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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   28562 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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It is an imposition of government power to prevent an employer from firing an employee for their private speech, but not an authoritarian one. It is also an imposition of government power to prevent an employer from firing an employee for being the wrong race, and yet most of us would agree that is appropriate. It is worth it for the government to intervene and restrict freedoms if those restrictions create more freedoms as a result. In this case protecting the ability of people to speak and not be mindslaves to the megacorps (and the activists who cherry pick people to bring to their attention).

From my point of view it’s actually one thing I’d want the government to protect people from, simply because it’s been used — in some cases by the government itself— as a way to back door punish crime-think. It’s for all intents and purposes illegal to say things against homosexuality. Your boss is practically obligated to fire you for saying it, because if he doesn’t, it constitutes a “hostile workplace” that he can be sued for allowing to exist. And the law gives no out for a person to be left alone, because the mere presence of someone who has in any context engaged in crime-think online is creating that hostile work environment. And thus Internet scolds can root out anyone who posts crime think online and make them virtually unemployable, which in modern society makes their lives miserable. The government has learned to censor by using the private sector as its enforcement mechanism thus avoiding breaking the first amendment itself. Facebook or Twitter censors your online presence, not the government. Your boss fires you rather than tge government arresting you. It is still censorship, and most people unless they’re ideological, learn very quickly what sorts of opinions they must never say aloud.

Having a bit of protection where private employers cannot fire non public facing employees for personal opinions on private accounts posted on their own time would remove that chilling effect. It makes sense that I could be fired as a company representative for saying something “evil” online. My job is to represent that company. It also makes sense that if I’m posting from official accounts, the employer has a right to control what I post on those accounts or on internal chats/emails. Those represent official communications. Even posting during office hours might fall under use of company time. But if I’m posting to MY personal account on MY personal phone on MY personal time, it’s not his business. And I think it’s only reasonable that protecting the principle of free speech means that I should be able to say what I want to on my own time.

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