The people cheering this on will not be protected when the mob comes for you.
We live in a digital age. If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.
Please make your points more substantively than this. Your comment is the fulcrum tipping this thread into flamewar, and that's because the ratio of grandiosity-plus-inflammation to information in it is super high (high is bad).
(I'd make the same reply if you were arguing this way for the opposite position, in case anyone is still worried about that.)
I don’t know if you were paying attention last week, but the mob literally came for the members of Congress.
There are wrong opinions, and then there is “six million Jews were not enough” and “hang the Vice President”, and a violent mob attacking the Capitol. No one is under any obligation to tolerate such actions in a civil society.
If I advocate for your murder, am I just expressing an opinion that should be consequence free if someone kills you? Does that change if enough people agree with me that you should be killed?
The mob has been coming for law enforcement and federal buildings in many major cities in America for nine months now. This mob actively organized on Twitter and other social media. Where was the outrage in June? Most of the organizations that organized this destruction still have their Twitter accounts.
Like with all the mainstream media that 'reported' in front of the federal buildings and businesses that got looted and burned down, the shootings in the CHAZ/CHOP areas and the continuous riots and chaos all over the summer last year as seen on Twitter, they told me that there was 'nothing to see here' and it was a 'mostly peaceful protest' which everyone knows is absolute BS.
Both the GOP and Democrats instantly condemned the Capitol riots, but as for the summer riots, but not a single condemnation from the media of those events or even the Democrats disavowing the summer riots in June that are still continuing to this day.
The outrage did not fit their narrative. Neither did it fit their definition of what they think a 'mob' is, since the main culprits behind it were BLM and Antifa, as usual.
I love it when people try to gaslight us like we haven't seen the shit that happened last year. The capitol building "coup" was like watching a kids bop version of BLM/antifa.
While there may be no central leadership, there are definitely organized chapters. That's exactly what they would like people to believe. And yet, they seem to act in an incredibly organized fashion...
Do self-identified Antifa just spontaneously and simultaneously decide to engage in identical acts violence? Is there some remarkably prominent commie Schelling point us outsiders aren’t privy to?
It's more like how "Anonymous" was in the 2008 Scientology demonstrations. Just buy a _V-for-Vendetta_ Guy Fawkes mask and you're in. Wanna be in Antifa? Just go to a demonstration and hang-out with other people who simply look like they're in Antifa - though that doesn't give anyone permission to fight or act aggressively: there is a degree of mutual-acknowledgement amongst "members": if someone acts aggressively or fights on the offensive (as opposed to fighting defensively against other people who were aggressors[1]) then you wont' find many future allies to witness in your defence in court.
I think you would find that the majority of people do not support the riots that were happening (and still are) prior, either. So if we say, those accounts should be banned also, will that make everything ok, as both sides would/could be seen as equal?
At the end of the day, we must also recognize that corporations are still run by humans. Those humans make decisions within the context of their own biases and interests. Those interests are also legal requirements in some cases.
It's a tough situation, but even companies which do not have a legal requirement to do so, should be able to express their own views, and be accountable for them. I believe that actions (or threats) by Trump towards twitter earlier on expresses how the Government at the time thought that social platforms should have some accountability.
> "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can't let a more sophisticated version of that.... happen again." ..... Trump
Setting aside for a moment the multiple orders of magnitude difference in lethality per participant, the key distinction for me is this: what happened in the Capitol is about usurping the monopoly on violence possessed by the government. BLM is not about overthrowing the government, and has never posed a credible threat to it. Even if BLM overthrew the government, no one has been talking about mass executions. By contrast, 6MWNE was on full display at the Capitol attack, as were calls to execute legally appointed representatives. I have been half expecting Trump to declare on Twitter that anyone who kills a democrat gets a pardon.
With the current state of the right wing in the US, there is a clear and present danger of us losing our democracy. When you look at the statements about the election from last _June_, or the purges at the Defense Department last fall, it is clear that this nonsense (and it is nonsense, 59 court cases and counting) about election fraud was premeditated, and so was this coup attempt. This is the Beer Hall Putsch, and it’s a mistake to see how lucky we got and say there is an equivalence to protests against police violence.
Assuming you’re arguing in good faith, what you’re missing is that the outrage from this event isn’t about the five dead people, tragic though that is. It’s about the fact that armed protesters just walked into the Capitol Building while Congress was in session. We are very, very lucky we don’t have dead congresspeople. What do you think the mob that beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher in the Capitol building would have done to AOC if they’d gotten to her?
We cannot afford to make the mistake Weimar Germany did. We cannot assume that because this failed the problem is gone. We cannot appease these people, we cannot treat them as benign. They must all be identified and prosecuted, and their enablers in Congress must be expelled from our governing bodies.
> Setting aside for a moment the multiple orders of magnitude difference in lethality per participant
Is this really true? I’m tempted to charge the entirety of the post-summer urban bloodbath to the BLM movement. This represents an increase of 3-4000 deaths over the prior year.
> BLM is not about overthrowing the government, and has never posed a credible threat to it. Even if BLM overthrew the government, no one has been talking about mass executions.
This is sidestepping your point somewhat, but Antifa (who figured prominently in the protests) do explicitly avow both these things.
Millions (the estimate I saw was 15-26 million) of people were involved in the BLM protests, which lasted many months. 25 people are known to have been killed. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assign 3-4k deaths to it. By contrast, this was a single event with a few thousand people in which 5 people died. That’s what I mean by orders of magnitude.
