> w/o also not greatly limiting free speech.
Indeed it would be exceedingly difficult to legislate against it. But something doesn't need to be illegal for us to push back against it. I'm not required to be accepting of all behavior that's legal.
For example, presumably you wouldn't agree with an HN policy change that permitted neo nazi propaganda despite the fact that it generally qualifies as protected speech in the US?
First, speak out about it and shame those engaging in it. If its not socially acceptable to ruin someone's live over their opinions then less people will go along with the mob and it becomes less of a problem.
Second, make sure that people's livelihoods are not ruined by people being mad at them. That's essentially what anti-discrimination laws do we just need to make sure they cover more kinds of discrimination. Essentially large platforms should not be allowed to ban you and employers should not be able to fire you just because a group of people is upset with something you expressed outside the platform/company.
If I say something racist at home, my friends and family will shame me - that is social consequence. If I say something racist at home and the person I invited over publicly posts that on Twitter and tags my employer to try to get me fired, that's cancel culture, and there's clearly a difference.
There are virtually no social groups where it's socially acceptable to get offended by what an individual said and then seek out their friends, family, and co-workers to specifically tell them about that thing to try to inflict harm on that individual. That would be extremely unacceptable and rude behavior in every single culture that I'm aware of, to the point where it would almost always be worse and more ostracizing than whatever was originally said.
Ah, fight cancel culture with cancel culture.
So you're going to legislate that employers can't fire people because of something they've done outside of work (presumably as long as its legal)? Many professions have morality clauses -- we'd ban those presumably? And if you had a surgeon who said on Facebook that he hated Jews and hated when he operated on them (but he would comply with the laws) -- as a hospital you'd think that people who raised this to you had no ground to stand on. That they should just sue if they feel they got substandard treatment?
> But something doesn't need to be illegal for us to push back against it.
This is exactly what cancel culture is. It's pushing back on something (usually legal, but behavior we don't strongly don't agree with).
And its absurd to me how the right acts like cancel culture is a left movement. The right has used it too. Look at all the post Charlie Kirk canceling that happened, huge scale -- even the government got involved in the canceling there. Colin Kaepernick is probably one of the most high profile examples of canceling. The big difference is that the right has more problematic behaviors. Although more of it is being normalized. Jan 6 being normalized is crazy to me, but here we are.
You conveniently left out the part about mob mentality there. I don't think anyone was ever objecting to people expressing their disapproval of something in and of itself. Certainly I wasn't.
I'm not sure what partisan complaints are supposed to add to the discussion. I don't think it matters if one, both, or neither "team" are engaging in the behavior. The behavior is bad regardless.
> I'd stop using HN and I'd tell others to also not use it. I'd implement cancel culture on it.
That's a boycott but I don't believe it qualifies as "cancelling". Identifying YC associated businesses and telling people not to patronize them due to the association might qualify. Trying to get people who continued to use HN after the policy change fired would qualify.
What if HN was a group about celebrating the abusing of kids, and the people who used HN were daycare workers? Would you just say that since it happens outside of work no one has the right to report it?
The example seems off base. Wouldn't that be conspiracy to commit a crime?
Taking you at (what I assume to be) your intended meaning. Obviously you can contrive various situations that would be sufficiently alarming to the typical person to cause them to justifiably abandon their principles and attempt community organization. Someone posting things that don't fit your worldview and make you mad doesn't rise to that bar.
Celebrating a crime isn't conspiracy to commit one.
> Obviously you can contrive various situations that would be sufficiently alarming to the typical person to cause them to justifiably abandon their principles and attempt community organization. Someone posting things that don't fit your worldview and make you mad doesn't rise to that bar.
Why wouldn't it? You've just constructed your bar, and that's great. I'm glad you'd never want to react on scale based on someone or some organizations postings. If Google's CEO posted that he "personally" thought that selling information to governments was fine if you didn't get caught, you wouldn't suggest to your friends to not use Google because it was just his viewpoint?
At the end of the day the community will decide if an argument to boycott at scale makes sense. If I go around saying to boycott Google because a guy there doesn't like anime probably will make me look more a fool than anyone else.
https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2026/01/15/culture-warrio...
I didn't construct some arbitrary personal bar. I simply acknowledged that edge cases exist that reasonable people might feel necessitate community action as a matter of self preservation. That doesn't undermine the general principle.
At the end of the day we're discussing social standards so there aren't going to be any airtight logical arguments and the edges will inevitably be blurry. If you adopt an extremist mindset you'll be able to rationalize just about anything. That doesn't mean you're actually in the right though.
Now, it's our job, when we see the arc not bending the right way (or fast enough) to do something, but I think to avoid allowing the arc to have levers is not doing ourselves any favors.
And with all the talk of cancel culture (not government action, but just all private citizen action), I've actually seen very few examples of it resulting in something that I consider unacceptable. Note, I'd consider physical threats outside the bounds of cancel culture -- those are just physical threats.