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I can't help but admit to some schadenfreude here. Where are all the claims of doordash being a private business that can do whatever it wants? Why isn't anyone

• standardUser 5y ago
  Sex work is consensual, doesn't target anyone, does not create a victim, doesn't diminish anyone else's rights, so why would it be comparable to hate-mongers being de-platformed?
  • commandlinefan 5y ago
    > consensual, doesn't target anyone, does not create a victim, doesn't diminish anyone else's rights Neither does tweeting that you won a presidential election but here we are.
    • sleepdreamy 5y ago
      What about starting a failed insurrection? Can we relate that to sex workers as well?
    • pfisch 5y ago
      If it culminates in plans to end democracy it does.
      • henriquez 5y ago
        If an election is rigged and an entrenched Deep State installs a fake president then wouldn’t that also end democracy?
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
  • mlindner 5y ago
    The argument isn't if it's a good or bad thing. It's just pointing out that hypocrisy is going on. If the basis of your argument is JUST that companies can do whatever they like because they're not the government and don't have to follow free speech rules, then you can't turn around and say that they shouldn't be able to do whatever they like in some other situation. The point being made isn't that this is okay behavior. The point being made is that people should be honest with why they're against or for something rather than pretending to appeal to some more basic moral/political/civic reason. (The deeper point is that some on the left and on the right are okay with censorship/deplatforming/refusal of service in specific situations because it was only happening to the people on "the other side". When in reality these are universal negatives and absolutely WILL be applied to your side as well once they become the norm.)
  • colpabar 5y ago
    So, in this instance it's bad because it's happening to people you don't dislike?
    • s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Yes?? Humans have preferences and think some things are good and some are bad.
      • ohCh6zos 5y ago
        Counterpoint. Because sex work is bad for once big tech is doing the right thing.
        • qualudeheart 5y ago
          The worst cases of sex work are those in which the sex workers are forced into it by human traffickers. Wether consensual sex work is good or bad, it’s clear to me that discriminating against victims of human trafficking is a terrible idea. Those people need to be saved from their abusive circumstances. Using the panopticon to ban them from everything only hurts them more.
        • zasdffaa 5y ago
          It certainly can be, but some people do it by choice, and like it, and make good money from it. That's not wrong in my books.
      • colpabar 5y ago
        Fair enough, but if that's your stance, I hope you're honest and open about it. I am not claiming you personally have done this, but so many people immediately jump on the private company defense when someone they dislike is deplatformed, when they really just don't like that person and are glad it happened.
        • s1artibartfast 5y ago
          I think the main problem is that many people fail to distinguish actions that are bad, and actions the government should prevent. There is a big difference between saying "This is bad and this company should stop doing it" and "This is bad and the government should step in". This is made worse, because most people don't even bother to propose a solution and just say "this is bad!" leaving others to fight over the implications of the incomplete thought.
  • coding123 5y ago
    > does not create a victim Isn't that massively debatable? Even if you find someone that says yeah I want to do this - what in their background/life story pushed them into that and made it what they "want"
    • rendall 5y ago
      > Isn't that massively debatable? Of course! Anything is massively debatable, if you want to be unreasonable enough about it. I've had discussions with people who were on the pro side of the "slavery debate", which is a thing apparently, and then tell me off using woke language to stay in my lane. But, yes, all anti-sexwork positions must begin and with the premise and insist that the sexworker does not really have agency. Not really a reasonable perspective, no matter how cleverly you try to twist it.
    • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 5y ago
      I have difficulty following this argument. It seems to me that if I were to apply this to myself that I would appear as a victim of "math work", where I have a background / life story that pushes me to "want" to do math.
    • s1artibartfast 5y ago
      By that definition, basically every person on the planet is a victim. I am a victim of my middle class upbringing that made me want to be highly compensated and do white collar work.
    • Manuel_D 5y ago
      The same could be said of plenty of other jobs. Does your waiter "want" to serve you food? Does your office's janitor "want" to clean toilets? If we adopt the position that workers who do their work because they need to earn a living are victims, then huge swaths of the economy - perhaps the majority of workers - are victims.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • pen2l 5y ago
    The casual characterization of sex work as a victimless phenomenon is a mistake we better not make. Prostitution and sex work is often rooted in poverty: https://dspace.wlu.edu/bitstream/handle/11021/34747/RG38_Woodward_Poverty_2020.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://dspace.wlu.edu/bitstream/handle/11021/34747/RG38_Woo... I especially dislike this unthinking and unconsidered memeing of sex work because it only serves to normalize the profession and has a net-deleterious effect on society.
