Jonathan Haidt, New York University professor and stalwart defender of free speech, recently suggested a solution to the problem of social media mobs.

Even if it were practicable simply to refuse to accommodate any mob, though, the desirability of such a proposal rests on the assumption that social media mobs are always bad—that the problem with a social media mob is the very fact that it’s a mob. To Haidt and others, what “messes with our moral matrices” is the medium of mobbing, not the message.

Social media mobs can recklessly and cruelly destroy careers, even lives. They incite threats, harassment, and occasionally violence. People in such mobs feel free to say vicious things they never would in real life.

It’s not without hesitation that I suggest that Haidt’s condemnation of all mobs is painted with too broad a brush. But even as some of the behaviors that are associated with mobs are unquestionably destructive (such as doxxing, threatening, stalking), the mere mob itself—the thousands of comments on social media, rudely or politely, expressing a unanimous moral or political opinion—is not in itself bad. Social media mobs are nothing but speech itself, multiplied. Like all speech, they can be blameworthy or praiseworthy, harmful or beneficial.

Some social media mobs have been an effective means to laudable change, particularly on behalf people who have traditionally not been the wielders and gatekeepers of political and social power. One example is early-career women, who by definition are not powerful. Their stories of harassment and assault were not taken seriously until the combined din of their gatekeeper-free social media commentary demanded a response. Matt Lauer, Steve Wynn, and Louis C.K. (among many others) were removed from positions of prominence and power. These men had used those positions to exploit a multitude of women, and presumably would have continued doing so had they not been stopped. Eric Schneiderman rightfully resigned as attorney general of New York State immediately after his alleged assault came to light due to his expectation that he might be subjected to a similar mob. Surely Rob Porter would still be in the White House today were it not for the mob that came for him.

Social media mobs haven’t only thwarted harassers and assaulters. The Trump administration almost certainly ceased its cruel policy of separating children from their asylum-seeking parents due to the outcry on social media. In another case, it’s arguable the guy who killed Cecil the lion suffered unduly harsh career consequences. But that particular social media furor also had a serious benefit. It led to new protections for lions.

Tongue-in-cheek, but not without a grain of truth!

Perhaps, then, it’s not the medium of social media mobs that’s the problem, but also the messages, motivations, and further actions of the participants.

Varieties of Mobs

Opposition to social media mobs is often expressed as a resistance to a left-wing thought police. However, social media mobs are not phenomena appearing exclusively on the left. It makes sense that the left, currently underrepresented in federal and many state governments, would be more apt to seize on such power as they can to effect their aims. But I have not seen a rigorous attempt to quantify the political orientation of mobs that would justify stating social media mobs are even primarily a phenomenon of the left.

One one hand, there’s Kevin Williamson, but on the other there are the various women victimized during GamerGate. There are the members of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” but also Jessica Valenti and Joy Reid. The Cecil the lion outcry was one of several that were largely non-partisan.

College campuses are the mythic ground zero of the fusion of leftist college students and social media mobs. Even some of my left-of-center relatives have bemoaned to me the college left’s stifling of politically incorrect speech. But barring speakers and firing professors for speech are both much less common than many people realize. There were tens of thousands of speakers invited to college campuses in 2017 and 29 attempts (not all of which were successful) to disinvite speakers. Moreover, there are more attempts to fire professors and disinvite speakers that are generated by the right than the left.

Annika Brooks (a pseudonym) is a left-leaning academic who was pursued by a right-leaning mob in response to a social media post. That post and subsequent harassment made national news. In an interview, Brooks told me how the effects lingered: “People still send me emails, DMs, threats; they publish blogs and stories about me. I still literally look around every corner of my apartment and half expect someone to follow me when I leave.”

“The nature of stalking is that you can never be sure it is over,” Brooks continued. “I feel ashamed when I go to conferences and know that if someone Googles my name, they’ll see alt-right articles calling me a monster. Dating was fun, because they’ll Google my name and the first thing they’ll see is death threats from Brietbart.” The brutal nature of the harassment is an important reminder that even if social media mobs are not inherently bad, in practice they can encourage seriously bad behavior.

The Morality of Mob Participation

Harassment, stalking, doxxing, implicit and explicit threats, rape and death threats, and racist, anti-Semitic, and sexist comments are patently immoral whether they spring from a mob or not. Alex Jones’s fans continue to commit a moral atrocity against the Sandy Hook parents.

In addition to unacceptably aggressive and violent behavior, another morally wrong kind of social media mob is the mob insincerely ginned up and coordinated. (Though it’s worth noting that there are times I’ve tweeted in genuine moral outrage on a particular topic and subsequently saw chin-stroking musings that those of us who did so were insincere.) What makes a coordinated mob morally different from a spontaneous mob is that participants are not (only) voicing an opinion, but are acting with the intention that in virtue of their numbers, they might inflict serious emotional pain or social consequences.

However, I want to look at what I call mere mob participation. For example, take a person who participates in a mob spontaneously. She sees an objectionable op-ed in the New York Times and quote-tweets it saying, “Get a load of this racist shit; I can’t believe the New York Times continues to print this author.” And so do 50,000 other Twitter users. Then 100,000. Has our quote-tweeter done anything wrong?

Philosophically, it’s hard to grasp a specific objection to mere social media mobbing. Social media mobs are, after all, speech. If the best solution to bad speech is more speech, what are mere social media mobs but lots more speech? If anything, mere social media mobs seem to be the very solution that free speech advocates would appreciate.

