The Hidden Costs of Defending Others Online

Defending the weak against attacks by the strong is noble, but needs to be done wisely.

One of the most valuable things we can do besides learning from our own mistakes is to help other people learn from our mistakes.

Looking back over the course of my newsletter here, I feel like I’ve overall done a good job. But if I had it to do over again, one change I’d make is not to have come to the defense of people who were being attacked online. I don’t think this was a bad thing to do, but it probably wasn’t something that helped the people I defended or worked to advance what I’m trying to accomplish.

You should think twice before rushing to the defense of someone online.

What I’m talking about here specifically is defending someone who others are attempting to cancel online, especially when it is powerful people attempting to destroy a weak person. For some reason, when I see this, it greatly offends my sense of justice.

You’ll note that I rarely if ever strongly criticize minor figures or everyday people even if they are guilty of something. I like to reserve any personal criticism for big name people for whom the very nature of their position means public critique is part of the package. I try to live by the rule of not punching down.

It absolutely bugs the living daylights out of me when I see bigtime people criticizing or attacking much smaller name people, especially when they are not known for holding other powerful people to account in the same way.

Sometimes this bothers me so much I feel compelled to speak up. In many ways this is a noble impulse. We should want to defend the weak against the abuse of the strong. But we still need to be wise in how we do that.

That’s why I don’t say never come to someone’s defense, but rather to think carefully about when to do it. This is for three key reasons.

1. You may make enemies out of powerful people.

Let me use the case of Josh Butler. He was a pastor who wrote a book about the theology of sex. When it came out, some women triggered a hate storm against him, which led to Butler being fired by his church, fired by the Keller Center at the Gospel Coalition, and having some of the people who had endorsed the book un-endorse it.

I thought this was a pretty lousy way for those people to treat Butler, so I wrote an article about it calling them out for their cowardice.

Newsletter #76: A Critical Shortfall of Courage

I still stand behind what I wrote 100%. But it probably didn’t make me any new friends at the Gospel Coalition, which has a large number of powerful and influential pastors on its board and council. I didn’t get any overt hate for this piece, but it probably didn’t advance my cause with that crowd.

That might be ok. In fact, it might have even been ok in this case. But moral influence is a finite resource. Spend it defending strangers online, and you may find yourself bankrupt when it truly matters. We have to be wise and judicious in how we deploy our influence. Where are we investing our talents such that they will generate a return?

There’s a basically constant stream of things like the Josh Butler situation. The internet serves you an endless buffet of injustices. The wisdom lies in knowing which battles are truly yours to fight. We could easily end up spending all of our capital on them instead of in advancing our mission.

We’ve only got so many bullets we can shoot. Before using one, we need to make sure it’s the right place by asking questions like: Is this aligned with my mission? How will engaging here affect my future ability to succeed in my mission or help others? Am I positioned to make a difference in this case? (In the case of Josh Butler and me, the answer was No). Are there other people who have already taken up the cause, or would I be filling a gap? What other injustices am I going to ignore or be less effective in addressing if I choose to engage on this one? These are in addition to spiritual practices such as prayer for wisdom.

2. You expose yourself to the risk of publicly supporting a dodgy person.

In the case of online cancellation mobs, we rarely know the target personally. I’ve never met or talked to Josh Butler, for example. In his case I felt pretty confident that he was, and is a legitimate person. He’d already been vetted and hired by multiple blue chip organizations. But that’s not always the case.

Many of the people who get targeted for cancellation are edgy characters or provocateurs. A lot of them turn out to be far dodgier than they appear. If you publicly come to the defense of one of these people - again, someone you don’t know personally at all - when it turns out he actually is a secret Nazi after all or something, you could end up with reputational harm.

The hardest lesson of online advocacy: The stories that most inflame our sense of justice are often the ones we understand the least.

Right now there are people on X who are defending the jailed British provocateur Tommy Robinson. And they are attacking the British populist politician Nigel Farage for refusing to defend Robinson. Well, maybe Farage knows things about Robinson that you don’t. In fact, Farage seems to be a good example of a politician who has the discipline to stick to his issues and avoid getting drawn into things that would undermine his ability to accomplish his goals. He’s controversial - but channels that into his issues.

Robinson is also someone who obviously courts controversy and loves to skate on the edge. There’s every reason to doubt that he’s a good guy. The fact that the the Rotherham scandal is legitimately evil of the highest order does not make Tommy Robinson someone I want to be defending.

It’s one thing to defend someone whose character you know personally. Or to talk about a situation of which you have personal knowledge. It’s quite another to speak forcefully about people you don’t know and have never met. It’s worth asking whether you really understand the situation and people as well as you think you do.

3. The person you defend probably won’t even appreciate it - and may not even want you speak up.

This one might be the biggest point you’d never considered.