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Stripe bans Trump campaign
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- copperwater69 6y agoJust make your own platform bro Just create your own online shop bro Just host your own platform bro Just host your own videos bro Just make your own DDoS protection bro Just make your own ISP bro Just create your own law firm bro Just create our own payment processing bro
- esoterica 6y agoIf you’re a principled free market conservative, then all of those are valid responses. Welcome to the free market at work! Sometimes market forces work against you but you don’t get to complain about it.
- copperwater69 6y agoWhen all of those happen to you and are supported by the other half of the country are you more likely to try and integrate or secede?
- abernard1 6y ago> Just create your own government bro (I agree with you. The logical conclusions are sad.)
- ahallock 6y agoHad we all but vestiges of a free market, these would be valid responses, but we don't.
- razius 6y agoThis is what happens when people don't read and just spew stuff. Go read "Wealth of Nations" and see Adam Smith's words about monopolies.
- Jonnax 6y agoThe trump campaign raised $200 million from soliciting donations to challenge the elections. Maybe they could have used some of that money to do just that? There's plenty of money to at least try.
- nobody9999 6y agoYour point is well taken. However, forcing people or organizations (which are groups of people) to host or support speech/activities they do not wish to support restricts the rights of those people/organizations. If you can force them to give up their rights, others can force you to give up your rights. I can't support that at all. What's more, the idea that there's some sort of conspiracy/cabal that spans every corporation, industry and profession to murder free speech is a pretty far-fetched one. There's an old saw that says, "if everyone around you appears to be an asshole, perhaps it's you and not everyone else." Not obligatory but apropos: https://xkcd.com/1357 https://xkcd.com/1357
- leereeves 6y agoMy objection to that argument is that the companies claim that the content on the website isn't their speech when invoking Section 230, then claim that it is their speech in order to invoke the First Amendment. Section 230 says: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. So how can a company have free speech rights regarding content if they aren't the speaker?
- nobody9999 6y agoSection 230 is irrelevant to the discussion in this case[1]. Section 230 refers to the ability of one party to sue over the speech of a third party. That's not in play here at all. Rather, this is about freedom of association. Stripe can associate (do business, in this case) with whom it chooses (with some restrictions[2], but this isn't one of them), and that freedom of association is protected by the constitution[0]. [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1_2_13_1/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1_2_13_1/ [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
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- jo032 6y agoI think our history books do a disservice when they teach McCarthyism by focusing only on the falsely accused-- many Americans really did support the USSR and some even swore an oath to Stallin. The lesson should be that it was still a mistake to take civil liberties away from these people who passionately supported a horrible cause, not that McCarthyists were just bad prosecutors who arrested the wrong people. I believe Trump supporters, especially the QAnon weirdos, are wrong to believe the things that they do, but they are less wrong than the people who supported the Soviet Union during its genocidal reign. Unless people are charged and convicted of a crime, their livelihoods should not be taken away by the whims of these powerful companies selectively enforcing their rules. McCarthyism was wrong then and it's wrong now, even though its targets are wrong too.
- admiralspoo 6y agoThe QAnon folks are no less irrational than any other (pseudo-)religious devotees and should be afforded the same protections under the first amendment.
- esoterica 6y agoThis is like the millionth time this has been posted on this website in the past few days, but the first amendment applies to the government, not private companies.
- jo032 6y agothe poster you are replying to seems to be arguing that Qanon people should be a protected class under the civil rights act because it's a hokey pseudo religion with prophecies, shamans, and everything. That absolutely does apply to private companies. I don't really know what to make of that as I am not a lawyer, but I'm not making a legal argument but a moral one. Internet businesses are natural monopolies and being banned from one can ruin your life without trial in a way that was unprecedented for private companies to be able to do in the past. In the near future somebody who is banned from both Paypal and Stripe will be close to being perpetually unbanked in some lines of work. The way progressives have cheered on giving tech companies this much power over our lives has been dispiriting
- thoughtsunific7 6y agoJUst kill yourself already
- sacks2k 6y agoThe people cheering this on will not be protected when the mob comes for you. We live in a digital age. If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.
- djakaitis 6y agoThe mob... keep living the hyperbole. One day you’ll realize you are the baddies.
- NoOneCaresAtAll 6y ago"The baddies" What are you, nine years old?
- claudiug 6y agoWrong opinions? They ban nazi lovers
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoSo you mean that 75M people who voted for trump are nazi lovers? I'm not American, but, wow. Be sure to always agree with your new ruling party, and vote as they say, or you might find yourself to be a nazi lover, too.
- grahamburger 6y agoNo one has been banned for voting for Trump. Those 75m people are fine, apart from the ones who stormed the capitol.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoDid Trump campaign storm the Capitol? You have evidence?
- deleted 6y ago
- quickthrower2 6y agoHe'll have to start taking cryptocurrency.
- bdcravens 6y agoHe said previously of cryptocurrency: "I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity."
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoHe might have an epiphany, due to his changed circumstances.
- mhh__ 6y agoThe full thread seems way too coherent and well-punctuated to be not written by a policy-maker/advisor, especially on a matter like US Fiat (put bluntly this is not a man who is either intelligent or interested in things like that)
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoWelcome to the shiny new age of totalitarian tolerance.
- djakaitis 6y agoI wonder if during world war 2 people opposed fighting nazis like this...
- rubatuga 6y agoThe US is not at war, these are two groups within a single country.
- alphabettsy 6y agoYes because there could never be a war within a country right?
- djakaitis 6y agoI think you are missing the point of my question. I’m pointing out that not all opinions should be protected equally. Opinions of hate or violence are bad for society. I don’t understand why the suppression of those things is considered totalitarian? Especially when it comes from private enterprise.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoBecause if you block 'bad' opinions, you'll need to arbiter them to distinguish bad ones from good. This process is corruptible and eventually you'll find that opposing a current government is 'bad' (this happened in my country in a short span of 15 years). So it turns out that allowing all speech, even 'bad' is less harmful for society in the long run than trying to suppress some speech.
