Let's examine why this is problematic:

- This will absolutely be leveraged on anyone in a precarious position. It's their ultimate out. Minority groups, majority groups, it doesn't matter - you're in trouble and need a platform to tell your story? Not happening on Twitch. Expect more to sign on to this idea; it is the ultimate tool for cancel culture proponents.

- Foreword: I am not making a constitutional argument. Private companies now own most of the highways we use for speech, much less widespread speech. Sure, Newspapers and mail can be argued, but there's plenty of examples where they had to tolerate nasty messages for some self-imposed access to speech principles. Secondarily, nobody used a newspaper to talk to their auntie, while Twitch isn't Facebook or Twitter self-expression is not limited to certain platforms. That is lost on tech companies.

This new stage of American moralism is pretty tiring no matter what group or direction it comes from. I can't imagine staying in this country much longer.

If you are serious about that statement, I encourage you just as I have encouraged all my family and close friends. I have never regretted leaving America. There are dozens of nicer countries to live in.

However, tech platforms exert their dominance worldwide. Americans have made this a global problem.

Most of my family and friends still feel like they don't need privacy because they have "nothing to hide" because they "aren't doing anything wrong." It's hard to communicate the idea that the tech lords' ideas about "wrong" are being rapidly redefined and weaponized, driven by a very active and rapidly growing neoreligious woke cult, and it has nothing to do with logic and reason, little to do with morality, and much to do with power. And the more information you feed them the more power you yield to them until one day you'll realize the enormity of what you willingly did, but by then it will be far too late. You will be a slave to their crushing, perverse, and ever smaller version of morality. They know who all your friends are, what your fingerprint looks like, your walking gait, where you hang out, ... everything. And they abandoned the motto "don't be evil".

No. Living in Europe, cancel culture, the woke inquisition and the minority culture wars are seen as a US only phenomenon. I could not be less touched and less interested by it.

This exists in Canada too, in case anyone is wondering. You cannot escape the toxic teenagers of the internet by moving to a different country.

Can confirm. Grass definitely is greener.

It isn't a given (and certainly would be hugely problematic to assume) that the same human sits behind the same username on each service. Absent strong linkage and enduring proof of that link, this will be weaponised (register same username on Gab and post hate, then report the user to Twitch). That's an obvious attack vector, and I assume they will be wanting to see proper links.

The game theory rational response for all users is surely therefore to not link or associate their online social presences together.

While I guess this might not work in modern social media culture of trying to gather a following everywhere on multiple platforms, this disclosing those accounts ("follow my Instagram and Twitter, like my YouTube videos, etc."), it perhaps will normalise less linkage (or leakage, depending on your perspective) between platforms?

If you depend on twitch, but don't want someone to try get you deplatformed based on something elsewhere, one of the best ways to prevent that would be to not have any linkable off-site activity. Then there's nothing for them to ban you for.

Or am I just reminiscing too much for the old internet before social media took off?

We've seen things that fester online that lead to real life tragedies or to the damaging of the fabric of democracy itself. Including insurrection on the US Capitol which took its roots on Twitter.

There's a spectrum between "cancel culture is bad" vs. "let domestic terrorists and CP sharers gather". And I don't think there's a slippery slope concern. Twitch already bans people for unexplained reasons anyways.

Nah, they probably just want to let a few criminals off the hook for funsies.

To throw that out and say "Nah let's nuke this guy's life because an anonymous person sent us a screenshot that they claim is him doing something racist" is not an improvement. This is moving in the wrong direction.

The duplicity on the violence issue is both stunning and terrifying.

All of that said, lets be careful not to boil this down to property damage so we can justify it. 19 people died in those summer riots. The property destruction affected mostly poor areas and minority business owners.

The duplicity is stunning and terrifying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur....

Then there’s collateral damage. Much of the rioting in the last year was criminality in service of a political goal. That is the literal definition of terrorism. These actions create fear in political opponents and aim to achieve political goals outside our legal process. That has a human cost.

But if I had to simplify it, life is a period of time. And time is used by people to acquire or create property. Therefore when that property is stolen or destroyed, it is taking away life.

A more comprehensive opinion: https://fee.org/articles/vandalism-is-violence-destructive-r...

Attempted murder, and arson of occupied structures. Far worse than the capitol riot.

Also, who the violence was directed at. In DC most of the rioters were unarmed and fought with police. In Portland and LA many protestors were armed and fought passing citizens, attacked drivers, etc. Police don't "deserve" to be hit, but they sign up knowing that the job can get rough. Random old ladies protesting the vandalism of their building shouldn't be hit but the justice mobs feel free to hurt anyone.

CHAZ/CHOP: 2 deaths Capital Hill Riot: 5 deaths

Source: I lived 2 blocks away

People here who say chaz wasn't dangerous should really look at how they propped up their own militia/security force and executed minorities.

Things I've seen video of includes guys handing out guns to (what appear to be) minors, fights breaking out, and people getting assaulted for recording what is happening there.

Some things are still available though - https://www.bitchute.com/video/1Jr0ILcX9hY/

Social media seems to be doing a pretty good job of trying to pretend these things didn't exist.

The initial few days of george floyd protests were tense, but almost every large city around the country also was.

What you are talking about is something completely different. That's not even cancel culture. It's upholding the law and it requires zero opinions from a random outrage mob, you report the content, the company reviews it and immediately deletes it if it goes against the law. There is no petitioning required to pressure a company because the vast majority of companies delete content like that as soon as they can identify its illegal nature.

Twitch is definitely a slippery slope, especially in distributing soft core porn to underage kids.

However, I'm not sure where you got the "opinion" that an insurrection must be carried out with a firearm? You can do a quick Google search for the definition of the term. Here's one from the Cambridge dictionary

> an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/insurrec...

Also, your CNN citation says in the headline that there was a gun found, but then the body of the article contradicts it

> Some of the weapons that were confiscated had been seen being used inside the US Capitol including a baseball bat, a fire extinguisher, a wooden club, a spear, crutches, a flagpole, bear spray, mace, chemical irritants, stolen police shields, a wooden beam, a hockey stick, a stun gun, and knives.

