One of the things I see in this thread is a conflation between the quality of an outcome, and the quality of the actions taken preceding that outcome.
There's an entire field of study around "Decision Science". Lots of people are really quite poor at being able to determine whether a decision was a good decision or not; they assume that a good outcome is proof of a good decision, and that a bad outcome is the result of a bad decision. This is rarely the case. Outcomes tend to be reliant on many factors outside of the direct control of the person making the decision. A good decision considers the possible and likely outcomes of a path, and weighs those outcomes and risks, then chooses the path that provides the highest likelihood of a good outcome.
A person might decide to take up running to increase their health. They might consider various different methods of becoming more healthy, balance against their likes and dislikes, and the potential types of injuries, and decide that running is the method most likely to provide good health outcomes in a sustainable fashion. That's a good decision. They might also have a previously unknown health condition that results in considerable injury when they take up running. That's a bad outcome. It was still a good decision, but the outcome was influenced by unknown factors.
On the other hand, a person might go to Vegas and bet all of their savings on a roulette spin. That's a bad decision. They might win that spin and double their money. That's a good outcome. It was still a bad decision, but they got absurdly lucky and ended up with a good outcome.
For a whole lot of this thread, cases get brought up in which the target was subjected to a considerable amount of harassment, abuse, intimidation, and real effects on their livelihood and their well-being. But in a whole lot of those cases, the target managed to recover and move on with their lives... and that outcome gets held up as proof that it wasn't that big a deal.
I think this is a very flawed approach to evaluating the appropriateness and acceptability of social-media pile-ons and campaigns to damage people's reputation and livelihoods. For the most part, we only really get news coverage of people who are relatively well known and famous, and who already have the ability to weather a storm. We almost never get coverage of regular every-day people who can't.
There's also a tendency to retroactively defend the abuse by deciding that the target did something bad, and therefore they deserved it. But we've seen several cases where the target did NOT do something bad, but were subjected to severe opprobrium and social sanction anyway.
I'd really like to ask the posters in this thread to genuinely consider the following two scenarios:
Scenario 1
Imagine that you're out in public at a social event, and you're confronted by a group of people targeting you with hateful rhetoric. You mostly ignore them, but they're persistent. Someone else sees this happening and comes up to you singing "kumbaya" loudly, and seemingly targeting you with their singing, rather than the people hurling epithets. Some random person videos this last bit and posts it on the internet, claiming that you were harassing the peaceful singer.
How do you feel about a large number of complete strangers viewing that clip, and reacting very strongly to it by placing the blame on you and calling you names? How do you feel about the news media latching on to this viral phenomenon, and publishing your name along with their interpretation based on that short clip? How do you feel about strangers sending you and your family death threats and wishes for harm to befall you? How do you feel about those strangers contacting your employer and demanding that you be fired because of that video clip? How do you feel about being vilified across the country, being labeled as an evil person?
Do you think that is acceptable and appropriate, even if you manage to keep your job?
Scenario 2
Imagine that you own a small business. You employ your nephew at your family business. One day, you find out that seven years ago, your nephew made some racist tweets. Even though the nephew says that they no longer feel like that, it was a strange teenage phase, and that they regret having made the tweets, you still decide that the right thing to do is to fire your nephew. Someone finds out about this and puts an article on the internet, suggesting that you are complicit in your nephew's behavior.
How do you feel about strangers on the internet petitioning all of your clients to stop doing business with you? How do you feel about being vilified as "racist adjacent"? How do you feel about your clients and suppliers pulling their contracts because they're afraid to be associated with you because of the social media backlash?
Do you think that is acceptable and appropriate, even if you manage to keep a remnant of your business afloat?
