I had to type in this box more times than I'm willing to admit to produce something that didn't violate the guidelines.
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.
> 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".
> However, tech platforms exert their dominance worldwide. Americans have made this a global problem.
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.
Perhaps this will encourage or lead to more people protecting their privacy and avoiding cross-service linkage?
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?
"Terrorist activities, child sexual exploitation, violent extremism, credible threats of mass violence, carrying out or deliberately acting as an accomplice to sexual assault" falls under moralism and cancel culture?
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.
Your sarcasm aside, there are obviously plenty of reasons why there are failings of the justice system and most people agree that the government isn't the sole arbiter of social accountability.
I'm not saying the justice system is perfect, but we've spent literally thousands of years refining it and people have fought and died for things like rules of evidence, the right to face your accusers, trial by jury, presumption of innocence etc, etc. These things are still not a reality in many places in the world.
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.
Anything posted on social media would generally be admissible as evidence in a US criminal trial, assuming that it isn't shown to be fake or irrelevant. That applies even if the recording was created illegally by a private individual.
The Chaz was worse wasn't it, there were more deaths, it lasted longer and the participants were given very charitable coverage. Violence and lawlessness is ok if you're on the right team basically.
Or burning down a police precinct. Or literally fire bombing federal buildings for MONTHS with virtually no consequences. And all the while politicians and media egg it on.
The duplicity on the violence issue is both stunning and terrifying.
They accomplished the goal of getting people to maybe think about police violence. It’s clear that lighter protests didn’t get any action or attention. If violence is so intolerable, I would like to see some calls for justice from those who seem more concerned about the protection of buildings than people’s lives.
Stop pretending the violence came from nothing. I have friends with burns on their legs from getting hit by stun grenades while actually peacefully protesting. You won’t believe that, but you can find video after video of police actively attacking peaceful protestors.
I do believe that. Certainly violence begets more violence and the police are certainly not blameless.
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.
Not claiming its only property damage, sorry if I seemed to imply. I'm sorry you're afraid of what has happened and how its been covered. I think the protests themselves will ultimately lead us to a better place - though of course any violence is not helpful to get to that better place.
I hope that you are right, and despite my pessimistic demeanor, I do believe ultimately good and necessary change will happen. Perhaps we can learn from the negative along the way. Thank you for your positive responses.
I dunno, I tend to regard property damage and murder to be different things. I have been surprised to see how many people disagree, and I'm still trying to understand that perspective.
It depends on the scale of property damage - lives aren’t worth infinite amounts after all. I would say damage in the millions is automatically equivalent to murder. But it doesn’t even have to go that far. Destroying someone’s small business (as an example) is also tantamount to murder - if a person pours years of their life, taking time away from their family, experiencing great stress, taking risks, and surviving via sheer grit, and then sees all of that destroyed by rioting black bloc hooligans in one short night, they would be utterly devastated. That’s a human cost and it is comparable to murder because someone poured their life into building that business.
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.
In Portland protestors have clubbed police on the head with bats (and famously a wrench), tried to set the courthouse on fire, and tried to set the mayor's occupied apartment building on fire.
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.
I'm sure it was mostly fine, in the same way if you stuck to certain places in the capital riots the majority of the people congregated were peaceful. The Chaz also usurped local businesses, there were plenty of firearms and at least five shootings. This is indisputable. Now you will say those are just bad apples, but you wouldn't give the same leniency to the capital riots would you. Also the leaders of the Chaz bare some responsibility for the deaths that happened in them do they not? But of course no one really cares about that, whereas assinine tweets by unpopular politicians mean they are traitors who orchestrated an attempted coup. To me the framing of similar events is very different based on political allegiance.. hence why I'm worried about these biased reporters gaining more power to determine who does and does not have a voice in society.
