Would everything have turned out differently if InterActiveCorp had looked at the online mob?

In December 2013, a director of public relations for the company, Justine Sacco, posted a joke on social media satirizing American insularity and racism. Sacco was about to board a flight to South Africa, where her anti-apartheid family had emigrated from, when she tweeted: “Going to Africa. I hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding, I’m white.”

While Sacco was on air and offline, her tweet went viral. A social media crowd condemned her as racist, established that she worked at InterActiveCorp, and pressured the company to fire her. “We’re about to see this bitch @JustineSacco fired. In REAL time,” one of her critics posted. The company duly fired her.

Sacco’s experience is featured in Jon Ronson’s book So you’ve been publicly shamed (2015), which drew attention to the brutality of the online world. Ronson had been an enthusiastic participant in shaming exercises on social media, enjoying the adrenaline rush and righteous satisfaction of embarrassing an opponent. But after reflecting on the devastating impact of the vigilante justice that was meted out, Ronson repudiated it and devoted a book to the subject.

As is often the case with debates about cancellation culture and free speech, Ronson did not question the corporation that provided the final cancellation to the Sacco. InterActiveCorp had a choice: It could have rejected the online mob’s demands to punish Sacco for her tweet by firing her. He could have criticized her joke as clumsy, insensitive and offensive. It could have explained that Sacco had intended to satirize racism and issued an effusive apology once she realized how her post had been interpreted. He did none of that. Welcome to the corporate cancellation culture.

Since then, the specter of an online shaming campaign followed by a corporate-branded dismissal has become a grim 21st-century ritual. After the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians last October 7th and Israel’s retaliatory massacre of the Gaza population that continues, the ritual has continued, mainly canceling the jobs and voices of pro-Palestinian advocates, including my client Antoinette Lattouf, fired by ABC hours after she posted a report from Human Rights Watch alleging Israel was using starvation as a tool of war. Every time the ritual is performed, the corporation feeds the beast that is the cancellation culture.

Many distinguished progressive commentators have argued that cancellation culture is a myth, a moral panic, or an unfounded complaint about delayed accountability made by those who have enjoyed an excess of cultural capital. I beg to differ. Social media companies make a fortune from content that provokes anger, and their algorithms are geared to profit from anger and revenge. As a result, vigilantism is rewarded with virality and we all get to witness the savage punishment of petty crimes. That brutality extends to firings, blacklists and shaming. The only beneficiaries of the culture of corporate cancellation are those who deal with the immense evil that follows: mental health professionals and pharmaceutical companies.

The rapid rise of social media companies into dangerous monopolies is emblematic of the second Golden Age. After more than 40 years of neoliberalism, corporations are now the most powerful entities in the world, none more so than Big Tech companies who enjoy wealth and power that surpass that of many nation states. The paradox of the social media age is that while we’ve never had such an abundance of speech, the harm it causes diminishes us all.

As corporations have de-unionized the labor market in recent decades, abuses have multiplied. Think 80-hour weeks, zero-hour contracts, permanent casuals, bogus internships and underpaid business models. Then there’s the crazy use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), non-compete clauses, and intrusive workplace surveillance technologies.

In my new book, Working for Brand: How Corporations Destroy Free Speechexamine the extraordinary power of the corporation through the lens of free speech. Companies now routinely censor their employees far more repressively than any liberal democratic government. The power to censure derives from the non-negotiable standard employment contract, which requires employees to comply with all relevant policies and a code of conduct. Buried in the fine print are obligations placed on employees to honor a company’s professed values ​​at all times—during and outside of work hours. These values ​​typically include respect, fairness, responsibility, honesty, and integrity. Additionally, the social media policy is likely to require an employee not to do or say anything that could bring the company into disrepute. Employees are prohibited from saying or doing anything controversial, especially when using social media.

There are many forms of harmful speech that are regulated by our laws, including those governing racial defamation, defamation, treason, and misleading and deceptive conduct. They are usually the product of careful deliberation, community consultation and review. Well-crafted laws demarcate the line between acceptable and unacceptable speech so that citizens can understand the permissible limits and make informed choices. Not so with corporate cancellation culture. Millions of employees in the labor market have forbidden to say anything that could bring the company into disrepute. What does this mean? You won’t know until after the event.

On Anzac Day 2015, when SBS sports journalist Scott McIntyre took to social media to condemn the way the war was glorified by Australians celebrating that public holiday, he could not have predicted that his life would never again be way. He tweeted similar sentiments on previous Anzac Days. On this occasion, the zeitgeist was different.

News Corp journalists and Coalition politicians (including then federal minister Jamie Briggs) launched a vicious online campaign, evoking the spirit lord of the flies. News Corp agitator Chris Kenny described McIntyre as “a bastard (who) hates Australians but makes a living off them” and urged then-communications minister Malcolm Turnbull to “get him out of state of payment”.chic)”. McIntyre was publicly vilified, abused and threatened. Then SBS fired him. Like other victims of the culture of corporate cancellation, including Yassmin Abdel-Magied, he left Australia to escape the vigilantes.

The net effect of the provisions in a standard employment contract is similar to that of a moral clause. Morality clauses were first introduced into the employment contracts of Hollywood studio employees after a star actor of the silent film era, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, was accused of rape and murder in 1921. Arbuckle was among the he was acquitted, but his career never recovered. The morality clauses prohibited employees from engaging in acts of “moral turpitude” or doing anything that would attract public scorn or contempt. Moral clauses were used by studios to fire and blacklist left-wing political activists during the McCarthyist witch hunts of the 1950s. They were also used to control the sexuality of Hollywood actors, including Rock Hudson. Hudson was forced to pretend to be straight; he married a woman to protect his career.

Moral clauses remain a feature of highly lucrative contracts between prominent brands and their brand ambassadors. These include supermodels and film and sports stars such as David Beckham and Beyoncé. After #MeToo, some publishers began including them in contracts with prominent writers.

Moral clauses and standard terms of employment contracts pose a moral dilemma. Should there be a market where workers can trade their citizenship rights? If our rights to participate in protest marches, make bad jokes, and post our political opinions on social media are considered negotiable, what are they worth? For the millions of workers whose rights are currently being suppressed, there is no additional compensation beyond their pay. For now, we are all brand ambassadors.

This piece was originally published in the November issue of Australian Book Review.