Where I live at least, there is a difference because they are performing a task that they are being directed to perform as part of their job, as opposed to just randomly stumbling across hate while browsing the internet - if I’ve directed one of my staff to “submit a PR to this repo and work with the maintainers to get it merged” and some asshole drops into the comments they are being forced to engage in that situation, and that is not ok.

One case that I’ve heard of is a pizza delivery place that had to pay some serious compensation to a couple of their delivery people because they refused to stop accepting orders from someone who would be super abusive if their delivery person wasn’t a white guy. Management knew what was happening, the drivers had complained and asked for a resolution, management had refused to do anything about it, so the business had to pay compensation.