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Stripe bans Trump campaign

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Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#441

Post by darkwizard42 »

imperio59 wrote: post #307
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95

There is a difference between bank accounts, Visa/MasterCard access and Internet service, on one hand, and App Stores, Twitter accounts and payment providers, on the other hand. The First Amendment promises both free speech and free assembly. Core to the latter is the freedom not to assemble. This freedom is regulated. You can’t refuse to do business with protected classes. But political affiliation is not a protecte…

I buy this argument as the law currently stands, but this is also such a moral double standard (Colorado bakery for instance). Also, how far do we go with this reasoning? Stripe and PayPal refuse service so they're supposed to "Go build their own" (it costs billions to create a new service like stripe or PayPal that can compare). AWS shut you down? Build your own data center... (Again, costs millions or billions). Wh…

Actually I think you might have the Colorado case misrepresented here. The baker was ruled in favor due to objecting based on his religious beliefs. Part of this was that he was okay with baking a cake for the gay couple but NOT one that had certain messaging that would violate his faith. [1]

If the baker had altogether refused to bake a cake for the gay couple, it would have been discrimination on a protected class.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece-colorado...

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#442

Post by dragonwriter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #230
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t refuse to do business with protected classes. But political affiliation is not a protected class. FYI, political affiliation is protected from discrimination in CA, NY, and DC. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...

> political affiliation is protected from discrimination in CA, NY, and DC Lawful political activity is protected from workplace discrimination. That’s a far stretch from making it a general protected class, and wouldn’t prevent Stripe from refusing to work with the Trump campaign.

> That’s a far stretch from making it a general protected class,

There's no such thing as a “general protected class”; there are different lists (and different effects of the status) of protected classes in various categories of law (public accommodations, employment, housing, etc.)

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#443

Post by darkwizard42 »

amelius wrote: post #104
awat wrote: post #64

Not to be reductionist but I don’t see this as a totalitarian issue. This is a free market decision. $Company decides to sever ties with another organization. That choice can be good, bad, reactive, overreactive, misguided, etc but it’s still a market participant choice. Market remains open for other market participants to make other choices.

That's a small market, getting even smaller ...

...which could be viewed as the overall market is deciding not to cater to these views... which is also absolutely legal (and creates a market opportunity for someone else if the group not supported supports it)

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#444

Post by saithound »

This confirms how disingenuous/delusional "free market", "free association" and "free assembly" arguments are in this case. Decisions by entities of this size simply cannot be interpreted under a "free association" lens, except to the same extent that Lockheed-Martin not selling arms to Iran, or, more pertinently, Baidu not serving up photos of the Tiananmen Square protests, can be interpreted under the same lens. You cannot conclude that an act of censorship is not a state or government wielding its power merely because it is done by a private company,

Nominally, Tencent is a privately owned company freely choosing who they provide a platform to [2]. But in reality, they have absolutely no choice but to ban Winnie the Pooh, unless they want a state apparatus to make their lives incredibly difficult from then on.

The same in the US: these are not mom-and-pop stores with immediate agents and agendas exercising their free association rights in accordance with their personal beliefs. These are large tech companies, deeply and inseparably intertwined with public authority and the political parties, lobbying and making political contributions on one side, seeking political approval and avoiding threats of regulatory retaliation on the other. They know full well that if they ban the wrong speech and refuse to ban the "right" speech, they face being regulated out of business. Indeed, seeing this threat, we see them scramble to align with an incoming administration.

You don't have to be an all-in free speech absolutist to see what's wrong with this: we're not talking about people with fringe views having to move to fringe platforms, we're talking about the campaign of the largest (soon-to-be-)opposition party being banned from major platforms en masse, while people with significant credibility regarding authoritarianism [1], who also happen to be on bad terms with said opposition party [2] denounce these acts as "unacceptable acts of censorship".

[1] https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347969772177264644 [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-05/donald-trump-us-has-n...

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#445

Post by tannhauser23 »

People here seem very certain that there won't be any negative externalities from tech companies deplatforming Trump and Parler. Let me raise several concerns.

