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The difference between a sovereign nation-state and a corporation is that a nation-state has a legal monopoly on sanctioned violence within their jurisdiction.

• topologistics 7y ago
  Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence. Say you have built up a following of people over many years and you are making thousands of dollars a month from YouTube, and they they decide to shut you down overnight, I bet it's going to feel like violence when it comes time to pay bills and you no longer have any of that income you have become accustomed to.
  • indigochill 7y ago
    >Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence. The thing is, no company is taking away a creator's right to their living. They may take away the opportunity to make a living on that company's platform, but there's a distinct difference. YouTube (or Twitch, etc) are providing a service to content creators, that service being hosting and broadcasting their content. Service agreements come with clauses about termination of service. A content creator should never put all their eggs into a single basket lest that service cease to support them for whatever reason.
    • asdfeasdffwes 7y ago
      When I was at Google, a few people there posted on internal forums to celebrate how successfully the deplatforming was in causing financial troubles for the targets.
    • xur17 7y ago
      > YouTube (or Twitch, etc) are providing a service to content creators, that service being hosting and broadcasting their content. Service agreements come with clauses about termination of service. A content creator should never put all their eggs into a single basket lest that service cease to support them for whatever reason. This is normally true, but in the "winner takes all" world, not having access to Youtube (or Twitch, etc) is effectively like being cut off from all customers. I experienced this in the past when running an ad supported website. Adsense paid by far the best (> 10x everyone else), so being shut off by them was like being shut off altogether. And the problem is that for marketplaces it typically is "winner takes all".
    • jahewson 7y ago
      > economic violence This construction is linguistic violence!
      • pb7 7y ago
        Please stop attacking me with your exclamatory violence.
    • holoduke 7y ago
      Should this, should that. I have heard this so many times. If you are a app developer and became successful on the Google playstore, but not on iTunes store then who are you to say that you should never put all your eggs into a single basket. This would never be a deliberate choice. Fact is, that many business lost everything due dragonic decisions made by big tech companies. Unacceptable. That's why those companies need to be split up. Regions like Europe need to restrict massive US invasion and come up with their own alternatives.
      • pb7 7y ago
        Even if YouTube (or the Play Store) was its own entity, they can still prevent you from publishing on their platforms on a whim. You solve nothing by breaking them up. Don’t hold your breath on Europe coming up with dominant consumer tech anytime soon.
        • BlueTemplar 7y ago
          Indeed, they need to be either shut down, or banned in Europe. You can't let companies have more power than nation-states !
    • aj7 7y ago
      If a service provider has a dominant position, it is essentially taking away a right to make a living. Want someone to switch your car for a Yugo?
  • SllX 7y ago
    Shift your perspective. YouTube is a video distribution service provider and one of many ways to publish a video. You can choose to publish on YouTube, but you don’t have the right to compel YouTube to do business with you anymore than a coffee shop has a right to compel their current coffee roaster to do business with them. If YouTube cancels their contract with you, they’ve taken away your ability to make a living on YouTube. What they haven’t taken away is your ability to make a living. You can even make a living in video production, if you can find the means to do so. YouTube certainly enabled many more people to viably live as video producers, but that doesn’t entitle people to make a living in that profession anymore than it entitles them to make a living roasting coffee or serving in a public office or performing heart surgery.
    • thisguysnuts 7y ago
      Classic masochist
    • aj7 7y ago
      Maybe we should make you persona non grata at the three largest supermarket chains in your area, plus Walmart and Amazon. You can get your meals at Burger King and 7-11.
      • SllX 7y ago
        I see your angle, but that would still leave me with countless other places to purchase groceries, any one of which could choose not to do business with me.
        • aj7 7y ago
          Indeed, the market for food is more fragmented than that for a large video audience. That's why it's a screwjob by Google. And it's a good reason to break Google into pieces.
      • ceejayoz 7y ago
        What consequences are appropriate for someone acting badly enough to get specifically, independently targeted by that many major local businesses and two massive transnational corporations?
• epicgiga 7y ago
  This is an overly simplistic view of power. The man in the blue uniform with the gun is at the end of a very long chain of people. What happens, historically, when one group wields superior technology to another group? Who has the power? Do you think we have the power, with our 1 in 300 millionth votes every 4 years for 1 of 2 people? Sure, let's pretend there'll never be any "senator, I'm afraid if you take that stance on that bill, our algorithm won't be able to help you..." behaviour. Absolute power corrup... I mean "muh private company -- nothing to see here".
