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Stripe bans Trump campaign

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Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#541

Post by monocasa »

mjevans wrote: post #501
baumandm wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

We don't have tests because they were specifically used to disenfranchise large classes of people in the past.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#542

Post by aww_dang »

Trasmatta wrote: post #337
camhart wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes some were violent. Yes those who were violent should be arrested, investigated, etc. But I'd argue half the country doesn't agree that the mobs intent was on killing members of congress. And that's the issue. You view it from that perspective, and from that perspective it makes sense to ban everything. But half the country (likely) doesn't agree with that perspective. I remember seeing bloody heads of Trump on tw…

Huh? You're really trying to compare what some randos do on Twitter to what the President of the United States did on Wednesday? Really think about it: the President of the United States incited a mob to attack the Capitol to prevent the certification of the vote of his political opponent. He did this by pushing constant lies and propaganda for months, and urging his followers to "fight" for him. Go watch his speech…

I think the poster's point was that you can cherry pick extreme examples from either side to support a desired narrative. If you believe that most of the Capitol Building protesters were peaceful this makes sense. Even if you disagree, take that as a hypothetical and work backwards from there to understand this view.

Several media outlets are highlighting the worst behavior and generalizing from there. Of course the media has every incentive to be sensationalist. There's also a question of bias outside of the motive of sensationalism.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#543

Post by idiocrat »

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…

> But political affiliation is not a protected class.

The ongoing purge -- would it not be seen as treason, as an act to in fact subvert/weaken a position of POTUS and therefore directly destabilize the US government?

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#544

Post by pmiller2 »

enw wrote: post #499
pmiller2 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be afraid of supporting fascists.

I'm surprised seeing these sort of comments on HN. Implying Republican == fascist is the exact type of thinking this world doesn't need, and prevents any kind of nuanced discussion.

I never said that. I said if you support fascists, you should be afraid. Mitt Romney didn't support fascism. He's a Republican, last I checked. Got any more words you'd like to stuff in my mouth?

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#545

Post by ineedasername »

eternalban wrote: post #133
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.

If alternative chat, payment, etc. are prevented from being created, that is not a "free market" decision. This smells like a politically aligned cartel, with key companies enjoying de facto monopoly positions in effect legislating what is and what is not acceptable. Right now, we haven't heard from ISPs. The entire suite of services that are controlled by the monopoly FANGs can be recreated, including clouds and clo…

To me this just smells like a bunch of companies finally booting people off for violating ToS. Especially given a reasonable argument that President Trump committed a crime, failing to enforce their ToS could open them to their own legal liability for facilitating activity that went against their ToS and is later found to be criminal. Shareholders would sue for securities fraud at the very least.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#546

Post by dnissley »

ineedasername wrote: post #527
crx07 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand it feels completely appropriate and even deserved. On the other, yes, this is unfortunately a path to a very serious totalitarian issue. Situations like this one underscore the future importance of cryptocurrencies. Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprison…

Going from bans due to ToS violations all of the way to government coercion of executives through imprisonment is an enormous leap in logic. There's quite a few steps along that path in between. And if course given that bitcoin has to be sent and received, if we ever arrived at your dystopia, bitcoin would not help: the political rival would simply jail the executive for receiving bitcoin payments instead of USD curr…

government coercion of executives through imprisonment

I think you read this slightly wrong -- drop the government (political adversary != government adversary) and relax imprisonment for threats of violence:

"coercion of executives through threats of violence"

...and we've got something a lot closer to what we already see today.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#547

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ffggvv wrote: post #462
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.

https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347970421161922560 does this make you reconsider at all?

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. I hadn't seen that thread from Navalny before, and I certainly think it adds a useful perspective to the debate.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#549

Post by adventured »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #485
hilbertseries wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives. How is this a good faith argument. You’ve jumped a situation where somewhere is being deplatformed and banned from various services for encouraging violence. To someone will us…

Russian opposition is tamest of the tame, yet, it is routinely deplatformed and prosecuted, guess for what, calls for extremism and violence! And a large portion of population believes that to be true, because government controls most sources of information. I think US might look exactly same in a few years. The mighty benevolent Party will care for thankful citizens, with the exception of a few outcasts who can't ev…

And it's no coincidence that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny spoke out against big tech conspiring together to censor Trump. He sees exactly what they're doing and knows where it leads.

All big tech has to do now is tighten the screws further, and they can use their new standard to wipe out any challenger from the right half of the political spectrum before they ever gain traction (whether in media, with payment processing, social media, news, tech platforms & hosting; it's all controlled by the same political group now).

This approach by big tech would have prevented Trump from ever having a shot at getting elected in the first place, they would have turned down the volume so nobody could hear what he had to say. Which tells you all you need to know about what's coming next.

The US is a unified structural dictatorship of the left now. Tech. Academia. Hollywood & media. Social media. News. Payment processing. Thought police. Speech censorship. Tyranny will obviously follow. I'm non-partisan, I've never voted for a Republican, but it's obvious the left has acquired a dangerous amount of system power over the country.

Here's a prediction for you: in the next few years big tech will use this same conspired approach to begin behavior 'encouragement' for the wider population. Fat shame someone? No more Gmail account for you. Say something hateful? No more PayPal account for you. Already you'd have 1/4+ of the left wing nodding their heads in agreement that this is exactly the kind of social engineering that should happen (a US form of what China does to its population). It's inevitably what big tech is going to do, because it's very hard to legislate behavior control to pursue the politically correct dream they have in mind (safe spaces for all, so long as it's their type of safe space, by their rules, and their ideas), but it can be achieved through aggressive coercive action using the platforms, and now with these moves they're officially on the political playing field. It'll arrive in the guise of wrapping society in bubble wrap meant to keep everyone safe, and it ends in societal death by suffocation, narrowing and revocation of practicable rights as ever increasing numbers of things become wrong-think (and come with punishment).

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#550

Post by aww_dang »

dragonwriter wrote: post #407
camhart wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe Trump was trying to overthrow the government? Had that been his real intent I'm fairly certain it would have had a more significant outcome beyond people stealing random envelops and podiums. It was a protest that went too far. We've seen plenty of this occur from both sides in the past year.

> Do you honestly believe Trump was trying to overthrow the government? Yes, just like I think that was the US’s goal in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs. And just as with the Bay of Pigs, the active agents that were sent off were expendable and abandoned once it didn't work. > Had that been his real intent I'm fairly certain it would have had a more significant outcome beyond people stealing random envelops and podiums. Mu…

The Bay of Pigs is a good example of an actual coup attempt with military training and small arms. Can you see the difference between that and what happened at the Capitol Building?
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