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Stripe bans Trump campaign

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Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#631

Post by doubleunplussed »

ashtonkem wrote: post #619
doubleunplussed wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? Breaking the law. Companies providing a service should not care what it is used for. If society has a problem with what people are using services for, it should pass laws, and the companies should comply with the requirements of the law. I don't know why we are allowing massive companies with unchecked power to make decisions about what is acceptable behaviour on social networks. Since when did they make th…

> Honestly? Breaking the law. Good news!

Did Parler break the law? Or just their users?

In either case, is Amazon acting on legitimate orders from law enforcement, or are they taking the law into their own hands?

Other than your comment, I've yet to hear anyone imply this is a legal, rather than a moral, matter.

Edit: I see this is the Stripe thread, not the AWS/Parler thread. I agree Trump has broken the law, though it is true that even criminals have regular bank accounts that don't get cancelled as soon as they're accused. Same thing applies, Stripe was not acting on a law enforcement request. It's vigilante justice, even if it's on the right side of history. I don't like the precedent.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#632

Post by bobthepanda »

ethbr0 wrote: post #377
bmarquez wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we're also at the point where some companies won't provide you with respectable service unless you @ them on social media. Real-world example: T-Mobile. Their Twitter and Facebook representatives (called T-Force) have better customer service (they are more empowered to help you without supervisor escalation and fix things faster) than calling 611.

I think that's essentially saying that "Customers who stand in the town square screaming 'T-Mobile sucks!'" get attention faster than ones that send private letters to T-Mobile. It's sad, but at least we have a digital public square?

If you want to do this more discreetly and in the old-fashioned manner, probably the fastest thing would be to contact your state's attorney general or equivalent.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#633

Post by bufferout »

There's clearly a line in the sand to be made somewhere here e.g. funding child pornography or terrorism. The easy answer for Stripe is "we ban any account that promotes illegal activity". In that sense, I can see the rationale of banning a political campaign that has clearly fomented an attempt at circumvent a legal civil process.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#634

Post by rayiner »

systemvoltage wrote: post #521
npunt wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

In their defense, I agree with you that this is a first time when global internet connectivity + social media + hatespeech cocktail has become poisonous to our societal health. We need to deeply think about all this - allowing peaceful, objective, conservative opinions and policy (such as the Lincoln Project) while condemning hate speech, violence, white supremacy and other racist behavior. "He who fights with monste…

> We need to deeply think about all this - allowing peaceful, objective, conservative opinions and policy (such as the Lincoln Project) while condemning hate speech, violence, white supremacy and other racist behavior.

But that’s the problem. Nobody trusts people in Silicon Valley or New York City to decide what those things are. These are people who have internalized ideas like “you can’t be racist against white people” which the vast majority of the country doesn’t share. And they certainly will not apply the same standards to people on the left glorifying violent radicals like Angela Davis. We just saw this happen this summer where the center-left media pretended for months that American cities weren’t on fire.

Your example proves the point. The Lincoln Project are basically fiscally conservative Democrats at this point. They’re not meaningfully conservative on any of the issues that matter to conservatives today: religious liberty, preservation of history, immigration, etc. And it’s not just an American thing. These issues are actually where the US right is increasingly aligned with the European center-right. Censors in NYC and SF would have censored a bunch of stuff people like France’s Macron have been saying lately.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#635

Post by flamble »

adventured wrote: post #549
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

Yes, the "left" represented by the Democratic party /s.

Every single thing you've listed is controlled by capital, not by the left. Tech, Hollywood/Media, Social Media, News, and payment processing. Academia is a very partial exception (google "Koch brothers university funding").

Do you think that any of the organizations that constitute these groups are run by social activists? These are overwhelmingly multinational corporations. They care about nothing but profit and the preservation of the status quo. They will appropriate rhetoric about identity politics insofar as it is a good marketing strategy, but they never make a move which is not motivated by their bottom line, which is why none of the tech giants acted against Trump until he threatened the orderly continuation of the system in which they're all invested.

"Left" media is a tiny, powerless fraction of the media. MSNBC and CNN toe the line of the DNC, a right-wing clique that represents only the interests of finance capital, and which, because it has comprehensively rejected any project of improving people's lives in any material way, has been forced into a politics of performative culture war posturing. Any leftist challenge to the status quo can be quelled by capital's complete capture of the media apparatus and government.

When you say "the left", it's very clear you mean social progressives, and nothing else. You're conflating co-opted woke capitalism with leftism, the same way countless liberals do.

You are however, absolutely correct about the coming repression that will be directed against the populace. It will be mostly directed against the left, as has always been the case, but we will definitely begin to see greater brutality in general as the overall immiseration and precarity of the average person continue to ratchet upwards.

In tandem with this, we'll see ever-increasing social policing of culture-war nonsense, as the social unrest continues to play out in a make-believe symbolic realm completely detached from material reality. People will of course continue to believe that it's "the authoritarian left" or "the bigoted right" that is ultimately to blame, depending of which flavour of news media they consume, missing the symbiotic relationship between two parties that both represent nothing but the short-term financial interests of capital.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#636

Post by dragonwriter »

refurb wrote: post #611
dragonwriter wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Enjoyed”, past tense, while they were openly plotting terrorism and insurgency. Once they executed it, that stopped (mostly, though people—including here on HN—are still arguing that they shouldn't be taken seriously.) But, had they been taken seriously when plotting murder and Insurrection in the open, it could have been disrupted before they swarmed the Capitol, or even showed up in D.C.

I’m reading the FBI warned the Capitol police about it ahead of the rally. So again, I don’t see them “not being taken seriously”.

> I’m reading the FBI warned the Capitol police about it ahead of the rally.

I’m reading now that anonymoust “senior law enforcement officials” are claiming that, even though the FBI already, after the event, said they had no intelligence that anything beyond First Amendment protected activity was planned or likely to occur. So either the FBI was previously lying on the record to make themselves look bad, or officials that won’t go on the record are lying to place the blame for failures on the Capitol Police after the head of the Capitol Police resigned at the request of the Speaker, so that responsibility is on a head that has already rolled.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#637

Post by chillacy »

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?

The author implies it’s worse to be censored by a company because with government you in theory can influence it with voting... but in practice you have about as much direct influence as reversing tides in the ocean by splashing against them.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#638

Post by Thorentis »

Looking at history, censorship has a far worse track record in terms of destroying democracy, than public assembly (even inside civic buildings) does. What makes people think that this time will be different?

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#639

Post by throwoutttt »

msla wrote: post #617
dukeofdoom wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Your whataboutism fails when I ask you how many police officers Bernie Sanders bludgeoned to death.

How many police have you seen Trump bludgeon to death?

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#640

Post by hanselot »

lsiebert wrote: post #608
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.

And yet they believe outright lies, lies repeated by GOP leaders, journalists etc, who at the same time denigrated the main stream media and scientists, eroding trust in neutral institutions. Evaluations are hard to make when all the sources you trust are lying to you.

Neutral is a very interesting word. I consider myself centrist, yet my views are considered by others to be "far right" and fringe, simply because I refuse to be told what to think by the US Left's propaganda machine. So go figure.

When even centrists are disenfranchised by your rhetoric, why would you feel safe, wherever you consider yourself to be on the political spectrum?

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