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Comment by alexb_ | Hacker News Reader

Consider that large tech corporations will literally never do anything that isn't furthering their goal of making more money. What effect does this type of banning have on the viability of competitors? It makes competitors attract those who are banned, and makes the site unusable for "normal people".

This is the real reason this stuff is banned. Don't let them convince you it's for any sort of noble reason.

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This is a complete misunderstanding of the corporate and human motivation. Corporations are run by people, specifically by rich people who spend their time in elite circles with a set of acceptable cultural and political beliefs. Everyone in the US knows what those are, and what happens to people who are seen as supportive of "deplorables".

CEOs also, like all humans, don't want angry hoards of very online people (blue checkmarks) screaming at them, and have shown time and time again they are willing to bend to the mob to make the screaming stop.

You're right: it's all about money. If it made the site unusable for "normal people", then it would not further their goal of making money.

They're making a financial judgment call. Hostile people scare "normal people" off the platform. Somebody decides whether they'll make more money by scaring off fans of the hostile posters, and how much of that hostility the "normal people" will take before they decide the site causes more aggravation than pleasure.

Captialism famously doesn't depend on generosity, but on self-interest. They can generally be trusted to make decisions based on it. I don't know whether they're right in this instance or not, but the decision makes sense viewed in that light. The whole point of capitalism is that it doesn't need to be noble to nudge people in directions that have wide benefits.

Or (to use the old analogy of a UGC-based site as a nightclub/bar), they kick out people who have a bad enough rep and have pissed off enough customers that it makes them look bad and might lose them money.

I don't think they care - nor should they, really - about silencing this a-hole or another one for good. They just care about PR and business so they boot users who threaten that.

Of all of the outcomes of decisions made in the service of making more money, banning virulent bigots training other people to hate and abuse women isn't one of the bad ones.

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