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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?
While on the one hand, there is a due process involved for criminal wrongspeech (which is distinct from wrongthink), it should also be noted that the power of the criminal law system are much beyond the powers of a twitter mob.
A twitter mob can cancel you, make you lose your employment, your reputation and so on. It is unlikely that they convince everyone to stop selling you food.
A court can sentence you to prison, confiscate your property and ultimately kill you (though that is very rare for speech acts in countries with any due process).
The relative threat of these depends on the position. I think people in the gig economy are probably less affected by twitter mobs (even if they bother to make Uber fire you, it is not like that career as a driver is an irreplaceable loss), while people who are independently wealthy are also not very affected.
The most affected are likely people who have some level of prominence and a customer base taking part in the boycott. An indie game developer is likely more affected by a cancellation from the left than a gun store owner.
Of course, prison will also not affect everyone equally. I imagine that for someone who has recently been doing time, getting another month for holocaust denial (or whatever) will have a much lower impact than for someone whose job, family and friends are all dependent on him being considered a law-abiding citizen.
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