I agree that there is a destroy-the-government black bloc present in some of the BLM protests. It’s a fair thing to point out, but I’ll say this: they’ve never had a chance or a credible threat. It’s really a false equivalence to compare a terrorist attack on the Capitol incited by the ruling party in an attempt to overturn a democratic election with seven months of mass protests against police violence.
The BLM protests themselves killed 20-30 people. The murder spree that immediately followed killed thousands more. The Gun Violence Archive has the whole story, but this chart for Philadelphia is indicative[1]. Note the structural break in the series in May 2020. I contend this was ex-ante predictable and should therefore be laid at BLM’s feet.
This is new information for me - thank you for providing it. What I’d like to understand next is - is there a causal link? This is a pretty unusual year in a lot of ways, including a record number of unemployed people and many people experiencing serious financial pressure. I did a little preliminary googling and it suggested that this is related to a large increase in gun sales in March and April, prior to the George Floyd incident. The other factor that I would think could be relevant is the increase in domestic violence during coronavirus restrictions, as people are trapped with their abusers.
I don’t agree the folks involved in the terrorist attack last week were not a credible threat. If they had succeeding in kidnapping and executing congresspeople, which was both possible and clearly the intent of at least some people who made it into the Capitol, things could have turned out very differently. Something like a third of Congress still thinks we shouldn’t do anything about this - the conditions are ripe for a coup; just because it failed doesn’t mean it didn’t have a chance.
That is very much in dispute, the reports [1] have been revised [2] and it appears that the officer may have had a medical issue and was not attached by anyone
Where was the "we love you, we know how you feel, please go home peacefully" rhetoric in June? Imagine the inroads that could have been made if Trump actually cared about injustice against Americans! Instead he stoked the fire, and saved his adoration for his cronies to throw them under the bus when they failed to secure him his position as unelected president.
Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and many other US cities saw mobs attempting (and in some cases, succeeding) in burning down police precincts and courthouses this summer.
You've subtly avoided answering the question I asked. As far as I know, there was one (abandoned) police precinct burned. Was the burning of an abandoned building avocation for violence against police officers?
If you need me to explain to you how mobs attempting to burn down police and court buildings is indicative of advocating violence towards police officers, then you've got bigger problems then your misreading of my response.
You've gotten a distorted version of the story. The Minneapolis Third Precinct was abandoned at the time of burning only because police could no longer defend it against the rioters who were trying to break in and hurt them.
> against the rioters who were trying to break in and hurt them.
This is, we'll go with dubious. Probably true at this point, but the protests had been going, relatively peacefully for close a day, and then less peacefully, with police having repeatedly tear gassed and fired rubber bullets at protestors who weren't doing anything violent, and didn't appear to have any violent intentions. Reports obviously differ, but many concluded that the actions of the police, in attacking the protestors, are what escalated the situation to violence. Compare from [1], and I think this "who is escalating" question becomes clear and relevant.
Which is to say that while the protest ended violently, I think you'll be hard pressed to find widespread intent that it be violent from the start.[2]
So again I'll ask: do you believe that the protesting in Minneapolis was formed with the intention of committing violence against police officers?
On the other hand, do you believe the insurrection at the capitol, which had participants openly advocating for violence for days, was formed, with the intention of committing violence against elected officials?
I find the attempt to draw a parallel between a situation where it took 3 days of getting teargassed for protestors to become violent and one where it took...a speech from the President.
[3]: https://www.apmreports.org/story/2020/06/30/what-happened-at... is my source for the timeline, which appears to be a fairly evenhanded account, noting that some city council members had already proposed abandoning the precinct for more than a day before it ultimately was.
I believe both of those things. I'm confused by the contrast you're drawing here, because the reason I believe them is the same in both cases: many participants made angry, public declarations that violence was needed and they'd like to see it happen. Questions of how many nonviolent people were involved, how long the violence took to kick off, or who made the first escalation don't strike me as very relevant.
Can you source these in the case of BLM? That's what I'm missing. Preferably equivalently specific plans, which amount to "our intent is to physically harm police officers and destroy a police precinct" at a minimum.
> how long the violence took to kick off, or who made the first escalation don't strike me as very relevant.
I think they're highly relevant to discussing the goal of the protests. If a group of protestors shows up and demonstrates peacefully, but is eventually goaded into violence by the group they're protesting[0], that's very different from a group that essentially immediately attacks the people they're protesting.
And, of course, all of this entirely assumes that both groups have equally valid concerns, which is just plainly not true and important to realize. If you're going to take a stance that violence is absolutely never valid, that's an interesting opinion that I don't believe I share. But if you're of the opinion that violence may be an acceptable response to injustice, well, there's a whole lot more reason to believe that BLM protestors have justification for their claim of injustice than stop-the-steal protestors.
[0]: I'll reiterate the importance of this, in general, especially with police tactics that escalate and force violence, such as kettling. While I don't think that specific tactic was present at the 3rd precinct events, tactics that escalate violence are often used against BLM protestors, to predictable results. The fact that violence was reached quickly and without any of those tactics at the capitol speaks to, I think, a different mindset.
> Preferably equivalently specific plans, which amount to "our intent is to physically harm police officers and destroy a police precinct" at a minimum.
I'll take a crack at this. I could just site your own post where you say the following:
" If you're going to take a stance that violence is absolutely never valid, that's an interesting opinion that I don't believe I share".
It kinda seems like you are at least implying that you support the violence that happened during those riots. So your post right here would be one example of people endorsing violence.
