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Comment by mistercheph | Hacker News Reader

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Ha-ha, but seriously: Society seems to have lost the ability to curb "annoying, mildly belligerent, but not strictly illegal" antisocial behavior. Used to be, if someone did some taboo thing that irritated everyone around them, the community would shame him for it. Now, you say something to them, and everyone whips their phone out and you're suddenly the Village Karen, butting your nose in where it doesn't belong. From loud motorcycles to cutting in queue, to abusing retail workers, to holding up traffic to take a selfie, to TikTok "pranks", everyone can basically get away with being a narcissistic asshole, and everyone else just keeps their heads down, desperately minding their own business.

In the 90s, the small town I lived in had a local community triple action principle. This was demonstrated on a little shit that had a noisy Renault 5 that used to get revved up all the time for no reason (between begging for £5 worth of fuel at the petrol station to keep it alive).

The first time he pissed someone off, it cost him a new tyre with a warning posted under the windscreen wiper, the second time it cost him a windscreen and a tyre. The third time the car had to be scraped off the road with a pick axe after being torched. The police saw nothing and did not do anything about it because they were happy with the outcome.

Aka vigilante justice - the avoidance of which is (typically) one of the primary existential purposes of formal law enforcement.

The deal is that formal law enforcement is reasonably effective meting out justice and that private parties people forgo pursuing their own.

A deal can be broken by either side.

Imagine if the same applied to HN.

Can some trollish comment slightly annoying tens of thousands of passing readers be a good cause for punishing the user that made it?

And how severe should that punishment be?

You've actually raised a fantastic real example of this in practice.

If I post a trollish comment, it'll likely get downvoted and/or flagged/hidden. In plausibly accidental cases, someone might leave a comment saying "you're likely getting downvoted because <douchey thing>." If I demonstrate a significant pattern of the same, I'll get shadowbanned (or fully banned).

You don't need to behead drivers of annoying bikes, but chastisement, mild punishment, and then significant punishment, is a sensible escalation. One potential system might be where the first offense gets a warning to fix the problem, the second offense gets a ticket and order to fix the problem, and the third gets the vehicle impounded.

What does it take to bring recurrences to a minimum-—both for that person and others?

I don’t especially want to have the police seize loud car guy’s car, but if that’s what it takes, I’m all for it.

How do you forsee a bill getting enough votes to make even a minor change, let alone 'whatever it takes', that could potentially penalize tens of thousands of people? Won't they all band up to defeat your proposal?

What happens in practice is that those thousands of people degrade the quality of life of millions of people. Those millions, don’t do anything, and don’t do anything, and don’t do anything, and then elect a populist right winger running on a law and order platform. Then you get all kinds of distraught think-pieces from distraught 25 year old graduates of elite art colleges wondering how this could possibly have happened.

How does this relate to my previous questions?

You’re a smart guy, figure it out.

No? The onus, going by HN norms, is on the replier to make the connection readily understandable.

Maybe a bit to extreme?

For first few offenses a few days in the stocks sounds reasonable, the second time we take an ear and for third offense you can pick between the gallows or being shipped to Australia.

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