Use of a particular service or website is not a human right. If your particular situation is such that it's unsafe or you need to violate TOS/regulations/laws by using a service... don't.
Classic. "I'm not at risk, so we need not change anything. Your behavior is therefore at fault."
> Use of a particular service or website is not a human right.
Of course not. Would you say that being able to freely live your life without threat of death (as you most likely already do) should be?
Allow me to extend your conclusion:
- People harass me at the laundromat because of my appearance, to the point where I fear for my life. "Don't go to that laundromat ever again." OK, I'll now have to go 30 minutes out of my way every time I need to do laundry. And suppose that this other laundromat is no different?
- People shout threats at me at the grocery store. "Don't go to that grocery store." Or, better yet, maybe I should just perfectly change the color of my skin and facial features to match theirs, so that the problem is solved!
I know you guys are going to hate this, but this attitude is precisely what is meant by "white privilege." Please let me know if I am misunderstanding your attitude, or what you think about this.
I'm sure you meant to say "Classic strawman:" because that's not at all what I said, or meant. Please actually respond to what I said and not whatever argument you heard other people make.
I think it's demonstrably true that if using Facebook is an acute risk to your life, you are better off not using. That doesn't mean you're at fault if you use it and someone kills you. But it doesn't mean that Facebook needs to change its real name policy. It means you need to weight the pros and cons of why you want to use Facebook and why using it could get you killed, and whether you're willing to risk that.
> Would you say that being able to freely live your life without threat of death (as you most likely already do) should be?
Yes.
But that doesn't mean that it's a right to do things that could engender threats to your life. A Tutsi has an inalienable right to live in Rwanda without fear of persecution or death. A Tutsi does not have an inalienable right to use Facebook (nor does anyone). If you're a Rwandan Tutsi, and you use Facebook, you should understand the risks. You should be able to use Facebook without fear or persecution or death but it's not a right any more than it's a right to have an email address or drive a particular type of car or eat a certain food on a certain day.
They're separate issues and it's Facebook's decision whether or not they want to require real names. To make that the issue ignores the fact that people are being killed because of their beliefs, or because they're transgender, or whatever the actual problem is.
> People harass me at the laundromat because of my appearance, to the point where I fear for my life. "Don't go to that laundromat ever again."
Well no, my response would be "Call the police." There are a lot of things that could happen from there. If it's actually harassment and the police address it, potentially problem solved. If it's actually harassment and police do nothing, that's a related but separate issue, and yes I would say that not going there again is the smart move. You have a right not to be killed and you have a right to wash your clothes but you don't have a right to wash your clothes in that specific laundromat at that specific time.
If it's not actually harassment then it depends what's actually happening. A group of teenagers pointing at laughing at you is uncomfortable and wrong but probably not harassment. A group of rough looking guys in a bad part of town staring at you will make most people feel uncomfortable but is also not harassment.
> People shout threats at me at the grocery store. "Don't go to that grocery store."
Call the police.
> this attitude is precisely what is meant by "white privilege."
I know you are going to hate this, but why is it the first person to bring up race is usually someone saying that something is offensive or privilege? I tend to agree that a certain level of privilege exists in the world and some of it has to do with race but Facebook's real name policy is a piss poor example of it.
How does one's LGBTQ status affect their legal name?
According to another anonymous source, Facebook refused their name despite presenting government-issued documents.[2]
[1]https://medium.com/@zip/my-name-is-only-real-enough-to-work-... [2]http://www.dailydot.com/via/facebook-real-names-cracking-dow...
Call the police? You don't have enough proof, and shouting death threats at people isn't "harassment" anyway, it's just "free speech", so just grow a thicker skin already, and stop encouraging the death threats to be sent to you by being out in public like that!
You have a right not to be killed and you have a right to wash your clothes but you don't have a right to wash your clothes in that specific laundromat at that specific time.
Nice how you seem to have started to realize your logical conclusion was "but you don't have a right to wash your clothes without the threat of being killed", but tried to avoid it.
I know you are going to hate this, but why is it the first person to bring up race is usually someone saying that something is offensive or privilege?
A while back I criticized the "politics" "detox" on HN by saying that there are a lot of people who don't have the luxury of just saying "I'm tired of all this, I'll take a week off from it". They don't have that luxury because they're going to be bombarded with hate, and probably harassment and threats, no matter what they do.