There were more deaths and more crime than what is just officially attributed to CHAZ. CHAZ also left behind a massive tent encampment that took over Cal Anderson park (adjacent to CHAZ), which at one point was used for riot staging. Police found a weapons cache hidden inside a tent that appeared to be for the homeless but wasn’t (https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-antifa-stored-weapons...). The sprawling homeless camp became its own controversy, with black bloc/antifa affiliated activists trying to set up a new autonomous zone following something similar in Portland (https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/12/18/296959-n296959). All this chaos and the park being taken over as an illegal homeless encampment provided cover for a homicide-suicide (https://thepostmillennial.com/homicide-suspect-in-seattle-sl...). The person committing the homicide was Travis Berge, a repeat offender who was featured in the documentary “Seattle is Dying” as a prime example of permissive restorative justice policies don’t work (https://komonews.com/news/local/travis-berge-repeat-offender...). He killed a woman that was allegedly his “girlfriend” before killing himself.
Call me biased but I happen to think that being at a “protest” that results in the storming of the Capitol during the tallying of electoral votes for our country’s leader is not equivalent to the occupation of a public park after a man was suffocated by a police officer. I happen to think that storming the seat of government is worse.. Chaz was two (maybe three square) blocks, and the news was acting like it was a country. Also absolutely nothing was stopping the police from doing their job, they literally abandoned a precinct which made zero sense at the time. I acknowledge there were shootings, but yeah like I said, I went there on multiple occasions and didn’t see a single firearm, but the news (both CNN and Fox) described checkpoints and anarchy when all I saw with my own eyes were art booths and a stage with speakers giving lectures.
I watched the mainstream news and I walked down the street. The vast majority of news coverage was very favorable to chaz/chop. It was extremely unsafe after sundown, made that way by the residents of chaz/chop.
I lived about 4 blocks north and I can give you videos of cal anderson and the general capitol hill area being dangerous after sun down throughout the past 4-5 years if you'd like. Seattle is overall not a nice place to live unless you're in the suburbs or only exist indoors.
One night right outside my window, I witnessed a homeless man with a gun to his head, right out in the open, screaming "KILL ME MOTHERF***" to the guy screaming "GIVE ME MY MONEY". I've seen knife fights by both QFC's.
Everyone just normalizes it and like, finds an equilibrium when you live there.
All the live footage I've seen from people who have actually gone suggests that it was as bad as people suggest.
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.
Can you link to any of that? I lived nearby and it felt more like a street festival the times I went by. I know this stuff happened, but I genuinely never saw what it was like.
Yeah, pretty much. I remember a Twitch streamer who'd broadcast from there even abused the DMCA to take down a video that Seattle's police department posted to try and identify the CHAZ-affiliated people who were caught on stream shooting and killing a black teenager. As far as I know Twitch didn't have any problem with that, because "Black Lives Matter" doesn't actually mean black lives matter...
I remember peacefully eating Subway about 2 blocks away from CHAZ watching bunnies hop around in the grass. I was there for photojournalistic purposes. I had to walk past a Starbucks with broken windows however. Actually being there and experiencing it, media most definitely blew it out of the water for outrage advertising $$. You're very right.
The initial few days of george floyd protests were tense, but almost every large city around the country also was.
Cancel culture isn't about a company banning things, it's about an outrage mob getting angry to the point where it becomes untenable for a company to defend an individual that hasn't broken the law.
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.
And all of this while twitch’s “Just Chatting” section is basically Soft Core porn, “hot tub streams” accessible to underage users, exploiting vulnerable, desperate people for insane amount of donations.
Twitch is definitely a slippery slope, especially in distributing soft core porn to underage kids.
Agreed. Personally I think we need to do a better job of preventing kids from being exposed to this kind of stuff. Not just on Twitch but everywhere else.
And of course punishment without process of law has never gone awry before, and never slippery sloped into something nightmarish. I'm sure it'll all be fine. It's not like we have ample historical examples of this sort of thing.
Wow, that's a really interesting idiom. I've never heard that before and will definitely use it over slippery slope, especially since pointing out a slippery slope is often incorrectly called a fallacy (from my understanding, it is only a fallacy if there is no established trend).