- jsmeaton 6y agoNo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- tmpz22 6y agoTo the HN users arguing in bad faith that Parler was just another Twitter or Facebook, it wasn't. The top posts of the site were overwhelmingly calls for violence, racism, and the spread of conspiracy theories. Parler volunteer moderators curated all dissenting voices on the platform to produce the exact content they wanted (accounts are shadowbanned by default until they are 'approved' for crying out loud). This is the paradox of tolerance reaching its tipping point. Any sufficiently tolerant society can only be so tolerant until a bad actor becomes so detrimental to the continued function of that society, that they must choose between allowing some intolerance toward the destructive actor or risk losing everything by allowing the bad actor to continue their work. This is not the patriot act. This isn't Prism. This is a group of people grooming others to shout fire in a crowded assembly hall. Good riddance.
- rasz 6y agoIs Parler a Russian OP? Is this conspiracy theory or facts? https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327270213256179712 https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327270213256179712 I haven't seen any "proper" news channels touching founding/funding subject.
- Damorian 6y agoRelevant: http://stonetoss.com/comic/build-big/ http://stonetoss.com/comic/build-big/
- samsquire 6y agoIsn't this overreach? Financial organisation making conditions on which political party you can support.
- Damorian 6y agoThis isn't new, Visa and Mastercard will block payments when it's politically expedient (see: pornhub, Kyle Rittenhouse legal funds).
- zionic 6y agoYet they won’t ban payments to law firms that fight for child abuse.
- grahamburger 6y agoIt's not about which political party they support. Literally no one is being banned from stripe just for voting republican.
- camhart 6y agoThis takes it a step closer, and certainly invokes that fear.
- AYBABTME 6y agoThey would have done it sooner if it was politically motivated, as opposed to being in reaction to breach of their ToS.
- camhart 6y agoI disagree. Earlier would mean Republicans have more time to enforce consequences. With looming antitrust cases with many big tech companies, this could be construed as a pledge of loyalty.
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- rubatuga 6y agoThat's pretty awful.
- disown 6y agoWhat a surprise... I've said this before and naturally downvoted by the suddenly zuckerburg loving anti-free speech crowd, but we really need to investigate the "cartel-like" collusion amongst in the tech industry. Expand that to tech + news collusion for a broader scope. The behavior of the tech industry is far more of a threat to democracy/unity/etc than trump in my humble opinion. I can't believe anyone even supports it at this stage, but that's political partisanship and propaganda for you. Heck you could even call this a soft tech coup... Edit: Hilarious, a downvote within a second.
- 5986043handy 6y agoStripe doesn't owe anyone the right to use their services. Just as an airline can bar anyone for most any reason (unless that reason is membership in a protected class[0]), Stripe can do the same.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ars 6y agoIt's pretty clear who actually wields power in America. The government could do nothing. But businesses who are answerable to nobody can do whatever they feel is best. Hopefully they always make the right choice.......
- illustriousbear 6y agoInteresting to see how the US political establishment is so intertwined with corporate interests that the private sector now openly acts to shutdown a hostile political movement. No need for things like the Communist act, it feels like these shutdowns were too fast and strong not to be coordinated. Nothing good will come from this sort of thing.
- pldr2244 6y agoAs has been repeated ad-nauseam elsewhere: Private enterprises should always retain the right to refuse to do business with violent and dangerous entities. The day the government FORCES me to have to do business with someone intending harm on others..
- awat 6y agoNot to be reductionist but I don’t see this as a totalitarian issue. This is a free market decision. $Company decides to sever ties with another organization. That choice can be good, bad, reactive, overreactive, misguided, etc but it’s still a market participant choice. Market remains open for other market participants to make other choices.
- intricatedetail 6y agoThere is no free financial market.
- amelius 6y agoThat's a small market, getting even smaller ...
- darkwizard42 6y ago...which could be viewed as the overall market is deciding not to cater to these views... which is also absolutely legal (and creates a market opportunity for someone else if the group not supported supports it)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TheGrim-999 6y agoIt's so interesting when people cheer on censorship because, don't worry, they've been convinced that it's good censorship. Still doesn't change what it is though. I'm sure anybody that's been censored, dehumanized, and removed from society by an evil regime has been comforted by the fact that the people doing it think it's fine to do it, or because the people doing it are doing it legally. Those facts don't make it right ...
- danijelb 6y agoI have a feeling that at least half of people here are using the free market argument ironically. Because until last week it was usually republicans who advocated for the free market, no government regulation, and believing that markets sort themselves out magically. And now they are angry when the free market is going in the direction they don't like.
- nla 6y agoAnother example of partisan politics by Big Peter Dinklage.
- nla 6y agoYet another example of partisan politics by Big Peter Dinklage.
- amadeuspagel 6y agoIronic, in light of the Trump admins recent ban on Alipay and other chinese payment apps.[1] [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/0cd2285d-5e39-4d54-81e7-f4c657364af1 https://www.ft.com/content/0cd2285d-5e39-4d54-81e7-f4c657364...
- camhart 6y agoAll of these silicon valley companies need to realize they live in a bubble. You can't continue doing this and expect it to be recieved well. Yes the extreme right is ridiculous. But the extreme left is too. Spend some time outside silicon valley and other liberal hubs. Understand the perspective of others. I am not in favor of violence. I am not in favor of Trump's behavior. However Trumps stance on policy typically aligns more closely with what I believe than Biden. Behavior like this alienates me. Again, I do not love Trump. Far from it. But these moves come across not as anti-extreme-right, but anti-conservative.
- Trasmatta 6y ago> But these moves come across not as anti-extreme-right, but anti-conservative. No, they're anti-"storm the nation's seat of government with an angry mob intent on killing members of Congress and / or the Vice President, as a last ditch effort to overturn a democratic election"
- camhart 6y agoYes some were violent. Yes those who were violent should be arrested, investigated, etc. But I'd argue half the country doesn't agree that the mobs intent was on killing members of congress. And that's the issue. You view it from that perspective, and from that perspective it makes sense to ban everything. But half the country (likely) doesn't agree with that perspective. I remember seeing bloody heads of Trump on twitter. That certainly seems a lot more like inciting violence than Trump saying to head down the street. As violence started to break out Trump tweeted that they should remain peaceful. Followed up by a video saying go home in peace. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/6568305002 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/6568305002
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Trasmatta 6y agoHuh? You're really trying to compare what some randos do on Twitter to what the President of the United States did on Wednesday? Really think about it: the President of the United States incited a mob to attack the Capitol to prevent the certification of the vote of his political opponent. He did this by pushing constant lies and propaganda for months, and urging his followers to "fight" for him. Go watch his speech and then try to tell me he didn't know exactly what he was doing. > Trump saying to head down the street I'm honestly flabbergasted that you can see the culmination of Trump's actions from the past year (or however long he's claimed the election would be rigged) as just saying "head down the street".
