No, there is no practical difference between the "can't" and "shouldn't", if your intent is to participate in the punishment for what someone does. (Maybe you feel, as an individual, you cannot influence it. But in fact you can easily become part of the mob that does have the real power of punishing somebody.)

> Pretending that we should all just ignore him telling a fan to "shove it up your ass"

Yes, of course we should ignore it, it was just a heckler. Even a heckler can be a fan. Everybody can be an a* sometimes, and deserves to be called out about it.

> As compared to what, mind reading?

Compared to his actions, of course. If you don't have additional information, only words, think twice about acting upon such information.

> you're upgrading this to "morality" when my original point was about whether I wanted to do business with him

It's of course up to you. But why wouldn't you want to do business with him anymore for other reason than to uphold a moral standard? It isn't like he cheated you, in fact we probably agree that Factorio is a great product. The morality comes into it from reasoning about your response.

In any case, I was speaking in a larger context. People do this all the time. For example, there are people who think Linus Torvalds is worse than Bill Gates because of the harsh words he sometimes uses (in public).

To me, that is a very superficial way of looking at things. And same here, I think Kovarex is one of very few capitalists who actually deserve all the money they got.

And that's so sad about all this "cancel culture" thing. It's boycotting people who are not necessarily the worst, just easy targets.

> So what, I can't make my own decisions based on someone else's behavior because there are other issues?

You can do whatever you want, all I am saying is you "shouldn't".