Cancel Culture Proof Your Online Business: 2 Lawyer-Approved Ways

So, cancel culture is a thing now. And it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon.

If you operate a business online, you might be afraid of a little public social media shaming. In this post, I talk about two lawyer-approved ways to cancel culture proof your business while everything is still peachy.

Cancel-culture-proof tip number one: embrace the morality clause.

Do you remember the whole Tiger Woods sex scandal thing? It was way back in 2010. And it's hard to imagine a time when someone could be shamed off of Instagram. Tiger lost $22 million in endorsements because of all of that.

This is why morality clauses exist. They exist for reasons of "scandal" and "moral turpitude" and "public disrepute"… Basically, bad behavior. (We talked about them once in the context of breaking up with a brand.)

It might be unfair for you to get caught in the crossfire if a company that you've partnered with as a content creator is caught under fire for doing something wrong and you are guilty by association. But it can happen. That's why you should make sure that any partnership or collaboration contract that you enter into has a morality clause.

This will give you an out. You want to be able to terminate for bad behavior -- and you can negotiate and come up with whatever "bad behavior" means to you. If it hits the fan with a brand or business that you've partnered with, you will be glad that the morality clause is there.

Tip number two, snap up "anti domain names."

A little thing called First Amendment free speech allows us to criticize public figures, political stances, and other things. So if someone buys a domain name with your brand in it, but it's something like YOURBRANDSUCKS.COM, or IHATEYOURBRAND.COM and they use that domain name to comment on and criticize your brand…

Guess what? You can't really do anything about it, because they're protected under First Amendment free speech.

These are what I call anti domain names… the "I hate" thing, the "your brand sucks" thing. So think about snapping them up. You might be surprised at how little they might cost.

So number one, morality clause.

Number two, snap up those anti domain names.

These are just some safeguards that you can put in place while everything is peachy keen, just in case of a social media uproar later on.

I hope that helps you to feel a little more at ease when it comes to cancel culture-proofing your online business, and I'll see you next time.