5 ms·

I'm not a fan of this guy's message at all, but the fact that you can be so easily and totally de-platformed should be a clarion call for everyone. Platforms w

I'm not a fan of this guy's message at all, but the fact that you can be so easily and totally de-platformed should be a clarion call for everyone. Platforms wield too much power and can wholly and totally destroy us. Run afoul of their rules just once (or maybe even not at all), and your business or identity gets totally erased with no recourse. This is a shameful and scary state for us to be in. Serfs of the platforms. If the political zeitgeist continues to become even more extreme, you might get silenced for questioning the origins of a virus, being LGBT, or expressing displeasure at a certain political candidate or business leader. Left or right. It should be impossible to remove someone from banking, PayPal, Shopify, social media, etc. -- unless they're actively breaking federal law. And even then, there should be a legal process in place to reclaim your identity and real estate. If legislation won't help us, then we need to build peer-to-peer (not federated) systems that will.

chatmasta 2y ago
I can understand the decision of a platform to remove the business account, or the posts of that account, which are promoting the sale of an item that’s basically inciting terrorism. But the decision to also ban his personal account seems like an overreaction.
- echelon 2y ago
  I absolutely detest this person's message and think they're a deeply flawed human being, but the power asymmetry and mechanisms to de-person are orders of magnitude more terrifying. This is 1984 type stuff. The banking pieces probably fall afoul of AML/CTF rules, which is fine. But the social media bans, total wipe of accounts, no process in place for restitution, and no communication are literally mechanisms of de-personing.
  - semiquaver 2y ago
    > literally mechanisms of de-personing A person is not the same thing as their social media account. “Literally de-personing” is usually called murder and is already illegal.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      They are referring to 1984 where any hints on your existence got erased from public knowledge. And I think that there are a few cases where that happened in real life as well, IIRC under Stalin.
  - snakeyjake 2y ago
    I find the act of banning someone from tiktok being equated with "de-personing" them extremely interesting. I think we have very different perspectives on what it means to be human, how much all of this (waves around hand in the general direction of social media) is worth, and what is important. I value tiktok, and all other social media platforms, at nothing. $0.00, maximum. If you built your business on them, you fucked up. If you use them for news, you fucked up. And if you feel that they are needed or important, you DEFINITELY fucked up.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      The problem is that many governments are starting use social media as official platforms. Want to know of road closures? Better check the relevant DoTs Twitter pages.
      - chatmasta 2y ago
        That’s a legitimate problem, but it’s one that you should take up with DoT, not Twitter. For critical services it may even be illegal, since you can’t access Twitter pages without logging into Twitter, and you can’t signup to Twitter without passing a CAPTCHA and other user-hostile gating mechanisms.
semiquaver 2y ago
> It should be impossible to remove someone from banking, PayPal, Shopify, social media, etc. One of the freedoms enshrined by the first amendment is the right to choose who you associate with. This also applies to businesses. It’s absurd to suggest that every company should be forced to do business with every person. As a freelancer I can choose my clients. I would hate to live in a world where a bad client could force me to continue to work with them unless they broke the law.
- scotty79 2y ago
  > This also applies to businesses. That's a very bad idea. Because then you have to create a myriad of laws that forbids discrimination on ever growing number of things. It turns ensuring everybody's basic economic freedom into a game of lagging whack-a-mole. If a business advertises a product or a service to the public with a price they shouldn't be allowed to refuse the product or a service to anybody willing to pay the price.
- foolswisdom 2y ago
  That's true until you become big enough that common carrier regulations apply to you. Besides, how does the first amendment enshrine that?
  - foolswisdom 2y ago
    To frame it differently, if you want people and businesses to do whatever they want, you need to make sure that the businesses they depend don't become platforms without meaningful competition. But of course the dream of every company is to be so big that they essentially own the market / space.
    - linksnapzz 2y ago
      Quite literally the Rockefeller/Buffett/Gates playbook. "Competition is a sin!"
  - semiquaver 2y ago
    > how does the first amendment enshrine [the right of association] Courts have interpreted “assembly” to include this right. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALDE_00013139/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALD...
EA-3167 2y ago
I don't disagree with your message, but man... I disagree with the idea that putting together a hit-list in the style popularized by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq is protected speech. There's a MASSIVE and obvious 1st amendment issue here, but in the sense of "Incitement to murder isn't covered under the 1st amendment" sense. So yes, our reliance on platforms which can cut us off is a problem, the chilling effect on online speech is a problem. But not over this.
- wnoise 2y ago
  Normally to be covered under "incitement", it has to be a call for imminent unlawful behavior.
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    A hit-list of specific individuals seems like it falls under that category, doubly so when it's clearly intended to be a "continuation" of the UHC CEO assassination.
    - idlewords 2y ago
      The guy also posted "the CEO must die" to his Instagram.
      - undersuit 2y ago
        Maybe you should apply HN comment etiquette outside of HN. >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. The strongest good faith interpretation of "the CEO must die" is that it is not a call to action for murdering "the CEO". But we'll let the author clarify: >“The CEO is more than an individual it is a figurehead of the capitalist order,” he wrote. “When we say the ceo must die, we mean the structure of capitalism must be broken.”
        idlewords 2y ago
themaninthedark 2y ago
>you might get silenced for questioning the origins of a virus I think we sped past that mile marker a long time ago. We have been warning that speech moderation and rules about "distasteful speech" and the like would end up hurting those who were advocating for it but I guess it requires a generational learning event. I guess until it gets bad enough that we decide that ideas regarding free speech and censorship should apply to corporations we are left with what Mr. Munroe had to say: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/

chatmasta 2y ago

I can understand the decision of a platform to remove the business account, or the posts of that account, which are promoting the sale of an item that’s basically inciting terrorism. But the decision to also ban his personal account seems like an overreaction.

