“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” - Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis
It doesn't matter what their views are. If someone decides they don't like them and that person have enough followers, they will find something.
The point I was making was the risk exists. Consider the scenario: Author says something interesting; I retweet; Author later says something awful which I don't even know about; My retweet is still present and can make me guilty by association.
This is very common on Twitter. It's not a place I can haphazardly navigate. I can't stay up to date on the latest outrage or who has fallen from glory.
Your comment implies that surely any cancellation of someone for their views must be justifiable.
That's an insane premise, but even if we presume it to be true, it still doesn't cover the case of _future_ cancellation when someone finds your tweets 10 years later and decides they aged like milk.
There are many comments I would have made 5-10 years ago, that I wouldn't make today. Sure, that's mostly due to maturity, but I've also adjusted my self-filter to account for a changing environment and audience.
At this point, I write all political comments under pseudonyms. It's not because I'm scared of getting cancelled — on the contrary, I wish I could argue my positions from my real name. But there is a lot of risk, for little benefit – I'm not a "journalist" or blogger or anyone with a career that depends on my political viewpoints. So why bother?
In general, online political comments gain me nothing, and there is no way to predict how those comments might look in a week, month, or even years from now. I do still write plenty of them, under pseudonyms (like this one), but it's more of a hobby to practice my writing. But I'm also not ashamed of anything I've written under any of the accounts – I would gladly defend all my opinions in person (to those close to me, who already know my feelings, and – btw, because they're sane – have never "cancelled" me).
Who knows, maybe one day I'll even tweet my pseudonym usernames so I can show everyone how right I was five years ago.
