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Stripe bans Trump campaign

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Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#501

Post by mjevans »

baumandm wrote: post #467
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Unfortunately I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that a large percentage of people across the political spectrum lack basic civics knowledge.

We make people take a test to drive.

People should have to take a Civics based test to vote. If someone wants to vote but fails the civics test, they should then immediately qualify for a minimum living wage job to go back to public education and get paid for getting at least an 80% grade at whatever grade level they're working at (obviously with either enrollment at lower grade levels, classification as disability if unable to learn or medically impaired, and similar options also on the table).

The goal would be to make sure that an EDUCATED and Civically Informed public, able to use Critical Thinking skills is the baseline expectation for a functional society in which the general people have the civic duty to be involved in the processes of self government and representative selection for representative democracies.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#502

Post by jaredklewis »

dataflow wrote: post #127
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…

> Stripe and Twitter are pretty clearly the latter. They might be the latter, but I wouldn't consider it obvious. Regarding social media, we've gotten to the point where even US Visa applications ask for social media handles (and I understand they consider it as a negative datum if you don't provide one). And we're also at the point where some companies won't provide you with respectable service unless you @ them on…

I don't have a twitter account and login to Facebook once a month. If both went away tomorrow, my life would continue, very much as now. And I think this is true for most people.

If my water, power, or internet was cut off, I would immediately suffer real, life changing inconvenience and hardship.

To me, the difference between these things is incredibly stark.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#503

Post by ineedasername »

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…

I don't see how it's anti competetive. The free market advocates on HN would say that other people will create other companies and gain the market share current companies have turned down. Or that existing niche companies will find an expanded market serving them.

It's also important to note that companies aren't cutting ties with Trump because of his political ideology, they're cutting ties with him because there's a strong argument he broke the law, and they don't want to be in the awkward position of facilitating that, especially as it could open them to their own legal liability.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#504

Post by doktrin »

If I had a dime for every time I read some pearl clutching comment about the big brother slippery slope on HN, I could have retired by now.

In all these years, the only actual existential danger to society to materialize are precisely the entities that are now being deplatformed.

Excuse me if I don't take all this hand wringing on behalf of unstable insurrectionists seriously.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#505

Post by plaidfuji »

systemvoltage wrote: post #481
npunt wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point about the 'invisible line' is astute. We're in a crisis of perception and reality right now, and this has caused many to lose sight of the very real lines that we have agreed upon to preserve society and democracy. I think the other important factor here is we are in a very vulnerable moment right now because we are in the midst of a transition of power. It takes time to transfer the apparatus and operatio…

I am also worried. It feels like Big Tech flourished in last 4 years with advertisement revenue while staying hush about these issues, but all of a sudden they have an epiphany now. Big Tech leaders are selfish, cowards, clueless and just as vulnerable as the government leaders. They were interested in milking billions in Ads from these hate speech, particularly Twitter. If I were employees at these big companies, I…

I think their hesitation was less from missing out on the trump supporter ad traffic and more from fear of retribution of the trump administration and its congressional allies. That faction has now all but lost their political power for the foreseeable future, making it much less risky to undertake the censorship measures.

Remember, two things happened at once: the riots, but also the result of the Georgia runoff which indicated a complete shift in governmental control. One cleared the runway for the reaction to the other.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#506

Post by grzm »

DSingularity wrote: post #486

I wonder, would these bans would have happened if the Republicans maintained control of the senate?

Counterfactuals are hard, and I'm spitballing here, I think it's useful to consider a scenario where that would be true: for Republicans to have maintained control of the Senate would likely correspond to more public support for Republicans in general, which means it's less likely there would have been run-offs in Georgia; the outcome of the November 2020 elections would likely have been settled much sooner, and less motivation for the unrest that culminated on January 6. So, as to the narrow "would these bans would have happened" now? Probably not.

