Hi Katy. I found my way here via Helen Dale. I’m an Englishman living in Singapore for about 18 years, and my first thoughts after reading your comments about Singapore were (a) this is the first I’ve heard of this, (b) this is totally expected, and (c) they will use this to shut people up.
Singapore is mostly sensitive about race - they had race riots in the 1960s and are ready to punish anyone who stirs up racial resentment as a response to those events. I myself have wondered how Singapore would cope with the arrival of CRT-based ideas, which would of course make the Chinese majority the oppressors. There have already been the occasional online activists waving ‘Chinese Privilege’ around as a form of criticism, although this is nascent at the moment.
I did not expect this to be suggested as a result of the repeal of section 377A, although I can see that the Singapore government has one eye on the West, and will not tolerate any attempt to push social change further than it allows.
Thank you so much for this insight. I was reluctant to say anything about the politics of it - as I don’t live there or know what’s going on, so this is incredibly helpful context. My concern was more - if they did this how would it work (or not work)?
That’s a good question. My guess is that it will depend on the severity of the issue which invokes the potential cancellation (the severity will of course be determined by the government). The legal response could be as mild as a public warning, or a fine, all the way to invoking the Internal Security Act - detention- if the issue is deemed serious enough. Who would be held responsible is probably where the difficulties lie.
An added consideration when furthering a conversation about the roles/goals of social media, intended as a means, is to address its ultimate, but maybe not desired, 'end:' Placing everyone back onto the same 'island,' and thereby, abolishing what once was given primacy - Privacy. Within such a conversation, one needs to apply both the hermeneutic of suspicion and the hermeneutic of retrieval.
This is true too. I was considering - how does privacy law interact with this? US has a tort of invasion of privacy, but we don’t in Australia (closest thing is breach of confidence). But once you put it out there… your privacy has gone, it’s in the marketplace.
You're from Australia...I'm originally from the U.S., but have lived in Canada since 1990. My masters thesis in philosophy [1989] addressed Jacque Ellul's 1954 book entitled, "The Technological Society." One of the seminal products from the latter part of his definition of TECHNIQUE, "seeking absolute efficiency in every field of human activity," is social media. But its maximum expression will be encompassed within AI. I am currently updating my thesis! My 3 sons [20's] are in partnership, running a social media marketing firm [HighKey Enterprises]! My parting thought: Social media and AI both challenges living by my high school motto - Esse Quam Videri. Cheers.
A public shaming of public shamers? On the one hand there’s a certain poetry to it, on the other hand, I worry that I’m behaving like them. As long as it wouldn’t get them sacked - I would just want them to think twice about how it feels to be publicly put on display like that.
I think any qualms about the morality of this should be offset by two things.
First, it's not about feelings, its about damage to livelihood and career, basically economic terrorism. They started it, let them reap the reward of being flagged as trouble makers.
Second, cancel culture damages our society by creating a false consensus, with all sorts of horrid actually physical downstream effects, e.g. puberty blockers. I think that harm outweighs the rights of people to not have their public acts made salient.
(Just to be clear, I'm imagining an archive of screenshots so potential employers and professional associates can look somebody up and make up their own mind.)
"First, it's not about feelings, its about damage to livelihood and career, basically economic terrorism. "
I agree that is the real crux of the issue. Commenting anonymously without any discussion or reference to your employer should not have any relevance back against your employer to have a real issue. [Then again, people are people, and not all employers are smart people.] If somehow the employer does find out, a conversation with their employee along the lines of "I don't believe you believe what you posted (or didn't know you believed that!!). You are entitled to your personal opinion, but keep it away from the work place or your fellow employees, especially if it is going to be disruptive in any way."
Hopefully you offer enough value and competence for your employer, and the marketplace, that they should be hesitant to fire you without truly good reasons.
If someone is fired, and doesn't have recourse to Australian type labor laws, they might still be able to make that fact public enough to bring boycotts and shaming against their former employer, but of course most other employers would view that with a jaundiced eye (unless they can use it in some form of counter advertising?? :-) )
Katy, Helen, great meaty topic for discussion. Too bad the law is so complicated, because humans are so prideful and inventive in maximizing their social status.
> they might still be able to make that fact public enough to bring boycotts and shaming against their former employer,
Unfortunately, the essence of cancel culture is that nobody wants to stand up and be counted. One reason, I think, is that those with a platform usually have something big to lose, and are adult enough to have adult responsibilities they can't jeopardise.
The other thing is that may opinion formers - artists, writers, public intellectuals - are freelancers, and thus can be passively cancelled, without any legal liability.
Thinking about what you said, my mind wandered along several paths, mostly related to seeking financial independence as a form of protection against the many vicissitudes of life, including being on the wrong side of a political argument. Your comment about artists, et al. suggests even that approach has limits. But ultimately we have to stand up for honesty, reality, "truth" as best we understand it. Otherwise, they have won and we have lost even before we begin.
