Today social media has amped up the power of gossip. Crowds can now form opinions on more cases, and thus enforce more norms on more people. But this has also revived the ancient problem of gossip rushing to judgement.
Sounds familiar.
Robin proposes this:
I seriously propose that some respectable independent groups create non-government non-profit “Cancel Courts”. When a crowd starts to complain about a target, these courts can quickly announce some mix of a speedy investigation and trial on this complaint. They’d solicit evidence from both sides, study it, and then eventually announce their verdict.
I see this as a proposal for resolving issues of social media gossip using a prestige mechanism. But the people who are using this tool are doing so to make a dominance move. They see prestige as a tool of the white supremacist patriarchy.
Try this for an experiment. Use your computer or your phone and see if it tells you that Charles Murray is a white nationalist (or extremist). I looked just now and Charles Murray’s entry at the SPLC describes Murray under its “Extremist Files.”
“Born: 1943”
“Ideology: White Nationalist”
Yes, I know, it’s the SPLC. But in my internet world the SPLC comes up first or second in an internet search on the question, along with Wikipedia.
= – = – = – =
I’m less certain about the claim that the Biden campaign labeled Kyle Rittenhouse, who allegedly killed two in Kenosha WI, a “white supremacist.”
It is reported that Rittenhouse’s legal counsel is suing somebody (Biden? Biden’s campaign?) over the allegation that Rittenhouse is a white supremacist.
It’s hard to tell what to believe, but…
The claim that either is a “white supremacist” or a “white nationalist” by any reasonable and objective definition seems unlikely. But the claims are easy to confirm on the internet for people who want to find such claims.
Murray has defended himself as follows. This was perhaps 10th on my internet search.
https://www.aei.org/society-and-culture/charles-murrays-splc-page-as-edited-by-charles-murray/
When discussing where a product I recently lunched would land on an internet ranking, I noted that it should defiantly be first. Second was a lot worse and barely respectable. Third might as well be 30th.
I suspect respectable opinion on Google is much the same.
That’s unusually dumb from Hanson. Why should the cancelers abide by the resolutions of these “courts”, especially if the “verdicts” don’t go their way⸮ What do they gain by that⸮ They have this power now. Why would they want to stop having it⸮ Does he think they’ll go all uwu from contemplating how neutral these “courts” are⸮
Right. Just use regular courts – as traditionally done in the common law – for the forms of “gossip” likely to cause most harm, i.e., “scandal-mongering” / lashon hara.
Also, the question is not the truth of the claim, but the liability of the speaker for public defamation and tortious interference. If we aren’t going to protect people’s speech, then at the very least one can preserve a balance of terror and put everyone in the positions of former employers asked to be references, a state of affairs in which everyone is equally intimidated to just keeps their mouths shut. Hey, better than the “unchecked and unbalanced” distribution of power in the speech control situation we have now.
The point is, the ‘culture’ part of “cancel culture” has to die: the incentive structure that makes it easy, quick, and costless to gang up and ruin someone’s life. It makes little sense to propose throwing marbles at a charging rhinoceros. Either we have to immunize the accused post-accusation, or you have to strongly deter most accusations being made in the first place.
To spread information likely to be harmful to particular people is a natural impulse that is as strong as it is socially destructive, which is why traditional civilizations realized that they had to throw everything they had at the problem to keep it under control, or else, well, us.
There really is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just find the wheel we threw away just a few generations ago and put it back on the axle. It turns out it was there for a reason, you can’t balance civil relations without it.
Elaine Ou proposed (on the same day) that social media companies subsidize libel accusations: https://elaineou.com/2020/10/29/liability-for-thee-but-not-for-me/
Handle had pointed out that old fashioned common law libel law (probably inspired by Old Testament injunctions against gossip ) would be a sufficient norm against cancel culture.
I suppose then that the problem Hanson is really trying to solve is that nobody believes that regular article 3 courts are able to neutrally enforce existing libel laws against cancel victims?
“The point is, the ‘culture’ part of “cancel culture” has to die: the incentive structure that makes it easy, quick, and costless to gang up and ruin someone’s life.”
