Stripe bans Trump campaign • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#911

Post by Jochim » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #908

Jochim wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> 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? I think this is the issue though, right. Elections represent what society wants. If 5 corporations get to decide you’re toxic and that prevents you from campaigning, what regulation will help insure this authority isn’t abused…

> I think it’s also worth noting the irony that many of the people complaining that bakers should be forced to bake a cake are supporting stripe being able to refuse service.

It's only ironic if you choose to ignore the fact that one of those cases involves discrimination against a protected class and the other does not. If you don't ignore that fact then the irony is only applicable from those who were espousing the "free market, free speech" position in the previous case.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#912

Post by eejit_compiler » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #841

eejit_compiler wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterexample: The Pirate Bay have successfully dealt with this sort of thing for many years, and they were subject to much harsher and more sustained censorship. Including legal attacks by various nation states. Is it really totalitarianism in this case? Or, just some private companies inconveniencing people by choosing not to do business with them?

While I applaud Pirate Bay for the technological ingenuity that is not an counter example in anyway The Pirate Bay is more or less a link register today after having been pushed to the point where they can not even sustain hosting torrent files, they can only host mag links. This is far cry from running an actual platform or business on the internet.

How is it not a counterexample? TPB has user registration, submissions and comments, and a search function. Conceptually, this isn't too different to the function of Parler.

Also, the introduction of magnet links (or more generally, the DHT which those rely on) was a broadly positive move for the BitTorrent community, reducing reliance on centralized tracker servers.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#913

Post by zo1 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #579

monocasa wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ironic that you have to point this out to someone who is arguing that people lack civics knowledge..

Exactly... If anything, this "test" will disenfranchise the claimed "uninformed" "Trump supporters".

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#914

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #880

CydeWeys wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically you're failing my civics test here, because you seem unaware that tests as a precondition of voting are unconstitutional because they were used for a century to deny black people the right to vote. You real don't want to go down this road: It leads to wide scale targeted voter suppression.

I am aware of that, which is why I expressly stated a related condition of restoring those person's rights as citizens by linking the temporary suspension of those rights to continued education (remediation of the citizen being failed by the state).

You're still failing the civics test, as you don't seem to be aware that the entire point of the poll tests was never to actually test anything, but rather to serve as a pretext to deny people their constitutionally guaranteed voting rights. You can't "fix" this problem by offering remediation measures that would be immediately coopted by exactly the same actors to exactly the same goal. All the continuing education would be is a waste of time and money for the targeted people going through it, as some excuse would still be found to deny their voting rights at the end of it. Do not underestimate the lengths that people will go to for voter suppression. You can't design a program that won't be intentionally warped and abused to serve this ulterior motive, especially considering that you won't be running it; they will be.

We have hundreds of historic examples here of how allowing the denial of voting rights for any reason is an incredibly slippery slope, and it is rightfully banned except in a tiny number of instances (felons) that still need to be rectified. And yes, the war on drugs is itself a successful voter suppression effort -- make enough things illegal, and convict enough people of felonies, and you can meaningfully alter the make-up of the electorate. This has actually happened.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#915

Post by zo1 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

kepler1 wrote: post #702

vladTheInhaler wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about voter ID is that it isn't inherently a bad idea, as long as you make it really cheap (ideally free) and convenient to get one . If republicans were actually interested in election integrity and civic participation, they wouldn't keep accidentally forgetting that part. But they're not, so in practice it ends up acting as a tool for discrimination and disenfranchisement.

>The thing about voter ID is that it isn't inherently a bad idea... This is very true. The same people who often argue loudly for privacy, security, are willing to have a hole in the election system, probably the more important of any of those things. Up to now, it's been "well, there's very little fraud going on", as if that makes it fine to ignore. Showing ID to vote in our most fundamental democratic process is NO…

There really is something seriously fishy with how "Voter ID" is being fought against and dismissed. Here you have a nearly 100% effective method of silencing the complaints of the "not accepting the fair election result" Republicans, and yet no one wants to explore it. Not only that, but it might even serve to promote participation and ease of voting, yet still... we get nebulous and down-right dismissive reasons why it can't be put in place.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#916

Post by eejit_compiler » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #323

eejit_compiler wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does fit the definition of terrorism though: violent action, or threats of violent action, for political purposes. I think it would be very difficult to argue that last week's invasion of the Capitol Building was neither violent nor politically motivated.