    • s1artibartfast 5y ago
      >Prostitution and sex work is often rooted in poverty Work that alleviates the hardships of poverty is a good thing. This is a positive good, not a mark against sex work. Same with other low skill jobs with low barriers of entry.
    • standardUser 5y ago
      I know many sex workers and every one of them would tell you to stop spreading this kind of negative propaganda.
      • pen2l 5y ago
        I'd rather that your sex worker acquaintances spend their energy surveying the existing body of academic literature on the subject than to make pleas to me. Not trying to be snarky here, and I'm not mounting a defense for complete prohibition of prostitution and the varying types of sex work, I'm just terrified by the increasing acceptability of the work in common society: I want little girls to have engineers and doctors as role models instead of being prodded into sex work by virtue of its encroaching and increasing presence and exposure, a trade that obliges (commonly) the woman to invest their time pleasing men, a trade that has diminishing returns overtime as they age. Leaving aside the mountain of studies that pinpoint poverty as root of most sex work the continents across the globe and related psychological issues brought on by the experiences later on, if you cannot accept earlier-stated premise, then I reckon we come from differing views and further debate on this forum on this subject will likely be fruitless.
  • everybodyknows 5y ago
    I'm now recalling the case of a woman of my acquaintance who developed a sexually-transmitted disease after her husband patronized a sex worker. Is that not to become a victim?
    • Manuel_D 5y ago
      The same situation happens with non-compensated infidelity. Does it follow that Tinder victimizes people because people use it to cheat on their partners, some of which consequently transmit diseases?
      • slibhb 5y ago
        No but it follows that cheating is wrong...just like prostitution. edit - the intense support for prostitution on HN (mostly computer programmers) will never cease to make me smile.
        • Manuel_D 5y ago
          Sure, infidelity is wrong - regardless of whether it's with a sex worker or in a normal relationship. But it doesn't follow that the former is wrong, across the board. The idea that sex work is wrong because someone could commit infidelity with a sex worker is as non-sensical as claiming bars are immoral because someone could cheat on their spouse with a partner they meet at a bar.
        • interator7 5y ago
          How? Cheating is, well, cheating on your implicit agreement with your spouse/partner. Prostitution, when done correctly, is a consensual agreement between two people. Essentially, there's no case in which cheating is not "wrong." There's many where prostitution isn't.
        • mariusor 5y ago
          Maybe you're blinded by your biases. It's not necessarily support for prostitution that you see (with all the seedy implications that your edit makes) but support for any person to have autonomy of their body in whichever way they see fit, including making a living by selling access to it to other people. The only side of sex work which is "wrong" and should be vilified, are the abuses that are prevalent in our society due to its illegality. Morality is not universal, so yours has no more value than anyone else's.
  • azth 5y ago
    > does not create a victim It does.
• drno123 5y ago
  Exactly this. Twitter can ban whomever they wish, and doordash can refuse orders however they wish. Simple as that.
  • standardUser 5y ago
    That's obviously not true as there are laws in the US making it illegal to discriminate against certain classes. Sex workers are not one of those classes, though they should be.
    • ohCh6zos 5y ago
      People boycott oil companies all the time, why should the class of sex workers be different?
      • standardUser 5y ago
        You have it backwards. Boycotting is a consumer decision, de-platforming is a business decision. We generally have few rules about how consumers make their decisions. We have tons of rules about how businesses operate.
    • jrsj 5y ago
      “Sex work” is just the commodification of women & does not deserve to be legitimized as a profession.
      • standardUser 5y ago
        And no men do sex work? Seems like your worldview is too narrow to really understand this issue.
        • jrsj 5y ago
          A small minority by comparison who aren’t exploited in the same way.
• s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Both arguments fail to distinguish between what a company can legally do, and how consumers can react and feel about it. Sex workers aren't a protected class, but that doesn't mean customers have to like it or shut-up about it. Similarly, McDonald's is private company and can decide to go 100% vegan. That doesn't mean the customers have to like it. The solutions are simple, complain to the company, tell others, and take your money elsewhere
  • imwillofficial 5y ago
    The comment wasn’t about the legality or customer satisfaction with the move. It was highlighting the complete and utter hypocrisy in causes people argue for. It highlights how people care more for their side winning, rather than the principle itself.