A rowdy unarmed (not a single firearm) mob is not an “insurrection”. I’m not condoning what happened, but can we please stop using hyperbolic language?
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
Organized, it says right there. You think that mob was organized? There was no plan
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
>On or about January 6, 2021, within the District of Columbia, CHRISTOPHER ALBERTS, did carry and have readily accessible, a firearm, that is, a Taurus G2C semi-automatic handgun, on the United States Capitol Grounds and in any of the Capitol Buildings.
"COUNT ONE
On or about January 6, 2021, within the District of Columbia, CHRISTOPHER
ALBERTS, did carry and have readily accessible, a firearm, that is, a Taurus G2C semi-automatic
handgun, on the United States Capitol Grounds and in any of the Capitol Buildings.
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."
See my other comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26734738. Meets the definition of insurrection, and there were many weapons present, incuding the ones you acknowledged, several unlicensed guns, and Molotovs.
How many people were engaged in activities that fit the definition of “insurrection” and how many have been charged with more than just trespassing? How many with conspiracy? If that number is nearly zero, out of hundreds who entered the Capitol grounds, who in turn were a small fraction of the tens of thousands in DC that day to support Trump, how can all of it and all these participants be described in such extreme terms? That seems like a false description.
> 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.
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against. There's plenty more explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme..., but the short version is that it leads to tedious, predictable, and nasty threads that destroy the curious conversation HN is supposed to exist for.
I never said every single person in the crowd was an insurrectionist.
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.
> Hundreds of people physically stormed the Capitol with the explicit intention of overturning a democratic election. What else would you call that but insurrection?
I would call it a protest or a riot. The vast majority were protesting against the legitimacy of the election results or simply there to rally for their candidate, both of which are legally allowed. That's not "overturning a democratic election" - that's drawing attention to the problem and calling for investigations. The fact that a few people within that crowd may have conspired to do something more shouldn't change the intent of the majority who were there. This is also why almost no one who entered the capitol will face any jail time or charges beyond trespassing.
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 (https://time.com/5950292/iowa-congress-election-rita-hart/).
> It's not a good look to downplay crime and violence just because the people doing it voted the same way you did.
I'm not downplaying anything, but rather describing things as they are. I feel your use of the word "insurrection" is exaggerating things. The only people using the word "insurrection" are activists and biased journalists - not our justice system. How many people have been charged or convicted for "insurrection"? How does that number compare to the number of people at the capitol?
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.
Upon watching the evidence and trial, it's clear it was organized. They had Save the Dates months ahead (at the exact time the election was being certified) with continued rhetoric that the election was stolen and that they had to march to the Capitol and fight.
Literally everything you're describing would be identical to that of a preplanned protest. The implication of "organization" is that of a plan for "insurrection", for which there is no proof of premeditation.
> with continued rhetoric that the election was stolen and that they had to march to the Capitol and fight.
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".
This is just moving the goal posts (not to mention plenty of weapons and threats were involved).
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.
You asked a well-considered question and got a stupid response. What a waste.
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.
Gotcha, I do appreciate you taking the time to reply seriously. My issue with your definition is that means the only thing you'll deem an insurrection is a revolution (basically a successful 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.
The BLM protests did at times turn to riots. I don't say that to dehumanize anyone but there was violence and destruction. Mainly because the cause was highjacked by groups that love to break out into violence, such as Antifa.
If we can't call out such groups and recognize the damage they do, what happens to the next protest?
I'm not sure what you mean, where am I unwilling to call out a group?
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.
I call riots that happened at BLM protests "BLM riots".
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.
Then you're willfully engaging in disinformation and dishonesty. If we can't agree to call things what they are, how can we hope to have any sort of discussion?
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.
