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Stripe bans Trump campaign

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Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#671

Post by aww_dang »

dragonwriter wrote: post #656
aww_dang wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> The Bay of Pigs is a good example of an actual coup attempt with military training and small arms. The Bay of Pigs wasn’t a coup attempt, though it was an attempt to replace the government. It was an invasion, support for which was cancelled when the expendable, superficially deniable spearhead force did less well than planned. And, yes, there are lots of differences between it and coup attempt at the Capitol, whic…

Perhaps we should turn to the academic papers on the topic if we are to argue semantics.

https://mises.org/wire/capitol-riot-wasnt-coup-it-wasnt-even...

>"In their article “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset,” authors Jonathan M. Powell and Clayton L. Thyne provide a definition:

A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.

There are two key components of this definition. The first is that it is illegal. Powell and Thyne note that this “illegal” qualifier is important to include "because it differentiates coups from political pressure, which is common whenever people have freedom to organize."

In other words, protests, or threats of protest don’t count as coups. Neither do legal efforts such as a vote of no confidence or an impeachment.

But an even more critical aspect of Powell and Thyne’s definition is that it requires the involvement of elites."

http://www.uky.edu/~clthyn2/powell-thyne-JPR-2011.pdf

>"Nonetheless, we should not be surprised that the media has rushed to apply the term to the riot. This phenomenon was examined in a November 2019 article titled “Coup with Adjectives: Conceptual Stretching or Innovation in Comparative Research?,” by Leiv Marsteintredet and Andres Malamud. The authors note that as the incidence of real coups has declined, the word has become more common but with modifiers attached."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032321719888857

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#672

Post by [deleted] »

NeutronStar wrote: post #479
rektide wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some previous names for cloud compute entities were "grid compute" and "utility computing". some veneer of old-school small fries still exist thank the stars but absolutely, more & more of the internet is powered by the hyperscalers. absolutely terrifying seeing the scales keep tilting heavier & heavier towards fewer & fewer options.

They are free to buy hardware and self host their website. It's not rocket science.

[deleted]

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#673

Post by msla »

throwoutttt wrote: post #639
msla wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Manson was convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life even though he wasn't at the Tate-LaBianca murders.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#674

Post by Dumblydorr »

beltex wrote: post #641

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” — George Orwell, Animal Farm I understand the moves by Stripe, Twitter, and co. However, I would argue that the long term implications set by this precedent are much worse. When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President. Three short years later, who took…

You're pointing out Snowden in 13 and Trump in 16 and implying there's a causal relationship between the two. This is ludicrous, Trump was elected due to numerous factors, it'd be hard to place Snowden in even the top 10. immigration, trade, feckless GOP, crowded primary field, biased dem primary, weak dem candidate, I could make massive list more important than Snowden. All trump's supporters would say about Snowden is that he's a traitor, they'd understand or care little about what he leaked.

Maybe this is a HN bubble, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't be able to tell you what Snowden even specifically leaked...or rather, the journalists leaked on his and our behalf.

Trump is not the leader of the free world any longer. He's clearly on the way out, and he invited violence while the door was closing. Even the weakened GOP must admit he is a wannabe dictator, and his rhetoric led to 5 deaths, nevermind untold thousands to pandemic.

So no, I think there is not much slippery slope implication to deplatforming insane people like Trump, Alex Jones, KKK members, Nazis, terrorists, etc. Why should these people retain the privilege of posting harmful and murderous content on a company's website? Where in the constitution is tweeting an enshrined right?

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#675

Post by gfodor »

avianlyric wrote: post #282
johndevor wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re talking about the first amendment, a legal structure, not freedom of speech, a philosophical concept.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#676

Post by jaredklewis »

nmfisher wrote: post #512
jaredklewis wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you were cut off from social media, payment processors, web hosts and mail providers, would you practically be able to launch a political campaign?

I didn't mean to imply that anything that isn't a utility is unimportant, but only that (unlike the parent) I think there is a clear difference between social media and actual utilities.

As for your question, probably not. And there is an interesting debate as to whether political candidates should be some sort of protected class. Though I don't think the issue is particularly urgent given that political candidates across the political spectrum (including Donald Trump) still have access to all of those things.

For the most part, payment process, web hosts, and mail providers are interchangeable, so I don't think it is a big deal that Trump can't use Stripe specifically.

Social Media is more complicated. I guess we will see how things develop, but my intuition is that Trump will open a parler account, interested parties will follow him there, uninterested parties won't, and his most noteworthy statements will be widely reported in the media. So, the same situation as when Trump was on Twitter.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#677

Post by ekianjo »

na85 wrote: post #189
klaudius wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could look at countries as being part of a market. If one country decides to ban your speech, you just move to another one, right? But that's not how it works because switching countries is very difficult. We demand free speech from a government even if we theoretically have the option to move. If you have a colluding oligopoly in something crucial to do business such as payments or communication, where it's diff…

Switching online payment providers isn't like moving to a new country, even a little bit.

If case you havent noticed once VISA bans you nobody wants to do business with you anymore.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#678

Post by gfodor »

nobody9999 wrote: post #583
johndevor wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom of speech has nothing to do with newspapers or news, and never has done. If somebody speaks in the woods, and there's nobody there to hear it, do they make a sound? Yes, they technically have free speech, but in reality not really. The purpose of speech is that you might persuade somebody else. If there's nobody to talk to, you might as well not speak at all.

Facebook, Twitter, et al are not public squares. You can speak all you want in public spaces, on your own property (whether that be your home, your blog or your mastodon instance) mostly without limit. But Facebook, Twitter, Google, HN or any other private organization is under no obligation to host or amplify your speech. The government can't censor you and you may speak your mind in public spaces. You may also do s…

Claiming they are not public squares is correct and says very little.

When capitalism revealed its ability to create abusive monopolies, we created new laws to mitigate those harms.

When the whole worlds discourse flows through a few centralized social media companies, as a society we are free to imagine new legal concepts and regulations to deal with the unforeseeable consequences of these new phenomena.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#679

Post by stale2002 »

ineedasername wrote: post #580
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah yeah those ToS, the new founding document of the United States of America. One little warning from someone living in a real fascist state (Russia). It wasn't always a fascist state, but when it began to morph into one, censorship what what they started with. Of course, it was legal, because it was all private companies, rightfully executing their liberty to not show anyone they don't like... The rich irony, of c…

So the government should instead step in and decide what companies can and can't do with their own services & infrastructure? That sounds a lot more fascist to me than a company saying, up front, "Here's the rules for using our service. Violate them and you can take your business elsewhere." And considering the ToS citations were I service of a potentially criminal act, fascism doesn't enter the picture: This is as m…

> So the government should instead step in and decide what companies can and can't do with their own services & infrastructure?

They already do this in many places.

The most common example would be common carrier laws. Those aren't particularly controversial.

Do you believe that common carrier laws are some huge infringement on company rights or something?

Do you believe that common carrier laws are "fascist"?

If not, then you must admit that your previous argument is pretty silly.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#680

Post by ekianjo »

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…

> allowing peaceful, objective, conservative opinions and policy (such as the Lincoln Project

Lol the same lincoln project that said on Twitter they are now building a database of all republicans to chastise them forever? Thats peaceful all right.

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