Where're the guns? CNN knows people only read headlines; they're so brazen with their narrative.

After they claimed over and over that Sicknick was killed with a fire extinguisher based on zero evidence for weeks there's no reason to trust the rest of these details in an article from February are true anyway, especially if CNN can't keep the facts straight between the headline and the article body

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/case-multi-defendant/file/13...

In the same sentence you quoted

COUNT TWO On or about January 6, 2021, within the District of Columbia, CHRISTOPHER ALBERTS, did unlawfully and knowingly enter and remain in the United States Capitol and grounds, a restricted building and grounds, without lawful authority to do so."

The reality is in the end, very few will serve jail time (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/jan-6-capitol-riot-...):

> Although prosecutors have loaded up their charging documents with language about the existential threat of the insurrection to the republic, the actions of many of the individual rioters often boiled down to trespassing. And judges have wrestled with how aggressively to lump those cases in with those of the more sinister suspects.

> “My bet is a lot of these cases will get resolved and probably without prison time or jail time,” said Erica Hashimoto, a former federal public defender who is now a law professor at Georgetown. "One of the core values of this country is that we can protest if we disagree with our government. Of course, some protests involve criminal acts, but as long as the people who are trying to express their view do not engage in violence, misdemeanors may be more appropriate than felonies.”

> The prospect of dozens of Jan. 6 rioters cutting deals for minor sentences could be hard to explain for the Biden administration, which has characterized the Capitol Hill mob as a uniquely dangerous threat.

If you keep this up we are going to have to ban you. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.

They don't need to be. Hundreds of people physically stormed the Capitol with the explicit intention of overturning a democratic election. What else would you call that but insurrection?

If they failed, it doesn't mean they weren't insurrectionists. It just means they were incompetent insurrectionists. It's not a good look to downplay crime and violence just because the people doing it voted the same way you did.

We aren't talking about "the vast majority." I already said this. We're talking about the hundreds of people who physically stormed the Capitol with the explicit intention of overturning a democratic election. The fact that there were thousands of peaceful protesters right outside doesn't erase the hundreds of insurrectionists.

> Keep in mind, there have been numerous past protests at the Capitol in the last decade, mostly from the political left. To claim that this one is somehow worse does not seem fair. Likewise, Democrats have challenged election results numerous times - including the 2000, 2004, and 2016 presidential elections. Even right now, during this very election cycle, there is a case where Democrats are challenging election results for a House seat, with Pelosi's support

You're saying that public protests and legally challenging an election in court are the same thing as smashing your way into the Capitol building, attacking cops, beating a policeman to death, and publicly bragging about your plans to murder politicians.

Everything I just said is well-documented with multiple live videos, mostly taken by the people doing it. You can find them in just a few minutes on Google. ("Dawn Bancroft", for example.)

You're consistently talking about what you think should have happened and ignoring the facts of what actually did happen. I don't think there's any further productive discussion to be had here.

None of which are proof of a planned insurrection. Of all the meanings you only picked the ones that fitted your predetermined conclusion.

Believing the "election was stolen" is an opinion that comes up every elections from both sides.

"Marching" most often means marches, which is a peaceful demonstration in itself, and the Capitol is not just the Capitol building, it's also the Capitol Grounds and the surrounding areas.

Fighting is a term often used colloquial non-violent way, as in "fight cancer" and "fighting for civil rights".

In all seriousness, at what point would you call something an insurrection?

Go ahead and define it now, that way in the future when "X" happens you can't reply with "X is bad, but it's not an insurrection". I'm being completely serious, please define insurrection, in your terms, so that in the future I can identify it accurately.

I feel like this has to be the first thing we do with folks who constantly say "X isn't Y". Okay, define how something gets classified as Y.

My definition would be rioting, specifically using escalating violence until success, to attempt to coerce a system into passing laws that it would not otherwise have passed or wanted to pass (up to and including deposing the leader).

I feel like my view loosely fits the Capitol riot, heavily fits the BLM riots, and heavily fits the 1776 insurrection.

I think the BLM protests (funny these are always deemed riots by certain folk, reminds me of how the military uses terminology to dehumanize, such as the word target) escalated to insurrection in one scenario that I know of, namely the CHAZ incident. Ultimately, that insurrection failed, since nothing significant changed.

I would argue folks, for some reason, only deem things X when it's too late. That goes for genocide, insurrection (which is done for many reasons along the entire political and human spectrum), slavery, etc.

If we can't call out such groups and recognize the damage they do, what happens to the next protest?

The comment said BLM riots, which did not happen. In your own words, you are close to realizing why I say it's dehumanizing and meant to impart a meaning that isn't true.

You said: "Mainly because the cause was highjacked by groups that love to break out into violence..."

In other words, you actually do realize they aren't BLM riots. They were BLM protests, that were highjacked by groups outside BLM to result in riots.

So stop conflating riots at a BLM protest with BLM riots. They are not the same thing, and by doing that you attempt to de-legitimize the BLM movement.

I'm honesty not sure why you think I'm not willing to call a riot a riot. I'm just not willing to attribute the riot to BLM, since it doesn't align with their values or leadership whatsoever.

They are not the same thing.

The reason they kept happening is the media, not you, were no willing to call out the violence. They were not willing to out of a fear that they would appear to be disagreeing with the cause.

You have to know that "BLM riots" imparts to those around you a far different message than "riots that broke out at BLM protests". And in an age where folks don't look into things for themselves and rely on trusting others, someone other than me is likely to assume you mean that "BLM was rioting". That's why wording / word choice are so important.

I think the media _did_ call out the violence though, in fact I would say they focused more on that than they did the actual BLM protests (a majority were boring affairs, just folks marching and speaking). The media is more than willing to try and maintain the status quo by focusing on anything but the actual protests, and they do so by focusing on the violence more than anything else. I'm not sure how you came to the exact opposite conclusion.

