11 ms·

I'm not even in the US, but all of this banning makes me really curious about what's being banned and why. Something that some of you may have missed: This ban

by tpmx 6y ago

I'm not even in the US, but all of this banning makes me really curious about what's being banned and why. Something that some of you may have missed: This banning thing already moved into the infrastructure/cloud services layer (AWS): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25707959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25707959

ryanSrich 6y ago
So many posts are getting brigaded this weekend. Removing this one now too.
- zionic 6y ago
  This really strengthens/validates everyone who told him to attack big tech sooner.
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    How would that have helped him? He relied on "big tech" to deliver his world view.
  - jimmy2020 6y ago
    he didn't. He thought they are by his side. How Tim Cook Won Donald Trump’s Ear> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tim-cook-won-donald-trumps-ear-11570248040 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tim-cook-won-donald-trumps-...
refurb 6y ago
You make a really good point. It’s basically the Streisand Effect. A bunch of people who didn’t even know who Steve Bannon is are going to go and find out now.
- glandium 6y ago
  And GP's link, which is about Parler, is another example. I hadn't heard of Parler before it was banned.
  - philosopher1234 6y ago
    Yes, there will be a short boost to parler and bannon, and then a long deafening silence. These bans will be effective.
    - shripadk 6y ago
      It won't be. These bans and policies have been going on for a really long time. It is just hitting the US now. It has been happening in India for far too long. Big Tech monopoly has gone unchecked all this while. At least I am happy to see my fellow Indians uninstalling WhatsApp and moving to Signal. The more such alternative services the better. This stronghold of Big Tech on what internet should be has to end and it will end.
      - Pfhreak 6y ago
        Research actually backs up that deplatforming does reduce audience sizes for an outlet. Which makes sense of you believe that some listeners will simply not have the interest in jumping over to a new platform. Repeat several times and with every platform shift the audience reduces.
        shripadk 6y ago
        > Research actually backs up that deplatforming does reduce audience sizes for an outlet. This research was done at a time when there was little to no backlash against Big Tech. When you factor in a billion+ people moving from one platform to another it is not the platform that is deplatforming users but it is the users abandoning the platform. I have seen it happen multiple times in my life: From Yahoo Messenger to Orkut, from Orkut to Myspace, from Myspace to Facebook. I have witnessed these shifts happen in India and it is crazy how quickly these platforms that had an established presence lose their dominance literally overnight. I bet that research you refer to hasn't included the Indian psyche in the mix. We move in hordes. All it takes is for one trusted and respected family member or relative to suggest jumping ship. Everyone just follows the leader blindly. Those companies that understand this psyche of Indians and cater to this mindset will do extremely well in India. But it is a double-edged sword. We don't have attachments to any platform. If we see that the platform is going against us, repeatedly, we just shift en-masse. I have seen it happen numerous times to know this time is no different (the most recent one that comes to mind is public orchestrated ban on TikTok after the Indo-China clashes. The Government was forced to ban TikTok after a majority of Indians demanded that it be banned). In few months WhatsApp will lose its dominance completely. The shift has only just begun. If you don't believe me you can save this HN comment and revisit it in a few months from now.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Steve Bannon is beyond the Streisand Effect. It only works when something obscure is banned. Everyone who might be influenced by Bannon already knows about him.
csa 6y ago
[Note: Trying to present this as factually as possible.] According to what the companies say: - The President incited some people last week to engage in violent behavior at and towards Congress. - There is evidence that further violence is being planned via a variety of platforms. - The platforms are attempting to limit their exposure to facilitating such actions. Some people think that the companies have ulterior motives. I will leave it to you to decide what you think the real reasons are.
- garbagetime 6y ago
  Here's an important question: would it be a good thing or a bad thing if it was very difficult to make plans involving violence on the internet?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bra-ket 6y ago
    there's a good precedent, just send everyone guilty of thoughtcrimes to Gulag, problem solved.
    - dang 6y ago
      We've banned this account for abusing HN with ideological flamewar and ignoring our many requests to stop. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of which ideology they're for or against. We especially ban accounts that have been using HN primarily for that, as yours has. That's a key indicator of bad-faith use of the site, and is obviously against the rules. When this came up yesterday, someone raised the common objection "why not just ban all politics then?" If anyone has that question, the thread is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711241 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
disown 6y ago
A stronger element of the power structure is silencing another. It's simple as that. Look at the relentless pro-censorship brigading on most social media. Lots of money, power and influence is being applied here. If this was china or russia, we'd call it a soft "purge". They'd call it promoting "harmony" or "protecting the people". Not sure what we are going to call it. Seems like whatever battle Trump and his faction was waging behind the scenes the last 4 years failed and he simply failed to win over enough power/influence to his side. We'll never know what really happened, we can just guess. But feels like history is happening. I don't think any of us have lived to through anything like this. I know I certainly haven't.
