4 ms·

Get Ready for the 'No-Buy' List

version_five 5y ago
I like how he calls out what is going on as Populism. Its interesting to think how a few years ago, the spectre of populism was mainly seen as a threat from the right. There was Orban, LePenn, the PIS in Poland, Bolsonaro, Trump, etc. (And to be clear, evidence supported right wing populism as a threat, although there were left wing variants too). And then suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of a serious populist threat that is not coming from the right, but from both a one-size-fits-all technocratic front, and what some people call the woke left (personally I don't think the characterization as "left" is accurate or adds value). My point is, across some key areas, we are now in a regime where recourse to due process and liberties normally afforded to liberal democratic societies has been dropped in the name of what the (real or percieved) majority is pushing for. That is populism, that everyone agrees is bad when it runs against something they want, but that somehow people are ok with when it aligns with their desires. It's nice to see this being called out.
- telxos 5y ago
  Also using populism + race in a moral context to gain political power. We have seen this one before.
boring_twenties 5y ago
Hm, if only there was a technology that allowed for online payments without the possibility of censorship.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Maybe call it ByteDollar or something like that.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I'm partial to "eShekels"
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Pesos Electronicas!
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  I'm really not a fan of cryptocurrency but yeah, this is it's ace card. It's "store of value" is absolutely terrible though. If someone pays me $10k for a used car, I know that I'll have $10k in 6 months. With bitcoin I could have $5k or less.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dane-pgp 5y ago
> If you really believe our democracy barely survived a stress test these last several years, and don’t wish to subject it to another, the last thing you should do is create hordes of desperate people, denied a voice and livelihood, and primed to be rallied to a future autocrat’s cause. Or in other words "That's a nice democracy you have there... It would be a pity if someone came along and insurrected it." The logic isn't necessarily wrong, but such an argument needs to be made explicit, and placed in the context of a wider strategic and moral landscape. It seems to be saying "Big platforms can do whatever they like, unless their actions are used by a potential autocrat to rally supporters", which is a position that fails to defend Freedom of Speech from either the whims of the big platforms, or the threats of the potential autocrats.
- chromatin 5y ago
  I don’t take it at all as the threat you portray it as. Instead, it is a sage warning — I fear the man who has nothing left to lose. Let’s be honest, our society has major cracks at the seams, and it is prudent to be worried about the ripping social fabric leading to worsening unrest, and, ultimately violence. (Apologies for the terribly mixed metaphors)
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    > I fear the man who has nothing left to lose. So much this.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > I fear the man who has nothing left to lose. Does taking away a man's Twitter account really mean he has nothing left to lose? I will grant you that if (or when) big platforms collude together to prevent millions of people from buying and selling, that will lead to some desperate people deciding they need to resort to violence to survive, but that's not what we've seen so far and it's not the stated goal of the big platforms. The existing violence we saw was not a reaction to people being censored, but instead arguably a result of lies about the election spreading unimpeded due to a lack of censorship. To argue that it was censorship that triggered the problem (and that a few people losing their social media accounts justifies an insurrection) is the tail dangerously wagging the dog. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not pro-censorship, and I wouldn't trust big platforms to decide what the truth is, or what "dangerous ideas" need to be hidden from people. I'm just pointing out that the argument of "If you do this (technically legal) thing, you will be met with violence" is not automatically a moral or decisive one, even if it is correct.
calmd 5y ago
A reminder that Bari is against cancel culture until you criticize Israel. She is such a hypocrite: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...
- l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago
  Thank you. However, the article is written by David Sacks.
betwixthewires 5y ago
It is getting crazy out there. But there is a silver lining. Companies have always grown, become dominant in their markets, then leaned on their sheer size to maintain supremacy, abuse their users and generally rest on their laurels. You look at any big company that is now gone, this is exactly what they did. Blockbuster is my favorite example, but the music industry did this too, and the film industry is currently going through a disruption that is the result of this mindset. These social sites and PayPal and the like, theyre making themselves fragile against disruption by doing things like this. They're actively creating disruptive opportunities in their own industries by making this ridiculous proposition of disallowing customers the norm. They think their size can stop this disruption, just like every single dead company of the past. They're killing themselves and I for one am very excited about it.
- l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago
  Have they ever partnered with the government to such an extent?
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Of course they have, do you think the government is just now getting in the business of leaning on private enterprise? You had the Big Ben system for US telephony, you had Operation Mockingbird which supposedly ended, you had many government agencies contracting with studios to produce propaganda (the most well known of these is wartime propaganda to counteract Nazi propaganda), fruit companies, oil companies, the lost goes on.
raffraffraff 5y ago
If you can influence the department that makes these decisions at <payment provider>, you've got McCarthyism-as-a-service. For anyone who thinks that their internal thought-police department will use that power wisely, look at the diversity and inclusion dept at US medical schools that are right now trying to ban the use of terms like 'male' and 'female', which are fundamental to medical practice. There is no line that cannot be crossed, by these people, when they are allowed to define what is acceptable. And there is no gold standard method for deciding what is acceptable either. For payment systems, it should come down to this: "Is it legal?". Full stop.