The footage of the people that actually got into the Senate seems to disprove this painting of the events. I didn't see anyone attempting to abolish the government or whatever. Rather, it was a few people taking pictures and standing around. I dont support them but I'm not going to lie about the footage and claim it was anything close to an unarmed insurrection
A mob occupying private land, for weeks (months?), and declaring autonomy under a radical, explicitly and overtly anti-american, revolutionary flag, threatening and ejecting any approaching officials, including medical services, with violence. Particularly when this mob is affiliated with a decentralized network throughout the united states with similar goals.
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.
Everyone knows that if you reside at the podium for 10 seconds uninterrupted, you become the President of the Senate and can issue any rules you want.
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.
I appreciate your perspective, but would argue you are overestimating the stability of our system. Also its not like those "jackasses" came out of nowhere... they were part of a protest organized by the sitting President to protest... the outcome of a typical election.
Oh come on. You have to keep your head pretty deep in the sand to think this was just tourists wandering through the Capitol. They killed a police officer and were chanting that they wanted to kill the VP and Speaker of the House. They flew a confederate flag inside the Capitol. Stop making excuses for traitors.
I watched the whole trial, it's pretty hard to excuse. Even GOP minority senate leader agreed he was guilty of inciting insurrection (despite voting not to convict on a technicality he created). Sorry if it doesn't match up with your worldview.
"Unarmed" is definitely false, per the other comments: the FBI confiscated "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."
But several people seem to be arguing that only firearms count. In that case: Christopher Alberts was arrested with a handgun and charged with unlawful possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds. Grant Moore was found an with unlicensed gun in his vehicle near the Capitol; Lonnie Leroy Coffman, the same, except it was multiple guns and 11 Molotov cocktails. (Source for all: https://www.usatoday.com/storytelling/capitol-riot-mob-arres...)
We can all be thankful he didn't use them, but a person who goes to a protest with Molotovs does not have personal defense in mind.
One more for future reference: Cleveland Meredith apparently arrived too late for the riot, but was arrested the day after with two unregistered guns after threatening to "put a bullet in [Pelosi's] noggin on live TV.”
> 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.
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.
Natural causes, obesity, police violence and, maybe, one instance of death that could have been caused by the scuffles which was originally blamed on a fire extinguisher (the story of which was retracted by the NYT just after the vote on impeachment). This is common knowledge at this point.
Also I said "significant violence", as in enough to overthrow the government.
They tried to stop the certification of an election winner using violence and intimidation. That's an insurrection.
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.
The word is often taken to denote a violent uprising. The Capital protests weren't particularly violent - the protesters didn't kill anyone (not to mention they were hardly an uprising).
>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.
> The word is often taken to denote a violent uprising. The Capital protests weren't particularly violent - the protesters didn't kill anyone.
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.
> 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 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...
> 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.
Please cite some sources showing that the governments of the Weimar Republic – generally formed by conservative and liberal parties and frequently supported by the SPD – used propaganda and censorship to get themselves overthrown by the NSDAP.
> 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.
What took place at the Capitol wasn’t an insurrection or a coup (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/06/why-this-wasnt-a-coup-c...). It was by and large a protest, like numerous past protests at the Capitol that didn’t generate the same media coverage due to bias (https://www.allsides.com/blog/capitol-hill-breach-riot-cover...). There were literally tens of thousands of people in DC for rallies and protests, including several thousand in front of the Capitol. A few hundred went past the barriers and almost all those who did, are only going to end up with a minor trespassing charge. Calling all of that an “insurrection” and claiming that Trump or rally organizers were “damaging the fabric of democracy” is not just hyperbolic, but explicitly false.
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.
I think it's an interesting consequence of accountability, that the people being held accountable tend to vocally dislike being held accountable, but don't want to say so for some reason.
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.
You're thinking of it like a legal process. Think of a private party instead - you're happy to invite lots of people, but everyone heard Adam was a real asshole to someone in public, so you don't want to have him at the party anymore (even though he was never bad at your previous parties specifically).
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.
> then what precisely are they defending their users _from_?
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.
> 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.
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.
> If the behavior on their platform is not disruptive to it, then what precisely are they defending their users _from_?
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.