- greesil 6y ago
  Have you considered that it's not brigading, but a broad swathe of unrelated people genuinely feeling a certain way?
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    A broad swathe of unrelated people systematically manipulated into feeling a certain way. This has been going on since Bush 2.0's 8 years of assault on the truth.
    - greesil 6y ago
      I genuinely can't tell which side you're taking about, one, or the other, or both. I feel like there are crazy people everywhere, ranging from the hyper woke to honest to god nazis. But one group decided to storm congress (which I still haven't wrapped my head around, I'm mentally living in the beforefor times) and by supporting the rule of law I must now be on the side that's not that, even if I have to share the bus with the nutters who believe in "censoring" and thought policing.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > But one group decided to storm congress (which I still haven't wrapped my head around, I'm mentally living in the beforefor times) Before 2018? https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1047935416182235136 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1047935416182235136
josephorjoe 6y ago
what’s being banned is systematic destruction of people’s willingness to believe facts in order to support a world view that is inconsistent with facts. why it is being banned is that it has convinced people to attack the government because they believe the government has done things (for example, “stealing elections”) that it has not done. big tech has apparently decided that they do not want to be blamed when the government has to shoot a bunch of delusional people to stop them from committing violent crimes based on lies
- olah_1 6y ago
  Violent riots have happened many times based on media lies. That part is not novel.
  - josephorjoe 6y ago
    agreed. nothing novel about people lying to convince other people to do something. what’s novel is the centralized nature of social media (in terms of # of people reached from a single source) and the fact that some incredibly wealthy companies control these sources and face an existential risk if their platforms are used to create enough civil unrest that whoever ends up controlling the government is convinced that these companies are too dangerous to leave unregulated.
    - Osiris 6y ago
      Exactly. These companies want to avoid government regulation / oversight. They are taking proactive actions to lessen the blame that would be assigned to them and thus (hopefully) avoid future regulatory action.
      - brg 6y ago
        The problem I see is that they are walking directly in to oversight through their concerted actions. They are going to end up being labeled public utilities (identity, max comm, public market have already been labeled so).
tpmx 6y ago
The AWS banning is what really concerns me. It's a clear escalation. First it's the app level (breached by Apple and Google), then the infrastructure level (breached by AWS - although there are alternatives here. Next up is DNS, I guess? And after that, routing. The ultimate Internet Death Penalty.
- edbob 6y ago
  > What's left after that? We're also seeing the refusal of legal representation, which seems nearly unprecedented. At some point, the only thing left will be civil death [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    This isn't about people having their civil liberties taken away. The social network bans are businesses protecting themselves from people whom threaten their business. Like a fast food restaurant refusing to serve customers who smoke crack in the restaurant. The platform and infrastructure bans are also businesses protecting themselves but not from people, rather from other businesses. This is on level with U-haul banning drug cartels from renting their trucks. No one's civil liberties are being taken away
    - mech422 6y ago
      Indeed, no business wants to carry unnecessary liability. Funny, Didn't see all this crying about censorship when MC & Visa cut off pornhub... edit: just to be clear, I mean when MC & Visa decided pornhub was a potential liability, they cut them off. When companies decide Trump or Parler are a liability - they do the same - they cut them off. Thats just capitalism.
      - throwaway3699 6y ago
        I don't agree that it's 'just capitalism'. Just because I acquire a piece of private property does not necessarily give me the right to do anything I want with it. I can't clobber you over the head with a product I bought just like how many countries have laws to say I can't kick you out of private property that's also a public square.
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
What I’m interested in is how many people here are applauding the banning while liberal voices like Glenn Greenwald, and the ALCU are decrying it. I’m sure some of my conservative friends would laugh if I told them this site makes me look like Regean in comparison to some others. All good fun of course. I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion and ones I disagree with shouldn’t be hidden, but that itself is just my opinion.
- longtimegoogler 6y ago
  Even if those opinions call for murdering journalists? Like many countries in Europe, calls for violence should be illegal. It's also pretty easy to not care about these things if your are a white conservative male and not the target of these things.
colechristensen 6y ago
The far right not-so-fringe elements led by the president tried to overthrow the government last week. If it had gone slightly differently they could easily have murdered a large chunk of the legislature. As a result there’s been a wave of deplatforming of the voices that helped encourage that culture. It is indeed unfortunate that this came to pass but it was a necessary response. When you test the limits and protections, you ultimately change the nature of them. This is why you really want to avoid doing so in a free society because then you’re faced with the negatives of being forced to restrict freedoms to prevent that test from happening again and facing the threat of the next time someone trying, them having learned the lessons of how to test the limits much more effectively.
rasz 6y ago
Huge simplification: After four years someone finally mustered courage to punch the Nazi, and others swiftly followed.