- alphabettsy 6y agoConservatives argued it was totalitarian overreach to force a cake baker to make a gay cake, maybe rightly so even if totalitarian was hyperbolic. Now we’re going to force companies to allow people to coordinate or encourage the overthrow of the entire government and that’s not totalitarian?
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoThere is a difference between bank accounts, Visa/MasterCard access and Internet service, on one hand, and App Stores, Twitter accounts and payment providers, on the other hand. The First Amendment promises both free speech and free assembly. Core to the latter is the freedom not to assemble. This freedom is regulated. You can’t refuse to do business with protected classes. But political affiliation is not a protected class. There are utilities, which have limited freedom not to assemble. Then there are private persons and private businesses. Stripe and Twitter are clearly the latter. AWS and Visa feel like the former, though they are legally the latter. The cost of switching private activity to a utility model is a loss of innovation and an increase in political involvement. We are re-evaluating, as a society, the balance between the freedoms of speech and assembly. Let’s not forget these are freedoms in balance, not a spectrum of tyranny and anarchy.
- 37rudydyeh 6y agoThe spectrum is authoritarianism and anarchy. Anarchists can still be tyrannical.
- zionic 6y agoI’m honestly happy they’re doing this. The harder they grasp, the more users will slip through their fingers.
- m8s 6y agoStripe isn't preventing the Trump campaign from fundraising. You can feel free to withdraw cash from your bank account and mail it to the Trump campaign. Stripe also isn't prohibiting all Republicans from using Stripe. It seems that the people claiming that this the end of free speech are unaware that demonstrating that freedom of speech can have consequences. In this case, that free speech was arguably inciting an insurrection.
- mehrdadn 6y ago> Stripe and Twitter are pretty clearly the latter. They might be the latter, but I wouldn't consider it obvious. Regarding social media, we've gotten to the point where even US Visa applications ask for social media handles (and I understand they consider it as a negative datum if you don't provide one). And we're also at the point where some companies won't provide you with respectable service unless you @ them on social media. Regarding payment platforms, generally people expect them to be quite neutral, since getting locked out of the financial system is not exactly going to lead to a great life in the modern digital economy. I don't know at what point these cross into "utility" territory, and I'm willing to entertain the idea that they might never do so, but I find it quite debatable and very much not clear. (Note: None of this is to opine on the reactions to this particular incident. Just commenting on the more general idea.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoJust build your own payment processor.
- ashtonkem 6y agoWe’re now into “would you provide credit processing for a small terrorist organization” territory with the Trump campaign. If they were a foreign non-state actor, it probably would be criminal offense to provide aid or transmit money for them. (For fairly obvious 1st amendment reasons it’s not possible to do that with fellow Americans, which is why the statutes specify foreign terrorist groups). I’m not terribly surprised that everyone is dumping them.
- perardi 6y agoFreedom of speech, you cry. Well, OK, this is freedom of speech…for Stripe. They don’t like what Trump has done. They are a private company. It’s their ball. They can take it home whenever they want to. Speech has consequences, and if you foment a hostile takeover of Congress, you pay your price.
- ohnohell 6y agoThis argument went out the window when Amazon started infrastructure bans. "Build your own..." What? Internet? Country?
- perardi 6y agoI would greatly appreciate if the Trumpists would go form their own nation.
- aww_dang 6y agoI recognize that you were being facetious, but this is work a look. Greater decentralization, smaller polities and a less powerful federal government could be a workable solution. It doesn't have to go to the point of secession. It is possible to respond with tolerance and let all sides live according to their wishes.
- lmz 6y ago"Build your own country" would be a nice start to another civil war.
- eejit_compiler 6y agoAmazon aren't the only provider of hosting services, even if they are one of the largest. It's entirely doable to shift providers, even in the face of censorship - The Pirate Bay is one long-running example of this.
- ohnohell 6y agoI'm not sure how you missed the point by that much. Infrastructure bans are a thing now. You can't produce an app to compete with Twitter and Facebook if you don't have access to scalable infrastructure. Moving to a different host to get canceled there isn't a solution.
- cblconfederate 6y agoI m sorry but all this concerted action feels (from afar) a lot like "if people don't vote the way we want, we re just gonna have to force them". It's not about overreach, but companies are not political entities, and reversing this relationship is a self-defeating travesty And if they are doing it for cheap popularity points -- well trump may be gone in a week, but his voters won't leave. this just reinforces mistrust in the state itself
- zionic 6y agoWhat’s amazing is this is, despite most commenters agreeing here, incredible evidence for the “they’re all controlled by the same people” crowd. This level of coordinated action shouldn’t be possible in a healthy, diverse, competitive environment.
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- gameswithgo 6y agosure it is possible, these people all just agree that parler and trump are a danger to the country and want no part of it anymore. the combination of the riots and trump losing the election means there is both more motivation to jump ship and less risk from doing so. if trump had won the election none of these companies would take the risk.
- qeternity 6y agoOf course it is. It’s not like these are fringe views that people are acting on. Look at his inner circle who abandoned him before “Big Tech” did. There’s a huge (and growing) chunk of society that is sick of what he says and does. Forget his ideals, I’m talking about his behavior.
- danhor 6y agoThe obvious reason could be something happening, impacting all these decisions in an major way. An attempted self-coup is a pretty good reason to act. Now the obvious question is, why did it take a few days? A) It didn't (twitter and other social media platforms reacted pretty fast) B) Companies that don't have a lot of experience with people inciting violence and riots (i.e. not huge social media companies) probably didn't have a process ready C) Since other companies took actions, the ones left may "read the room" In fact, the spread-around (in time) and ad-hoc actions speak more to an "oh shit, this is very bad for our image and our own employees are very unhappy with this" reaction
- hadrien01 6y agoI just want to say that I really like the format of that article: short and to the point.