The context we're in is advocation for violence prior to the events. Are you looking for cheap rhetorical points, or are you actually trying to engage thoughtfully (as the person I'm responding to is)?
> people endorsing violence.
Note how you've shifted from "advocating for" to "endorsing" and what I asked for was 'specific plans, which amount to "our intent is to physically harm police officers and destroy a police precinct"'.
So can you explain how my statement that, hypothetically, violence may be acceptable in some situations, is a specific plan to harm police officers? With the added assumption that such people should then, you know, show up and do a violence. All of those things were present with Parler. Unless you're claiming that
1. I made statements specifically advocating for violence against in advance of the 3rd precinct protests
2. I then showed up to those protests and committed acts of violence (or, alternatively, I have a large enough following that my followers did the same)
If even you yourself are at the very least implying that you might support the violence, then really it should not be surprising or an out there claim that other people at the riots also supported the violence, is the point.
Feels like a weird thing to push back on. You kinda admit that you personally might support the violence. If even you admit this, then really you should not be pushing back hard on this assumption that other people also supported it.
It should not be an out there claim, that other people supported the violence, when you are kinda implying that you support it yourself.
I just don't think that you should act flabergasted, or surprised, or indignant, or demand large amounts of specific evidence, at someone making a claim that other people supported or wanted violence to happen, given that you kinda are saying that you support it yourself.
> The context we're in is advocation for violence prior to the events
"Nobody advocated for violence before it happened, but now that it did happen I definitely think that the violence is justified!" feels like a pretty poor argument to me.
If you are going to imply that the violence was justified, then really you should not push back on this idea that other people thought it was justified to, and endorsed it prior to the event.
I'm not asking for examples of people saying what the protestors did was okay. I agree that there's lots of that. I'm asking for examples of the violence being planned or premeditated. Those are two different things. The "line" appears to be in between those two things, and people (like you!) appear to be equivocating between them when they aren't the same.
> support it yourself.
My (hypothetical!) lack of objection to generic violence is not the same as active planning and encouragement of specific violence. And I find your repeated attempts to equivocate between the two rather confused.
I'm asking for examples of the second, the active specific planning and incitement of violence. You're avoiding engaging with that request, likely because, as I believe, you can't find examples of that kind of behavior.
> My (hypothetical!) lack of objection to generic violence is not the same as active planning and encouragement of specific violence.
Yes there are varying levels of support. But frankly if you are going to take a position that is kinda moderately in favor of violence, then you really should not be pushing back so hard at the possibility that there are other people who were a bit more supportive of the violence than you are.
That is what I am pointing out. I'd put you at a 5/10, on the "is this person trying to justify the violence that happen". So if an average/random person such as yourself are going to moderately support the violence, then you really should not be so flabergasted at the suggestion that there were other people that were closer to an 8/10 on the "do they support violence" scale.
If such a thing would be so unsurprising, you should have no problem finding and citing those examples. Your only justification so far seems to be a combination of "both sides are the same" and "well some people don't object to all violence".
My argument is that, well no, both sides aren't the same, as shown by the fact that only one set of protestors was openly advocating for and planning to attack people. The burden of proof is on you to show that they both sides are in fact the same. I obviously can't prove a negative, and so far you haven't provided anything concrete.
> "well some people don't object to all violence".
Actually, after rereading the original comment, I'd have to say not some people. Instead Id say you specifically. You specifically pretty much tried to said that the violence was justified.
Ex: you said this, which is a not so subtle attempt to justify the violence:
"of the opinion that violence may be an acceptable response to injustice, well, there's a whole lot more reason to believe that BLM protestors have justification for their claim of injustice ".
> well no, both sides aren't the same
Specifically you, kinda do seem at least to be pretty similar to the "other side" actually, after rereading your comment, in that you attempted to imply that the violence actually was justified, and that it therefore "may be acceptable".
Your comment was a pretty clear attempt to say that this violence could have a "justification" that would make it "acceptable".
No, not "understand". Instead you implied that it would be justified and also acceptable.
In this situation I really would not consider you much different than the other side if you are attempting to say that the violence was justified and acceptable.
If you are saying that it was justified and acceptable, which your comment pretty clearly
seemed to imply, then I would consider the difference between you and "the other side" to be very small to the point where the difference doesn't matter that much.
That's pretty close to advocacy for violence to say that it was justified and acceptable.
I'm going to disengage because you've chosen to repeatedly ignore my comments, and instead respond to imagined things that I haven't said. I can only assume this is because you can't actually do what I've asked you to do seven times now, and find someone actually openly advocating for and requesting that people engage in violence against the police.
I want to be absolutely crystal clear about one thing: I have never, not in this comment thread, nor anywhere else, advocated for people to engage in violence against the police. It is frankly insulting for you to insinuate that I would do so, or to state that there is essentially no difference between me and people who planned and executed an attack on congress.
> I have never, not in this comment thread, nor anywhere else, advocated for people to engage in violence
What I pointed out is that you basically said the violence was "justified and acceptable".
Those were your words, when you used the words "justified" and "acceptable" in your original comment to generally describe that violence in general. I didn't make you say that.
Would you consider throwing IEDs at cops while hundreds of people chant "pigs in a blanket fry em' like bacon" and try to set fire to the building the police are in violent?
Or howabout permanently blinding some of the cops with lasers? Is that violent, or is that just asking for a funding change in the police department?
Those statements, one from William Barr and one from trump, turned out to be false.
The pigs in blankets quote is from a peaceful 2015 protest. Trump lied about it in a Presidential debate.