By that same definition the antifa riots are terrorism too then? Politically motivated violence - throwing explosives, setting buildings on fire, etc. Yet I haven't heard that word used at all.

"Antifa riots" is a somewhat vague descriptor, but may well be yes, depending on which incident or incidents you're referring to.

Are you sure you haven't heard anyone describe anti-fascist actions as terrorism? I believe Trump himself said as much, several times last year, to wide news coverage.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#917

Post by astura » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

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…

>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.

Wtf? Nobody said anything of the sort, and if they did they would have been downvoted to the maximum. This is just totally absurd revisionist, we were only five years removed from the W Bush administration, which committed legitimate war crimes and left office with a 22% approval rating.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#918

Post by sam_goody » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

BlanketLogic wrote: post #551

nmfisher wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That is a non-sequitur right? Twitter , Google and Apple via their app stores, and now stripe are refusing to doing business not with a political party. They are refusing to doing business with people who have committed alleged(?) crimes. The _actions_ by a group of people are resulting in these bans. Not the group's affiliation. Am I missing something here?

I dunno.

BLM may claim not to be responsible for the horrendous roiots and crime that has been committed in its name across America.

Trump may claim that he is not responsible for the tiny (in proportion) riots that happened in DC.

(IMO, they are both responsible, thus making BLM the one with more blood on its hands. But nobody asked me.)

BLM may claim that it is in their rights to fight law and order if it causes harm to individuals.

Trump may claim it is in his right to complain about law and order when (in his opinion) it was not lawful.

(IMO, this is a finer line. He certainly can legally complain. Riots are over the line for either right or left)

Stripe processes payments for BLM, and Twitter allows their posts, etc. So IMO the line they walk is fine and biased.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#919

Post by mmcwilliams » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

jo032 wrote: post #19

nobody9999 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Internet businesses are natural monopolies and being banned from one can ruin your life without trial in a way that was unprecedented for private companies to be able to do in the past. What solution do you propose? Take away the right of association from one group of people to enable another group? That seems strange to me. If you allow the government to create a precedent where you can restrict the rights of anyon…

What you are saying is word for word the libertarian argument against the civil rights act ("if we have to bake a cake for gay weddings, what if wants a cake for their child bride!"). I happen to disagree with it as it applies in the real world

This argument seems to intentionally ignore that the conservative-led decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled in favor of the bakery.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#920

Post by grzm » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

DSingularity wrote: post #804

jonas21 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that counterfactuals are hard (and often pointless) -- but it is worth noting that it would have only taken a small shift in public support for Republicans to have kept control of the Senate -- for example, ~50K votes in the Ossoff/Perdue runoff, or alternately ~14K votes in the same race in the general election. That's an incredibly tiny shift, and one that could have been geographically isolated to…

Maybe they are often pointless but I think in this case it would be helpful if we found out the main drivers for these decisions. Let’s not undermine the significance of techs decision to censor here. The potential blowback could be in tens of millions of users abandoning these platforms for alternatives. So should we give them credit or was this a political decision? Maybe the DOJ will drop its cases against big tec…

You’re looking right past the likely cause and jumping straight to the reaction. Ignoring the context is not useful. Twitter, Facebook, AWS, and others didn’t act ex nihilo.

To flip it around, do you think Twitter, Facebook, and AWS would have taken these actions if protesters hadn't broken into the Capitol on January 6? I think it's unlikely.

Twitter and Facebook have taken little action in the past four years even when there were many calls to do so, and Twitter had already come out and said that they'd subject Trump's account to normal TOS review after he leaves office. So something happened that caused them to change their decision. In this case it's not hard to see that the proximal and stated cause is sufficient to explain their actions.