- dillondoyle 6y agoI love Axios. It also looks like they might even try to be more than a news outlet, but more of a tech company. I signed up to access this tool, would love to try it out for our clients. https://www.axios.com/hq https://www.axios.com/hq
- logicslave 6y ago"Give me liberty or give me death"
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- staunch 6y ago@dang there is some clearly abusive use of flagging to silence opposing views in this thread. A sign of just how intolerant so many people have become. Please do something about it, like removing flag permissions from these users or making flagged comments remain visible. This behavior is toxic.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- grzm 6y agoThe best way to contact the mods is via the Contact link in the footer.
- staunch 6y agoI'd rather it be an "open letter" in this case. No action was taken to un-silence abusively flagged threads, as far as I can see. This is as close to HN moderation "transparency" as we get.
- pmiller2 6y agoExcuse me for not tolerating fascism.
- nur20212 6y agoyeah, it's a big problem. If you're going to allow political discussions you should remove voting and flagging for those posts.
- Zezi 6y agoThis is insane. I’m anti crypto since inception but there needs to be checks and balances. No judicial precedent or order just monopolies. If you’re pro AWS and social media banning I disagree but can understand to an extent. This is just lunacy
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agothis is a pretty good time for a lot of the anti crypto crowd to figure out the necessity of permissionless money. I hope to never hear the statement "crypto has no real usecase" ever again.
- sg47 6y agoWhat's lunacy is inciting your supporters to be violent and try to overthrow democracy. Replace insurrection with child porn and see if your argument still stands.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoThe debate here seems like fuel for antitrust issues. A single company deciding not to do business with someone (over actions, not innate stuff like protected classes) should be fine, but when you let them get to be a backbone service, then issues surface like those discussed by everyone here. If google, for example decided to stop surfacing trump stuff in results, that could be a real issue. Not because it’s google doing a bad thing, but because google has become so big. Maybe “what happens if this service started banning folks?” is a useful thought exercise for whether a platform has accrued too much market share/power/influence.
- astura 6y agoStripe (and every other credit card processors) have long refused to do business with a broad amount and types of businesses. For example, Stripe themselves don't serve most travel sites. https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed It's a super common practice to deny some customers for basically all financial services companies.
- koolba 6y agoIf they stopped providing services to all political campaigns that’d be comparable.
- astura 6y agoIf you read the blog post I linked to you'd see there are various exceptions that Stripe makes in most categories and they make business justifications for each exception. It's in Stripe's best interest to deny services to Trump because coups and unstable governments are just bad for business. That's why the business lobbying group the The National Association of Manufacturers is calling for invoking the 25th Amendment This is part of their statement: “This is not the vision of America that manufacturers believe in and work so hard to defend. Across America today, millions of manufacturing workers are helping our nation fight the deadly pandemic that has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives. We are trying to rebuild an economy and save and rebuild lives. But none of that will matter if our leaders refuse to fend off this attack on America and our democracy—because our very system of government, which underpins our very way of life, will crumble.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/business/national-association-manufacturers-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/business/national-associa... Financial services companies have always chosen their customers carefully, If there were antitrust concerns with this they would have already been addressed - because this is SOP.
- a3n 6y agoKnow your customer.
- newbie578 6y agoI'm curious if other countries around the world are going to see how dependent they are on these so called "platforms" and is it going to trigger a change. If Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Stripe, etc. decide to ban you, you are done, vanished into thin air. You lose your infrastructure, social network, media channel, de-listed from Search, and oh yeah right, your financial end up being blocked. While Uganda is not the best example, they are the first country which realised how quickly you can get deleted, so they just decided to completely block all the players. And again, the average joe gets hurt...
- gulag4nerds 6y agoIt's just the new mode of imperialism. Control the economy, control the country.
- apple_innocent 6y ago"Nobody gets fired for banning Trump."
- rglover 6y agoMaybe I'm being naive but it seems like a larger problem is being ignored here that I feel I should call attention to. This is going to piss people off and some of those people are going to be real, nothing-to-lose extremists. Actions like these though seemingly harmless in the short-term are going to radicalize the exact person/type of people that you do not want to radicalize. Because a lot of high-ranking SV folks (and patrickc) are on here, please, for the sake of stability in the country, do not continue down this path. This may seem innocuous now and purely a matter of principle, but this is a match to gasoline (in a multitude of ways). --- Please do not read this through whatever political lens you occupy, but instead through the lens of civility.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe larger problem is that the United States Congress was, just four days ago, invaded by a violent mob and forced into hiding for hours. People are going to be a lot more radicalized if they think they can get away with that! It would be like refusing to cut business ties with a mafia don because you're afraid of radicalizing his soldiers - maybe there's some short-term benefit, but in the long term all you accomplish that way is legitimizing the violence.
- brown9-2 6y agoThe problem is those people are already radicalized, and if you give them what they want out of fear, then they’ve already won
- rglover 6y agoI know some of them, and no, but they're getting there.
- heartbreak 6y agoYour original post can be read as an indirect threat (don’t push them to the brink...or else). Why are you saying these things on behalf of a group of people that you’re not a member of?
- rriepe 6y agoThis is terrifying. They'll be coming for Trump supporters next. Gmail dropping anyone who receives Trump spam? Anything is possible now.
- trustfundbaby 6y agoI was on the fence about this, but reading the comments convinced me it was the absolute right decision. The fact that all these institutions just allowed this horrible hateful speech for four years, in the name of free speech etc, despite all the harassment, harm (mental and otherwise) it caused to so many people in America actually emboldened so many to the extent that now that they crossed this invisible line, they can't even really understand the ramifications of what happened. That what gets me. To be hyperfocused on the free speech or "big brother" aspect of these bans, not the fact that a small group of rioters were just a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history with the blood of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the chain of command of the United states of America, as well as overrunning the seat of power of the most powerful nation in the world, on national TV ... just tells me that things really went too far and should have been shut down much sooner. I'm sure a lot of the people at the capitol that day have the narrative running in their minds that they are the heroes of America democracy, but the reality is that there is simply no justification for any of this, that can be told. A smarter group of individuals would take all this on the chin, make penance in some way while staying under the radar to regroup and reconfigure their message/approach instead of citing private business overreach as some sort of justification for what happened
- Rapzid 6y agoOne of the more concerning tactics I've witnessed over the past few years that Trump and other parts of the GOP rhetoric machine were using in service of lying to people.. Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights. "Stop The Steal" is just another flavor of conflating 1st amendment "freedom of speech" protections with a "RIGHT" to be on some platform or another, or to talk at some venue or another.
