it's interesting to think about this case from the perspective of the banned user being right, morally, if not legally. what if? as our social circles are incr

it's interesting to think about this case from the perspective of the banned user being right, morally, if not legally. what if? as our social circles are increasingly connected, being "banished" from them may not be a trivial matter. what is the cost of this to the individual? well to be specific here for a moment, cloudynights is the premier amateur astronomy forum. so for an astronomer, being cut off from that community may be quite significant. imagine a programmer cut off from google or stack overflow or github. we have to remember that these communities exist and are profitable because they are doing something; it's not very easy to quantify the value they provide to an individual in the same way the owner of the forum can simply count up the lost revenue in terms of the number of ad clicks. but that doesn't mean there isn't a value and consequently a cost associated with losing it. so our user is banned and it has an impact. intuitively it still seems that it doesn't justify attacking the platform. you should at least seek remediation first, right? maybe there is an appeal process. but what if there isnt? increasingly, there is not. as platforms "scale up" they are increasingly automated, with dark patterns consciously baked in from the get-go. the platform can make its own terms. don't like them? go away. that was ok before the internet became a neccessity to function in modern society. it's not ok anymore, and we need to recognize that people are going to fall through the cracks. pretty normal people who matter just as much as anyone else. from what i've read, this kid does not deserve to rot in a cell for years. it's going to get worse before it gets better.