The officers sight returned.
Edit: in response to this, you provided a video that doesn't include
> throwing IEDs at cops while hundreds of people chant "pigs in a blanket fry em' like bacon" and try to set fire to the building the police are in violent?
As far as I can tell, it's someone throwing a firework at the side of a stone building, which while not a great idea isn't endangering anyone. And "fry em like bacon" no where to be found.
As for that chants: go to any of the videos of the various occupations from the summer. If that really does come from a 2015 march instead of 2020, fine, but go to any video and find the same activity (arson, assault, IEDs, lasers) and chants like "no justice no peace".
Shouldn't people be held accountable for their own actions at some point? Everyone should know that murder is illegal, even if <insert popular figure> says to kills someone, you should know not to.
"I don’t know if you were paying attention last week, but the mob literally came for the members of Congress."
A couple of hundred people attacked the capitol in a crowd of 500,000+. Do you remember the phrase 'mostly peaceful protesters'? We've been hearing it for 8+ months after violent riots in major cities which resulted in 30+deaths, hundreds of innocent people attacked, and 1 billion+ in property damage.
"There are wrong opinions, and then there is “six million Jews were not enough” and “hang the Vice President”, and a violent mob attacking the Capitol. No one is under any obligation to tolerate such actions in a civil society."
Antifa and BLM have taken over multiple state and federal buildings over the past 8 months. In June, for instance, multiple fires were set all over DC. A church was nearly burnt to the ground and the President had to go to an underground bunker as a result of the threats outside the white house.
Unlike the protests in January 6th (which was an unorganized mess of random people), BLM and Antifa are professional rioters/criminals. They wear masks to protect themselves and have corporate backing from large left-leaning organizations.
Instead of concern, local leaders painted BLM and named a major street after them.
I'm not sure why you only seem to care when it's Trump supporters. Political violence is wrong on both sides, but only one political not only supported it, but paid the bail of rioters and continue to deny that it even exists. The real criminals are about to get into office.
"If I advocate for your murder, am I just expressing an opinion that should be consequence free if someone kills you? Does that change if enough people agree with me that you should be killed?"
You do realize Trump never said any of this, right? Him and his entire campaign have denounced the violence repeatedly. If you listened to the speech before the capitol was attacked, it was not full of any sort of energy. He basically said that it was all in Pence's hands. Supporters were actually angry because he sounded so defeated. This doesn't sound like the actions of someone trying to storm the Capitol.
The media+tech companies+incoming administration are censoring and destroying their political opponents for things they themselves have been supporting and instigating for 4 years.
If it wasn't so scary, I would call it pathetic actions from limp-dick journalists.
There is a difference between eight months of protests in which 15-26 million people participated across the entire country resulting in significant property damage and some loss of life (~25 people), and what happened last week.
Let’s call what happened last week what it was: a terrorist attack against the seat of government perpetrated by the ruling party in an attempt to overturn a democratic election.
You need to take a serious look in the mirror and ask if you’re the bad guy. As arch-conservative a figure as Mitch McConnell describes this as a failed insurrection and you make excuses for it.
Spare us your outrage. A literal mob just overran the Capitol. Attempting to talk about “the mob” in opposition to the actual mobs that are continuing to take over Capitol buildings is frankly so tone deaf it’s almost insulting to our intelligence.
I'm tired of people who have only read one book in their entire lives (1984) trying to explain to me how banning Trump is going to lead to an angry leftist mob throwing me in jail (because leftists have power right?) for speaking.
Poor Orwell must be rolling in his grave. Maybe we should wrap him in copper for free power?
For the record, Orwell was a leftist. Yes, 1984 was a warning about the USSR, which he hated, but the idea that he was warning about creeping leftism in general turning into authoritarianism is to really misunderstand him.
For the record, he hated the authoritarian right just as hard as he hated the authoritarian left, possibly more so. He participated in the Spanish civil war, following his own advice that everyone pick up a rifle and shoot a fascist. He was wounded in action by a sniper bullet to the throat.
By the terms of his place and time, he considered himself a libertarian (that word later came to be a right wing phenomenon in America, self consciously co-opted from the left). We’d typically call him a democratic socialist; someone who wanted the government to help solve the “social problem” (where the term “socialism” partially comes from) of poverty and what not, but he was also wary about giving too much power of the government to control people.
He was a complex guy with even more complex political opinions. Sadly our Cold War fueled reading of 1984 has flattened out a lot of his nuance from him.
Biden decried the violence in Seattle. Trump encouraged this riot, and may have even purposefully slowed down the authorization to send in the National Guard.
You don’t get to call me a hypocrite based on stuff you’ve made up.
The people cheering this on will not be protected when the mob comes for you.
The facile sophistry of comments like yours is becoming obnoxious. An actual fascist mob already came for us last week and we were not protected, get it?
There can be interesting intellectual arguments about whether this was the right move but breathlessly calling ToS enforcement by private companies a “mob” while ignoring an actual mob with lead pipes, guns, and bombs ain’t it.
Get back to me when they do it to someone who did not just tell a crowd of terrorists to go over to the Capitol and "save" the country from its own democratic process.
There's a big difference in wrong opinion and inciting violence. This isn't the government doing this. This is private companies taking action against the spread hate and lies. These are companies I want to do business with.
gab got de-platformed and the mob didn't come for anybody else...the world moved on. not everything is a slippery slope. tons of people criticizing it on twitter/fb and they aren't being censored.