- TearsInTheRain 6y ago> Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights. I dont think we need to infantilize Trump supporters. They are capable of evaluating claims made by the GOP.
- chrononaut 6y agoI am curious for the people against such action by Stripe, what conditions do you think are appropriate before cutting off this kind of service to a customer? I imagine there must be some conditions that would make one say "we are enabling this individual's actions" to some definiton of "actions" that you disagree with.
- doubleunplussed 6y agoHonestly? Breaking the law. Companies providing a service should not care what it is used for. If society has a problem with what people are using services for, it should pass laws, and the companies should comply with the requirements of the law. I don't know why we are allowing massive companies with unchecked power to make decisions about what is acceptable behaviour on social networks. Since when did they make the laws? We have a process for this, and it is for democratically elected representatives accountable to their voters to write laws. Just because you agree with the decisions made by these companies today doesn't mean this is the right process. They're unelected and unaccountable. It's an insult to democracy that we're allowing them to control people's behaviour, even if you agree with them.
- chrononaut 6y agoI spent a few minutes thinking about your reply and I can't determine whether I also share this same opinion, although it is a set of good points. There are parts of me that feel like services like Facebook and Twitter may not fit in this model because they've almost inadvertently become modern journalistic entities, and my concerns with them are more monopolistic than their probably justified ability (given that they have become journalistic entities to some extent) to curate, regulate, and present information.
- skynet-9000 6y ago> because they've almost inadvertently become modern journalistic entities Perhaps not inadvertently..
- ashtonkem 6y ago
- lazyjones 6y agoBad idea IMO, the Internet doesn't forget. Why would anyone choose Stripe over another payment processor now when Stripe comes with the additional risk of being banned at a whim for whatever political/ideological/opportunistic virtue-signalling reason? It's not like they have a monopoly like Apple and Google with their respective App Stores. The same goes for AWS, it's just irresponsible to use it now.
- Trasmatta 6y ago> being banned at a whim The President of the United States just incited insurrection because he lost the election. This is not a case of somebody being "banned at a whim".
- lazyjones 6y ago> incited insurrection AFAICT this is a common opinion shared by half the population or so, but it's not an undisputed fact or court ruling. What's protecting you or me from similarly popular accusations that might be false in our case? Should we only use Stripe and AWS if we are certain we'll never do, say, or be associated with something that might upset half the population of the USA or a few people in power? Wikileaks upset a lot of people and got banned by VISA and others, for example. Without any wrongdoing in my opinion. For my business sense, being dependant on AWS, Stripe, Shopify or other politically motivated organizations is a risky situation I'd rather avoid. YMMV.
- walkedaway 6y agoAnd yet Apple and Google have never taken any action against twitter despite similar content over the past four years threatening or organizing violence on twitter - content which is still there to this day. America has fallen into an Orwellian society. Would have never thought that possible, but to see the number of people supportive of such a society is mind boggling.
- incrudible 6y agoI encourage everyone to enable “showdead” in this thread to see which standards are being applied for flagging.
- ShamelessC 6y agoI encourage people to use Hacker News whichever way they want to. Many people respect this forum as a place for intelligent discussion. Unfounded claims that the election was stolen is not intelligent discussion. Unfounded claims that "ANTIFA" existed in any sort of widespread, organized fashion during the black lives matter protests are not intelligent discussion. Whataboutism surrounding the treatment of occasionally violent protests during BLM versus the treatment of an attempted coup lack the nuance surrounding the psychology, sociology, and power dynamics of the two situations being drastically different. That is not intelligent discussion. Unfounded claims that the insurrectionists were either ANTIFA agitators (they weren't) or were somehow peaceful as they chanted "hang Mike Pence" and searched for Nancy Pelosi with zip ties, are not intelligent discussion. In fact, I lost a lot of respect for this community by turning on showdead. I'm not sure I'll be staying here much longer if this momentum of misinformation continues to grow.
- incrudible 6y agoAgain, I encourage everyone to enable “showdead” and see for themselves to what degree your representation of what is being posted here matches what is being flagged.
- hysan 6y agoReminds me of when payment processors dropped Wikileaks. That was never reversed, so I don’t think this will be either.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AzzieElbab 6y agoIt does not feel like any of these purges are voluntary. Maybe fb which is coincidentally under most legal pressure atm
- arthurcolle 6y agoAll of this is bullish for cryptocurrencies, that's all I'm gonna add here.
- foofoo4u 6y agoThe past several years have made me aware of the vulnerability of overreliance on consolidated powers. Silicon Valley has too much influence on the world. Most of the world’s tech resides within it. The ideology of the region is vastly different than large swaths of the country. The nuance goes far beyond simply Democrats versus Republicans. California, solidly a blue state that overwhelmingly voted for Biden, voted very differently internally when it came to November’s ballots. Just a few counties away, we came to find that the rest of the state believes in fundamentally different values than the Bay Area. For example, the majority of residents within the Bay Area were in favor of Prop 16 while the rest of Californians were not. What this means is that even Democrats themselves cannot agree amongst each other on fundamental values. This should be concerning even to Democrats because one faction of their party has overt influence and control on the flow of the world’s information. This week’s events made it evidently clear that one’s presence on the web is dependent on the wills of those from a very small concentrated region. A region in which people outside struggle to even make their why into it, physically, because of prohibitive cost of living and limited housing. Are we going to live in a future in which all of those who do not bow to the Bay Area’s ideology will have the digital rug pulled under them? Hopefully not, but the point isn’t wether they will or not, but rather can they do it. We shouldn’t make ourselves so vulnerable.
- strogonoff 6y agoPeople behind all the platforms that are now banning Trump and GOP politicians presumably were aware of what was happening in the last two years. I wonder if recent events were truly the last straw for them, or did they suddenly gain the will to act after election results and are doing the right thing because it’s convenient now.