Meanwhile there are a lot of other people who can simply take a week off: they don't face that constant bombardment, nobody will try to follow them around and keep forcibly exposing them to it, etc. This is what's meant by "privilege"; the people who can treat this as just something tiresome which can be safely ignored for a week are fundamentally living in a different world than the people who will be followed and threatened by it no matter what (because, let's face it, there are dedicated ragemobs out there which don't care if somebody stops reading one site, or going to one laundromat -- they'll track down phone numbers and home addresses and keep coming).
Getting the people who "take a week off" to understand that this is something unique to them as a class, something that others can't just do whenever they want, something that really is a luxury compared to the way others are forced by our society to live, is often very difficult, because when you live in that protected bubble you often are completely unaware of its existence. You don't face that kind of treatment, after all, and you think of yourself as average, so on average that kind of thing must be very rare or perhaps greatly exaggerated. Dragging people out of that bubble and making them confront the fact that no, it's not rare and no, it's not exaggerated (if anything, it's often understated), and yes, there are very clear patterns, based heavily in race and gender, which consistently appear to determine who gets the luxury of the bubble and who doesn't, is very hard, but necessary.
In situations like the hypotheticals described, I would also say that the local authorities have lost their mandate to govern, and that those subject to the adverse conditions are ethically justified in securing their own safety by any means at their disposal, including against those (former) local authorities, if necessary, while still engaging in everyday commerce and public discourse. Making everyone stay home to stay safe is not an acceptable option. Living your life is more than just avoiding an untimely death.
You do have the right to do business at a laundromat without the threat of being killed, but it is not the owner of the laundromat that has the ultimate duty to provide the illusion of physical security there. If a state exists, it is the state's duty to make you feel safe anywhere in public, provided that you do not yourself act unlawfully.
No government upholds that duty perfectly, however, so a certain measure of responsibility for one's personal safety will always fall upon the individual. And in order to safeguard the benefits of trade, a certain measure will always fall upon the business owner who wishes to keep their customers (and unpurchased property).
Facebook has chosen, perhaps wrongly, to implement its policies such that it is easier (and cheaper) to hold misbehaving individuals accountable after the fact than to protect innocents from misbehavior before it happens. This is a business decision, and it reveals by its failures that state authorities are not effectively investigating and prosecuting criminal harassment to the extent necessary to make people feel safe, and in the worst cases, it is the state authorities themselves that are harassing identifiable individuals.
> The police aren't there to protect you, specifically. They are paid to enforce the law, as directed by their superiors.
Those people who say "Just call the police." have likely never actually called the police (in the US).
And this segues into my response to you: as you said, it is very hard for some people to just "up and ignore politics for a while".
What I feel you are missing however is that there is a very perverse mirror effect: as a white guy (which I assume from your comment you are not), drinking from the social justice firehose is like basking in anti-white male hate (remember that just like not every white male is a racist and a sexist, not every advocate for social justice is immune from similar hateful beliefs targeted at the former group).
One difference is that you're supposed to like it. Or at least a white male who's a "good person" is.
Now, I don't know to what extent both situations are similar or different, I've only ever experienced one side of it (and all the minority friends I ever asked couldn't relay experiences that approach the level of severity people imply on the Internet. But maybe that's because Québec/Ontario is a very different place than wherever you live, or maybe I just don't know the right people).
> something that others can't just do whenever they want, something that really is a luxury compared to the way others are forced by our society to live
I don't really know how to frame this, but I think it's worth noting that in fact, no matter what you've experienced, you still live a luxurious life yourself by today's world standards.
Indeed, if you make just 18k $/year, you're part of the world's richest 10%.
If you have Internet, then you're part of the 40% of people lucky enough to do so.
In many countries today, female foeticides (that is, killing babies because they are not males) is a reality. In other places, young boys are used as sex toys. In a few Islamic countries in Africa (Sudan and Chad are the 2 I remember offhand), actual chattel slavery is still a thing today.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that probably all of us who can comment on HN live in a bubble (certainly some bubbles are inside others however).
And I think it's easy for all of us to look at bubbles inside our own and "take a week off" from problems which do not affect us directly. Heck, I've seen videos of crazy stuff and I'm writing about it here and I still don't really grasp that people actually get stoned to death for adultery.
In perspective, it feels to me like the plight of marginalized people in western countries is akin to a rich lawyer complaining to Bill Gates about how unfair it is that he can't afford a small island himself while ordering a burger from a minimum wage cashier.
