The greatest beauty of this exchange is the degree to which each exercised free association. Cerf did not wish to associate with Pound, and Auden felt that this wish was insufficiently justified and, in turn, chose not to associate with Cerf, causing him to have to go back on his actions.
Ultimately, I see most modern de-platforming as being very similar, with the significant difference that it is not at all civil (which is ultimately easy to factor out for me).
For what it's worth, I may well choose to not use some piece of software because I dislike the leadership. That is a free choice. I may well tell my friends why I made this choice and they may well go along with me. The company may then choose to fire the leadership and alienate those who like them, or choose not to and alienate me and my friends. It's all free choice.
So, overall, I'm not too upset about cancel culture. It's for those of us who sympathize with the cancelled to create spaces where they can continue to thrive. And if we do it right, and if we are right that they are unfairly cancelled, then we will have a weapon that will beat the uninformed in the market. If not, we fail, and the rest of humanity thrives.
Ultimately, the Brendan Eich situation is like this. I don't like that he donated against gay marriage. I didn't stop using Firefox over it. I didn't start using Firefox over it. But by my principles of liberty, I could reasonably have said "I will not work at Mozilla or use Firefox so long as they permit this unless they end their association with him" and they can reasonably have said "Okay, don't. Your loss." or "Okay, we fired him". After all, we are just free people choosing whom we would like to associate with.
Ultimately, I see most modern de-platforming as being very similar, with the significant difference that it is not at all civil (which is ultimately easy to factor out for me).
For what it's worth, I may well choose to not use some piece of software because I dislike the leadership. That is a free choice. I may well tell my friends why I made this choice and they may well go along with me. The company may then choose to fire the leadership and alienate those who like them, or choose not to and alienate me and my friends. It's all free choice.
So, overall, I'm not too upset about cancel culture. It's for those of us who sympathize with the cancelled to create spaces where they can continue to thrive. And if we do it right, and if we are right that they are unfairly cancelled, then we will have a weapon that will beat the uninformed in the market. If not, we fail, and the rest of humanity thrives.
Ultimately, the Brendan Eich situation is like this. I don't like that he donated against gay marriage. I didn't stop using Firefox over it. I didn't start using Firefox over it. But by my principles of liberty, I could reasonably have said "I will not work at Mozilla or use Firefox so long as they permit this unless they end their association with him" and they can reasonably have said "Okay, don't. Your loss." or "Okay, we fired him". After all, we are just free people choosing whom we would like to associate with.