- saithound 6y agoThis confirms how disingenuous/delusional "free market", "free association" and "free assembly" arguments are in this case. Decisions by entities of this size simply cannot be interpreted under a "free association" lens, except to the same extent that Lockheed-Martin not selling arms to Iran, or, more pertinently, Baidu not serving up photos of the Tiananmen Square protests, can be interpreted under the same lens. You cannot conclude that an act of censorship is not a state or government wielding its power merely because it is done by a private company, Nominally, Tencent is a privately owned company freely choosing who they provide a platform to [2]. But in reality, they have absolutely no choice but to ban Winnie the Pooh, unless they want a state apparatus to make their lives incredibly difficult from then on. The same in the US: these are not mom-and-pop stores with immediate agents and agendas exercising their free association rights in accordance with their personal beliefs. These are large tech companies, deeply and inseparably intertwined with public authority and the political parties, lobbying and making political contributions on one side, seeking political approval and avoiding threats of regulatory retaliation on the other. They know full well that if they ban the wrong speech and refuse to ban the "right" speech, they face being regulated out of business. Indeed, seeing this threat, we see them scramble to align with an incoming administration. You don't have to be an all-in free speech absolutist to see what's wrong with this: we're not talking about people with fringe views having to move to fringe platforms, we're talking about the campaign of the largest (soon-to-be-)opposition party being banned from major platforms en masse, while people with significant credibility regarding authoritarianism [1], who also happen to be on bad terms with said opposition party [2] denounce these acts as "unacceptable acts of censorship". [1] https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347969772177264644 https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347969772177264644 [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-05/donald-trump-us-has-not-seen-evidence-alexei-navalny-poisoning/12633148 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-05/donald-trump-us-has-n...
- tannhauser23 6y agoPeople here seem very certain that there won't be any negative externalities from tech companies deplatforming Trump and Parler. Let me raise several concerns. If you are a politician, are you comfortable with a few tech CEOs holding the power to destroy your campaign? Especially when the CEOs live in the same region and contribute to similar causes? Wouldn't you seek to rein in the power of companies that have the power to destroy you? Or seek to use this power against your political enemies? "Don't attempt a coup," you say. Sure. But the stated reason by the companies is generally that Trump campaign encouraged and promoted violence - are you sure that this rational will be narrowly applied going forward? Especially when there's an effort by some to redefine hurtful language as violence? If having active/robust moderation is a hard requirement to exist as a viable app, wouldn't this prohibit new social media companies from going viral? FB/Twitter spends millions and employs an army of contractors to moderate their platforms. Can a new startup that's growing exponentially build moderation before they're shut down by Apple/Google/AWS? On a related note, does it concern you that the last two social media apps that seriously challenged FB/IG/Twitter are Tik Tok and Parler, and the American government forced a sale of the former and private companies collectively decided to boot the latter? Hey, I'm just being paranoid. I'm sure these monopolistic companies will use their power perfectly going forward and never make any mistakes. I'm also sure that government will respect their reasonable use of power and leave them alone.
- ffggvv 6y agowelp, guess stripe is actually evil. that sucks because i considered working for them in the future (had an offer from them before), but guess not anymore. plus their equity vesting structure is absolute trash and doesn't allow employees to get any gains from the stock rising before vest. stay away.
- Triv888 6y agoIt is getting ridiculous... the companies are getting really scared, I think.
- rektide 6y agoI'm in favor of payment processors doing the right thing but I also want people to have ways to move money where they want. which seems like something the internet has failed to evolve, without these very very high priced middlemen. I wish banks would do something useful. they don't. seems like they won't. this guy deserves nothing but choking society by these narrow narrow deciders, these enablers of basic functions opting out... grossly imbalanced & disgusting that this is such a death knell, that events like this are catastrophic. coproations should not have such a chokehold on basic society.
- DSingularity 6y agoI wonder, would these bans would have happened if the Republicans maintained control of the senate?
- grzm 6y agoCounterfactuals are hard, and I'm spitballing here, I think it's useful to consider a scenario where that would be true: for Republicans to have maintained control of the Senate would likely correspond to more public support for Republicans in general, which means it's less likely there would have been run-offs in Georgia; the outcome of the November 2020 elections would likely have been settled much sooner, and less motivation for the unrest that culminated on January 6. So, as to the narrow "would these bans would have happened" now? Probably not. All of this is conjecture, thought experiment off the top of my head that I will not do much to defend. And, of course, none of that is what actually happened.
- jonas21 6y agoI agree with you that counterfactuals are hard (and often pointless) -- but it is worth noting that it would have only taken a small shift in public support for Republicans to have kept control of the Senate -- for example, ~50K votes in the Ossoff/Perdue runoff, or alternately ~14K votes in the same race in the general election. That's an incredibly tiny shift, and one that could have been geographically isolated to a single state. Additionally, I'd imagine a shift toward Republicans that fell short of Trump winning the presidency would have led to more unrest on Jan 6, not less.
- DSingularity 6y agoMaybe they are often pointless but I think in this case it would be helpful if we found out the main drivers for these decisions. Let’s not undermine the significance of techs decision to censor here. The potential blowback could be in tens of millions of users abandoning these platforms for alternatives. So should we give them credit or was this a political decision? Maybe the DOJ will drop its cases against big tech. Maybe the senate/congress will stop calling the CEOs to testify.
- doktrin 6y agoIf I had a dime for every time I read some pearl clutching comment about the big brother slippery slope on HN, I could have retired by now. In all these years, the only actual existential danger to society to materialize are precisely the entities that are now being deplatformed. Excuse me if I don't take all this hand wringing on behalf of unstable insurrectionists seriously.
- dnissley 6y agoWhen half the country is so resentful of the other half that it starts to act out, is escalating that situation the best option? Or perhaps you let them vent for a bit (mostly harmlessly, but not entirely) and then try to engage with them and bring them back to reality?
- doktrin 6y agoThey just vented all over the Capitol. It was far from harmless, and could easily have been much worse. Continued appeasement makes little sense. If you can provide something other than hand-wavy speculative justification for your theory, I'm all ears.