I like how he calls out what is going on as Populism. Its interesting to think how a few years ago, the spectre of populism was mainly seen as a threat from the right. There was Orban, LePenn, the PIS in Poland, Bolsonaro, Trump, etc. (And to be clear, evidence supported right wing populism as a threat, although there were left wing variants too). And then suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of a serious populist threat that is not coming from the right, but from both a one-size-fits-all technocratic front, and what some people call the woke left (personally I don't think the characterization as "left" is accurate or adds value). My point is, across some key areas, we are now in a regime where recourse to due process and liberties normally afforded to liberal democratic societies has been dropped in the name of what the (real or percieved) majority is pushing for. That is populism, that everyone agrees is bad when it runs against something they want, but that somehow people are ok with when it aligns with their desires. It's nice to see this being called out.

telxos 5y ago
Also using populism + race in a moral context to gain political power. We have seen this one before.

boring_twenties 5y ago

Hm, if only there was a technology that allowed for online payments without the possibility of censorship.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
Maybe call it ByteDollar or something like that.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I'm partial to "eShekels"
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Pesos Electronicas!
raffraffraff 5y ago
I'm really not a fan of cryptocurrency but yeah, this is it's ace card. It's "store of value" is absolutely terrible though. If someone pays me $10k for a used car, I know that I'll have $10k in 6 months. With bitcoin I could have $5k or less.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dane-pgp 5y ago

> If you really believe our democracy barely survived a stress test these last several years, and don’t wish to subject it to another, the last thing you should do is create hordes of desperate people, denied a voice and livelihood, and primed to be rallied to a future autocrat’s cause. Or in other words "That's a nice democracy you have there... It would be a pity if someone came along and insurrected it." The logic isn't necessarily wrong, but such an argument needs to be made explicit, and placed in the context of a wider strategic and moral landscape. It seems to be saying "Big platforms can do whatever they like, unless their actions are used by a potential autocrat to rally supporters", which is a position that fails to defend Freedom of Speech from either the whims of the big platforms, or the threats of the potential autocrats.

chromatin 5y ago
I don’t take it at all as the threat you portray it as. Instead, it is a sage warning — I fear the man who has nothing left to lose. Let’s be honest, our society has major cracks at the seams, and it is prudent to be worried about the ripping social fabric leading to worsening unrest, and, ultimately violence. (Apologies for the terribly mixed metaphors)
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  > I fear the man who has nothing left to lose. So much this.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > I fear the man who has nothing left to lose. Does taking away a man's Twitter account really mean he has nothing left to lose? I will grant you that if (or when) big platforms collude together to prevent millions of people from buying and selling, that will lead to some desperate people deciding they need to resort to violence to survive, but that's not what we've seen so far and it's not the stated goal of the big platforms. The existing violence we saw was not a reaction to people being censored, but instead arguably a result of lies about the election spreading unimpeded due to a lack of censorship. To argue that it was censorship that triggered the problem (and that a few people losing their social media accounts justifies an insurrection) is the tail dangerously wagging the dog. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not pro-censorship, and I wouldn't trust big platforms to decide what the truth is, or what "dangerous ideas" need to be hidden from people. I'm just pointing out that the argument of "If you do this (technically legal) thing, you will be met with violence" is not automatically a moral or decisive one, even if it is correct.

calmd 5y ago

A reminder that Bari is against cancel culture until you criticize Israel. She is such a hypocrite: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago
Thank you. However, the article is written by David Sacks.

betwixthewires 5y ago

It is getting crazy out there. But there is a silver lining. Companies have always grown, become dominant in their markets, then leaned on their sheer size to maintain supremacy, abuse their users and generally rest on their laurels. You look at any big company that is now gone, this is exactly what they did. Blockbuster is my favorite example, but the music industry did this too, and the film industry is currently going through a disruption that is the result of this mindset. These social sites and PayPal and the like, theyre making themselves fragile against disruption by doing things like this. They're actively creating disruptive opportunities in their own industries by making this ridiculous proposition of disallowing customers the norm. They think their size can stop this disruption, just like every single dead company of the past. They're killing themselves and I for one am very excited about it.

l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago
Have they ever partnered with the government to such an extent?
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Of course they have, do you think the government is just now getting in the business of leaning on private enterprise? You had the Big Ben system for US telephony, you had Operation Mockingbird which supposedly ended, you had many government agencies contracting with studios to produce propaganda (the most well known of these is wartime propaganda to counteract Nazi propaganda), fruit companies, oil companies, the lost goes on.

raffraffraff 5y ago

If you can influence the department that makes these decisions at <payment provider>, you've got McCarthyism-as-a-service. For anyone who thinks that their internal thought-police department will use that power wisely, look at the diversity and inclusion dept at US medical schools that are right now trying to ban the use of terms like 'male' and 'female', which are fundamental to medical practice. There is no line that cannot be crossed, by these people, when they are allowed to define what is acceptable. And there is no gold standard method for deciding what is acceptable either. For payment systems, it should come down to this: "Is it legal?". Full stop.