All of this is conjecture, thought experiment off the top of my head that I will not do much to defend. And, of course, none of that is what actually happened.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#507

Post by freeone3000 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #491
ashtonkem wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of this is that you’re so close to being right, but you’re focusing on the wrong group. On Wednesday an armed mob literally rushed the Capitol because people didn’t vote the way they wanted them to, with the intent to just force them. It might end up being a “self-defeating travesty”, but only time will tell. But you seem more worried about a virtual “mob”, which frankly seems insanely out of touch at the m…

> armed mob I donno if I'm just blind but I keep hearing 'armed' but I haven't seen any photos of the mob carrying guns or baseball bats as claimed by the media. The only photo that showed anything was the guy climbing over the seats with zip-ties which were apparently taken from a bag left by a police offer? Not saying you're wrong just feel like the photos / videos, vs what people are saying, seem to contradict eac…

Capitol police found and defused three pipe bombs, and seven people in the mob so far were arrested for carrying illegal firearms.

And as an aside, "armed" versus "unarmed" is largely immaterial. I don't care if you and five hundred of your buddies show up with supersoakers and pool noodles with the intent to overturn a vote count, it's a direct assault on democracy.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#508

Post by npunt »

systemvoltage wrote: post #481
npunt wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point about the 'invisible line' is astute. We're in a crisis of perception and reality right now, and this has caused many to lose sight of the very real lines that we have agreed upon to preserve society and democracy. I think the other important factor here is we are in a very vulnerable moment right now because we are in the midst of a transition of power. It takes time to transfer the apparatus and operatio…

I am also worried. It feels like Big Tech flourished in last 4 years with advertisement revenue while staying hush about these issues, but all of a sudden they have an epiphany now. Big Tech leaders are selfish, cowards, clueless and just as vulnerable as the government leaders. They were interested in milking billions in Ads from these hate speech, particularly Twitter. If I were employees at these big companies, I…

Self-preservation was certainly a part of why there was inaction, as was financial motive. I also think they were rather naïve about their roles & responsibilities and the real world consequence of their own platforms, as well as lacking in a sophisticated understanding of how to do content moderation or even politics. These topics are both very old (social organizing, radicalization, usenet), and very new (primary medium for global discussion, recommendation algorithms, etc).

This is definitely a moment that will define social media specifically and tech more broadly. Before Wednesday, social media was one thing, and after, it will be another. This is also a bit of a backlog being flushed; many of these decisions were likely made months or years ago, and only accelerated by Wednesday's events.

I see this a little like safety regulations - every regulation is written in blood. Perhaps soon so will every major shift in the tech landscape.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#509

Post by jolincost »

No quarter.

Free speech limited by inciting violence, OK, but should be applied evenly. Anrifa, BLM, weren't deplatformed, right?

The politics of the new right are for some reason considered an existential threat by big tech, and the global security and intelligence faction.

We can't have a situation where Trump can actually deliver results and give the people hope and risk upsetting the control system, so we need to remind everyone they belong to a global control structure, introduce a virus, and coordinate an exaggerated curfew response to remind everyone to be afraid and that we're really in control, not some new fangled ideologue making promises of renewed greatness and destruction of the control system

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#510

Post by dukeofdoom »

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…

A few issues:

1) The most radicalized are by Q. Which itself is a disinformation campaign, contributed to by government entities.

2) Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Would he be held to the same standard? OAC praised BLM protesters marching on the White House a few months ago, with Antifa trying to breach police lines and storm the White House. Should we throw her in jail for sedition. How about Pelosi that asked the army to ignore orders from Trump.

The US might be a democracy. But just because you can vote, does not mean you have any meaningful amount of power. The powerful cabal of corrupt politicians, and their rich backers, they have power. And they have been there for a very long time. They are almost impossible to displace. This breach shook them, because it was common, everyday people that did this. The same people that have had their livelihood destroyed, and have been hurt by all the COVID rules, rioting, trade deals with foreign countries, and so on.

Trump is great for democracy. At every turn he exposes the hypocrisy of the current system. He needles them, and each time they over react. Exposing all their flaws. The amount of backstabbing he gets just from the Republican party, is waking up millions of people.

Thanks to him, we found out how convoluted and non transparent the election process is. How biased the media is. How the Supreme court cowers to political pressure. And now how big tech is working in collusion.

All things that a democratic movement can help to fix.

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