I feel like they do this to any cause, not just BLM. Doesn't matter if it's a left leaning issue, a right leaning issue, or an issue supported by the majority of Americans. They portray it in whatever way maintains the status quo.

Escalating? 0/10 not at all

Attempt to coerce laws? 2/10 not really

I mostly agree. It doesn’t pass my own definition.

Storming the capitol with weapons, having leaders with knowledge of the layout, and actually spilling blood. The picture of the right in this country by media is generally a caricature of an inbred, uneducated southern hick, so it's easy to pretend that they planned for a serious coup and we're just completely incompetent. But the lack of weapons in any significant quantity, or their use, or even their brandishing in the capitol, suggests that there were never any serious plans for a coup or even for violence.

The fact that "insurrectionists" came within 5 feet of the entrance to the chamber with the politicians they were allegedly targetting and obliviously walked past it more likely shows that there was no serious preparation, given that the layout is easily searchable online.

This is manufactured hysteria by the media, for political goals. It comes from the same place as this twitch policy - we are in the midst of a dirty culture war.

"Oh, please. Attempted murder? They don't give the Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry!"

They broke into the Capitol building, and in to the Senate chambers, while congress was in session.

We're just lucky they didn't get the Gavel of Power too!

Or.. in the real world, we understand how the US political system works, realize there was no real "insurrection," and we rightly call it a bunch of jackasses trespassing.

Your call.

Wasn't an idle threat either.

I find your comment quite one sided and exaggerated.

There was no insurrection on the Capitol because there was no guns, no widespread weapon carry, no significant violence inside and no proof of an organization to actually overthrow the government was shown in the various reports and court cases. The surveillance videos showing the protesters walking in calmly in file following the cordon is the definitive proof of that. In fact the censorship and manipulation of social media is known to cause the formation of various ideological bubbles that acts as positive feedback loops for extremism.

On the other hand we saw waves of violence since last year that were instigated by actual self-proclaimed insurrectionists. News presenting the violence were minimized while news of politicians supporting the protests and news stations downright lying the violence while buildings were burning on the background. This is all due to the censorship and narrative control of big media conglomerates, not actual open conversations.

> There's a spectrum between "cancel culture is bad" vs. "let domestic terrorists and CP sharers gather"

Crimes are not on a spectrum, either someone is guilty or not, there is no in between. And as pointed out by Justice Thomas recently, when organizations become too big they can be subject to regulations as public utilities, which will made them unable to infringe on the first amendment of their users.

> And I don't think there's a slippery slope concern.

Contrary to popular belief, fascism and Nazism did not rise because of free speech, but because of speech suppression and narrative control (read propaganda) along side with a close collaboration with intelligence services that began as early as the 1920s. Given that the more we they censor the more they have power which makes them more and more successful in censorship and narrative control means that we are in a positive feedback loop, which is slippery slope.

> Twitch already bans people for unexplained reasons anyways.

And?

Your claims here are like saying that the civil war wasn't an insurrection because the confederacy didn't want to overthrow the US government, they just wanted to form a different government.

>Your claims here are like saying that the civil war wasn't an insurrection because the confederacy didn't want to overthrow the US government, they just wanted to form a different government.

There's not that much of a parallel. The Capital protesters wanted to show resistance to the election being stolen from what they saw as the legitimate winner. The Civil War was, like, a war, and way different in every way.

False.

> There's not that much of a parallel. The Capital protesters wanted to show resistance to the election being stolen from what they saw as the legitimate winner. The Civil War was, like, a war, and way different in every way.

It wasn't a war at first. The South Carolina Declaration of Secession was created and printed with significantly less violence than the insurrection at the capitol...the first shots fired didn't happen for another 4 months. The fact that only 5 people died in the insurrection doesn't mean that the would-be confederates didn't attempt an insurrection, it just means they didn't succeed, and couldn't muster up enough traction to last a single day.

What's false? Both the statements you quoted? I'll provide my reasoning for each.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The first statement:

> The word is often taken to denote a violent uprising.

Here's the definition that pops up when you Google the word:

> a violent uprising against an authority or government.

Or from the Oxford English Dictionary:

> The action of rising in arms or open resistance against established authority or governmental restraint; with plural, an instance of this, an armed rising, a revolt; an incipient or limited rebellion.

I think this is enough to show that it is often taken to denote a violent uprising.

--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------

The second statement:

> The Capital protests weren't particularly violent - the protesters didn't kill anyone.

The easiest response for me to make is a request: name one person the protesters killed. There was a lot of false reporting by the mainstream media at the time, so I don't particularly blame anyone for believing the protesters killed people. But it just doesn't seem to actually be the case. You can read an analysis of the violence here: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-c...

--------------------------------------------------------------

All of these are false. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26734738

"No significant violence"? They murdered a police officer. And badly beat several more. Several of them are on bodycam video.

There is also definitely a slippery slope concern. It isn’t just illegal activities that are being censored on Twitter or Twitch or Facebook or elsewhere. If your opinion/perspective disagrees with progressives on some controversial topic like gender identity or guns or illegal immigration or the coronavirus, you will be censored even though you aren’t breaking any law. Such censorship has been normalized bit by bit over the last four years, and is exactly the slippery slope in action. And since it inhibits the exchange of ideas and free flow of political opinions in a system that depends on it, such censorship is the REAL damage to the fabric of democracy.

It'd honestly be pretty refreshing for a leader to come out and say, "I don't think my actions should be held against me like your actions should be held against you because I'm special/different." Insane, but refreshingly honest.

For what it's worth, I'm increasingly with you re: leaving the US, for what basically amount to the opposite reason. I'm tired of people not being responsible for themselves, their actions, and the outcomes that happen beyond the first order consequences.

Who decides who needs to be held accountable, and for what? Shouldn't that be the justice system?

Twitch mentioned proactively banning people who are arrested, without using the word 'convicted'. Which demographics is that likely to affect?

It's a reasonable thing to do and you have about the same level of responsibility for your party as twitch has for their platform. You probably also don't care what the justice system thinks about the invitations to your party.