Parler bans people that post poop pics. It just so happens that mainstream services have a higher standard.
But seriously, how is mounting an insurection a slippery slope? At this point I get the feeling that a lot of people posting here are apologists for domestic terrorism and it worries me.
There are violent people and they think like Timothy McVeigh. That should worry you. It should worry you even more if they can find like-minded friends like Terry Nichols on cesspools like Parler.
> At this point I get the feeling that a lot of people posting here are apologists for domestic terrorism and it worries me.
What a great way to shut down any discussion. Anyone who doesn’t agree must be terrorist apologists?
If you read these comments and all you can see in anyone not posting full throated praises of this purge are people defending terrorists, consider taking a break from the discussion and come back when you’re ready.
Oh, I see. Are we talking about the 75 million people who supported the person who incited a mob? Members of the mob themselves? What's the difference?
I get it - to you it's just a political flame war. Easier to just brand everyone who voted for Trump a terrorist sympathizer, than to consider the myriad reasons they may have had for voting how they did. It's only 74.2 million people after all.
Maybe easier for you to dismiss concerns your fellow technologists might have, when Big Tech's largest companies unite to completely destroy a competitor with millions of users in a single day, based on the actions of a tiny sliver of its users.
"What's the difference?" you ask, I assume non-ironically.
I wonder, let's say if a politician started a fund to bail out the arrested protesters, would you consider them complicit in the violence?
> Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. [0]
This is what Trump wants. This is why he's tried to overturn a democratically held election. This is why he's incited his followers to riot.
You seem to be assuming I'm a Democrat. I am not.
BTW, I love how you've disingenuously implied Harris funded bail for the DC protesters. She did not. It was for the BLM protestors, who, are clearly not fascist, if you look at the definition.
Again, I’m not interested in the political flame war.
You want to make it solely about the right, and the term fascist is thrown around against many on the right regardless of how non-fascist they may be, often times immediately followed by violently attacking them on the street.
I didn’t say Harris funded bail for the DC protestors on the 6th.
In fact, Harris funded bail for rioters who were much more violent than what we saw on the 6th. The BLM riots caused over $2 billion in property damage, killed dozen of people, and maimed hundreds. Police officers, and Federal courthouses were a notable target. Also the Whitehouse on at least one occasion.
It's not a "political flame war." For the past 4 years, we have had an ultra-right wing, authoritarian, nationalist president in the White House. That's literally the definition of "fascist."
> In fact, Harris funded bail for rioters who were much more violent than what we saw on the 6th. The BLM riots caused over $2 billion in property damage, killed dozen of people, and maimed hundreds. Police officers, and Federal courthouses were a notable target. Also the Whitehouse on at least one occasion.
And, for that, I give her credit.
While the casualties are regrettable, I'm not sure why you even mention them here.
Property damage? Pffft. Who cares? That's what insurance is for.
It's not a slippery slope because they're all saying the same things. The examples you listed are not a spectrum where it's leading to milder and milder forms of extremism.
They are not "conservative", they are fascist loons. There's a big difference. Reasonable conservatives can get along quite well in society, even today.
Replying to Chrissnell comment which seems to be flagged.
I agree with your sentiment, and I was there on slashdot in those times. Even though I have nothing for or against the political events happening in the USA. I fear that all these companies are using what happened as a pretext to stop giving service to people with different ideas.
Twitter censoring trump is OK. Reddit censoring some channels is OK. But blocking a chat app from apple/google store? AWS? Stripe? This is exactly what a lot of us fought for ed2k, BitTorrent DeCSS and other technologies: the technology is not bad. And even if we dont like the content, we should allow people with different ideas to talk a out it.
Sure, some of the people at the capitol committed a crime. But it's the same as if companies have banned cryptography because of DeCSS.
AWS laid out the timeline in their letter to Parler:
> "Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST."
please quit equating terrorism with “differing opinion”
trump caused his followers to believe the election was a lie, and when they came to protest he egged them on to the capital building where they beat a police officer to death with an american flag while singing the anthem.
they beat him to death with an american flag and trump called them patriots after.
beat him to death sir, these patriots, our president said. wearing nazi tshirts, sir.
differing opinions? maybe you can find a better way to communicate your idea here
I see where you are coming from, but I do not agree that they are being punished just for “having the wrong opinion”.
The Trump campaign just attempted a coup. As in they attempted to seize control of the government by stopping the lawful transition of power. That it failed does not make it any less serious. Should we let them continue to try until the are successful? Let’s not repeat the mistakes of 1920s Germany.[0]
I do not think it is hyperbole to say that Trump and his ilk are fascists, not unlike the Nazis.[1] They are the mob that is coming for you.[2] Do not make the mistake of failing to believe these people when they tell you who they are and what they are about.
What mob? The one what wants to hang Mike Pence? I'm not a Trump supporter but as a Christian I admire Mike Pence as a person, even before he supported Trump.
Banks accounts? All internet presence? Neither of those things is happening. They still have websites, not to mention a press secretary with the world’s press at their feet.
Minimizing it to just wrong opinions? NAMBLA, look it up, is still around so stating this is about wrong opinions is ignorant.
I’m fairly certain that attempting to overthrow the government to get your desired election result is fascism. Saying we will have a trial by combat just before telling protestors to head to the Capitol sounds a lot like a call for violence.
"Rudy Giuliani, made a reference to the HBO drama “Game of Thrones” when he called for a “trial by combat” while talking about conspiracy theories alleging massive scale voter fraud."