The problem is who judges the Adams and decide that they are assholes. People are worried that the judge will not be fair and it will be biased in favor of some ideology.
Of course at some point it will not be fair. No system is and people make mistakes. The question is - is it going to be less fair / more biased than not applying the same policy.
No, because "natural rights", like all rights, are a human abstraction and thus open to interpretation, political and religious bias and difference of opinion. They don't actually exist in Nature and so can't actually be objectively quantified. The Declaration of Independence was written by men who believed they had a God-given right to own other men as property after all.
You mean they can ban someone from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and all other services with live streaming option? That's not really the case.
There are posts elsewhere indicating that twitch is close to the only game in town for live game streaming. People were denied access to tournaments, not intending to stream or commentate themselves, because the tourney organizers wanted to stream on twitch.
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.
Sure, it sucks that twitch is the only game in town for professional gamers. For some reason other attempts never worked long term. But what options are there? Either it needs to be worth for someone to compete with the service, or streamers would have to gain some kind of law protection status which would be worse than now. Or even worse, twitch could go the way of pro physical sports where as long as you don't kill someone, nobody cares. (and you may even get positive pr to keep covered up)
They are deciding how they view each user and their actions. Shouldn't I also be expected to have the same privilege?
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.
>Held accountable by whom? We didn't elect twitch.
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?
> 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?
Historical social shunning was the majority of people in society choosing to exclude people. Today's cancel culture is vocal minorities bullying monopolistic companies into excluding people.
For much of the history you are referencing there was no difference between the whims of society and the whims of the judicial system. We now have the separation of the two which opens the loophole I previously mentioned. Do you have any suggestion for how to address that loophole?
For example, imagine a scenario in which a loved one comes to you and says they were sexually assaulted two years ago. It happened long enough ago that there is no hope to recover any corroborating evidence. It will simply be the victim's word against the perpetrator and therefore there is almost zero hope of conviction. Do you tell this person "just trust the judicial system" or would you help them achieve some sort of punishment outside of the judicial system such as getting the perpetrator fired?
We have shifted from relying on the whims of society for justice to relying on the judicial system for justice. There isn't a "separation of the two" even now, there's only one recognized system for determining justice. Vigilante justice is illegal.
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.
> Do you tell this person "just trust the judicial system" or would you help them achieve some sort of punishment outside of the judicial system such as getting the perpetrator fired?
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.
Your child comes to you and says a teacher raped them and your response would be you "might mention it to mutual acquaintances"? You wouldn't want to be a "snitch" and tell the school that employed the teacher?
That’s super extreme. Of course I’d call the cops the same day. It’s your job to protect your children.
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.
Early American culture was designed to prevent this. Early pilgrims were persecuted by other Christian groups in Europe. So they built in ideas like religious freedoms to try to build a society that could accept differences of opinions. I'm not American but have a lot of respect for what they were trying to achieve.
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.
The idea that the Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom is mostly a fairy tale. But either way, there is a world a difference between shunning someone for exercising religious freedom and shunning someone who very likely committed sexual assault.
EDIT: This is being downvoted. I'm not sure if it is the Pilgrims comments, so I will point people to the Wikipedia article and the second sentence which notes that the Pilgrims "fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands." They spent over a decade in Holland. They didn't come to America due to persecution because they already had religious freedom in Holland.[1]
I think we will have to agree to disagree on the history of the Pilgrims.
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.
> 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.
There are plenty of sources that agree with me on the Pilgrims.[1][2][3]
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.
Well, they were eventually “persecuted” in Holland the same way they were “persecuted” in England: They weren’t allowed to impose their religious rules on others. That’s the “persecution” they “fled.”
> Society. Don't like it, pick a new society like the two commenters you responded to you are considering.
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.
No, it's not society. That makes it sound like everyone has a say.
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.
I'm willing to bet there are a significant number of people who didn't vote for him who would be opposed to an individual getting banned for supporting him. This pushes the percentage of individuals who are opposed to this punishing/excluding over 50%. "The powerful" that you are referring to would also be a minority if your numbers are correct.