If you are a politician, are you comfortable with a few tech CEOs holding the power to destroy your campaign? Especially when the CEOs live in the same region and contribute to similar causes? Wouldn't you seek to rein in the power of companies that have the power to destroy you? Or seek to use this power against your political enemies?

"Don't attempt a coup," you say. Sure. But the stated reason by the companies is generally that Trump campaign encouraged and promoted violence - are you sure that this rational will be narrowly applied going forward? Especially when there's an effort by some to redefine hurtful language as violence?

If having active/robust moderation is a hard requirement to exist as a viable app, wouldn't this prohibit new social media companies from going viral? FB/Twitter spends millions and employs an army of contractors to moderate their platforms. Can a new startup that's growing exponentially build moderation before they're shut down by Apple/Google/AWS?

On a related note, does it concern you that the last two social media apps that seriously challenged FB/IG/Twitter are Tik Tok and Parler, and the American government forced a sale of the former and private companies collectively decided to boot the latter?

Hey, I'm just being paranoid. I'm sure these monopolistic companies will use their power perfectly going forward and never make any mistakes. I'm also sure that government will respect their reasonable use of power and leave them alone.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#446

Post by [deleted] »

brown9-2 wrote: post #433
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just categorizing everyone protesting as "fascists" is ignorant. These people think the election was rigged, and they don't trust institutions. They think that our democracy is at risk, and your solution is to push them, deplatform them, and remove all hope of legal political influence? Reacting to this anxiety with force is going to cause a war if it continues.

> remove all hope of legal political influence no one has suggested this and none of the actions of the past few days can be categorized as this Trump’s campaign (for an election that has ended) is not the only campaign in the country

[deleted]

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#447

Post by TearsInTheRain »

Rapzid wrote: post #355
trustfundbaby wrote: post #279

I was on the fence about this, but reading the comments convinced me it was the absolute right decision. The fact that all these institutions just allowed this horrible hateful speech for four years, in the name of free speech etc, despite all the harassment, harm (mental and otherwise) it caused to so many people in America actually emboldened so many to the extent that now that they crossed this invisible line, the…

One of the more concerning tactics I've witnessed over the past few years that Trump and other parts of the GOP rhetoric machine were using in service of lying to people.. Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights. "Stop The Steal" is just another flavor of conflating 1st amendment "freedom of spe…

> Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights.

I dont think we need to infantilize Trump supporters. They are capable of evaluating claims made by the GOP.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#448

Post by darkwizard42 »

postalrat wrote: post #440
Tokkemon wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop downplaying a literally terrorist attack on the nation's Capitol.

Why aren't you blaming the security at the capital? Isn't it there fault the rioters got as far as they did?

Yes, but... that doesn't justify entering the capital or climbing the building either. The state of security isn't the topic of discussion above.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#449

Post by pmiller2 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #406
sdwa wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with this at all and I am tired of seeing "sensible" people here explain how it's important to reach out to fascists and make them feel loved. You're only advocating further normalisation of fascism, and depriving them of the consequences of their actions—consequences that have always been a part of civil society. What's more, that you seem to be more preoccupied with not upsetting these fascists rather…

Just categorizing everyone protesting as "fascists" is ignorant. These people think the election was rigged, and they don't trust institutions. They think that our democracy is at risk, and your solution is to push them, deplatform them, and remove all hope of legal political influence? Reacting to this anxiety with force is going to cause a war if it continues.

What else do you call people supporting fascists?

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#450

Post by zaroth »

pmiller2 wrote: post #435
zaroth wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d suggest the comments are actually not as much to do with Trump specifically as you seem to suspect.

Oh, I see. Are we talking about the 75 million people who supported the person who incited a mob? Members of the mob themselves? What's the difference?

I get it - to you it's just a political flame war. Easier to just brand everyone who voted for Trump a terrorist sympathizer, than to consider the myriad reasons they may have had for voting how they did. It's only 74.2 million people after all.

Maybe easier for you to dismiss concerns your fellow technologists might have, when Big Tech's largest companies unite to completely destroy a competitor with millions of users in a single day, based on the actions of a tiny sliver of its users.

"What's the difference?" you ask, I assume non-ironically.

I wonder, let's say if a politician started a fund to bail out the arrested protesters, would you consider them complicit in the violence?

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