The extent to which corporations should be considered private entities does not seem like a settled question to me. Your corporation has no natural right to exist, and therefore does not have the natural right to do business solely as it pleases.

> and you have about the same level of responsibility for your party as twitch has for their platform.

What responsibility are they exercising? If the behavior on their platform is not disruptive to it, then what precisely are they defending their users _from_?

> You probably also don't care what the justice system thinks about the invitations to your party.

Invite someone on the most wanted list. I can't imagine it playing out that well for you.

You are replying to a poor argument from the parent poster, they don't have to be protecting anyone, it's fine for them to simply say "I don't want that jerk at my party"

> Your corporation has no natural right to exist

Natural right is a weird qualifier, some corps have a legal right or privilege to exist depending on "must grant" or "may grant" in the locality.

> and therefore does not have the natural right to do business solely as it pleases

Well sure, they aren't allowed to ban people for their membership in a protected class, e.g. their race or disability for the same reason that they aren't allowed to sell cocaine or kill people, because the law prohibits all of those things.

This is a particularly interesting topic - a lot of the parallels around private vs. public places seem to have eroded over time. Facebook, Twitter and others are now serving the function of a public place. They are means of communication used by governments and elected leaders.

I suspect at some point soon there will be a shift in the balance here, to try and address the extent to which companies are "private entities" sitting outside of the legal frameworks, where they deal with the public. NJ views privately owned shopping malls to be public places from a 1st amendment perspective, even though it is not publicly owned - it isn't a huge leap to consider FB or similar as a public space on that basis.

From being surrounded by Adams. Either you act in cases like that, or you become known as "that place that likes to invite Adam (and others)". And it's completely up to the host which side they want to be on. Twitch chose to end the invitation.

> Invite someone on the most wanted list.

That's not even close to the case discussed here.

The only ones I know about are related to the Declaration of Independence and I don’t have any evidence they are comprehensive.

I don’t have any evidence to believe of a conscious higher power, so my list of natural rights is likely to differ from people who do.

Sure, it's just video games, but we have to reckon in general with the consequences of an oligopoly that's 'just exercising control over their private property' when it adds up to most digital communications.

Game live-streaming isn’t important enough.

If I want to see it like a legal process there is nothing they can say, specially after this, to make me change my outlook in the same way they ban people for violating their way of thinking and give them no appeal not even the time of day.

Society. Don't like it, pick a new society like the two commenters you responded to you are considering.

>Who decides who needs to be held accountable, and for what?

Once again, society.

>Shouldn't that be the justice system?

The justice system is purposely setup in a way to make it difficult to punish people. This is good. We don't want the government throwing people in jail with flimsily excuses. However this allows a loophole for people to get away with a wide variety of crime and criminal like behavior which is obviously bad. How would you suggest these people are held accountable if it isn't through "cancel culture" which is basically just the modern equivalent of social shunning that various cultures have been doing for centuries?

Long-held traditions of social shunning, ostracization and extrajudicial bullying are widely understood to be terrible and have produced horrific injustices for centuries. What you're calling for is a regression of justice. It's precisely the disgusting consequences of vigilante justice that led us to develop the modern systems of justice that we rely on today.

Accountability quickly turns into a witch hunt when people start tearing down standards of proof and judicial restraints as "loopholes". When did we forget that?

No, I absolutely would not help a loved one achieve some sort of extrajudicial punishment, I would instead strongly recommend against it. I would try to comfort and support them, responses that are helpful regardless of how good or badly I personally judge their case and related punishments. I would tell them that perhaps the justice system has failed them and no system is perfect, but vigilante justice is a terrible and unproductive response that breeds more injustice than it resolves.

The way you fix loopholes in the justice system is by fixing loopholes in the justice system. The justice system is governed by laws developed by deliberative bodies held accountable through democracy. It's not pretty and it's not satisfying, but after centuries of gross injustice we should know better than to trust mob justice.

Nope. Neither. I may or may not stop associating with the perpetrator, all things relative to my perception of how bad the thing they’ve been accused of was. I might mention it to mutual acquaintances and let them decide how they want to deal without any judgement on my part.

Trying to get someone fired / hurting their livelihood in general seems quite childish.

I try to mind my own business. I don’t snitch on anybody if I see them doing something wrong. I don’t join online mobs or rage on anybody.

If some adult I knew said “so and so made me feel really uncomfortable 2 years ago” or “so and so touched me 2 years ago” I’m not going to say “hey let’s get them fired!!!”

It’s not my place to be a vigilante. I wouldn’t get involved at all. If I had a good relationship with the accused I would probably even help them out, eg hire them, after someone “cancels” them.

By all means have your group of close contacts that you shun when they step out of line but doing that society wide causes too many injustices.

I don't think there is a world of difference between the two. You are shunning someone because it is very likely the did something wrong. If that is your close friend and you think they did it, then it's probably a good idea to shun them. The hope is that they will see they did something wrong, own up and change. This makes the world a better place.

Some person on the internet that has been accused of doing something wrong could be black listed from online life, but what does that achieve? We don't even know if they did it?

Then what happens when someone changes their ways and becomes a better person? Do we keep them blacklisted? This seems to be the way we are operating.

Right. Twitter hands out lifetime bans. I was very encouraged this week by Justice Thomas’ opinions on monopolistic platforms. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...

Almost no one is "cancelled" permanently. Maybe they go away for a few months or years, but they almost always are able to resume some sort of normal life eventually. It is much less severe than a jail sentence. If they truly do reform and become a better person, that usually speeds up the process, but it is rarely an actual requirement.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the...

[2] - https://www.history.com/news/why-pilgrims-came-to-america-ma...

[3] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history...

I guess you can move out from the US and that's probably a very good decision to make, however: first of all, those corporations are not local to the US, but global, world-wide. Furthermore they are willing to work with authoritarian governments, like Google working with the Chinese government to spy on their citizens. Second, corporations and Western governments are actively trying to remake the rest of the world in US image, project their problems on us and force everyone to make the same mistakes they did. You can run from the problem, but it's not going to solve anything and it will eventually get you too. As far as I'm considered, America falling apart would be an acceptable outcome for me personally, if it wasn't for the fact that you're trying to drag the rest of the world down with you.