- CathedralBorrow 6y agoHow do you engage with a mob that chants demands for executing democratically elected leaders while storming the capitol? Listen to their demands and try to find a compromise?
- kristianp 6y agoUpvoted for teaching me a new phrase.
- jolincost 6y agoNo quarter. Free speech limited by inciting violence, OK, but should be applied evenly. Anrifa, BLM, weren't deplatformed, right? The politics of the new right are for some reason considered an existential threat by big tech, and the global security and intelligence faction. We can't have a situation where Trump can actually deliver results and give the people hope and risk upsetting the control system, so we need to remind everyone they belong to a global control structure, introduce a virus, and coordinate an exaggerated curfew response to remind everyone to be afraid and that we're really in control, not some new fangled ideologue making promises of renewed greatness and destruction of the control system
- balls187 6y agoI hope Stripe gave them a week to find a new payment processor.
- DeadReckoning 6y agoThis is the start of antitrust against big tech. They’ve made enemies on both sides
- sillypecan 6y agoThe real danger isn’t in what people say on a platform where everyone disagrees. It’s going to be what happens when we have divided into different social networks, payment processors, banks, social networks, films, and credit unions. Do you know what you call people you can’t talk to? Enemies. It may be satisfying, but I can’t approve of these actions when I can foresee the horrific conclusion.
- cccc4all 6y agoThis is more of a political statement from Stripe than a business decision. They made their choice, we'll see the consequences of their actions now. It's one thing to ban a normal person or business. But to ban Trump, the current sitting president, leader of GOP and the person that represent almost half the country, is tall order. There's good reason why business should avoid politics, like Coinbase has done so far. It's a slippery slope that doesn't end well for the business.
- sebastianconcpt 6y agoCensorship is the seed of genocide. Change my mind.
- trhway 6y agosomebody should release a WWII/Cultural Revolution style poster "What did YOU do today to deplatform Trump?" Something like this "What did you do today for the victory?" https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/33/2f/c2332f9706f7b768243ffc521016cf47.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/33/2f/c2332f9706f7b768243f... or this "What did you do for the airforce?" or this http://www.sovmusic.ru/jpg/posters/ussr0550.jpg http://www.sovmusic.ru/jpg/posters/ussr0550.jpg
- vmception 6y agoSilicon Appalachia is gonna be hilarious.
- throwitaway1235 6y agoDoes Russia or China host any payment processors? That would be my advice to Republicans or anyone who wishes to dissent against the liberal Western order. It's going to be impossible to rely on American corporations to serve you if your opinion goes against ruling consensus.
- bufferout 6y agoThere's clearly a line in the sand to be made somewhere here e.g. funding child pornography or terrorism. The easy answer for Stripe is "we ban any account that promotes illegal activity". In that sense, I can see the rationale of banning a political campaign that has clearly fomented an attempt at circumvent a legal civil process.
- Thorentis 6y agoLooking at history, censorship has a far worse track record in terms of destroying democracy, than public assembly (even inside civic buildings) does. What makes people think that this time will be different?
- augustt 6y ago"... the right of the people peaceably to assemble"
- beltex 6y ago“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” — George Orwell, Animal Farm I understand the moves by Stripe, Twitter, and co. However, I would argue that the long term implications set by this precedent are much worse. When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President. Three short years later, who took the office? Would you have every imagined that? The same goes for this. Think five minutes into the future if you will. If the leader of the free world can be banned from all social media and co, who are based in the very same nation, and who are monopolies, then what hope is there for the rest of us?
- jevgeni 6y agoAmericans didn’t Weimar-Republic into a fascist regime this time, thankfully. The prevailing idea on HN is however “let’s have no regulation than bad regulation”... Guys, there’s such thing as good regulation.
- amznthrwaway 6y agoHN is largely pro fascism, and pro white supremacy at any cost. This is an extremely bigoted place, and as such there are a lot of people who ar quite comfortable with a civil war which they feel might benefit them. These people do not care about democracy. This is a deliberate result of long running mod3ation decisions.
- AnHonestComment 6y agoIt’s unclear the Germans of the Weimar-Republic would have been better off with communists, considering the Stalin and Mao atrocities. Just, factually.
- Griffinsauce 6y agoTo be fair, it's far from over. If this is analogous to the beer hall putsch it can be evaluated in a decade or two perhaps. The very most dangerous thing that could be done right now is to say "glad that's over and nothing happened".
- f430 6y agoI feel like a lot of tech companies are walking into a trap. They are doing this to win favors from Harris-Biden administration but regulations are going to happen regardless. In fact, the USGOV can now point to these very actions as evidence to push for tech regulation. It's very similar to how during Vietnam War, many on the South Vietnam side switched sides to fight their own. When the smoke cleared, the first people to go were those who switched sides to help the communists come into power. Reason: once a traitor, always a traitor.
- wolco5 6y agoMaybe I'm looking at things differently. Doesn't this push Trump to accept bitcoin. Wouldn't bitcoin get a big boost making him richer as the donations increased? By doing this now highlight how much Stripe profitted when the going was good. But it also signals when the going isn't good they will not stick with you.
- Dumblydorr 6y agoWho said free speech must extend to every private entity? Can I walk into anyone's home, business, property, or vicinity and say whatever I want with zero consequence? Why should websites have to allow anything to be written on their own website?
- mavidser 6y agoThis isn't sitting well with me at all. Of course it had to be done, but I also think it's a scary precedent. First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. I realize that the banned groups and people were really into extremism (to say it lightly), but there's also the fact that the Pandora's box has been opened, where huge private companies can remove figures and communities of an entire political spectrum - leaving them voiceless. And given the way political democracy swings, I am quite afraid of the time this starts happening to us. Also, just to clarify: I'm thinking this from the POV of the non-violent conservatives who are seeing this as an attack on their politics, and who can then use this as a justification to block BLM/"antifa" protests for "peace" if they come back in power.
- joshuamorton 6y agoThe "they" in the poem is the people who stormed the Capitol building, not Stripe. The "me" is, say, Marco Rubio or Mitch McConnel: a conservative, willing to hitch themselves to an authoritarian for a while, but who ultimately finds the authoritarian policies too distasteful (and that the leaders policies are dangerous, even to someone who was initially a moderate ally or supporter of the leader). And I mean this quite seriously. Neimoller, the author of the poem was at least somewhat anti-Semitic and a Nazi and a supporter of Hitler until the mid 1930s.