For example, there is a whole racialist industry out there promoting racist views with no core or real foundation for them. We need to loudly and often echo Senator Tim Scott's admonishment "America is not a racist country!" Affirmative action (and related legislation) has done what it was intended to do, so it is time to stop that type of favoritism.
Same for misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Our culture is now much more accepting of these issues than might have been the case even a decade or two ago, but the baseline transition has occurred (i.e., the Overton Window has shifted). However, the Left continues to use falsified assertions to gain power they have not really earned.
It's hard when being brave means being brave on behalf of our dependents, who rely on us to have an income in order to e.g. pay them through university.
To be honest, I'm most worried about the backlash, which is going to sweep away a lot of progress if we're not careful.
PS: by the way, I am now retired, so I have less exposure to being cancelled than some (and no Face Book or Twitter account). While my former employer at both the corporate and the local department level was not perfect, I had relatively little to complain about (in my pre social media situation). They even held yearly "ethics classes" discussing "what if" situations, stressing "avoiding even the appearance of impropriety". In those exercises I almost never selected the top choice preferred by HR or whomever, but they did explore gray areas, which I thought was good.
Yeah I’ve had people try to cancel me, some time ago now (not for something anyone cares about much now: the Overton Window has shifted). It was frankly horrendous. I was on probation at the time, in a new job, and I was terrified. Luckily my employer stood firm. I remain very grateful for that. And I agree on the false consensus aspect. Have you read Timur Kuran’s Public Liés Private Truths? Very interesting on the question of preference falsification, and the harms it does to democratic society. Basically it breaks the democratic feedback loop which enables bargaining with the public.
Heard it discussed, not read it. Probably where I picked up concern about false consensus. (I try to only engage with this stuff from time to time. Otherwise it's paralysing.)
Your story highlights what for me is the centre of gravity of this problem: employers, either directly as in your case, or indirectly as in the case of venues and publishers. Their lack of backbone is weirdly disquieting.
"However, that’s a matter for United States law." No it isn't; US sovereignty stops at the 12 mile limit. You might want to be cravenly submissive to the subverting of your nation, however I don't think you'll find very many agreeing with you.
Someone has brought to my attention the possibility that this is in fact designed to silence social dissidents, rather than to facilitate civil disagreement: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/12/asia/cancel-culture-law-singapore-intl-hnk/index.html
Hi Katy. I found my way here via Helen Dale. I’m an Englishman living in Singapore for about 18 years, and my first thoughts after reading your comments about Singapore were (a) this is the first I’ve heard of this, (b) this is totally expected, and (c) they will use this to shut people up.
Singapore is mostly sensitive about race - they had race riots in the 1960s and are ready to punish anyone who stirs up racial resentment as a response to those events. I myself have wondered how Singapore would cope with the arrival of CRT-based ideas, which would of course make the Chinese majority the oppressors. There have already been the occasional online activists waving ‘Chinese Privilege’ around as a form of criticism, although this is nascent at the moment.
I did not expect this to be suggested as a result of the repeal of section 377A, although I can see that the Singapore government has one eye on the West, and will not tolerate any attempt to push social change further than it allows.
Thank you so much for this insight. I was reluctant to say anything about the politics of it - as I don’t live there or know what’s going on, so this is incredibly helpful context. My concern was more - if they did this how would it work (or not work)?
That’s a good question. My guess is that it will depend on the severity of the issue which invokes the potential cancellation (the severity will of course be determined by the government). The legal response could be as mild as a public warning, or a fine, all the way to invoking the Internal Security Act - detention- if the issue is deemed serious enough. Who would be held responsible is probably where the difficulties lie.
I honestly don’t know how it would work, particularly with anonymous accounts.
An added consideration when furthering a conversation about the roles/goals of social media, intended as a means, is to address its ultimate, but maybe not desired, 'end:' Placing everyone back onto the same 'island,' and thereby, abolishing what once was given primacy - Privacy. Within such a conversation, one needs to apply both the hermeneutic of suspicion and the hermeneutic of retrieval.
This is true too. I was considering - how does privacy law interact with this? US has a tort of invasion of privacy, but we don’t in Australia (closest thing is breach of confidence). But once you put it out there… your privacy has gone, it’s in the marketplace.
You're from Australia...I'm originally from the U.S., but have lived in Canada since 1990. My masters thesis in philosophy [1989] addressed Jacque Ellul's 1954 book entitled, "The Technological Society." One of the seminal products from the latter part of his definition of TECHNIQUE, "seeking absolute efficiency in every field of human activity," is social media. But its maximum expression will be encompassed within AI. I am currently updating my thesis! My 3 sons [20's] are in partnership, running a social media marketing firm [HighKey Enterprises]! My parting thought: Social media and AI both challenges living by my high school motto - Esse Quam Videri. Cheers.
Perhaps we could make cancellation attempts costly by crowd funding an public archive of names and tweets.