echelon 2y ago
I absolutely detest this person's message and think they're a deeply flawed human being, but the power asymmetry and mechanisms to de-person are orders of magnitude more terrifying. This is 1984 type stuff. The banking pieces probably fall afoul of AML/CTF rules, which is fine. But the social media bans, total wipe of accounts, no process in place for restitution, and no communication are literally mechanisms of de-personing.
- semiquaver 2y ago
  > literally mechanisms of de-personing A person is not the same thing as their social media account. “Literally de-personing” is usually called murder and is already illegal.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    They are referring to 1984 where any hints on your existence got erased from public knowledge. And I think that there are a few cases where that happened in real life as well, IIRC under Stalin.
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  I find the act of banning someone from tiktok being equated with "de-personing" them extremely interesting. I think we have very different perspectives on what it means to be human, how much all of this (waves around hand in the general direction of social media) is worth, and what is important. I value tiktok, and all other social media platforms, at nothing. $0.00, maximum. If you built your business on them, you fucked up. If you use them for news, you fucked up. And if you feel that they are needed or important, you DEFINITELY fucked up.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    The problem is that many governments are starting use social media as official platforms. Want to know of road closures? Better check the relevant DoTs Twitter pages.
    - chatmasta 2y ago
      That’s a legitimate problem, but it’s one that you should take up with DoT, not Twitter. For critical services it may even be illegal, since you can’t access Twitter pages without logging into Twitter, and you can’t signup to Twitter without passing a CAPTCHA and other user-hostile gating mechanisms.

semiquaver 2y ago

> It should be impossible to remove someone from banking, PayPal, Shopify, social media, etc. One of the freedoms enshrined by the first amendment is the right to choose who you associate with. This also applies to businesses. It’s absurd to suggest that every company should be forced to do business with every person. As a freelancer I can choose my clients. I would hate to live in a world where a bad client could force me to continue to work with them unless they broke the law.

scotty79 2y ago
> This also applies to businesses. That's a very bad idea. Because then you have to create a myriad of laws that forbids discrimination on ever growing number of things. It turns ensuring everybody's basic economic freedom into a game of lagging whack-a-mole. If a business advertises a product or a service to the public with a price they shouldn't be allowed to refuse the product or a service to anybody willing to pay the price.
foolswisdom 2y ago
That's true until you become big enough that common carrier regulations apply to you. Besides, how does the first amendment enshrine that?
- foolswisdom 2y ago
  To frame it differently, if you want people and businesses to do whatever they want, you need to make sure that the businesses they depend don't become platforms without meaningful competition. But of course the dream of every company is to be so big that they essentially own the market / space.
  - linksnapzz 2y ago
    Quite literally the Rockefeller/Buffett/Gates playbook. "Competition is a sin!"
- semiquaver 2y ago
  > how does the first amendment enshrine [the right of association] Courts have interpreted “assembly” to include this right. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALDE_00013139/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALD...

EA-3167 2y ago

I don't disagree with your message, but man... I disagree with the idea that putting together a hit-list in the style popularized by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq is protected speech. There's a MASSIVE and obvious 1st amendment issue here, but in the sense of "Incitement to murder isn't covered under the 1st amendment" sense. So yes, our reliance on platforms which can cut us off is a problem, the chilling effect on online speech is a problem. But not over this.

wnoise 2y ago
Normally to be covered under "incitement", it has to be a call for imminent unlawful behavior.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  A hit-list of specific individuals seems like it falls under that category, doubly so when it's clearly intended to be a "continuation" of the UHC CEO assassination.
  - idlewords 2y ago
    The guy also posted "the CEO must die" to his Instagram.
    - undersuit 2y ago
      Maybe you should apply HN comment etiquette outside of HN. >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. The strongest good faith interpretation of "the CEO must die" is that it is not a call to action for murdering "the CEO". But we'll let the author clarify: >“The CEO is more than an individual it is a figurehead of the capitalist order,” he wrote. “When we say the ceo must die, we mean the structure of capitalism must be broken.”
      - idlewords 2y ago

themaninthedark 2y ago

>you might get silenced for questioning the origins of a virus I think we sped past that mile marker a long time ago. We have been warning that speech moderation and rules about "distasteful speech" and the like would end up hurting those who were advocating for it but I guess it requires a generational learning event. I guess until it gets bad enough that we decide that ideas regarding free speech and censorship should apply to corporations we are left with what Mr. Munroe had to say: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/