It's only a very small minority of people are the ones that decide who gets punished and excluded.

It's not society, its the powerful.

This is how you have people getting banned for supporting a national politician who won election with ~49% of popular vote. Those 49% clearly didn't get a say in who gets punished and excluded. Only the powerful get that say.

By this study it's about 8%:

https://hiddentribes.us/

Society changes, get over it. These changes are going to ruin platforms and people will dislike it and move to other platforms, yet they will still be in the same society.

>The justice system is purposely setup in a way to make it difficult to punish people. This is good. We don't want the government throwing people in jail with flimsily excuses.

This is literally what happens all day every day in the justice system which is nothing more than a formalized social shunning process that requires fewer people to ruin your life and profit off of it indirectly.

What if the decision-makers at twitch represent 'society' less than they think they do?

Even beyond the tech challenges, there are thousands of posts out there describing the network effect and trend towards winner-takes-all in a given social networking market.

I'm honestly curious about the mindset that leads one to just say 'nothing stopping you, make your own twitch, no biggie'. Is it lack of sympathy for those cast out? Idealistic belief in free markets and meritocracy? Genuine belief that it's easy? What's the underlying angle?

I would compare it to when Reddit started cracking down on immoral content. That created demand of competitors. Multiple ones popped up. However they weren't able to sustain themselves or grow demand because society was on Reddit's side and not the side of Voat and the like.

The reason it is currently difficult for Twitch competitor to gain traction is because people are largely fine with Twitch. Even so, there are still plenty of other streaming options including those with sizable userbases even if they are targeting different market segments like Facebook and Youtube.

... are there not enough giant companies doing this thing that didn't exist a few years ago?

You realize you can pay for a VPS for $10 a month and broadcast to hundreds of people right?

> If this were the internet of the 2000s, with a widely distributed network of self-hosted blogs and BBs

Pretty sure all that stuff can still be done. Do you not realize you can rent a server and buy your own domain name? You can even rent a VPS with 40 gigabit internet and 10 terabytes of upload for around $20 a month.

> What about the little guy? What if it's the historically persecuted who continue to be persecuted when this all shakes out?

Lol, who are the historically persecuted that aren't able to stream video games because they can't help but violate twitch's TOS. I have a hard time believing this is even a serious conversation.

Accountability to me is that the government teaches them a lesson, some company doesn't need to jump in line to punish them for me to feel satiated -- that job is done by the government. Moral communities are just that though, tiny groups that would like to exercise their power and worldliness on others in pursuit of their utopian society free from democracy and government oversight. Having come from a repressive religion, I have no argument against why this paradigm is flawed, but maybe it takes the eyes of someone who has lived that to see it.

It's clearly with the company executing the decision to remove someone from their platform, but trying to decipher whether or not what they're doing is a financial or moral decision (despite their claims, that's part of the financial choice) becomes fairly pointless.

If you want to rail against a changing society, that seems like a waste of time. If you want to rail against a specific set of companies who have acted in a specific way, I think that's more productive and addressable.

Liberty is having the right to offend people, that’s what it means.

Several political philosophers critical of liberalism (and even those sympathetic to liberalism) have argued that several free actions we take do indeed disadvantage people in various ways, whether it comes to democritic citizenship or other social interactions. It is entirely possible to act under the flag of liberty while still (knowingly or not) disadvantaging other people. This 'paradox' (speaking loosely) has given birth to the (currently popular) philosophy of egalitarian liberalism (or, liberal egalitarianism, as opposed to other theories such as Marxian egalitarianism).

You can read more about this at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/#NewLib

Liberty is the action itself, irrespective of the result.

Liberty is a two-edged sword, which is something a lot of people seem to have forgotten.

not anymore (if you are implying physical removal). you can't even apprehend shoplifters anymore without getting sued.

If you only "metaphorically" toss someone onto the pavement, though (tell them to leave the premises), you're fine, and can have the group who has a monopoly on force enforce that request if necessary.

On the other hand, without the state having a monopoly on violence, anyone has the right to take whatever they want from you, given sufficient force.

Blaming BLM for the acts of individuals is tantamount to blaming the right for the acts of people who organized in private groups on a public platform. Both sides will claim that the other has stoked fear, hate, and division to various degrees in a myriad of ways. I tend to agree with both, but I also realize that the people really responsible are likely at the top of a chain that laypeople can't even perceive.

If we're to undo the damage that Russia has done to this country I think it starts in that understanding. Then and only then do we have armor to fight a nation hell bent on destroying things like ethos.

Phrasing this as an argument against "Cancel Culture" is the ultimate moral hand-wringing. There is nothing even closely resembling what you're talking about in this change. This is no slippery slope. This is just the obvious result of people realizing that the internet is real life.

If you want to say something that annoys the public, something pushing the frame of the Overton window, write a blog. Run a mailing list. Run a Mastodon instance. Run a private invite-only telegram chat.

And for communicating with your auntie, you don't need a public platform; use an IM. Use Signal if you discuss something that leads to instant deplatforming on Twitter.

Leave Twitch to dancing kids, or whatever is all the rage there now. Leave Facebook to vacation photos and discussing technology, arts, or hobbies. Leave Twitter altogether, or at least go read-only.

Historically in this country, we've tried hard to prevent that.

It's astounding to me that anyone believes this. American puritanism has always had an incredibly censorious streak.

Go tell this to any gay/bisexual person not living in a large city, even today. Cancel Culture isn't even close to new. Millions and millions of Americans still live entire lives pretending to have roommates instead of partners. Teachers are still fired for being gay; in the 90s, every gay teacher I knew lived in TREMENDOUS fear. Even in cities. One male elementary teacher I know lived celibate for over two decades because he feared that being outed would definitely leave him destitute and could even eventually land him in jail. He worked in a very liberal big city. Teenagers are still routinely kicked out of home for not being straight. There are still many communities where the key to that raise or promotion is being in the right small group at the right church.