OK. Why does this happen to begin with? Why does anyone in power listen to a bunch of dweebs on the internet?
I’ll tell you why. The door swings both ways. All that spectacular power of hyper-efficient viral attention and persuasion creates the incentive structure that makes it easy, quick, and costless to sell, to persuade, to become well known.
The fact that it tips easily seems so very exciting when it works for you. I doubt we can have it only one way. Are Arnold Kling and Robin Hanson so well known and influential without this? No. Perhaps it is better not to invest so much in ephemeral attention.
“Are Arnold Kling and Robin Hanson so well known and influential without this?”
This probably isn’t a fair assessment, at least not for this blog.
ASK shunned social media from the beginning and there are plenty of posts laying out the reasons behind that in the archives. So, I’m pretty sure that most of his success has nothing with social media.
That Covington Catholic kid won some likely large settlements from many of the prestige liberal press. And yet, I don’t see any visible difference in their behavior. They seem to treat it as “just a cost of doing business.” You would need bankruptcy level settlements to get an actual change in behavior.
It’s the same as with any other crime/undesirable behavior: deterrence is much better achieved by less devastating punishments that are applied consistently such that each given infraction has a high chance of being punished, than by truly draconian punishments that are applied randomly such that each given infraction has a low chance of being punished.
The law of defamation (libel and slander) has developed over centuries and is available to punish false statements that cause injury. See: https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/defamation-law-the-basics.html
Per the link elements of such an action are:
1. Someone made a statement;
2. The statement was published;
3. The statement caused you injury;
4. The statement was false; and
5. The statement did not fall into a privileged category.
Communications between an attorney and client, husband and wife, clergyperson and penitent, and doctor and patient are all examples of privileged categories.
The article states that social media is not privileged:
“Due to social media, it’s now easier than ever to make a defamatory statement. That’s because social media services like Twitter and Facebook allow you to instantly “publish” a statement that can reach millions of people. Whether it’s a disparaging blog post, Facebook status update, or YouTube video, online defamation is treated the same way as more traditional forms, meaning that you can be sued for any defamatory statements you post online.”
Why is this legal framework inadequate?
Would a Hanson court of cancellation operate on different standards? If so, what would they be?
I am afraid gossip court would just be another one of those execrable and tedious “fact checking” scams that normalize deceit and misrepresentation.
In the real world, libel actions do not work like that. The plaintiff has to prove that the publisher knew the statement was untrue or had “reckless disregard” whether the statement was true or not. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff and the defendant doesn’t have to do much more than say, “I thought it was true.”
5) should really read, “the publisher knew the statement was false or published it with reckless disregard of whether it was true or not.”
And yet the SPLC is shelling out millions in settlements and Nicholas Sandman has won sizable settlements.
And yet, these institutions are still quite wealthy and haven’t changed behavior.
LKY used to use the libel laws to destroy his enemies, but he controlled the courts and when you lost you lost big.
I suspect that in regard to Nicholas Sandman, those who settled were concerned that a jury would indeed find “reckless regard”. Some of the stories were incredibly poorly done, well outside what the publications said their standards were.
Oops! “reckless DISregard”
And when a lot of people repeat a harmful remark about someone, it is hard for him to prove damage from any one instance.
This is already happening, but on the left side. They’re called fact checkers (Snopes, etc.). The right already discounts them as tools of the left, so I don’t see why the same thing wouldn’t happen here.
Upon further reflection I would also challenge the notion that “Today social media has amped up the power of gossip.” Unless you include “the gossip spreading industry that markets itself as ‘journalism’” in the definition of “social media,” one is left with the impression that Hanson is merely indulging in another attack on popular sovereignty. In reality, elites are as guilty of gossip as the bourgeoisie and working classes, if not more so. Opinion surveys show that large segments of the population correctly have very low trust in the accuracy or integrity of the commercial media “journalism” racket. 2020 has been a banner year in gossip wrongs committed by elites and the wrongs committed by the plebes are insignificant in comparison. Gossip mongering marketed as journalism is where reform considerations should focus.