Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe bans Trump campaign

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

831–840 of 1001 posts

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#831

Post by awb »

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…

> “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Actually, the problem is that those with power can get away with this but others can’t.

Think five minutes into the future if you will where there are no consequences if you have enough political power. Some day that might be a socialist or a communist or a white nationalist or a fascist encouraging an armed group to intimidate the legislature. Will we encourage companies to continue to do business with them as well? Or do we specifically grant Republicans and Democrats the privilege to abuse the power of their office?

Imagine Jamal from down the road hammering his neighbors with lies about an election and then organizing a march into the capital that beats a police officer to death with the goal of killing the VP of the US. Jamal had no status, no privilege, no financial resources and no one to pardon him. No one is worried about Jamal or his supporters ever attaining political power and seeking revenge because they have no connections, no wealth and no access to the halls of power. No communities are “healed” by not prosecuting Jamal, so he ends up going to jail for a long time. On the flip side, Stripe has never heard of Jamal so he gets to keep his preferred payment processor after he’s released from prison. Meanwhile Trump who’s been pardoned and is living under Secret Service detail at Mar a Lago is still somehow “not as equal” as Jamal because Trump is only able to make money online through other payment processors but not his preferred Stripe gateway.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#832

Post by croon »

ekianjo wrote: post #680
systemvoltage wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Holding people accountable to their actions? I fail to see the dark path we're walking down unless you think they're suggesting public lynching.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#833

Post by Griffinsauce »

jevgeni wrote: post #657
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…

Americans didn’t Weimar-Republic into a fascist regime this time, thankfully. The prevailing idea on HN is however “let’s have no regulation than bad regulation”... Guys, there’s such thing as good regulation.

To be fair, it's far from over. If this is analogous to the beer hall putsch it can be evaluated in a decade or two perhaps.

The very most dangerous thing that could be done right now is to say "glad that's over and nothing happened".

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#834

Post by codecamper »

Tech companies are acting exactly like Republicans who were aligned with Trump. Everybody using this chance to say how much against Trump they are... in his last 10 days.

Honestly it is ugly how stupid and easily swayed they think the public are.

The time to ban and disconnect from Trump was about 3 years ago.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#835

Post by doubleunplussed »

npunt wrote: post #812
nmfisher wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, I don't know. There was a group of people arrested in Michigan (?) for the kidnapping of the Governor (?), so it's possible. But either way, I don't think it's relevant. If you want to boot someone off social media because they espouse a cause that others take too far, then there's a lot of BLM people who should receive the same fate. Anything else is rank hypocrisy. It's worth adding that I think Trump is a p…

At least when it comes to BLM vs Capitol there are three very important differences that far outweigh the surface level similarities: 1. Power - what happened at the Capitol was conducted by people who have enjoyed broad political power, whereas the BLM protests were about the people who have been unjustly under the thumb (or knee) of those in power. 2. Message - the BLM protests were about very real and well documen…

>1. Power - what happened at the Capitol was conducted by people who have enjoyed broad political power, whereas the BLM protests were about the people who have been unjustly under the thumb (or knee) of those in power.

I don't think this is true at all. There is a lot of resentment out there from poor whites who have been getting the short end of many sticks lately. They may be better off than poor blacks on average, but they do not enjoy political power. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because the people who enjoy political power are white, that all, or even most, whites enjoy political power.

I believe both protests were by groups lacking in power, and that this sort of thing is only going to get worse as economic inequality increases.

Most people don't have power, and it's getting worse as power is concentrated into the hands of the few. As bad as black people have it on average, pitting poor blacks against poor whites is a distraction from the real power disparity, which is that a lot of people in the US are really, really poor. Whilst the elites pay lip service to the issues faced by blacks, whist doing almost nothing to help (a rich black kid getting into a better school does nothing for the impoverished masses), the poorer whites don't feel like the elites are even pretending to try to address their problems. And they're right.

The US needs to fix its inequality issues if it expects either side to stop protesting, and violence is only going to get worse as people see their issues not being addressed.

Storming the capital was not a bright idea, but angry people are stupid, and they're going to just cause as much destruction as possible until life for them gets better. History is littered with examples of inequality leading to violent uprising.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#836

Post by jariel »

johndevor wrote: post #240
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…

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…

"For all intents and purposes, freedom of speech has flatlined in America."

No - 'Freedom of Speech' is at an all time high.

The internet gives every single person a giant soap box to stand on.

You can communicate, in public, with anyone in the world.

25 years ago, you had no voice.

Now, everyone can be a 'journalist' or 'agitator' or whatever.

The level of open communication possible today was unthinkable 25 years ago.

25 years ago most people didn't have access to 'most news'. The NYT maybe was accessible by the elite in most towns, but the LA times was not. Now it's all available to everyone.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#837

Post by thrwawy12345 »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #833
jevgeni wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans didn’t Weimar-Republic into a fascist regime this time, thankfully. The prevailing idea on HN is however “let’s have no regulation than bad regulation”... Guys, there’s such thing as good regulation.

To be fair, it's far from over. If this is analogous to the beer hall putsch it can be evaluated in a decade or two perhaps. The very most dangerous thing that could be done right now is to say "glad that's over and nothing happened".

Yea. Now seems like a weird time to declare that fascism hasn’t taken hold, given all the censorship.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#838

Post by blub »

invisible wrote: post #699
nmfisher wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is saying “don’t arrest and prosecute the people who invaded the Capitol”. This is about the campaign finance/social media account/etc of the current sitting POTUS. You don’t need to condone the actions of the Capitol terrorists to take issue with him being banned from every platform having committed no crime (or at least, not having been convicted of any crime). A few hundred people invaded the Capitol, but t…

> We’re leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes, and then late in the evening or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of and bullshit, and all of a sudden. All of a sudden it started to happen. > Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican party. He’s got guts, he fights. He fights, and I’ll tell you. > We’r…

Based on how the German press was claiming that Trump was clearly guilty for the Capitol building incident, I was expecting at least some kind of controversial statement, but there's no explicit call for violence or anything in there. Nothing.

If this is all that the people blaming Trump have, they can't even convince an impartial observer or a judge, never mind his supporters.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#839

Post by Jochim »

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?

If society has decided that your political campaign is so toxic that no one wants to do business with you, should private entities be forced to deal with you if you are not a protected class?

Parler being booted is society's reaction to a movement that has been getting more extreme for the last 5 years.

I'll note the irony that many of the people complaining about companies refusing to deal with Parler are the same people that support bakeries being able to deny the business of people in a protected class.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#840

Post by leereeves »

nobody9999 wrote: post #415
leereeves wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I thought this discussion was on a different post. You're right, the argument above doesn't apply to Stripe. Instead, I would respond that freedom of association is considerably more limited than other rights. Soldiers, students, jurors, prisoners, etc are often forced into association with people they would rather not associate with, and businesses are legally forced into association to protect the rights of…

>So forcing businesses to associate with someone in order to protect fair elections or free speech rights wouldn't be incongruous. A fair point. How would you apply that in this case? I'm not being snarky, I just don't see the relevance of applying your (correct in certain circumstances) reasoning in this particular case.

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the details of this case, so I won't speculate about how this case might be resolved under current law.

But the general principle I would apply here is that people who own important infrastructure shouldn't be allowed to interfere in elections (Trump 2024 in this case, I assume) by refusing to allow candidates to use that infrastructure.

I don't think that's controversial in the case of, say, electricity or phone service, and it seems reasonable to apply it to payment processing as well.

Post reply on HN