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From a deontological perspective, a culture where punishment for wrongthink is dished out by social media is better than one where wrongthink is outright illegal. That's why I like living in America, where there are no hate speech laws.
But a thought occurred to me: from a consequentialist perspective, it'd be better to let "cancelling" be done by the state, because then people can defend themselves and a court can decide if they're truly guilty of the offense.
I'm ignorant of international affairs, so I have a question for those of you who are better-educated and/or not American: in a culture where there are hate speech laws, like Britain, are Twitter which hunts less common?
The difference is that in Europe both hate speech laws and labor laws are stronger and the latter often protect some form of political expression. Originally this was largely implemented so leftists couldn't be fired by their employers, but some people with wrongthink views have used them effectively. Eg. there are a few TERFs who've successfully avoided being fired in the UK via labor tribunals and legal action, and in France and Germany you get the occasional hard-right figure who successfully appeals a firing.
In the US only a handful of the most progressive states have these laws. Eg. Damore was able to get a good settlement for being fired by Google because California is iirc one of very few states where you can't be fired for political views. A lot of the BLM-related cancel mob firings in the US would be illegal in much of Western Europe.
The Maya Forstater case in the UK wasn't an employment law case ruling that she was unfairly dismissed (she was on a fixed term contract which wasn't renewed, so she had no rights under UK employment law). The court ruled that her gender-critical feminism was a secular philosophy analogous to a religion, and therefore protected under antidiscrimination laws. This makes political views a stochastically protected class (because you don't know whether a tribunal will find a given set of political views to constitute a philosophy).
Firing a permanent employee with the usual employment law protections (which, in the UK, requires 2 years' tenure) for out-of-work political speech is sufficiently straightforwardly illegal that cancelmobs don't bother asking employers to do it.
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