Cancel Culture is not new, and historical examples of it have been far more damaging that losing access to a streaming site. What is new is conservatives finding themselves as a permanent numerical and therefore economic minority. And it's infuriating to them because suddenly the "free market" mechanisms that used to protect them as a numerical and especially economic majority are instead turning against them, even as they hold onto political power, because the market doesn't care about gerrymandering.

I'm not going to hire homophobes because I don't want to work with people who hate me. Is that cancel culture? I don't care. Fucking sue me.

The characterization of Cancel Culture as a "new thing" is beyond infuriating. If you want to roll back Cancel Culture, maybe start by realizing that it's not even close to a new thing.

if this becomes more widespread, this is one of the most chilling aspects. I don't think it takes much imagination at all for anyone to consider a future where something you said today that is totally acceptable by today's standards keeps you from participating in some aspect of society* in 10 to 20 years time. Think about how many public figures have been canceled for things they did that were socially acceptable 10 to 20 years ago. Now imagine tooling being developed that scans your entire social media existence for the past 10 to 20 years and then throws an automated exception saying that you can't register. Then imagine that you have no recourse because there is no due process and practically non-existent Google quality customer service.

* any sufficiently pervasive social network is a significant aspect of society

The only way I can see out of this displaced and performative moralism is to not attach your name to anything that could be considered even remotely problematic in the future.

To get rid of old tweets, FB posts, anyone reading this might want to try the Jumbo app [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/media/teen-vogue... [2] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/jumbo-privacy-security/id14540...

It's not just blind spots you recognize and correct. There are societies in history like the USSR, the DDR, North Korea, etc., where those with dissenting views weren't the ones with the blind spots, but that it was society itself that developed blind spots and punished those that did not go along with those blind spots.

There's a Hollywood bigwig in trouble these days for doing pretty much what Marco Pierre White did to Gordon Ramsay when Ramsay was an apprentice. In other words, they both violently threw stuff at people in fits of hysterical rage.

If I did that, they'd lock me up. Try being in a rage and throwing stuff at a cop, or perhaps a judge in court. Context seems to matter here: but the question is, should a brilliant chef in the brigade system, or a powerful Hollywood executive, GET to physically attack people? When a regular person does not get to commit assault as just a random everyday thing?

What's making it weird is, we're more or less talking about rule of law, but nobody appointed Twitch a government. But by the same token, if you're on Twitch's property, it seems like they've got a right to apply their own rules.

Folks seem to want to force something like Twitch to also have courts, and treat people innocent unless proven guilty. We expect this of governments because they're so powerful, but a private residence might have a great deal more freedom for the occupant to apply their own rules on their property.

Castle doctrine for Twitch? Do they get to blackball you and ruin your social media life if you're on their property and they think you've done something horrible? Do they get to share their information with other private entities, can you be permanently shunned because one entity got mad at you?

The highway is the one thing they do not own. They own exits on the highway. But no one is stopping anyone from sending emails. Or setting up their own website and messaging service. It is easier and cheaper today to to connect with others and express yourself without the need for private companies than it has ever been in the history of mankind.

Parler was literally kicked off of AWS and Twillio.

The highway is people typing parler.com in their browser, which was never interrupted. Parler could have made their own exit on the highway instead of telling people to take the exit for Amazon or Twilio.

And in the history of the world, this ability to reach everyone in the world was not possible until a couple decades ago.

1. Moderators of groups on social networks have no obligation to let you speak in a space they control. If you want to fully exercise your right to free speech, you must make your own group.

2. Social network companies have no obligation to let you speak in a space they control. If you want to fully exercise your right to free speech, you must build your own social network.

3. Datacenter as a service companies have no obligation to let you speak in a space they control. If you want to fully exercise your right to free speech, you must build your own datacenter.

4. ICANN has no obligation to let you speak in a space they control. If you want to fully exercise your right to free speech, you must make your own internet.

5. Payment processors have no obligation to let you speak in a space they control. If you want to fully exercise your right to free speech, you must make your own financial system.

6. A country no obligation to let you speak in a space it controls. If you want to fully exercise your right to free speech, you must make your own country.

I personally think 1 is obviously fine, it starts getting slightly iffy at 2, quite sketchy and worrying at 3, and 4 is where major alarm bells start ringing. Do you agree that it goes from fine at 1 to a major problem at 6, and merely disagree on where exactly on the road between 1 and 6 we should push back, or do you think 6 is perfectly fine?

#5 is also a problem, although I believe this should also be a utility. Although, as I understand the Fed is coming out with their own thing soon, but I don’t know if it will be treated as a utility.

#6 is, of course, way far gone.

#1 to #3 are the domain of private enterprises, but at #4 it becomes infrastructure like roads, water, gas, etc and you can’t feasibly have more than one so it should be treated as a utility.

If it really stops at 3 that's probably fine -- we'll see some new IAAS providers that accept money in exchange for not taking down content that is legal but some people don't like, the would-be censors will get mad but not be able to do anything about it, and that will be that. However, I expect that what will actually happen is the next social media site that is considered problematic and can't be cut off at the IAAS level because it self-hosts will be blocked off at either the DNS level or the payment processor level. Hopefully I'm wrong. Time will tell.

Right, because AWS is literally the only way to host a website, and Twilio is literally the only way to send emails.

I'm glad you feel secure enough to say that out loud, and maybe from some perspective you are technically correct. But the comparison you gave about email is easily refutable. Most email traffic is controlled by large providers, large providers which can denylist your mail servers for a myriad of vague reasoning which take forever to scrub yourself from. Given that major mail providers now regularly sniff your emails as a feature, your privacy now comes at a premium. In other words, privacy is a feature and a premium one at that.

So, while the future is not certain to be what I imagine it can be from this point, it's certainly not open and free as you've asserted.

Most people choose to use email controlled by large providers. I choose to pay a company for my email needs. Others have that choice too. They can also choose not to use the large providers. It's open and free as in speech (excluding illegal activities of course), but it's not effortless and not free as in beer.

