It’s not about precedence or what’s “OK”, it’s about how free speech works in general. You still cannot possibly create a system where person A can say something that’s against the prevailing norms, and persons B through Z can’t say “you should be fired” and consider it to be “free speech”. Regulating speech based on content or the number of people saying it is not free speech.
(The few exceptions, such as directly encouraging a crime are very narrow. For example, expressing bigoted opinions is legal, saying “there’s a <X>, get them!” Is not, because it’s a direct and specific incitement to commit a crime).
Those that bully others and encourage suicide should receive social opprobrium for being toxic. They are typically well within their right to say such odious things, but we are also within our right to call them out and shun them from polite society. Freedom of speech doesn’t just apply to nice speech.
You can suggest that such pressures are mercurial, and that businesses shouldn’t cave to the crowd demands. In many cases you would be right, but in general if your attitude is that humans should ignore social pressure when you don’t like it, you will be continuously disappointed. If you attempt to regulate that, then you no longer have freedom of speech, period.
I find your comparison of social disapproval via opt-in social media to a lynch mob that killed minorities in cold blood to be completely gross. Comparing the two overstates the former and trivializes the latter in a way that I don’t think people should find comfortable.
There’s no need to run counter factuals about social media powered past, plenty of people were actually killed for expressing progressive sentiments long before the era of social media or even mass media. A couple hundred people having it out over 280 characters is fine, and comparing that to lynch mobs is both historically illiterate and sensationalist.
(The few exceptions, such as directly encouraging a crime are very narrow. For example, expressing bigoted opinions is legal, saying “there’s a <X>, get them!” Is not, because it’s a direct and specific incitement to commit a crime).
Those that bully others and encourage suicide should receive social opprobrium for being toxic. They are typically well within their right to say such odious things, but we are also within our right to call them out and shun them from polite society. Freedom of speech doesn’t just apply to nice speech.
You can suggest that such pressures are mercurial, and that businesses shouldn’t cave to the crowd demands. In many cases you would be right, but in general if your attitude is that humans should ignore social pressure when you don’t like it, you will be continuously disappointed. If you attempt to regulate that, then you no longer have freedom of speech, period.
I find your comparison of social disapproval via opt-in social media to a lynch mob that killed minorities in cold blood to be completely gross. Comparing the two overstates the former and trivializes the latter in a way that I don’t think people should find comfortable.
There’s no need to run counter factuals about social media powered past, plenty of people were actually killed for expressing progressive sentiments long before the era of social media or even mass media. A couple hundred people having it out over 280 characters is fine, and comparing that to lynch mobs is both historically illiterate and sensationalist.