Say you’re having a conversation with someone who says something racist. It‘s not immoral to reply, “hey, that’s racist.” Indeed, it’s usually morally praiseworthy to say so. If your interlocutor is making a good faith error, that’s valuable information. Even if there’s no hope of convincing your interlocutor, though, stating your moral beliefs helps you. It helps re-affirm those beliefs as part of your core identity.

Social media is no different. If someone says something racist, it hardly seems bad to, say, post a reply or quote-tweet saying it’s racist. The person who uttered the original statement might well take it to heart and stop saying such things. Even if she doesn’t, other folks may read your criticism and learn something about what people find racist. And again, stating your own moral opinions can usefully re-affirm them.

If it’s not bad for you to say make such a statement, why should the fact that other people said the same thing render your statement immoral? Why should a morally permissible or praiseworthy action become immoral when others perform the same action? When does the action suddenly become wrong? After 50 people say it? 1,000? Why would repeating such an action make it wrong?

Like many other journalists, I have been rudely informed by large swaths of the internet that something I’ve written is nonsense. It is a highly unpleasant experience. But in each of those cases, the first tweet or two of criticism didn’t really bother me. Indeed, I sometimes appreciated the feedback. In aggregate you tend to feel under attack. However, each particular member of the aggregate didn’t do anything different from the first few repliers who didn’t do anything wrong, who merely offered morally acceptable (if highly annoying) criticisms. Instead of only discouraging people from making criticisms, we ought to encourage those who are criticized to remember this.

Being criticized can, after all, be beneficial. I’ve found being called out for social justice reasons difficult but ultimately valuable. When my middle child was born disabled, I said plenty of stuff that was cluelessly ableist. I appreciate the patience of disabled folks who took the time to let me know what I said was wrong and why. I have a much better understanding of disability, and my own son, because they did.

In one noteworthy case, a man about whom I had tweeted critically (along with thousands of others) seems very sincerely to have taken the criticism to heart and become a better person.

Some might say there is no point in “piling on” with a criticism if others have already made that point. However, it‘s reasonable to want to offer a particular take, or share it with your particular set of followers, or to re-affirm your moral character.

There has never been a time in human history when certain kinds of speech had no social consequences. As free speech advocates (and I consider myself one, though I differ in particulars with many of the folks who are currently widely known as free speech advocates), we should be concerned with preventing legal consequences for speech rather than try to prevent social consequences for speech.

Left-Wing Mobs Are Not Uniquely Devastating

When I have mentioned that I don’t get why most free speech advocates are so down on social media mobs, I’ve been informed that accusations of violations of social justice are uniquely devastating. A single offhand comment made by a foolish young person can be revived to completely destroy one’s life. Therefore, the argument goes, we must take special care to prevent these accusations, since they in turn inhibit free speech.

None of that is true.

There are plenty of things you can say that will get you ostracized and possibly fired. Anyone setting forth an elaborate defense of, say, pedophilia or terrorism will likely find that some career doors have shut. My husband’s job, like many others outside of academia, has extremely strict rules about what he can say under his own name on social media, most of which have nothing to do with social justice. There are certainly negative consequences to violating social justice, but there’s nothing magically potent about accusing someone of such violations in particular. Indeed, Virginia House candidate Denver Riggleman’s predilection for Bigfoot erotica was a much hotter topic of conversation than his ties to white nationalists.

It’s also not true that career consequences are worse now than ever before for “wrong speech.” In the 1950s, an actor who merely admitted he was gay would be shamed out of Hollywood. In the early 2000s, Bill Maher was fired for making a joke about 9/11.

Contradicting social justice is by no means an automatic career-ender. After all, we have a president (and vice president, and attorney general, and secretary of state, and…) who have all been accused of violating social justice. Hollywood and mainstream media are supposed to be the enforcement arm of the leftist social media mob, yet here is Mel Gibson having a career renaissance. In 2017, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture.

What To Do About Mobs

I asked Brooks for an opinion about mobs in general, including ones that pursue social justice. “The main problem with the mob is that it is uncontrollable, and while people ought to be called out for social wrongs that may amount to less than a crime, or a crime that can’t or won’t be punished, there is no way to control, predict, or reign in the underbelly of those mobs that we don’t usually see — the part that creates kill lists, that stalks women, that initiates movements to find and hunt down that person’s friends, and that sends messages with rape and death threats that include personal info so you know it’s legitimate,” Brooks said. “There is a difference between a mob and terrorization, and practically no action that has caused a mob is an action that warrants terrorism.”

Brooks’ distinction between mobs and terrorism is useful, because it gives us a distinction on which to focus our critical energy. Since social media mobs are not inherently bad, and can occasionally be a force for good, discouraging them seems yet another inhibition of speech.

We should focus our energy not on mere mobs, but instead on the coordinated attacks, the threats, the revelation of personal information, the stalking. Though those behaviors might be encouraged by social media mobs, they aren’t a necessary consequence of them. We could recognize the signs and call it out with more speech. Employers could be encouraged to recognize and ignore specifically the coordinated attacks. Social media platforms could more seriously enforce their rules against these.

“I don’t think BBQ Becky deserves to be terrified for her life,” Brooks added. “But she does need to be held accountable.”