end result is a war between factions (which we are now seeing) where one side will be victorious and the others crushed and oppressed.
Why would you want that? Why not agree to a ceasefire, where everyone agrees to put up with some level of other people saying and doing things they find horrible, in order to enjoy the same tolerance themselves?
No idea what you think you’re responding to. This response doesn’t appear to have anything to do with my actual words.
It doesn’t appear that you’re able to read and respond to my words as written. I’m not sure how else I can explain my view.
Does my support for free speech change when someone uses their free speech to advocate for something I dislike?
No, it does not.
A friend texted me to say that someone was fired from the Broad institute for a social media post that said, approximately, “I’ve downloaded the clip of Charlie Kirk’s head exploding so i watch it to cheer myself up”. I replied that firing seemed a little extreme, but i could see how that kind of comment could make for an awkward workplace. My friend, who opposes “cancel culture” in general, thought it was much too much of a response, and pointed out that an employee at a scientific research establishment is pretty far away from the comment being “job relevant”. (He said that he could see a police officer being fired for overtly racist statements, for example, as that might impair his ability to do his job.) I agreed that it did not seem like a strong case to fire someone over. Although i happen to think that enjoying snuff films is pretty repulsive, even if you have reason to hate the person who dies. (And frankly, any US research scientist had reason to hate Charlie Kirk.)
I pointed out that the Broad is partly owned by Harvard, which is under a political microscope. And we agreed that they probably wouldn’t have even had an HR chat over something like that two years ago.
Is that the kind of discussion you are curious about?
Also… The cancelling is being driven in part by the federal government right now. I’m 98% certain this guy was fired because his employer was worried about a reaction from the feds, for instance, and i get the impression that’s not the only similar case. So i think we actually do have a first amendment problem here.
Everywhere I’ve worked you had to be careful about putting political or religious messages in any kind of permanent form, and probably verbally too.
Employers don’t want you offending customers or being seen to represent the company’s view, and want to foster an environment in which all employees feel welcome.
So the firings don’t surprise me and I don’t care. I only care where there is specific evidence of hypocrisy and/or it’s part of someone’s actual job to opine (eg the news analyst that got fired).
Why am I certain that you’re not referring to the daily war between factions I see almost every day in my YouTube feed?
The war between intolerant of ideological differences factions of Christians who do not want a tolerant society that’s religiously diverse.
Except, of course, for Jews. But they’re only tolerated so that when Jesus returns He can go on a murder spree.
Of course, on some level I’m going to think it’s “right” to for a non-governmental entity to fire people for expressing a viewpoint I find deeply offensive, and “not right” to for a non-governmental entity to fire people for expressing a viewpoint I disagree with.
But I still acknowledge that the company who fires the person I agree with has the right to do so, whether or not I think his actions were right.
But as soon as the government puts their finger on the scale, whether it by passing laws that protect people from the non-governmental consequences of their speech, or by coercing private entities to fire people, that’s wrong and unconstitutional.
I think there’s a huge ethical and legal difference between protecting people from being arbitrarily fired for behavior done in their spare time unrelated to their job, and coercing entities to fire people for their speech.
In no way criticizing your post,
And that opens the rabbit hole where a public pressure campaign and an act of government are deemed to be equivalent. (Which they are not.)
Yes, this is what “employment at will” means, and that’s pretty much all employment in the US.
I note my example, where it’s almost certainly the threat of the government reacting to the social media post of a Broad employee that got him fired.
If we are going to retain “at will” employment, could we at least implement a mandatory “cooling off” period before employees get fired for social media posts? Like wait a couple weeks to see if the scandal dies down instead of immediately firing someone in the heat of the moment?