8 ms·

“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,

by 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 ago
Americans 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 ago
  HN 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 ago
  It’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 ago
  To 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".
  - thrwawy12345 6y ago
    Yea. Now seems like a weird time to declare that fascism hasn’t taken hold, given all the censorship.
    - LarvaFX 6y ago
      Learn from Germany: Das Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Artikel 18 Wer die Freiheit der Meinungsäußerung, insbesondere die Pressefreiheit (Artikel 5 Abs. 1), die Lehrfreiheit (Artikel 5 Abs. 3), die Versammlungsfreiheit (Artikel 8), die Vereinigungsfreiheit (Artikel 9), das Brief-, Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnis (Artikel 10), das Eigentum (Artikel 14) oder das Asylrecht (Artikel 16a) zum Kampfe gegen die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung mißbraucht, verwirkt diese Grundrechte.
Dumblydorr 6y ago
You're pointing out Snowden in 13 and Trump in 16 and implying there's a causal relationship between the two. This is ludicrous, Trump was elected due to numerous factors, it'd be hard to place Snowden in even the top 10. immigration, trade, feckless GOP, crowded primary field, biased dem primary, weak dem candidate, I could make massive list more important than Snowden. All trump's supporters would say about Snowden is that he's a traitor, they'd understand or care little about what he leaked. Maybe this is a HN bubble, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't be able to tell you what Snowden even specifically leaked...or rather, the journalists leaked on his and our behalf. Trump is not the leader of the free world any longer. He's clearly on the way out, and he invited violence while the door was closing. Even the weakened GOP must admit he is a wannabe dictator, and his rhetoric led to 5 deaths, nevermind untold thousands to pandemic. So no, I think there is not much slippery slope implication to deplatforming insane people like Trump, Alex Jones, KKK members, Nazis, terrorists, etc. Why should these people retain the privilege of posting harmful and murderous content on a company's website? Where in the constitution is tweeting an enshrined right?
- Rexxar 6y ago
  > You're pointing out Snowden in 13 and Trump in 16 and implying there's a causal relationship between the two. Your are misinterpreting his comment. He says that you can't 100% trust in long term government/administration. There will always be a bad guy somewhere at some moment.
weixiyen 6y ago
> 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. Most of the public was pro-Snowden, especially the tech community. Telegram rose like a rocketship as a result of concerns over NSA backdoors.
ramraj07 6y ago
Can you prove that the same people who said "so what" to Snowden said "this is fine to these tech actions? My personal experience is that the people who opposed to mass surveillance are fully in support of these actions. At least I do. It's fairly clear where these companies are drawing a line, and for most people like me, it's a perfectly acceptable line. Being the cause of actual violence and death means you get to be banned. Fairly clear? The more murky question is people who think all cake shops should serve gay weddings but twitter should also be allowed to ban trump. Tough call and nuance involved there, but I doubt there's much ambiguity separating where one stands on Snowden's revalations and these recent bans
- LadyCailin 6y ago
  I'm one of those "murky question" people, and here's my take on it. Discrimination is discrimination, and can and should be prohibited. Free speech was not invented when Twitter and Stripe were created, and thus it cannot be deprived by being banned from these platforms. Fomenting violent revolution is most certainly worth preventing, as is discrimination against people for their immutable traits. Fomenting violence is not an immutable trait. I see the point people try to make when they equate the two, but I don’t think it’s a good one, because then it equates lgbt discrimination with private company platform bans for fomenting violence, implying that if you have one, you must tolerate the other, but that’s not true. One can ban discrimination while at the same time allowing Twitter or whoever to ban people promoting violence on/with their platforms. The principals are internally logically consistent, even if one disagrees with them.
acdha 6y ago
> 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 This is … not even remotely how I remember that period, more of a sense of outrage and companies rushing to encrypt internal connections and deploy PFS. > 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? This isn’t a great fit: Trump isn’t being banned for being a conservative or talking policies, but for inciting violence which lead to a deadly mob. If all that happens are companies enforcing their terms of service against violence or hate speech evenly, that bothers me a lot less — especially since in this case it’s treating everyone consistently rather than singling him out for special treatment.
root_axis 6y ago
> When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide Wow, that's some impressive revisionist history, unfortunately for you its possible for us to actually look back in time and see exactly what was said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849932
osgovernment 6y ago
Strength through adversity? Maybe this will be the fire needed to improve decentralization and alternative currencies that are more censorship resistant?
Griffinsauce 6y ago
> 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? 1. "leader of the free world" is an incredibly arrogant statement. 2. He can be banned for the same reason that the rest of us can: inciting violence. I'd argue that having equal rules for everyone (or even _stricter_ ones for politicians) is good and healthy. The banning of people inciting violence gives me hope.
- nailer 6y ago
  Trump called for a March on the Capitol building. This is a very common thing for politicians to do. This does not constitute inciting violence.
  - leokennis 6y ago
    Please. The "nod nod wink wink" is extremely obvious in any Trump speech.
    - LadyCailin 6y ago
      And further, the "we love you" comment in the midst of it.
    - nailer 6y ago
      That's vague and could be used to ban any left wing politician that organised a March. Is that what you want?
  - tadfisher 6y ago
    You may read his statements so, but his followers treated them as marching orders. https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347873498925064194 https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347873498925064194
- ergocoder 6y ago
  It's your opinion that Trump incited violence. If you ask Trump opposition, they will all say he should go to jail for 1000 years for hundreds of crime that Trump committed. I'm not close to he situation, but I'd feel much better if a judgement like this actually comes from a trained judge with a proper due process.
awb 6y ago
> “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Actually, the problem is that those with power can get away with this but others can’t. Think five minutes into the future if you will where there are no consequences if you have enough political power. Some day that might be a socialist or a communist or a white nationalist or a fascist encouraging an armed group to intimidate the legislature. Will we encourage companies to continue to do business with them as well? Or do we specifically grant Republicans and Democrats the privilege to abuse the power of their office? Imagine Jamal from down the road hammering his neighbors with lies about an election and then organizing a march into the capital that beats a police officer to death with the goal of killing the VP of the US. Jamal had no status, no privilege, no financial resources and no one to pardon him. No one is worried about Jamal or his supporters ever attaining political power and seeking revenge because they have no connections, no wealth and no access to the halls of power. No communities are “healed” by not prosecuting Jamal, so he ends up going to jail for a long time. On the flip side, Stripe has never heard of Jamal so he gets to keep his preferred payment processor after he’s released from prison. Meanwhile Trump who’s been pardoned and is living under Secret Service detail at Mar a Lago is still somehow “not as equal” as Jamal because Trump is only able to make money online through other payment processors but not his preferred Stripe gateway.
astura 6y ago
>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. Wtf? Nobody said anything of the sort, and if they did they would have been downvoted to the maximum. This is just totally absurd revisionist, we were only five years removed from the W Bush administration, which committed legitimate war crimes and left office with a 22% approval rating.

