Good point. For me it's not exactly schadenfreude. I'm ok with hype that turns out to be justified. And I'm mostly resigned to people who go wrong through an excess of enthusiasm and naivete. But when unjustified hype shades into negligence or fraud, I take a rich pleasure in seeing people get their comeuppance. It's not schadenfreude precisely, but more about seeing justice done, about seeing karma fulfilled.
I don't speak German, but I don't know if it ceases being schadenfreude just because you feel that the bad thing that happens is justified. Indeed, the Wikipedia page on the word freely mixes those kinds of examples in their page.
I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but recently I've been having a fairly negative reaction to the happy feelings that occur when justice is served. Sometimes I think this fuels a search for justice, where punishment is almost a desired goal from the beginning. The OP also discussed the feeling of satisfaction that their world view is justified when someone gets punished. Without trying to ascribe any intent to the OP, I get very bad vibes out of relentless searches for justice where the punishment of those caught fuels a reinforcement that a certain world view is correct.
Of course this is completely blowing these feelings up out of proportion, but from small seeds grow tall trees. I have lately wondered if justice is really something we should not try to pursue.
The OP also discussed the feeling of satisfaction that their world view is justified when someone gets punished.
If you mean me, I feel like this puts words in my mouth, words that I do not agree with. I am not a vindictive person. I am not taking glee in people being punished per se. But I have made my peace with the fact that when people pursue a bad path long enough, at some point, it is likely to get push back. It no longer bothers me that the pushback may involve what you are terming punishment.
But, so far, what I am hearing is that Holmes is being banned from a thing, not thrown in jail. She may find that painful, but I don't think telling her "We expect you to stop this shit that is potentially harmful to other people." is actually punishment. It is merely protecting other people.
If she cannot behave responsibly enough to provide a genuine service while getting rich, she has no God given right to do whatever the fuck she pleases.
To my mind, this is in the vein of "Your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins." If you or Ms. Holmes thinks that is a painful and excessive restriction, well, too bad, so fucking sad. It isn't being done to hurt the woman. It is being done to stop her from hurting others.
It might interest you to check out Better Angels of Our Nature, a book by Steven Pinker about the history of violence. He argues that it's typical for humans to fall into cycles of retributive/vengeful violence against one another, or even "Hobbesian trap" patterns of preemptive violence. This leads to astronomically high rates of homicide.
The development of governments that have a monopoly on the use of violence helped curb this. If both sides of a dispute cede their right to violence and entrust a neutral third party with dispensing justice, they can be satisfied with the outcome and save face. For obvious reasons, this leads to a much more civil society than people needing to take the law into their own hands.
In this sense, it's actually a blessing that we're inclined to feel so satisfied seeing justice done by a third party.