I don't see how much more open and free (as in speech) it can get without taking away someone else's ability to do what they want with their computer.

Do you understand why some of us are viewing this problem through an anti-trust or public utility lens now?

In other words, "I don't understand how much more open and free (as in electricity) it can get without taking away someone else's ability to do what they want with their power plant."

It's really, really unfortunate that this debate was triggered for what are at their base partisan political reasons. Because this is a debate we should have had with cooler heads, about what these services actually represent for human society and how government should interact with this technology. Instead, everyone is drawing a line in the sand based on their politics (not saying you are doing this, but others clearly are).

And look, yeah, I get it. "Electricity" is not "speech". But when you need electricity and you need computers to transmit speech in the modern era ... well I guess I just see it as six of one and a half dozen of the other.

I'm also viewing it through a public utility lens. But Amazon's computers and Twilio's computers are not public utilities. The network (internet) is a public utility. I would say DNS and ICANN is a public utility also. Electrical power lines are a public utility. Roads are a public utility. But those are the components that are not feasible to duplicate, servers and data centers are.

Ok but where you would go where it's better? I do empathize as a born + raised american citizen, however, seeing how other countries have handled the pandemic -- I am more tentative versus [ideally] excited.

If you support it because it hurts your political enemies, maybe you will be the political enemy in 5 or 10 years, and you will have no recourse

Top streamers have been banned or lost partnerships for playing their own music[0], stating controversial political opinions[1][2], getting trolled by users who "snipe" streamers and shout vulgarities, or just accidentally showing movie clips with nudity [3]. From what I gather, the ban appeal process is byzantine and is heavily biased towards inaction. Oftentimes appeals are never even considered, or partnership staff plainly doesn't respond.

The upsetting part is Twitch is such a great platform technology wise, and its competitors can't seem to recreate the same magic. I guess we're stuck with lousy moderation until the streaming fad dies down.

[0] https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/twitch-reportedly-suspen...

[1] https://dotesports.com/streaming/news/hasanabi-banned-from-t...

[2] https://win.gg/news/5496/destiny-loses-twitch-partnership-fo...

[3] https://www.ginx.tv/en/twitch/vinesauce-banned-on-twitch-ove...

None of your links back up the idea that Twitch is cracking down on free speech.

From the link:

>> According to Twitch rules, nudity and sexual content are allowed if they are originally part of the game, but not if the game is modded to include sexually explicit material.

>> In this case, the original Blade Runner game has been modified to add some elements from Blade Runner 2049, including the famous hologram girl scene.

You could call that a "clear" policy, but it's also self-evidently insane. The problem isn't that there was nudity. The problem is that someone modified the game. Of course, that's also allowed.

It's easy to say that Twitch should be more flexible with these things, distinguishing something like this example from a more pornographic mod, but putting more power in the hands of the individuals applying the rules will make things feel more arbitrary not less since different moderators will have different standards for when something goes too far. If you want there to be a clear rule so people know what they can or cannot do, then that means it's going to come off as overly ruthless in situations like this.

"The perpetrators' motives were rational, based on America's policies and actions" is one thing (which I happen to agree with), but anytime you start indirectly justifying civilian massacres, it's a slippery slope. "America" isn't just the government but also the set of people living in the country.

Did Japan deserve the nuclear bombings, and did post-defeat Germany deserve ransacking and worse? On one hand, of course the leadership deserved severe reprisal, and their governments and forces did even worse things when taken in total, but if you're a person on the ground seeing civilians brutalized and killed, "desert" becomes a much more flawed notion.

An example for watchers of Attack on Titan, without spoiling anything: did [X] deserve [Y]?

So, I probably agree with that Twitch streamer's sentiment, but I disagree with the way they said it and I understand why Twitch suspended them.

In my view, this just leads to overall lower quality content on the platform. Creators can't risk or innovate because their entire livelihoods at are at the whim of a temperamental moderator.

"If that means white redneck militia dudes mowing down dipshit protesters that think they can torch buildings at 10 PM, at this point they have my fucking blessing."

and

"America Deserved 9/11"?

Because those are the literal quotes from things that got people pulled from Twitch and you've labelled "controversial political opinions." I'm sorry, but suggesting that we unilaterally kill innocent people or that innocent people deserved to be killed by terrorists is absolutely beyond the pale and should result in consequences like losing partnerships or facing suspensions.

I'm not so old to remember the arguments about how women are too emotional to be allowed to vote, or the ones about black people, but it was pretty unacceptable to come out in defense of either of those groups either.

Why in the world would I believe censorship is only going to squash the sort of stuff you list, when there's such a long history of it being used to oppress anyone who thinks they deserve the same rights as the rest of us?

Are we going to ban any pro-abortion discussions, because "suggesting we kill innocent people" is absolutely beyond the pale? Do you really think there aren't millions of people in the US drooling at that sort of censorship opportunity?

I believe that Twitch has too much power/authority, but also I believe that it's reasonable to moderate speech in communities and platforms.

That said, I believe there's a material difference between examples and what was shared in the parent comment. I don't think one can generalize from "speech calling for violence should be removed from Twitch" to "all unpopular opinions will be suppressed". Yes, it was unpopular (and career limiting) to stand up for LGTBQ+ folks, and those voices rarely got mainstream airtime. Suppressing those voices was wrong, but totally different than prohibiting endorsements of mass violence.

I believe we, culturally, can evaluate the difference between "I think gay folks should have equal rights" and "America deserved 9/11" and understand why we should be open to the former and cautious about the latter.

I can expand on this if you're really curious. The short version is that I don't think it's realistic to expect reciprocal generosity from a party that clearly has a double standard about what is and isn't censorship. But on the other hand, we can make a choice not to literally hand that party ammunition for their arguments.

We know that laws around censorship are disproportionately targeted at minority/oppressed communities. We have over 100 years of history demonstrating that fact, from the draft protests, to McCarthyism, to the mass-deplatforming and threatening of the LGBTQ+ community, to moral panics about satan worshiping and sex in mainstream media. We also know the arguments that those people use to try and further their agendas.

