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Comment by jcarrano | Hacker News Reader

I usually agree with EFF, but this clearly crosses a limit of promoting and glorifying violence. In this case the user is clearly in violation platform TOS.

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Those rules are always applied inconsistently. Nearly all political statements are violent or are calls to violence, but if the violence is deemed acceptable violence then it probably wouldn't even register as violent by a person reading them.

For example, "we need to deport illegal immigrants" is a call for violence if you think about it, it's just violence through one of the acceptable channels - law enforcement.

The same is true of statements about war, whether it be in support of Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, etc. Maybe the violence is self-defense, but doesn't change the fact it is violence.

You don't see platforms removing these violent statements, because it's "acceptable" violence, but what violence acceptable is malleable. It changes in society over time, and it's different depending on who you ask.

Rounding up somebody and detaining them is not violence.

???????

Do you have a question?

This is categorically untrue.

No, it isn't.

Forcibly relocating someone is an act of violence.

Not if it doesn't involve violence.

Now tell me, how do you forcibly relocate somebody who does not want to be relocated, without violence?

Hacker News take of the day: Rounding up somebody and detaining them is not violence.

Would you like to expand on how you came to this conclusion? It's at odds with most interpretations of labour camps and internment camps and "re-education centres"

It might be an unjust detention, but it's not violence. There's no physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill. The force, if any, is intended to restrain.

>There's no physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill.

Weird, how do the people get to the camps then?

In a car?

What happens if they don't want to get into the car?

The agents of the state will use physical force to put them in there.

Is that violence to you?

No, because it's not physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill.

You don't think relocating someone to a camp against their will is intending to hurt?

Are you serious about that?

Correct on both.

So you wouldn't mind too much if I forcibly relocated you to Elko, Nevada?

I would mind, but that doesn't make it violence.

Just like most other systematic issues, the "Violence" is rarely surface level. The violence in these specific cases may look more like a father and husband being gone without meaningful trace, leaving a potential family to fend for themselves without a legal or decent way to do it. It's a teenager never making it back home, leaving a family in turmoil. The act of processing someone for illegal immigration may not be violent[citation needed], but the wake of the act is undeniably violence. I'm curious now, why do degrees of separation of intent minimize fault of the perpetrator?

Denying Ruby Ridges the chance to attend an integrated school wouldn't have been violence on one hand, but the systemic chain of events inside the lack of equal opportunity could be perceived as such.

I think you mean Ruby Bridges. Ruby Ridge was something different and fortunately there was only the one notable event there.

Yup, what an oversight! Sorry about that.

I think you've given some good examples of distressing or deeply undesirable situations that are not because of violence.

And what happens if you refuse?

It is. We can argue under which conditions it is legitimate, which is long debate. At some point, it seems that the TOS does make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence, however imperfect it may be.

For example, nobody in their right mind would consider a policeman being distinguished for stopping a shooter as "glorifying violence" even if the officer had to use violence to him down.

So well put, thank you

They aren’t applied inconsistently. Distinguishing between lawful and unlawful forms of violence is a perfectly consistent way to go about it.

That's fair and might be true, but not all platforms specifically say that's how they go about it. The TikTok community guidelines don't distinguish between illegal and legal violence, they ban all promotions of violence. Maybe they only enforce it against illegal violence, but then they're following their community guidelines incorrectly, albeit, maybe consistently incorrectly.

In common usage we don’t think lawful violence as violence. We don’t say that it’s violent for police to arrest bank robbers. Therefore prohibitions on violence are commonly understood to apply only to unlawful violence. No one is confused by this!

The distinction only surfaces if someone insists on describing lawful violence as violence, as in the parent comment.

>Nearly all political statements are violent or are calls to violence

Maybe if you only listen to extremist diatribes instead of reasonable discourse.

Trump ran a platform of violence. Where's the reasonable discourse at the top of the ticket?

Well, the other ticket was less unreasonable and there are other political discussions than US presidential elections.

There are other discussions but you're saying they must only feel that way because they listen to extremist diatribes. They must be paying attention to the biggest political discussion which was won on extremist diatribes. The extremism is more prominent than you may want to believe.

Maybe I shouldn't have said nearly all, but a good amount. Nearly all laws are enforced by the threat of violence, or actual violence, so I don't think I'm too far off.

Yes, "political statements are violent or are calls to violence" is true in the sense that state power is ultimately based on the threat of violence. At the deepest level of analysis this violence is illegitimate too. The thing is, we are sadly not yet at the point where we can do away with the state.

The rules are reasonable as far as they prohibit glorifying illegitimate violence. Whether the platforms applies the rules in this way for other cases or not is irrelevant for this particular case, even if we know the TOS are applied pretty arbitrarily.

What do you think of the many similar decks listed in the article that got to stay up? The IDF Gaza deck posts X marks over the cards every time one is killed

Maybe they should be banned too? It doesn't subtract from my point. Still, there is a world of difference between killing people because you don't like their companies and killing combatants of a terrorist organization.

I'd note this doesn't meet the legal limit of promoting violence.

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

(This strict standard saved Trump on Jan 6, incidentally.)

I wholeheartedly disagree. Nowhere do these cards actually call for violence. This is clearly a case of billionaires protecting their egos and keeping the masses in line. If Trump can get away with Jan 6 then this is peanuts.

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