by tpmx 6y ago

ryanSrich 6y ago

So many posts are getting brigaded this weekend. Removing this one now too.

zionic 6y ago
This really strengthens/validates everyone who told him to attack big tech sooner.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  How would that have helped him? He relied on "big tech" to deliver his world view.
- jimmy2020 6y ago
  he didn't. He thought they are by his side. How Tim Cook Won Donald Trump’s Ear> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tim-cook-won-donald-trumps-ear-11570248040 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tim-cook-won-donald-trumps-...

refurb 6y ago

You make a really good point. It’s basically the Streisand Effect. A bunch of people who didn’t even know who Steve Bannon is are going to go and find out now.

glandium 6y ago
And GP's link, which is about Parler, is another example. I hadn't heard of Parler before it was banned.
- philosopher1234 6y ago
  Yes, there will be a short boost to parler and bannon, and then a long deafening silence. These bans will be effective.
  - shripadk 6y ago
    It won't be. These bans and policies have been going on for a really long time. It is just hitting the US now. It has been happening in India for far too long. Big Tech monopoly has gone unchecked all this while. At least I am happy to see my fellow Indians uninstalling WhatsApp and moving to Signal. The more such alternative services the better. This stronghold of Big Tech on what internet should be has to end and it will end.
    - Pfhreak 6y ago
      Research actually backs up that deplatforming does reduce audience sizes for an outlet. Which makes sense of you believe that some listeners will simply not have the interest in jumping over to a new platform. Repeat several times and with every platform shift the audience reduces.
      - shripadk 6y ago
        > Research actually backs up that deplatforming does reduce audience sizes for an outlet. This research was done at a time when there was little to no backlash against Big Tech. When you factor in a billion+ people moving from one platform to another it is not the platform that is deplatforming users but it is the users abandoning the platform. I have seen it happen multiple times in my life: From Yahoo Messenger to Orkut, from Orkut to Myspace, from Myspace to Facebook. I have witnessed these shifts happen in India and it is crazy how quickly these platforms that had an established presence lose their dominance literally overnight. I bet that research you refer to hasn't included the Indian psyche in the mix. We move in hordes. All it takes is for one trusted and respected family member or relative to suggest jumping ship. Everyone just follows the leader blindly. Those companies that understand this psyche of Indians and cater to this mindset will do extremely well in India. But it is a double-edged sword. We don't have attachments to any platform. If we see that the platform is going against us, repeatedly, we just shift en-masse. I have seen it happen numerous times to know this time is no different (the most recent one that comes to mind is public orchestrated ban on TikTok after the Indo-China clashes. The Government was forced to ban TikTok after a majority of Indians demanded that it be banned). In few months WhatsApp will lose its dominance completely. The shift has only just begun. If you don't believe me you can save this HN comment and revisit it in a few months from now.
colechristensen 6y ago
Steve Bannon is beyond the Streisand Effect. It only works when something obscure is banned. Everyone who might be influenced by Bannon already knows about him.

csa 6y ago

[Note: Trying to present this as factually as possible.] According to what the companies say: - The President incited some people last week to engage in violent behavior at and towards Congress. - There is evidence that further violence is being planned via a variety of platforms. - The platforms are attempting to limit their exposure to facilitating such actions. Some people think that the companies have ulterior motives. I will leave it to you to decide what you think the real reasons are.

garbagetime 6y ago
Here's an important question: would it be a good thing or a bad thing if it was very difficult to make plans involving violence on the internet?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bra-ket 6y ago
  there's a good precedent, just send everyone guilty of thoughtcrimes to Gulag, problem solved.
  - dang 6y ago
    We've banned this account for abusing HN with ideological flamewar and ignoring our many requests to stop. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of which ideology they're for or against. We especially ban accounts that have been using HN primarily for that, as yours has. That's a key indicator of bad-faith use of the site, and is obviously against the rules. When this came up yesterday, someone raised the common objection "why not just ban all politics then?" If anyone has that question, the thread is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711241 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

disown 6y ago

A stronger element of the power structure is silencing another. It's simple as that. Look at the relentless pro-censorship brigading on most social media. Lots of money, power and influence is being applied here. If this was china or russia, we'd call it a soft "purge". They'd call it promoting "harmony" or "protecting the people". Not sure what we are going to call it. Seems like whatever battle Trump and his faction was waging behind the scenes the last 4 years failed and he simply failed to win over enough power/influence to his side. We'll never know what really happened, we can just guess. But feels like history is happening. I don't think any of us have lived to through anything like this. I know I certainly haven't.