> I’m fairly certain that attempting to overthrow the government to get your desired election result is fascism.
I can't believe I'm actually going to go to this topic, but your argument has been made before with the Reichstag Fire [1]. Using threats of violence as a pretext for assuming more government control is a tactic as old as governments.
> The Nazi Party used the fire as a pretext to claim that communists were plotting against the German government, which made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
Fine, this particular action is not government control.
But the argument that taking away power from people because they're "fascists" isn't like fascism is not a strong one. These people are supposedly an existential threat to the fabric of America, and there absolutely is not a single group that hasn't simultaneously deplatformed them.
It suggests a question around who really holds the power here.
> I can't believe I'm actually going to go to this topic, but your argument has been made before with the Reichstag Fire [1]. Using threats of violence as a pretext for assuming more government control is a tactic as old as governments.
There's a bit of false equivalence here. The fire was, on one hand, a false flag (from the very link you posted), and on the other hand, a stroke of luck.
Whereas here, it was an attempt at taking human hostages (reference: the many more recent videos of insurrectionists with human zip ties and small arms) and disrupting election certification with human shields in the form of a mob of conservative protesters. Which by every definition would be an attempted coup.
And don't get me wrong, I'm saying quite explicitly that there were legitimate, Trump-believing protesters in the crowd who either got swept up into the moment or genuinely fear for the state of the country but who were not in it to overthrow a legitimately elected government. However, within the crowd were people who came equipped to overthrow leadership followed by blending right back into the crowd, and they coordinated on platforms such as Parler with impunity, which is precisely why deplatforming the platforms is the appropriate next step.
It's not because of everyday conservatives who feel duped. It's because of the conservatives who came together to enact violence and disrupt the democratic process.
> It's not because of everyday conservatives who feel duped. It's because of the conservatives who came together to enact violence and disrupt the democratic process.
And those 75M voters are not able to receive communication from a person they voted for and want to hear speak. They can't buy things from stores that are selling ordinary, run of the mill political apparel. The servers and apps providing social media--protected under section 230 just like AWS, Apple, and Google--have been banned.
It is not the extremists who are receiving the brunt of this purge.
>It is not the extremists who are receiving the brunt of this purge.
And if the extremists hadn't stormed the capitol and been supported (Trump literally said "we love you.") by certain folks, those who are being inconvenienced (and yes, it's just an inconvenience) wouldn't be.
You are free to create your own far-right payment bank and payment system. The fact that sites like 4chan and Stormfront continue to exist is a sign that no one's speech has been stifled, only inconvenienced.
That is true but from the perspective of the British it was illegal. I'm not sure that British companies would've provided services to revolutionaries while they literally try to overthrow the constitutional order of their country. Sure, they succeeded, got their independence, but when someone decides to literally fight against the country from the inside they shouldn't expect any company to be friendly to them or to offer them any services. As a matter of fact not even the government will be friendly, because they will do everything in their power to maintain order from their legal and constitutional perspective.
What happened on the Capitol had elements that lead to a conclusion that the goal was to stop legal procedures in the country, perhaps even taking elected representatives as hostages. This is different from any other type of "ordinary" riot. Luckily the people there didn't seem to be particularly skillful so they didn't manage to achieve anything. But they shouldn't expect that everyone will forget what they tried just because it failed. There needs to be a serious investigation first to determine how was it organized and what were the goals. Until this is known for sure, everyone should be really careful and that includes the right of companies to ensure their tools are not used for a potential violent government overthrow. What would happen to the revolutionaries if the American Revolution had failed? I'm pretty sure that the British wouldn't just forget it and pretend it didn't happen, even if they managed to stop it quickly before it got serious.
...and after winning they promptly put down another attempted revolution, then passed laws against further violent revolution and working with foreign governments against the US:
>If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.
Calling for the overthrow of the government through violent insurrection isn't an opinion.
You've been posting tons of political flamewar comments to HN, some of which have been egregious. I'm replying here because it's your most recent comment, not because it's the worst of what you've been doing on this site.
We ban accounts that use HN primarily for political battle, regardless of which politics they're battling for. We have to, because otherwise this site won't survive for its intended purpose, which is intellectual curiosity.
This quote is deeply misleading. It's not completely clear but I think Rudy is talking about Biden, Trump and himself staking their reputations on the outcome of a fraud investigation.
Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat. I’m willing to stake my reputation, the President is willing to stake his reputation, on the fact that we’re going to find criminality there.Is Joe Biden willing to stake his reputation that there’s no crime there? No.
There is also a pause around the trial by combat comment that is not evident in the transcript so its probably worth listening to the speech to get the full context.
The RNC declared Trump to be the leader of their party after he told a crowd of armed terrorists that they should go to the Capitol and "save" the country from the politicians who were busy certifying the results of an election. They did so after that same crowd stormed the Capitol building, replaced the American flag with a Trump flag, and proudly declared to the cameras that they were there for a "revolution."
Kind of hard to know where the line is drawn between "declaring as your leader the man who advocates for a violent overthrow" and "advocating for a violent overthow."
Stripe hasn't been around that long. I'm sure they can find another payment processor.
And if they can't, well, we all know Republicans don't trust filling out documents (i.e. ballots) when it isn't done in person. So perhaps the best solution is for supporters to drive to their local GOP office and hand deliver the cash.
First they came for the violent insurrectionists attempting a coup in the nation's capital to prevent the peaceful transition of power, and I was glad that they did.
> The people cheering this on will not be protected when the mob comes for you.
> We live in a digital age. If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.
