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Comment by amazingamazing | Hacker News Reader

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amazingamazing

But nothing, lol. Should everyone working at meta be killed due to their contribution to social media?

If there’s a problem people should be tried in court, not killed

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> Should everyone working at meta be killed due to their contribution to social media?

Not one of them - but you might be shocked by the amount of people that would say yes.

> If there’s a problem people should be tried in court, not killed.

Agreed - but what happens when the courts are corrupt? At least the thinking among these types is that the rich are above the law, so the only way to achieve justice, is to take it into your own hands.

Maybe our problems are only perceptive, or maybe there's something to them.

I don't know.

But what I do know is there's a pretty big divide.

Lol lots of SV freaks in the comments here very close to having their "are we the baddies" moment

It's interesting to see how both HN threads are noticeably more "moderate" and "rational" than the vast majority on online responses such as Reddit.

After joining hackernews I realized people here are generally open minded and thinkers. If you provide a valid point they will often reflect on their stance.

Hackernews is my fav forum.

There are plenty of people who do wrong in society and are not tried in court. They are just killed by the authorities because there is no recourse to try them in court. For example: if some person takes a hostage, the police will kill them if there is no other way. And for some very rich people with a lot of power and causing damage, what is the other way?

Should they? No. Morally (the world of "should"), vigilante justice should not be used in a society with laws and courts.

Is is a different world than should, though. In the world of is, there are a large number of people who feel that the system is rigged against them, that they're never going to get justice, that the courts are bought by the rich and powerful. In the world of is, that creates the grounds where vigilante "justice" will be used.

Whether you agree with it or not, whether you think it's right or not (I don't), we live in a society with a large number of people, with guns, who feel that the legal system has failed them, the political system has failed them, and this is the only course left. That feeling, in enough people, leads to some of them taking action.

So let the rich and powerful beware. I don't agree with it, I don't advocate it, but it is. If you're powerful, and you live in a world with potential vigilantes, you'd better make sure that not very many of them feel like it's time to become a vigilante. The rich have ignored that bit of practical wisdom; yesterday may have been the chickens coming home to roost.

To spell out something I think you're saying: if you want people to use the legislative and judicial systems to deal with abuses by the rich and powerful, you need to make sure that those systems are visibly willing and able to do so.

It's not just that you need a system that adequately prosecutes and punishes crime in order to keep vigilantes in check. Most such systems evolved as an explicit alternative to systems based on vendettas or lynching. These latter modes of prosecution and punishment are always lurking under the surface because they were there first and could only be inhibited by more civilized modes; they were never abolished by them.

Nobody's saying they should be killed. But I can't deny, at least to myself, what emotions might inadvertently well up within my soul (does Meta believe in souls?) if an unthinkable event like that you are hypothesising about were to happen. It's outside of my control.

If those people singlehandedly ran a division which unnecessarily harmed or killed tens of thousands of people all in the name of selfish profit while continuously two facing the entire public claiming to care about the lives of their customers, who are most likely trapped into using the companies services by monopolistic behavior created and continued by the person, then yeah.

Also, why are we so afraid that millionaires and billionaires might be a little afraid of the populace? Shouldn't they be? Shouldn't we live in a world where we care for each other and help to improve the world? Shouldn't the people that abuse that system to kill for profit be scared? I think they should be terrified, it might convince them to treat their fellow man better.

There must be real consequences. There is a group of people in America right now which can simply never face any real consequences for anything they do. They have enough money to survive being fired, they have enough lawyers to never go to jail, and if they do they'll get a cushy cell in a fed block for a year or so, followed by still having millions of dollars when they get out. What can we, as a populace, do to keep these people from destroying our society for their personal gain (deteriorating the conditions of normal life continuously will lead to revolt and unrest and destabilization). All we have is fear. That's the only option they've given us. So we should use it. Don't like it? Maybe start listening when the entire populace of the country is screaming at you every hour of every day that you're actively and intentionally killing them. It doesn't matter if it's just a system that you oversee, it's your responsibility. Your can change it, and you aren't, and we're begging you to. That state can only last so long before something breaks. The millions of furious people will not break first

Everyone? No. Those above a certain level? Who knowingly contributed to the Rohingya genocide? I wouldn't do it, but I would laugh at their obituaries.

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