by beltex 6y ago

jevgeni 6y ago

Americans 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 ago
HN 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 ago
It’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 ago
To 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".
- thrwawy12345 6y ago
  Yea. Now seems like a weird time to declare that fascism hasn’t taken hold, given all the censorship.
  - LarvaFX 6y ago
    Learn from Germany: Das Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Artikel 18 Wer die Freiheit der Meinungsäußerung, insbesondere die Pressefreiheit (Artikel 5 Abs. 1), die Lehrfreiheit (Artikel 5 Abs. 3), die Versammlungsfreiheit (Artikel 8), die Vereinigungsfreiheit (Artikel 9), das Brief-, Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnis (Artikel 10), das Eigentum (Artikel 14) oder das Asylrecht (Artikel 16a) zum Kampfe gegen die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung mißbraucht, verwirkt diese Grundrechte.

Dumblydorr 6y ago

You're pointing out Snowden in 13 and Trump in 16 and implying there's a causal relationship between the two. This is ludicrous, Trump was elected due to numerous factors, it'd be hard to place Snowden in even the top 10. immigration, trade, feckless GOP, crowded primary field, biased dem primary, weak dem candidate, I could make massive list more important than Snowden. All trump's supporters would say about Snowden is that he's a traitor, they'd understand or care little about what he leaked. Maybe this is a HN bubble, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't be able to tell you what Snowden even specifically leaked...or rather, the journalists leaked on his and our behalf. Trump is not the leader of the free world any longer. He's clearly on the way out, and he invited violence while the door was closing. Even the weakened GOP must admit he is a wannabe dictator, and his rhetoric led to 5 deaths, nevermind untold thousands to pandemic. So no, I think there is not much slippery slope implication to deplatforming insane people like Trump, Alex Jones, KKK members, Nazis, terrorists, etc. Why should these people retain the privilege of posting harmful and murderous content on a company's website? Where in the constitution is tweeting an enshrined right?