Sure, there are awful things happening around the world. But your response is classic "whataboutism"[1]. At some point you have to start prioritizing problems to solve, and problems which are closer to home will, psychologically, impact people in ways different from problems that are distant. Plus, bringing up conditions in developed countries probably creates the opportunity to marshal more resources to do things about other places (since newly-empowered people will have greater capital and technological resources to bring to bear on eradicating trouble around the world).
My understanding of whataboutism is that it must be an attempt to deflect from some problem that the user doesn't want to address. Like if one is a racist and say 'oh but what about children in country X'. And even then, there are ways to interpret what I just wrote unfavorably due to the plethora of possible definitions of the * isms (is it subtle bias or is it fear/hate of, or etc.).
Anyway, the point I would make is that I think your argument about what to prioritize is shaped around the conclusion you want to reach. Consider this: why should I prioritize my fellow countrymen/westerners of another race over my fellow human beings from another country?
Because they are closer or more akin to me? If so, why not care about people even closer to me: my family and my 'tribe'?
What I'm describing is what is generally seen as conservatism and I expect that it is even seen as either actual bigotry/racism/etc or at least related to it, yet your argument for the 'opposite side' is very similar. Or, if you prefer, what might be said to be racist about an argument against caring for other races could be said to be xenophobic about yours, in a way (I'm not trying to insult you, but rather trying to point out a case of repugnant conclusion).
But anyway, the whole topic is vast and I realize that I've contradicted my own recommendation of emphasizing solutions, so here is my attempt at that: it could be that there are ways to improve race relations that are either the most effective ways to improve the world or that also happen to benefit everyone's ingroup and if those exist then I encourage people to focus on sharing those.
As for more contentious solutions, I have no idea yet. I have seen too many life skill assessment surveys and such to believe that pure 'system 2' solutions (to use Kanehman's nomenclature) will ever work: most people are what Kahneman would call 'lazy thinkers' and I'm fairly convinced that the *isms are merely consequences of such cognitive biases. Short of genetic engineering or separating groups into nations based on their group identity, I don't know what could work.
The quality of this advice is very dependent on the quality of the police you are calling.
For instance, someone in Kern County (incl. Bakersfield), California, should probably not call upon the police for anything less severe than "someone is already dead".
If you truly fear for your life at the laundromat, save your quarters for a few weeks and buy a washtub, scrub board, wringer, and clothesline. Or use a drop-off service. You do not need a laundromat or your own washing machine to do laundry. It is counterproductive to feel like you're going to soil your pants when trying to get another pair clean.
But the grocery store... food is a necessity. You can't really decide not to eat, or to grow everything you will eat at home. There, you're going to need to carry the most effective weapon for self-defense that the state will allow you to keep, keep your shoelaces tied properly, and be hyper-vigilant of your surroundings, potential threats, and escape routes.
The police aren't there to protect you, specifically. They are paid to enforce the law, as directed by their superiors. If you wind up dead, it is likely that no cop will ever be held even partially responsible for it, regardless of the circumstances. If you take appropriate and ethical measures to protect your own safety, police may treat you as just another part of the problem when they arrive (if they decide to show up at all).
In any case, the danger is not Facebook, or the laundromat, or the grocery store: the danger is the person who wants to harm you. The danger is that you cannot effectively defend yourself from such people in your everyday life, regardless of whether some business or other is passively enabling their threatening behavior. If someone is using Facebook to make you fear, complaining to Facebook is the wrong thing to do first. Depending on your means, build a wall, hire a bodyguard, buy a weapon, get security monitoring, join the neighborhood watch, or install surveillance cameras--whatever it takes to make you feel safe from unknown assailants. Then you can complain to Facebook.
It's our government. We should write the best rules. If the company doesn't like it they can go to a different country.
The problem with rules is that they are "one-size fits all". Very binary. Instead of telling people what they can and can not do, why don't we simply require full disclosure?
> We should write the best rules. If the company doesn't like it they can go to a different country.
That's easier for companies than citizens. But the determination of "best rules" in a (representative) democracy depends on which mob is in charge this week...
Using the word right for something should be reserved only for those specific, first-order activities which are so inalienable as to suggest the inability to do them is reprehensible to and an affront to basic humanity.
Being safe is a right. Speaking your mind (with certain reasonable limitations) is a right, even if your opinions are garbage to 99% of the world. Using the laundromat at Whittaker and 8th is not a right, nor is using Facebook or even the internet.