>Society. Don't like it, pick a new society like the two commenters you responded to you are considering.
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.
There is no set percentage, but if the decision makers at Twitch don't represent society, there is nothing stopping a Twitch competitor from sprouting up that is more in line with society's morals.
I'd submit for your consideration that there's quite a lot stopping someone from just starting a twitch competitor.
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?
Remember your hypothetical started with Twitch's morals being out of line with society's morals. That represents a huge demand for a competitor.
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.
Now you're moving the goal posts from "able to broadcast yourself" to "starting a twitch competitor.
Then you're moving the goal posts from "streaming yourself" to "reaching as many people as possible and/or making the most money from it".
You can say what you want on the internet, but people don't have to listen and companies don't have to broadcast you, promote you or pay you.
Alex Jones still does his show, but if you accuse the victims of a mass shooting of being actors in a conspiracy for gun control, you might not get to have people subscribe to you on youtube.
I didn't open up the "just go start your own twitch" line, I was responding to someone.
> You can say what you want on the internet, but people don't have to listen and companies don't have to broadcast you, promote you or pay you.
That sounds good in a vacuum, but what about when it's a handful of companies doing all of the broadcasting? If this were the internet of the 2000s, with a widely distributed network of self-hosted blogs and BBs, I'd be right there with you, but that's not where we're at.
Alex Jones is big enough to bring his noxious show anywhere. What about the little guy? What if it's the historically persecuted who continue to be persecuted when this all shakes out?
> That sounds good in a vacuum, but what about when it's a handful of companies doing all of the broadcasting?
... 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.
Describing the options available currently today is not a helpful contribution here, and seems intended to silence discussion of something considered unjust by others. Beyond the facts you've cited — as a private company, Amazon owes no duty of 'guaranteed platform' whatsoever — is there anything else you're able to contribute to this discussion? What are your views? Do you agree or disagree with the "simple" circumstances you cite? Do you consider Twitch's actions likely to promote injustice against minorities?
The parent comment you're replying to notes, correctly, that the behaviors you label "corporate libertarian" are the choices available today. It's not valid to infer and label the beliefs of the poster of that comment for describing these choices under the current US situation, even if those choices seems unjust and cruel, as it's entirely possible they don't agree, or they have more nuanced beliefs, or maybe they're just bitter today for reasons wholly unrelated to the topic at hand. You could instead indicate that what they describe is precisely the circumstance you wish to change (you do wish to change that, right?), and maybe you could even go into detail how you'd change it (would you pass new laws? what would they say?), and what approach you think would be effective for making that happen. Anything along those lines would be valuable and relevant.
I think people generally mention accountability when it suits them, specifically when it suits their group morals.
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.
The responsibility starts to fuzz when you try to follow that thread.
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.
"We can ban anyone at will for any reason or none" (which is what this kind of policy amounts to) is corrosive to actual accountability. Twitch are appointing themselves as judge, jury and executioner; there's no evidentiary standard, no right of appeal, no procedural safeguards. It's the same kind of "accountability" as the Star Chamber - a way for the strong to impose their will on the weak.
Limited-liability companies are an unnatural, artificial privilege; perhaps we should tolerate them when they serve some social purpose, but they should be held accountable like any other government-backed entity (since that is in fact what they are). More to the point, pragmatically the likes of twitch are harder to avoid than many national governments.
The "witches" in Salem weren't actually witches. Racist and violent assholes on social media trying to drape themselves in the false flag of liberty are still racist, violent assholes.
I think the parent comment is trying to point out that the people who were deciding who was a "witch" in Salem back then could be the same type of people who are deciding what counts as "racist" or "hate speech" these days when it comes to "canceling" others.
Yes, practically everything every social media platform has done over nearly the last decade which anyone has ever disagreed with has been equated to Nazism, Stalinism, Orwellian dystopia or the Salem Witch trials. The slippery slope fallacy is very popular, especially on Hacker News.