  • SllX 7y ago
    There’s elections in every State every 1-2 years for a variety of positions from city assemblies to county board of supervisors to the lower and upper house of each State that has both, executive offices, different special district bodies, Judges in some cases for better or worse, and again, depending on the State, various city, county and/or State ballot propositions before we even get to the 1 Representative, 2 Senators and 1 President you can cast votes for as well. That’s just the ballots you cast. There are countless ways to politically involve yourself in any issue you care to make the time for. We’re not powerless citizens, but our power is diluted, intentionally so, because that’s what democracy does. You wield as much power as you are willing and able to accumulate up until the point where the power you wield competes with people with interests counter to yours. Yes, it was a simplistic outline of the power of the state vs. the power of a corporation, but it is an accurate one. Corporations are agents of the people they serve, a means of aggregating means and power to more effectively wield it in the interests of the people they are serving. The power they can wield is immense, but it is still ultimately subordinate to the power of a state.
• soulofmischief 7y ago
  > they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process Are you suggesting violence can be only physical in nature? Even if you aren't, your choice of the word violence is intentional because you want to avoid words like "harm" which more fully capture the socioeconomic implications of being fired without due cause from a position which your livelihood depends on. In an ideal world, nation states would provide UBI for their citizens. A company is not going to provide UBI for someone who does not add to their bottom line. And that's why the American government, for example, could be considered a business instead of a real government. A government by nature serves its people, a company by nature is served by its people.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • SllX 7y ago
    Violence is inherently physical. It is the forceful physical violation of one’s person or property. Trying to expand the definition of “violence” beyond this scope dilutes its meaning beyond recognition and usefulness. However, I will agree it is harmful when a supplier terminates its services, particularly so if you were dependent on that supplier. People make their own choices about who to do business with and how to go about their business, but let’s not pretend that YouTube is anything it isn’t. The lesson to take away here isn’t that YouTube should be regulated like some kind of utility and to take away their ability to terminate relations with producers, but that you shouldn’t be so thoroughly dependent on one supplier for your business that it is financially ruinous to lose their services. I’m not saying there’s no case to be made for YouTube to improve their policies and processes to provide more due process than they do now, but that’s a debate that should be happening between YouTube and the people that use YouTube to distribute their work. They’re not employees, they’re clients, effectively small businesses and a number of the smarter ones already know the danger of depending on YouTube as their sole source of income and have worked to diversify.
    • JorgeGT 7y ago
      > It is the forceful physical violation of one’s person or property. But not all property is physical. And increasingly, our property is just data located in somebody's servers: your Dropbox contents, your Steam games, the money in your online bank account.
• banads 7y ago
  >A tech company can deplatform you with impunity, but they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process. Corporations are still agents of real people, and those people are still subject to the laws of nations. The influence of Twitter on say, the Arab Spring, says differently. Or the many other cases of social media platforms and algorithms being used to incite mobs, riots, and revolutions. Hatred is a prime input/output for algorithms optimized for engagement. We all know what impulsive mass hatred can lead to.
  • SllX 7y ago
    What we are discussing here is not whether a platform which enables people to communicate can be used to incite and coordinate violence, of course it can! We’re discussing whether deplatforming a person from a private social media platform or video distribution platform is a form of violence.
    • banads 7y ago
      We're discussing the violent capabilities of governments versus tech giants.
• chillacy 7y ago
  Just want to point out that this is true today in the USA and most developed nations, but there was definitely a time when corporations had armies and navies (e.g. Dutch East India Company times). Corporations, not government, were also the main driver of the Atlantic slave trade. Of course this was true at the time because of a power vacuum, physical security is a requirement to doing business–at the end of the day someone has to hold the gun.
  • SllX 7y ago
    Mostly agree! But! An important part of a monopoly is the ability to grant licenses on that monopoly, or letters of marque and reprisal, or charters or pass laws governing acceptable uses of violence by private citizens, and so on. Theoretically if Congress allowed it, private corporations could raise standing armies and navies, I just don’t think we or anyone in Congress would stand and suffer that blight on society. In a way though, that’s what private security contractors are though, although their authority to engage in violence is legally limited. Also it is important to note that such corporations as the Dutch East India Company operates their militaries outside and beyond the core jurisdiction, were and of their nations of origin. There was no contradiction of terms in subjugating and governing Indians and Javanese so long as they weren’t subjugating free Dutchmen.