A public shaming of public shamers? On the one hand there’s a certain poetry to it, on the other hand, I worry that I’m behaving like them. As long as it wouldn’t get them sacked - I would just want them to think twice about how it feels to be publicly put on display like that.
I think any qualms about the morality of this should be offset by two things.
First, it's not about feelings, its about damage to livelihood and career, basically economic terrorism. They started it, let them reap the reward of being flagged as trouble makers.
Second, cancel culture damages our society by creating a false consensus, with all sorts of horrid actually physical downstream effects, e.g. puberty blockers. I think that harm outweighs the rights of people to not have their public acts made salient.
(Just to be clear, I'm imagining an archive of screenshots so potential employers and professional associates can look somebody up and make up their own mind.)
"First, it's not about feelings, its about damage to livelihood and career, basically economic terrorism. "
I agree that is the real crux of the issue. Commenting anonymously without any discussion or reference to your employer should not have any relevance back against your employer to have a real issue. [Then again, people are people, and not all employers are smart people.] If somehow the employer does find out, a conversation with their employee along the lines of "I don't believe you believe what you posted (or didn't know you believed that!!). You are entitled to your personal opinion, but keep it away from the work place or your fellow employees, especially if it is going to be disruptive in any way."
Hopefully you offer enough value and competence for your employer, and the marketplace, that they should be hesitant to fire you without truly good reasons.
If someone is fired, and doesn't have recourse to Australian type labor laws, they might still be able to make that fact public enough to bring boycotts and shaming against their former employer, but of course most other employers would view that with a jaundiced eye (unless they can use it in some form of counter advertising?? :-) )
Katy, Helen, great meaty topic for discussion. Too bad the law is so complicated, because humans are so prideful and inventive in maximizing their social status.
> they might still be able to make that fact public enough to bring boycotts and shaming against their former employer,
Unfortunately, the essence of cancel culture is that nobody wants to stand up and be counted. One reason, I think, is that those with a platform usually have something big to lose, and are adult enough to have adult responsibilities they can't jeopardise.
The other thing is that may opinion formers - artists, writers, public intellectuals - are freelancers, and thus can be passively cancelled, without any legal liability.
Thinking about what you said, my mind wandered along several paths, mostly related to seeking financial independence as a form of protection against the many vicissitudes of life, including being on the wrong side of a political argument. Your comment about artists, et al. suggests even that approach has limits. But ultimately we have to stand up for honesty, reality, "truth" as best we understand it. Otherwise, they have won and we have lost even before we begin.
For example, there is a whole racialist industry out there promoting racist views with no core or real foundation for them. We need to loudly and often echo Senator Tim Scott's admonishment "America is not a racist country!" Affirmative action (and related legislation) has done what it was intended to do, so it is time to stop that type of favoritism.
Same for misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Our culture is now much more accepting of these issues than might have been the case even a decade or two ago, but the baseline transition has occurred (i.e., the Overton Window has shifted). However, the Left continues to use falsified assertions to gain power they have not really earned.
It's hard when being brave means being brave on behalf of our dependents, who rely on us to have an income in order to e.g. pay them through university.
To be honest, I'm most worried about the backlash, which is going to sweep away a lot of progress if we're not careful.
PS: by the way, I am now retired, so I have less exposure to being cancelled than some (and no Face Book or Twitter account). While my former employer at both the corporate and the local department level was not perfect, I had relatively little to complain about (in my pre social media situation). They even held yearly "ethics classes" discussing "what if" situations, stressing "avoiding even the appearance of impropriety". In those exercises I almost never selected the top choice preferred by HR or whomever, but they did explore gray areas, which I thought was good.
Yeah I’ve had people try to cancel me, some time ago now (not for something anyone cares about much now: the Overton Window has shifted). It was frankly horrendous. I was on probation at the time, in a new job, and I was terrified. Luckily my employer stood firm. I remain very grateful for that. And I agree on the false consensus aspect. Have you read Timur Kuran’s Public Liés Private Truths? Very interesting on the question of preference falsification, and the harms it does to democratic society. Basically it breaks the democratic feedback loop which enables bargaining with the public.
Heard it discussed, not read it. Probably where I picked up concern about false consensus. (I try to only engage with this stuff from time to time. Otherwise it's paralysing.)
Your story highlights what for me is the centre of gravity of this problem: employers, either directly as in your case, or indirectly as in the case of venues and publishers. Their lack of backbone is weirdly disquieting.
Oh goodness yes, I can only dip my toe into this stuff rarely. Have to spend time doing productive or enjoyable stuff.
But I'm an author and if I'm not careful the damn thing sits on my shoulder and whispers in my ear.
"However, that’s a matter for United States law." No it isn't; US sovereignty stops at the 12 mile limit. You might want to be cravenly submissive to the subverting of your nation, however I don't think you'll find very many agreeing with you.