Hacker News Reader

Comment by apta_ | Hacker News Reader

It's due to extreme virtue signaling, basically cancel culture. These companies have to behave alongside the social pressure or else they're going to lose revenue.

View on HN

I didn’t think “don’t lynch the Vice President” was an extreme position, but maybe I’m out of touch

Literally everyone clutching their pearls over this seems to ignore this. Were people under the impression it was reasonable to plot the assassination of the Vice President of the United States on social media sites?

Parler spends most of its moderation effort removing accounts of leftists who argue or make fun of right-wingers on that site. Someone who never even posted anything got their account banned over a screenshot. Yet they refuse to remove calls of violence against elected officials?

I don't even like Mike Pence. But I don't think he should die! He should just retire!

Shouldn’t those offenders face jailtime instead of censorship when inciting violence? To not see the darkness might be worse as you don’t then see the effects of things. Maybe get a psychologist involved, some happy pills and the offenders can make US better instead of being a tax burden?

> Shouldn’t those offenders face jailtime instead of censorship when inciting violence?

How can they face jail, if they are FBI operatives, acting on direct orders?

I means, are we supposed to believe, that FBI — the same FBI that surveils entirety of Internet and have backdoors in FAANG — fails to catch a whiff of ongoing revolts?! And police just yields Capitol to bunch of protesters?!? And they say, that Russian FSB is heavy on theatrics...

But that doesn't answer the question, that just shifts the immediate problem to "we need to fix our law enforcement".

I don't see how you can look at the United State's incredible incarceration rate and decide "Well we need to put more people in prison"

I would say Amazon removing Parler due to a TOS violation is preferable to locking up thousands of people in federal prison.

You're not. The near ubiquitous rebuttal I keep reading to the actions of Twitter, Apple, etc. are juvenile slippery slope fallacies.

And that the VP is even from their own party makes it even more absurd.

They can ban individual accounts calling for violence (which happens on both the extreme left and extreme right). But it's only socially acceptable to ban one of those, the other gets a free ride.

No. What is this garbage whataboutism of "both the extreme left and extreme right"?

People are trying to have civil discussions and you are using inciteful language calling their argument "garbage".

Would you agree that it is Twitter and Facebook's responsibility to ban all BLM-affiliated groups? After all they have organized numerous events that involved mass rioting that resulted in billions of Dollars in damage, many deaths, and disruption to the lives of hundreds of thousands. In many cases, politicians like AOC or news pundits like Don Lemon have condoned this violence, and even encouraged more such action. At times they have gaslighted us by claiming those events were "mostly peaceful" even though there is evidence to the contrary showing criminality far larger in scale than the recent capitol riot (example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/31/fires-light-...). Those individuals and groups who organized, incited, and participated in such events were not reprimanded and not banned.

So why are they all given a pass? It's because these tech companies are comprised mostly of left-leaning staff and are willing to now exercise their power against everyone else. Until Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon deplatform every single person and group involved in the hundreds of events in 2020 that involved criminal acts, these new acts of censorship will remain discriminatory and unacceptable.

You don't think the radical left is a problem that the far right is feeding off of? Then the cycle goes on. They both feed off each other.

No, I don't.

And I frankly don't care much for your example. My grandfather was a Pole who had to fight Nazi invaders, and I have no reservations about him having to put a few bullets over them.

Nazis and fascists do not want a free and fair society. They delight in the violence of it and have no interest in a marketplace of ideas.

The radical left is a problem in Seattle as they are terrorizing the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to community activist Victoria Beach explain how she is upset for them terrorizing the area and hijacking the Black Lives Matter movement.

https://twitter.com/choeshow/status/1345184414016278528

https://twitter.com/choeshow/status/1345192831602679809

The "virtue" of totally unmoderated speech is just another value you hold that you're misleadingly not categorizing as a "virtue": You're doing it right now.

The very idea of "virtue signaling" is delusional. There is no practical difference between twitter's intent and their action here.

Yes, this is how companies are supposed to work. There are plenty of examples of conservatives trying to “cancel” companies for some perceived transgression as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com