Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

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I don't agree. I think that the harm caused by these loud demagogues (is that redundant?) is massively overblown.

The US president, perhaps the one with the most platform and audience and reach, couldn't even summon a properly armed militia, it was only a small group of mostly unarmed rioters. Their best efforts achieved precisely nothing: they did not seize any power, they did not hold any territory. It wasn't even a battle. Far from an insurrection, it was just some smashed windows and an instagram moment and now they're all in jail. Calling what happened an armed insurrection is factually inaccurate, even if a few of the rioters brought weapons.

If platform and reach are proportional to messaging effectiveness (the presumption that this sort of censorship makes) then everyone else's efforts along these lines (who isn't the president of the United States) will be substantially less effective than even this massively ineffective display in DC.

Let them squawk. Misinformation and lies simply aren't that dangerous, otherwise we would have had to ban the church centuries ago.

Americans are inundated constantly with bullshit messaging from large, powerful organizations. They aren't nearly as malleable as the pro-censorship people seem to think they are.

To take it away from this political moment for a second, do you believe it's acceptable to allow someone to yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or do you think these people aren't actually yelling, "Fire!", and when we determine someone is yelling, "Fire!", those private institutions should still stop them?

I don't think private institutions, especially when there are a small number of extremely powerful ones that exert control over publishing, should be applying or enforcing subjective standards on publishing.

This isn't a legal opinion but a personal one: people who decide unilaterally for other adults what they should be allowed to read or see are assholes.

My web host is in many senses like my ISP: I don't pay them to editorialize.

In the US there is already a huge and well- (and perhaps over-)funded machinery for investigating and enforcing the law. If the laws are being broken, why not let them handle it? (This has the added benefit of applying the existing body of legal wisdom regarding state censorship.)

If the laws aren't being broken, what's the problem?

Does, "This won't make us any money, and could further result in the company going under or otherwise severely being hindered in the market due to the negative backlash and resulting decline in business." count as a subjective standard that you believe a private institution should not be applying?

What are corporations allowed to do then, in your mind?

Allow me to dodge answering directly:

If gigantic multinationals and infrastructure providers stop hosting anything that might be unpopular or generate bad PR, then we quickly approach a world where the tyranny of sheep logic[1] (not what people think, but what people think other people think) will dictate the very narrow range of what products, services, media, literature, and art are available.

That world sucks and we should avoid it.

This has already mostly happened for concert venues in the US, as well as video hosting.

Already we've made a world where the basic human unclothed form is all but outlawed except in clinical (or apparently yoga) settings online. I don't think there's any upper bound to what a culture can contort into believing is unacceptable.

[1]: https://www.epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/

This implies there's better logic than sheep logic, and that some subset of humanity is privy to it, which feels like the source of the problem in the first place; people thinking that they're better than other people and reacting to that feeling.

Wouldn't another definition of "sheep logic" just be "society", and don't we kind of all agree that society (though not without drawbacks) is vastly superior to no society?

This argument feels like frustration with the price we pay for allowing others to exist alongside us.

Perhaps we should stick to what we in society generally agree on: the rule of law and equal application of it.

Having non-mainstream beliefs or opinions isn't illegal, and I don't think people should be losing their accounts and data for things that aren't illegal.

We already take that approach for public utilities; your water can't be shut off because of your political affiliation or membership in some unprotected class like BDSM practitioners.

Perhaps web and infrastructure hosting (app stores and communications systems (ie social media) included) should be approached in a similar fashion.

this. Current outright banning and gagging will surely backfire.

The pro-trumps will raise the question: "what are the other-side so afraid of, that they are trying to shut us off?" So instead of calming them down, it'll actually have the opposite effect - the feeling that the other side is much more evil than imaginable.

And the questions for bystanders will be "If the powers-that-be can snuff that side, what guarantees that I/we won't be snuffed?"

If you see the foundations of democracy, 'Freedom-of-speech' is actually a device to ensure no political party can have dictatorial powers over what the public can know. Moreover, democratic societies are actually more resilient due to these 'room-to-wiggle' - the other option will be much more violent 'revolution' experienced by dictator-states at their end.

Anyway, the other side is producing gibberish, then so be it. Just refute them properly inside a shared platform.

The point you're trying to make isn't actually one anyone (rational) is trying to disagree with. Obviously (IMO) differing viewpoints should be allowed to coexist.

The problem is that you're not really addressing the actual issue, which is whether or not I can enter into agreements or not contingent on my own actions.

If I can, then it's fair for the other party of that agreement to exercise that part of the agreement and end our relationship. If I can't, then I'm not allowed agency over my own actions, nor is the other party...

Are you suggesting that groups shouldn't create terms of use that are contingent on how a service is used?

Terms of use are not legally binding, they are simply a courtesy.

A service can today kick you off without your having ever violated the terms of use they publish.

To answer your question, our society presently restricts several types of businesses from either offering or not offering service to certain groups in various circumstances. This wouldn't really be any more of a stretch than preventing the electric company from denying you service.

I don't think anything I said was related to legality, but I apologize if I wasn't clear about that. Agreements between people are definitely enforced by legal means, but agreements between people are also a moral question about honesty -- will you do what you said you'd do?

But what I hear you saying is that society should not allow people to enter into agreements that would be conditional on what they use that service for, is that right?

If so, I strongly disagree.

I should be allowed to enter into agreements based on how I behave, and I expect people I enter into agreements with to abide by what they claimed they'd do, including if they agreed ahead of time that it was up to me to evaluate their behavior and judge for myself when to stop allowing them access to my service.

To deny me this right would be a violation of the concept of ownership, which I believe is a critical aspect of modern society.

This is a different discussion if you don't think people can own things (which is a fair argument, though I would have disagreements as well).

This is not comparable because screaming fire in a theatre isn't an opinion, which free speech set out to protect. It is a dishonest argument to justify cracking down on dissent from my perspective.

So you think I know better and am intentionally mischaracterizing the two as equivalent?

The real insurrection was not the rioters. They were, as you say, very disorganized and barely missed their opportunity to massacre the Senate when they chased a security guard down a hallway, past the open doors to the senate chamber.

President Trump, however, played his role well. He refused to call in the military to end the insurrection, giving the rioters several hours to run rampant though the Capitol of the world’s biggest military power.

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