> There is no false flag of liberty, that is an oxymoron.
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).
Purely literally, yes, you're correct, you can neither physically remove someone nor physically restrain someone, and this is a good thing, as the state has a monopoly on use of force.
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.
Metaphorically, because we're really talking about whether "liberty" implies a "right to offend people" that precludes Twitch from being able to ban any account for any users' behavior. It does not. Especially not for the kind of egregious reasons they're stating.
> this is a good thing, as the state has a monopoly on use of force
i disagree that its a good thing. The threat of a minor altercation from property owners helps maintain stability (emphasis on minor).
And the state having a monopoly on violence changes the dynamic of property, where the government can take whatever it wants from me (even my children) if they want to dream up a reason.
>And the state having a monopoly on violence changes the dynamic of property, where the government can take whatever it wants from me (even my children) if they want to dream up a reason.
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.
Since when has BLM or antifa been held accountable for anything? BLM alone murdered over 30 policemen and several civilians. They pulled a dead body out of one of the burned out buildings in Minneapolis after the violent left-wing riots there. Antifa murdered 9 in Dayton and injured over 20 others, they stormed multiple government buildings and attacked government officials and police. Who is held accountable for promoting violence against ICE, disclosing the home addresses of the police and shooting at their facilities?
I'll try to be mature about my response to this too.
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.
If you go on Facebook and say "Hey, I'm going to go shoot up a school on twitch tomorrow", then Twitch can ban you. Previously, it was unclear that this was bannable because it didn't occur on site.
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.
Thank God Twitch is stopping people from livestreaming how they shoot up a school. It's not like we have mechanisms that work to actually prevent those events in the first place. We really need internet mob justice to provide a non-solution to this already-solved problem.
It's plain and simple: nobody is willing to give you a tribune for a risky public speech on their large, multi-tenant, money-generating property. They don't want the bad PR fallout. Not because they are moralistic; they care about their profits. It's the public who is moralistic, and even a small but vocal group can do a lot of damage to a company image, with a silent / tepid support from the bulk of the public. Don't expect commercial entities to fight for your First Amendment rights; they exist to earn money, and have a ton of honest warnings in their ToS.
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.
> or if the perpetrator was not a user when they committed the acts.
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
I was having this exact conversation with a friend the other day. To engage in any form of (even remotely) political discourse on the internet is to step into a landmine once you consider the 20-year horizon. People are now being fired for things they said as teenagers [1], and while I am all for anti-racism and inclusiveness, have we forgotten that people grow and change with time? That we are products of our society and those societies often imbibe us with some blind spots that we later come to recognize?
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].
> those societies often imbibe us with some blind spots that we later come to recognize?
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.
I think it's kinda fascinating to see the things that powerful public figures thought they could get away with.
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?
>Private companies now own most of the highways we use for speech, much less widespread speech.
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 funded by a billionaire. They did not need to depend on someone else's computers (AWS and Twilio). They could have hosted things themselves and reached their audience.
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.
So at what point do you say that is no longer the case?
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?
#4 is a problem. ICANN should be like a utility (and as far as I know, it sort of is for now).
#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.
Alright, fair enough. AWS pitches itself as basically a utility, and so treating it as a utility when it's convenient for Amazon and as a fully private service when it's not strikes me as sketchy, but yeah that's more a complaint about Amazon's deceptive advertising than anything else.
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.
> 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.
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 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.
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.
>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.
>Do you understand why some of us are viewing this problem through an anti-trust or public utility lens now?
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.
>> 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.
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.
It seems like that the companies are trying to avoid the lawsuit. Let say our freedom of speech is X. In tradition, we have X<LAW. Right now, we get X<COMPANY<COMPANY<...<LAW which would definitely narrow down when the company chain increases.
America has changed a lot, used to be whether you were on the left or the right, you were radically pro-free speech because bad speech needs to be exposed. Somehow it's turned to "we need to censor bad speech" which is a dangerous cultural turn.
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
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.