Just to rebaseline, in this case a mob infiltrated the dais in the Capitol, and this mob's opinions included speech not just disagreeable to public corporations but unprotected by the United States government.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
If you can't ban a fascist for instigating violence and a coup attempt then your ToS are worthless and all moderation on every website must be made illegal.
Correct. While silencing him may be satisfying, this road will lead us down a dark path. It is better to suffer a little evil than to loose everything good.
There was a time when the tech community fought ferociously against corporations and government attempts to censor and silence ideas. In its early years, Slashdot was ardently libertarian, as were most of the engineers I worked with. Can you imagine 1997 Slashdot’s reaction to something like Apple removing Parler from the App Store? There would be protests, DDoSes, editorials from thought leaders, and more.
I feel very out of place with many of the younger folks working in tech today. The majority of them seem to support (or even demand) de-platforming of people and ideas that they disagree with.
This is not a good trend. As you said, the mob will eventually come for you, too.
I have seen this exact phrase like 500 times in the past week. Do you guys all read the same books or something?
It's such a huge exaggeration to say that stripe's decision was motivated by a 'mob'... Wait, it was motivated by a mob, the mob of right wingers. And they DID come for me. That's why we ban them from our websites.
It's just pure fear mongering and outrage news to say that liberals are mobbing together to force companies (as if its not ultimately the choice of the company) to ban people, and that somehow this will lead to them turning on each other... and then i'll be sorry i banned Trump? I don't get it.
Read what you just wrote 3 or 4 times over. Who is the mob? Stripe? A billion dollar company who has one small board of directors who made this decision?
What am I underestimating? The power of a company to deprive people of their income? Oh, you mean every single company on earth?
History is riddled with stories that start just like this? Yes, history has one example of a story that starts with a fascist mob invading the government, and then the liberal mob banned them and then... wait a second that's not how the story went.
Other people have pointed out that Trump and much of the GOP just launched a coup, so I'll leave that aside.
Of course it's different from living under a fascist government. A totalitarian government would send you to a prison camp or kill you for saying the wrong thing. The Stasi would systematically and invisibly ruin all your relationships and your career. People who are banned from Twitter can go to another website or start their own. If they're banned from Stripe, they can use Visa or pay in cash. If they are banned from social media, they can hop on any of the numerous right-wing TV stations or write for any of the numerous right-wing newspapers.
Even if this were the government, it would be an exaggeration to say that these actions are totalitarian. There are countries today where you could get locked up for having the wrong opinion that are miles from being fascist. Germany springs to mind, since many people have been arrested for Holocaust denial. Many European countries tick along just fine despite the fact that they would instantly throw the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church in prison.
The American dedication to freedom of speech is admirable. However, it is also an aberration. Since the American approach to freedom of speech is not the norm, we should treat it as rare and precious but also recognize that things would be mostly fine with some restrictions. Cool it with the hyperbole.
The American dedication to free speech only functions when people -- especially those in power -- are acting in good faith.
Trump took the pseudonymous troll culture of the internet to the highest office of government, and this is the result. Trolls and Trump play by different rules, truth and facts are inconsequential -- all that matters is the reaction of their victims.
I have sympathy with Trump supporters that are not in on the "joke". It's not stupid to believe the president of the United States will be honest with them (at least on issues of national importance like "massive" election fraud), but he won't. If you were attracted by his other views (however distasteful), it is a bitter pill to swallow to admit he is a lier.
Americans are lucky their constitution was strong enough to ensure (at least) Trumps tactics to overturn a democratic vote failed.
This sounds like a slippery slope argument[1], which can be genuine but also controversial when generalized.
Can we talk about individual instance, like those specific to the current situation with Trump or other situations, like "Operation Choke Point," separately or should something like this be only considered with generic rules that do not consider the nuisance and details of any specific circumstance?
I've heard this argument a lot lately. What other amendments should we allow corporations to break?
You are also only saying this because your side is the one doing the censoring. If Republicans had control of all tech and media and you were almost completely censored, I think your opinion would change.
Since you can't actually figure out the most obvious point ever made in a comment. The Dominion company used Solarwinds, which could have directly affected our elections after multiple companies were breached from the hack.
In Georgia, a security professional proved that machines were not only attached to the Internet, but were getting updates from servers outside the country and had the ability to be updated in real-time.
Those claims were dropped because they were wishful thinking and didn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. The non-expert who made those claims caused the author of the tool he misinterpreted to write an entire blog post about it:
The other key thing to understand is that Georgia had a full hand recount of the paper ballots which those machines tabulated. Even if they were completely hacked, they couldn’t rewrite the paper records and there’s no credible evidence of even a single ballot being changed much less the many thousands of them which would have been needed to make the electronic and hand counts match.
A random person on a blog is not an investigation. We needed a full audit after 100s of people came out with allegations. This would have put it to rest.
There were other allegations that Dominion machines were attached to local networks for updates during election night. Were they? I have no idea. There as no investigation. Only denial.
I personally have used dead people's names (with DoB and city) in a few of the battleground states and I could see they not only received a ballot on election night, but sent it back. How could this possibly happen?
This was passed off as 'fake news'.
I'm not going to repeat all of the other claims, but we had a bigger investigation on Trumps Russian collusion, which had a fraction of the evidence.
If I could put in a handful of names into a government site and see this, I can't imagine the amount actually in these databases.
The sickest part is that people just aren't curious. They hate Trump so much, they want to win at all costs.