- skc 6y agoAs a complete outsider to US politics I'm still struggling to understand why so many people are upset at "Big Tech" about this. I think what all the de-platforming efforts show very clearly is that people inside these companies, taking their cues from what is most likely a majority of their employees and probably most importantly...customer base, don't want to be associated with certain types of behavior. Maybe it's driven by greed, maybe ethics...doesn't really matter. They've done the analysis and they've all decided that it's ultimately bad for the company long term. From all the complaints, one would think that these CEO's just woke up one day decreed these bans due to their own personal feelings.
- Jackson12 6y agoThis is a really bad idea. I'm more sympathetic to Twitter. Even under the First Amendment there's no right to say things that aren't true. Which is more the issue than incitement. But this goes way too far: Companies with business before the US and foreign governments should not be making these decisions. The potential for corruption is absolutely huge. Do we really want Tik Tok deciding what the US President can and can't say. This is going to further erode trust in US institutions. To believe Trump isn't lying about the election you have to think there's a massive conspiracy to keep him out of power. Well... Banning people from sharing beliefs doesn't make them less popular. Banning racist speech has NOT worked in Europe. This is disproportionate to what Trump actually did. This is not to downplay the seriousness of a riot inside the Capitol Building. The timing and nature of the act are repugnant and the people who did it deserve to spend some quality time in federal prison. Trump's false rhetoric about the election being stolen undoubtedly (and foreseeably) motivated these people. But I don't think what he said can be fairly read as advocating what happened. There was no threat whatsoever of the government being overthrown. Trump and people like him will ultimately find a way around these actions. And once they do they will cease to be effective. Individual states can probably step in and ban this sort of thing. And I fully expect most Red States to have done so by the end of the year. These tools should be preserved for a true emergency. Which this isn't. The right solution to the issue of disinformation is changing libel laws. NYT vs Sullivan was probably a mistake. And several states have criminal libel laws that could have plausibly been applied here.
- cavisne 6y agoThe trump campaign fundraises through a generic platform for all republicans, is the entire Republican party cutoff from Stripe now? More generally Stripe knows which users have contributed to the campaign, bought merch etc. Even beyond the card used as they also fingerprint the browser[1]. Will those users be blocked by Stripe Radar across all sites now? After all they "contributed to domestic terrorism" Probably not, but what a great marketing on ramp for 75M people to crypto! [1] https://mtlynch.io/stripe-recording-its-customers/ https://mtlynch.io/stripe-recording-its-customers/
- avalys 6y ago"Stripe is the Christian bakery and Trump is the gay wedding."
- newguy1234 6y agoImagine what would happen if Trump comes back and says: "Our store is only accepting Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero as payment methods" Could spearhead the shift to decentralized cryptocurrencies.
- HNfan345 6y agoI wonder if this will spearhead the adoption of cryptocurrencies which we so desperately need?
- yters 6y agoSo is google going to start censoring my email now? I have friends in islamic and other authoritarian regimes that deal with this sort of thing. So ironic in the effort to fight fascism big tech becomes fascist. Doubleplusgood doublespeak!
- dang 6y agoFor those who haven't seen any of my annoying mentions of it yet, large threads on HN are currently paginated for performance reasons (yes we're working on it) so you need to click More at the bottom of the thread to get to the rest of the comments—or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722027&p=5
- mrgordon 6y agoWhat took so long?
- yters 6y agoAll I ask is consistency of deplatforming by big tech. If Trump gets deplatformed for inciting violence, then BLM should get deplatformed for all the cops assassinated by BLM activists.
- CryptoPunk 6y agoThis is why we need cryptocurrency.
- codecamper 6y agoTech companies are acting exactly like Republicans who were aligned with Trump. Everybody using this chance to say how much against Trump they are... in his last 10 days. Honestly it is ugly how stupid and easily swayed they think the public are. The time to ban and disconnect from Trump was about 3 years ago.
- mrkramer 6y agoI feel like decentralized solution like Bitcoin would solve the problems of responsibility, liability and trust. There needs to be economic incentives and costs throughout the network. You as a processing node can support who ever you want and you can collect fees from them for processing transactions. For example if majority of nodes do not want to process certain transactions from certain individuals or organizations renaming nodes can charge high fees and earn huge profits meanwhile demotivating the sender/s of this transactions. Satoshi mentioned feeding off of spammers[1] ; basically you farm money from malicious and toxic emails(content) or malicious and toxic transactions. This way you disincentive them to continue with their malicious operations. [1] https://marc.info/?l=cryptography&m=123290127832572&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=cryptography&m=123290127832572&w=2
- hehehaha 6y agoNot everything can and should be solved by half-baked blockchain technologies.
- mrkramer 6y agoBitcoin was in alpha when Satoshi released it and then left 2 years later. If he/she stayed Bitcoin would be something like PayPal is today. Without founder/s projects aren't the same just like when Jobs left Apple, Apple almost disappeared under new leadership.
- mrkramer 6y agoTypo: remaining nodes*
- nojvek 6y agoTrump could have gotten away with anything. Free speech has to have limits. Free speech, but not at the cost of lives. Trump crossed a bar, his constant spread of hatred and dividing the country led to people dying. It led to his supporters walking into the capitol with IED bombs. If they found Mike Pence or Nancy pelosi, they were ready to spill blood. People died. It has been discussed in Parler, thedonald.win, in r/TheDonald subreddit. This is the line. If they simply protested outside, it would have been fine. Although I am not okay with total ban forever. The courts should be the ones deciding on such matters. We ought to have a civil debate about this. Both sides feel they are right. I also agree that Big Tech is way too powerful and Republicans strongly feel they are suppressed. That ain’t right. Big Tech needs to be held in check. They don’t enforce their policies uniformly, neither is there a due process where both sides of the argument are heard and recorded before a judgement is made. Someone wakes up and clicks a button “Ban” without much recourse for their actions. That’s the problem. We need more objectivity and accountability in the system.
- tomerbd 6y agoSo long free speech and thanks for all the fish.