greesil 6y ago
Have you considered that it's not brigading, but a broad swathe of unrelated people genuinely feeling a certain way?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  A broad swathe of unrelated people systematically manipulated into feeling a certain way. This has been going on since Bush 2.0's 8 years of assault on the truth.
  - greesil 6y ago
    I genuinely can't tell which side you're taking about, one, or the other, or both. I feel like there are crazy people everywhere, ranging from the hyper woke to honest to god nazis. But one group decided to storm congress (which I still haven't wrapped my head around, I'm mentally living in the beforefor times) and by supporting the rule of law I must now be on the side that's not that, even if I have to share the bus with the nutters who believe in "censoring" and thought policing.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > But one group decided to storm congress (which I still haven't wrapped my head around, I'm mentally living in the beforefor times) Before 2018? https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1047935416182235136 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1047935416182235136

josephorjoe 6y ago

what’s being banned is systematic destruction of people’s willingness to believe facts in order to support a world view that is inconsistent with facts. why it is being banned is that it has convinced people to attack the government because they believe the government has done things (for example, “stealing elections”) that it has not done. big tech has apparently decided that they do not want to be blamed when the government has to shoot a bunch of delusional people to stop them from committing violent crimes based on lies

olah_1 6y ago
Violent riots have happened many times based on media lies. That part is not novel.
- josephorjoe 6y ago
  agreed. nothing novel about people lying to convince other people to do something. what’s novel is the centralized nature of social media (in terms of # of people reached from a single source) and the fact that some incredibly wealthy companies control these sources and face an existential risk if their platforms are used to create enough civil unrest that whoever ends up controlling the government is convinced that these companies are too dangerous to leave unregulated.
  - Osiris 6y ago
    Exactly. These companies want to avoid government regulation / oversight. They are taking proactive actions to lessen the blame that would be assigned to them and thus (hopefully) avoid future regulatory action.
    - brg 6y ago
      The problem I see is that they are walking directly in to oversight through their concerted actions. They are going to end up being labeled public utilities (identity, max comm, public market have already been labeled so).

tpmx 6y ago

The AWS banning is what really concerns me. It's a clear escalation. First it's the app level (breached by Apple and Google), then the infrastructure level (breached by AWS - although there are alternatives here. Next up is DNS, I guess? And after that, routing. The ultimate Internet Death Penalty.

edbob 6y ago
> What's left after that? We're also seeing the refusal of legal representation, which seems nearly unprecedented. At some point, the only thing left will be civil death [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death
- cptskippy 6y ago
  This isn't about people having their civil liberties taken away. The social network bans are businesses protecting themselves from people whom threaten their business. Like a fast food restaurant refusing to serve customers who smoke crack in the restaurant. The platform and infrastructure bans are also businesses protecting themselves but not from people, rather from other businesses. This is on level with U-haul banning drug cartels from renting their trucks. No one's civil liberties are being taken away
  - mech422 6y ago
    Indeed, no business wants to carry unnecessary liability. Funny, Didn't see all this crying about censorship when MC & Visa cut off pornhub... edit: just to be clear, I mean when MC & Visa decided pornhub was a potential liability, they cut them off. When companies decide Trump or Parler are a liability - they do the same - they cut them off. Thats just capitalism.
    - throwaway3699 6y ago
      I don't agree that it's 'just capitalism'. Just because I acquire a piece of private property does not necessarily give me the right to do anything I want with it. I can't clobber you over the head with a product I bought just like how many countries have laws to say I can't kick you out of private property that's also a public square.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago

What I’m interested in is how many people here are applauding the banning while liberal voices like Glenn Greenwald, and the ALCU are decrying it. I’m sure some of my conservative friends would laugh if I told them this site makes me look like Regean in comparison to some others. All good fun of course. I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion and ones I disagree with shouldn’t be hidden, but that itself is just my opinion.

longtimegoogler 6y ago
Even if those opinions call for murdering journalists? Like many countries in Europe, calls for violence should be illegal. It's also pretty easy to not care about these things if your are a white conservative male and not the target of these things.

colechristensen 6y ago

The far right not-so-fringe elements led by the president tried to overthrow the government last week. If it had gone slightly differently they could easily have murdered a large chunk of the legislature. As a result there’s been a wave of deplatforming of the voices that helped encourage that culture. It is indeed unfortunate that this came to pass but it was a necessary response. When you test the limits and protections, you ultimately change the nature of them. This is why you really want to avoid doing so in a free society because then you’re faced with the negatives of being forced to restrict freedoms to prevent that test from happening again and facing the threat of the next time someone trying, them having learned the lessons of how to test the limits much more effectively.

rasz 6y ago

Huge simplification: After four years someone finally mustered courage to punch the Nazi, and others swiftly followed.