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Stripe bans Trump campaign

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Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#281
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gab got de-platformed and the mob didn't come for anybody else...the world moved on. not everything is a slippery slope. tons of people criticizing it on twitter/fb and they aren't being censored.

[flagged]

Parler bans people that post poop pics. It just so happens that mainstream services have a higher standard.

But seriously, how is mounting an insurection a slippery slope? At this point I get the feeling that a lot of people posting here are apologists for domestic terrorism and it worries me.

There are violent people and they think like Timothy McVeigh. That should worry you. It should worry you even more if they can find like-minded friends like Terry Nichols on cesspools like Parler.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#282

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…

Freedom of speech was created when there were many distributed newspapers. If one newspaper decided not to publish your piece, you could go to another. There was not a cabal of newspapers that controlled 99% of information distribution, like do Twitter, Facebook, and Google. This is not something the founders ever could have foreseen. For all intents and purposes, freedom of speech has flatlined in America. What will…

Freedom of speech has nothing to do with newspapers or news, and never has done.

It only protects you from government, nothing else.

There are legitimate concerns regarding monopolistic behaviour of large digital gatekeepers. But we don’t solve that by deciding to restrict their speech (which is what forced speech would be). You solve it by either making them utilities or breaking them up to create more competition.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#283
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gab got de-platformed and the mob didn't come for anybody else...the world moved on. not everything is a slippery slope. tons of people criticizing it on twitter/fb and they aren't being censored.

[flagged]

They are not "conservative", they are fascist loons. There's a big difference. Reasonable conservatives can get along quite well in society, even today.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#284
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.

[deleted]

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing the point of my question. I’m pointing out that not all opinions should be protected equally. Opinions of hate or violence are bad for society. I don’t understand why the suppression of those things is considered totalitarian? Especially when it comes from private enterprise.

Because if you block 'bad' opinions, you'll need to arbiter them to distinguish bad ones from good. This process is corruptible and eventually you'll find that opposing a current government is 'bad' (this happened in my country in a short span of 15 years). So it turns out that allowing all speech, even 'bad' is less harmful for society in the long run than trying to suppress some speech.

The thing is, even if someone recognizes:

>… you'll need to arbiter them to distinguish bad ones from good. This process is corruptible…

By the time this may matter the most, it is already too late… rubicon has already been crossed. Thus, the one who recognizes this must position themselves to expect any of the downsides that will most assuredly come and to expect society to be of no help at all to achieve such ends.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#286
I am curious for the people against such action by Stripe, what conditions do you think are appropriate before cutting off this kind of service to a customer?

I imagine there must be some conditions that would make one say "we are enabling this individual's actions" to some definiton of "actions" that you disagree with.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#287

The debate here seems like fuel for antitrust issues. A single company deciding not to do business with someone (over actions, not innate stuff like protected classes) should be fine, but when you let them get to be a backbone service, then issues surface like those discussed by everyone here. If google, for example decided to stop surfacing trump stuff in results, that could be a real issue. Not because it’s google…

Stripe (and every other credit card processors) have long refused to do business with a broad amount and types of businesses. For example, Stripe themselves don't serve most travel sites.

https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed

It's a super common practice to deny some customers for basically all financial services companies.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#288
post #26

The people cheering this on will not be protected when the mob comes for you. We live in a digital age. If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.

> it's not any different than living under a fascist government

We should be celebrating Stripe's ability to do this. Do you think a Chinese company could "deplatform" Winnie The Pooh?

It's fantastic that we can still disassociate ourselves and our businesses from someone like Trump!

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#289

The debate here seems like fuel for antitrust issues. A single company deciding not to do business with someone (over actions, not innate stuff like protected classes) should be fine, but when you let them get to be a backbone service, then issues surface like those discussed by everyone here. If google, for example decided to stop surfacing trump stuff in results, that could be a real issue. Not because it’s google…

Stripe is hardly a “backbone” service. There a dozens of different payment processors out there, many of them much larger than Stripe.

There’s absolutely nothing preventing the Trump campaign from using a different payment processor.

It would be a different matter if Visa and MasterCard had blocked them.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#290
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has restrictions on free speech that prevent things like saying hateful stuff. And so far Canada looks pretty democratic and fair to me. Have a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_Can...

Actually it's fraught with issues. "Hate speech" was used to stop the republishing of the cartoons that got the Danish guy murdered. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-im-withdra...

Nothing's perfect, my point us that it didn't lead to a totalitarian state.
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