After so much time has passed and state leaders have rejected any and all calls for investigation (and big tech sites have censored anyone that questioned it), even if there was evidence at one point in time, it would be long gone by now. These investigations should have been immediate.
The Democrats are now going to usher in some of the worst laws imaginable for free speech. It has already started with the de-platforming of Parler.
At some point talking time will indeed be over, and it will be a time for action.
> I personally have used dead people's names (with DoB and city) in a few of the battleground states and I could see they not only received a ballot on election night, but sent it back. How could this possibly happen?
Who gave you the list of dead people? How did you verify its accuracy and rule out things like that case with an older woman voting as “Mrs. [dead man]”? What did reporters say when you contacted them?
> I'm not going to repeat all of the other claims, but we had a bigger investigation on Trumps Russian collusion, which had a fraction of the evidence.
That’s just silly: we have a mountain of evidence from multiple governments’ investigations into Russia’s activities and it’s had extensive hostile cross-examination. In contrast, we have a pile of unsupported allegations rife with errors and bad faith claims which the president’s own lawyers kept dropping because they knew that they didn’t have a case. That’s why Trump had to pressure people to manufacture fake votes because the real ones didn’t give the answer he wanted.
Thank you. I could figure out most of that, but I resent the "I ask questions and expect you to figure it out" format, no matter who does it and what point they're pushing. And in fact you supplied some details that I did not know and would not have guessed.
We need more people to be working on solving climate change, not less. We would have viable nuclear power by now if it weren't for all of the leftists in the 70s-90s protesting its existence and making it a liability for many companies to even consider it.
The unintended consequences of this would be stunning. But I suspect if the people that enacted these proposals were ever around to see the results, they would shift the blame.
"Carbon tax should be so high that nobody asks if they should fly but if they can afford to fly."
Just like all of these types of proposals, they only help the rich and powerful. Propose gun control? But hire private guards with guns to protect you. Propose Universal health care? But have the best private care in the world that the rest of us will no longer be able to afford.
We also aren't focusing on the actual source of the problem. The US only accounts for around 25% of total carbon emission. India and China make up a much larger percentage, yet can can continue to pollute and destroy the environment with impunity while gaining power in the process. While economies shrink in places that have strict carbon emission rules, China doesn't follow those same rules and grows. It's sort of like playing baseball when the other team is allowed to take steroids.
..and before you tell me about per/capita and 'fairness', this doesn't really matter in the end when humanity is destroyed.
I don’t think they would have gone to his house or received a search warrant based solely on those two details.
They have the wreckage of RV, so they should have been able to find its VIN. That would have led to identifying the owner. It’s pretty likely at this point that it was the same RV regardless of whether the owner actually set the bomb.
I don't think that's as certain as "should" suggests. Some vehicles have the VIN on the engine block or various highly recognizable part of the frame. Did this one? I don't know what's normal for an RV. If it was like a lot of vehicles and only had it on the front corner of the dash, it might be hard to find among that many pieces over that large an area. And that's not even counting the possibility that the perpetrator deliberately removed it.
That style of RV is literally just a production van with a new body dropped on, so I’d assume it has the VIN in the usual places.
They have now confirmed that they used tips as well as the VIN to idwntify the owner:
> Tips from the public helped authorities initially identify Warner as a suspect. The Tennessee Highway Patrol discovered a vehicle part with the VIN that linked the RV to him.
Glad that they found it, but I don't think that changes the point. The "usual places" is just one or two places on each model, and bomb sites are messy. They could have been diligent and not found it. You were expressing a certainty that wasn't warranted, and in a way that was slightly disparaging to those actually on the ground doing the work.
My “should” was intended in the sense of “I’m optimistic that they would find it”, not “if they don’t find it it’s because they didn’t try hard enough.”
“You should find carrots in the produce section”, not “you should wash your hands after sneezing”.
If I wanted to convey that tone I should have italicized it or used asterisks. That should have carried my intention more accurately.
Amazon pays millions and millions of dollars in taxes. Most reports about Amazon not paying taxes are by people that don't know how the tax system actually works in the United States.
It may have been 'slavery' 100+ years ago, but it's turned into something much better. Does everything have to be doom and gloom? Can't we ever enjoy anything?
This has been going on for at least a couple of years. I ran into it with redis servers last year. They search for servers with simple/no passwords, lock up the data, and demand BTC to get it back.
You can search for Redis instances that have disabled authentication and have a "crackit" key stored in them which is created by one of those Redis malware bots:
I'll add that the vendors have actually gotten much better! Redis and MongoDB both now have good, secure defaults. And I believe both will throw you a huge warning if you're listening on 0.0.0.0 w/out authentication.
Something I didn't expect were the number of developers that hadn't heard of favicons before. Got quite a few people asking what those icons were. Btw there are security use-cases around them as well nowadays (ex. detecting phishing websites).
No, very often they do add the favicons! That makes it easier to locate websites that are outside of your expected IP space but are pretending to belong to you. For example:
It takes a bit more refining to get a good list of results; the general idea is to find websites that look like the real deal but are located somewhere on the Internet where you didn't expect to find them.
The amount of brute forcing attempts on servers of all and any kinds I run is absolutely nuts. But yes they are often trying only a small number of common accounts/passwords.
I keep meaning to sit down and do a bit of analysis on the source of the connections.
I got the same thing with Postgres. It was on a toy project learning Docker Compose, naively used PORTS instead of EXPOSE on the DB container. Also the CPU of the Postgres process was at 100% so maybe I got some crypto miner too.
We live in a digital age. If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.