Rexxar 6y ago
> You're pointing out Snowden in 13 and Trump in 16 and implying there's a causal relationship between the two. Your are misinterpreting his comment. He says that you can't 100% trust in long term government/administration. There will always be a bad guy somewhere at some moment.

weixiyen 6y ago

> 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. Most of the public was pro-Snowden, especially the tech community. Telegram rose like a rocketship as a result of concerns over NSA backdoors.

ramraj07 6y ago

Can you prove that the same people who said "so what" to Snowden said "this is fine to these tech actions? My personal experience is that the people who opposed to mass surveillance are fully in support of these actions. At least I do. It's fairly clear where these companies are drawing a line, and for most people like me, it's a perfectly acceptable line. Being the cause of actual violence and death means you get to be banned. Fairly clear? The more murky question is people who think all cake shops should serve gay weddings but twitter should also be allowed to ban trump. Tough call and nuance involved there, but I doubt there's much ambiguity separating where one stands on Snowden's revalations and these recent bans

LadyCailin 6y ago
I'm one of those "murky question" people, and here's my take on it. Discrimination is discrimination, and can and should be prohibited. Free speech was not invented when Twitter and Stripe were created, and thus it cannot be deprived by being banned from these platforms. Fomenting violent revolution is most certainly worth preventing, as is discrimination against people for their immutable traits. Fomenting violence is not an immutable trait. I see the point people try to make when they equate the two, but I don’t think it’s a good one, because then it equates lgbt discrimination with private company platform bans for fomenting violence, implying that if you have one, you must tolerate the other, but that’s not true. One can ban discrimination while at the same time allowing Twitter or whoever to ban people promoting violence on/with their platforms. The principals are internally logically consistent, even if one disagrees with them.

acdha 6y ago

> 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 This is … not even remotely how I remember that period, more of a sense of outrage and companies rushing to encrypt internal connections and deploy PFS. > 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? This isn’t a great fit: Trump isn’t being banned for being a conservative or talking policies, but for inciting violence which lead to a deadly mob. If all that happens are companies enforcing their terms of service against violence or hate speech evenly, that bothers me a lot less — especially since in this case it’s treating everyone consistently rather than singling him out for special treatment.

root_axis 6y ago

> When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide Wow, that's some impressive revisionist history, unfortunately for you its possible for us to actually look back in time and see exactly what was said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849932

osgovernment 6y ago

Strength through adversity? Maybe this will be the fire needed to improve decentralization and alternative currencies that are more censorship resistant?

Griffinsauce 6y ago

> 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? 1. "leader of the free world" is an incredibly arrogant statement. 2. He can be banned for the same reason that the rest of us can: inciting violence. I'd argue that having equal rules for everyone (or even _stricter_ ones for politicians) is good and healthy. The banning of people inciting violence gives me hope.

nailer 6y ago
Trump called for a March on the Capitol building. This is a very common thing for politicians to do. This does not constitute inciting violence.
- leokennis 6y ago
  Please. The "nod nod wink wink" is extremely obvious in any Trump speech.
  - LadyCailin 6y ago
    And further, the "we love you" comment in the midst of it.
  - nailer 6y ago
    That's vague and could be used to ban any left wing politician that organised a March. Is that what you want?
- tadfisher 6y ago
  You may read his statements so, but his followers treated them as marching orders. https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347873498925064194 https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347873498925064194
ergocoder 6y ago
It's your opinion that Trump incited violence. If you ask Trump opposition, they will all say he should go to jail for 1000 years for hundreds of crime that Trump committed. I'm not close to he situation, but I'd feel much better if a judgement like this actually comes from a trained judge with a proper due process.

awb 6y ago

> “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Actually, the problem is that those with power can get away with this but others can’t. Think five minutes into the future if you will where there are no consequences if you have enough political power. Some day that might be a socialist or a communist or a white nationalist or a fascist encouraging an armed group to intimidate the legislature. Will we encourage companies to continue to do business with them as well? Or do we specifically grant Republicans and Democrats the privilege to abuse the power of their office? Imagine Jamal from down the road hammering his neighbors with lies about an election and then organizing a march into the capital that beats a police officer to death with the goal of killing the VP of the US. Jamal had no status, no privilege, no financial resources and no one to pardon him. No one is worried about Jamal or his supporters ever attaining political power and seeking revenge because they have no connections, no wealth and no access to the halls of power. No communities are “healed” by not prosecuting Jamal, so he ends up going to jail for a long time. On the flip side, Stripe has never heard of Jamal so he gets to keep his preferred payment processor after he’s released from prison. Meanwhile Trump who’s been pardoned and is living under Secret Service detail at Mar a Lago is still somehow “not as equal” as Jamal because Trump is only able to make money online through other payment processors but not his preferred Stripe gateway.

astura 6y ago

>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. Wtf? Nobody said anything of the sort, and if they did they would have been downvoted to the maximum. This is just totally absurd revisionist, we were only five years removed from the W Bush administration, which committed legitimate war crimes and left office with a 22% approval rating.