They will still use those arguments even if we have Free Speech principles. The difference is that neutral observers will be able to tell that they're being hypocritical. The difference is that they'll have fewer laws on the books that they can quickly repurpose to their agenda.

When you know what someone's strategy is to attack you, when you know how Republicans are going to try and disrupt protests and attack critics, you don't play into that strategy. You try to set up an environment that is hostile to their talking points. That's how Free Speech advocacy responds to bigots -- it tries to make a general social environment where, for example, the recent Florida laws trying to shut down protests look unusual and bad and repressive even to casual observers who haven't researched the issues.

We don't expect racists and homophobes to play fair, that's why we're building a set of laws and social standards that make it harder for them to argue that it's OK to pull funding from schools that teach critical race theory. These people are better at censoring than you are; if you let them set all of the rules of engagement, then they will win.

----

The opposite is also true. Free Speech and Free Association are more helpful to progressive organizations than they are to regressive movements, because most of the time regressive movements are trying to shut down conversation and to stop social evolution. You can see this happening with critical race theory, you can see this happening with BLM protests, you can see it pop up with recent efforts to restrict counseling and support structures for LGBTQ+ youth. You can even see it with how much Conservatives have freaked out over company statements on voting rights and business decisions not to work with states that pass regressive laws. Regressive movements talk a big game about Free Speech, but so much of their ideology depends on nobody questioning the status quo of how we think about race, gender, and inequality, and on punishing and ostracizing anyone in their communities that listens to critics or evolves their views over time.

Sure, they'll use Free Speech to try and argue against Freedom of Association or to claim that they're being oppressed because a football player had the "audacity" to talk about race in a public setting, but they're not particularly good at that kind of rhetoric. The arguments are ultimately unpersuasive and it's relatively easy to point out how they're being hypocritical. So by creating an environment that is Free Speech friendly, not only do we make their ideas about oppression less persuasive and harder to implement -- we also play to our strengths. We create an environment where it is easier to educate people about issues like trans liberation and to showcase the radical inequalities that exist in America. I don't think it's an accident that LGBTQ+ rights have progressed faster than other historical pushes for equality in an environment where it's easier than ever before to share information about people's day-to-day struggles and experiences. So much of regressive ideology relies on people being able to block out progressive movements and to filter/mischaracterize what progressive movements say.

----

So long story short, TLDR regressive/bigoted movements do abuse Free Speech to defend themselves, but it's mostly rhetoric. They are more reliant on censorship than on a free flow of information to further their goals. To the extent that they really care about Free Speech, they're mostly just arguing to get rid of Freedom of Association and to force people to stop criticizing them or kicking them out of privately owned spaces.

So when we build societies that are resistant to censorship, we're not saying that those people will play along and respect our rules. And we do accept that on the tail-end of certain movements (esp conspiracy theories), Free Speech does genuinely make our job harder. But what we're trying to do is to create a battlefield for progressivism that (overall) plays to our strengths and exploits their weaknesses.

But this isn't really how it works. Forebearance actually does have value because it changes society as a whole, shifts expectations at a broad scale, and creates moral authority to demand better from others which is persuasive and powerful.

At the end of the day, what kind of society do you want to live in? Will you contribute to making that society, or not?

To use your analogy, let's say Bob is constantly stealing from you. You urgently need some essentials, and you say, "I know, I can steal them from Bob." But somebody stops you and says, "Wait, you don't want to do that! If you steal from Bob, he'll steal from you!" You would probably not find this persuasive, because you know Bob will steal from you regardless. There probably are good arguments you can make against stealing from Bob, but that particular one doesn't jibe with reality.

You're framing this as a simple prisoner's dilemma problem with sharp-edged binary choices - but it's much more fluid than that in real life.

The fluidity non-binaryness of this is even more apparent given it's millions of people we're talking about, over time lasting generations.

If life really was a prisoner dilemma cooperation would be impossible.

Where's our freedom of privacy?

If we stop being freedom of speech absolutists, I can already tell you what's going to happen.

edit: I do not for the life of me understand why someone would downvote this. The opposite of freedom of speech is fascism, and it is a tool that can be employed by any ideology to oppress and impose.

Interpreting that as saying that people deserve to be killed by terrorists is 1. confusing a country as a whole with its citizens as individuals and 2. an unrealistically literal interpretation of clear hyperbole. Interpreting common hyperbole literally is just as problematic as taking hyperbole to excess.

I will say, when someone says we should attack civilians because of their government's foreign policy, I will say that crosses a line. It's unacceptable in my view. There's a huge gap between, "We should have uncomfortable discussions" and "those civilians deserved to die".

And on the internet, it's really challenging to say what is hyperbole. Even if it was intended to be hyperbole, which is plausible, maybe it's a charged enough topic that one should choose a different (or more obviously) hyperbolic take.

Mine too, but it's standard rhetoric among a very, very large part (possibly a near-majority) of the US population. Tech companies are fueling that fire by showing that (from that perspective), yes, they really are the paternalistic coastal elites that the other half of the country suspected they were. Leaving aside the many ways in which this weapon of platform banning can be abused by future shifts in power -- Google, Twitter, AWS, and now Twitch are not helping the causes they claim to be helping with prominent bans, they are just building taller walls around the various echo chambers.

This is not healthy for a functioning democracy or individual liberty and freedom.

Freedom of speech needs to remain absolute. Encroachments upon our rights endanger us all.

(Honestly, we need freedom of privacy too. I wish we could roll back the clock and install amendments to enshrine these too.)

The rioting needs to fucking stop. If that means white redneck militia dudes mowing down dipshit protesters that think they can torch buildings at 10 PM, at this point they have my fucking blessing. Holy shit, this shit needs to stop. It needed to stop a long time ago.

To the rest of us, he is expressing exacerbation that law enforcement is allowing chaos from one particular political faction.

If you do believe in good faith that Destiny is actually "suggesting that we unilaterally kill innocent people", then do you believe that bluechecks on Twitter who freely speak in similar terms about White people are actually advocating for the slaughter/genocide of Whites?