    • s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Where exactly is the hypocrisy?? I don't see any in the linked twitter post. It is exhausting to see all these attacks against hypothetical and hypocrit straw men. "people argue this" and "people care about that", with no concrete examples for meaningful discussion
      • imwillofficial 5y ago
        You know exactly what I’m talking about. Which means you’re arguing in bad faith. You’re telling me you are unfamiliar with people arguing that private companies can do as they please when somebody they don’t like gets canceled, then decry free speech restrictions when their side gets the axe? You seriously want references? Go on twitter.
        • s1artibartfast 5y ago
          >You seriously want references? Go on twitter. That's my point. If I go on twitter, I can find people arguing every conceivable combination of arguments. I'm sure many are hypocritical. In this context, neither the twitter post or the replies I saw were calling for government intervention. I just think it is a bizarre social phenomenon to criticize and in this case find schadenfreude in a hypothetical reaction. It is the political equivalent of shouting out into the night because you know some is out there, and laughing that you scared them off. "Im sure someone out has this hypocritical take, and boy do they look stupid"
• ActorNightly 5y ago
  An open food delivery service isn't even needed. The solution is much simpler, and is the subject of a 2016 song by Kevin Gates 2 phones.
• sascha_sl 5y ago
  I'm not sure who you think you're getting back at here. Sex workers aren't a left cancel culture monolith. And it's not like Twitter only bans some people with partiucular politics. Their reporting and review is so bad, I once received a 7 day ban for telling a newspaper to "cease existing" (exact words, probably banworthy had they been aimed at an actual person, but well, wishing bankruptcy on a newspaper isn't exactly the same).
  • colpabar 5y ago
    I am aware my comment is childish and not really worthy of the standards of this website. But I don't mean to "get back" at sex workers, I mean to "get back" at hypocrites who all seem to universally love the private-company/just-build-your-own-X argument when someone they don't like is deplatformed. I find it amusing that no one ever seems to make that argument when someone on their side is the victim. edit: I also just find it very odd and disappointing that so many on the left are so eager to defend the "rights" of massive multinational corporations. As someone who used to be proud to call myself a democrat, what the hell is that about??? >Their reporting and review is so bad, I once received a 7 day ban for telling a newspaper to "cease existing" (exact words, probably banworthy had they been aimed at an actual person, but well, wishing bankruptcy on a newspaper isn't exactly the same). Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about hate speech laws?
    • sascha_sl 5y ago
      I feel very okay about hate speech laws, if they're reasonable. I don't subscribe to the notion of absolute free speech where what is acceptable speech is inevitably a slippery slope and thus you should just allow all of it. No implementation is perfect, but I do think my place of residence (Germany) does reasonably well. I'm also frequently the target of hate speech and a cult that wants to see people like me eliminated from society exists freely on Twitter, but that is not down to it being impossible to moderate them, that's because moderation on Twitter is an uncoordinated afterthought executed by an overworked and underpaid workforce that does not get nuance. For instance, I'm regularly told to "join the 41%". That's code for "trans people that attempt suicide". Twitter doesn't care.
• breadbreadbread 5y ago
  So It sounds like you are conflating this with other platform discrimination issues, perhaps Twitter banning people after repeated misinformation (1) or banking and infrastructure platforms banning N*zis (2) (it's important to note that banking platforms also often ban sex workers and the platforms they use). In the first case, that is banning people for actions that they take directly on their platform that goes against terms of service. Great, easy, we know that that a private business can set rules for their own platform. For the second, I think its reasonable that a company might be cautious allowing certain groups to actively fundraise and recruit if they demonstrate a direct harm to others (hate groups with militias). For this case of Doordash x Sex Workers, the case is a lot less defensible. If true, this would mean that Doordash is extending their terms of service to include off site activity. This does raise some red flags... but from case (2), we know that that can be defensible if A) that action hurts others and B) if the service used directly aids in those acts. A) Consensual Sex Work is not harmful, and the moral panic around it is probably more harmful than the act itself and B) Doordash does not directly aid in the operation of Sex Work... So yeah I think some outrage around this is warranted if it is true.