Platforms systematically removed a user because he made "most wanted CEO" cards
eff.org
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Platforms wield too much power and can wholly and totally destroy us. Run afoul of their rules just once (or maybe even not at all), and your business or identity gets totally erased with no recourse.
This is a shameful and scary state for us to be in. Serfs of the platforms.
If the political zeitgeist continues to become even more extreme, you might get silenced for questioning the origins of a virus, being LGBT, or expressing displeasure at a certain political candidate or business leader. Left or right.
It should be impossible to remove someone from banking, PayPal, Shopify, social media, etc. -- unless they're actively breaking federal law. And even then, there should be a legal process in place to reclaim your identity and real estate.
If legislation won't help us, then we need to build peer-to-peer (not federated) systems that will.
The banking pieces probably fall afoul of AML/CTF rules, which is fine. But the social media bans, total wipe of accounts, no process in place for restitution, and no communication are literally mechanisms of de-personing.
> literally mechanisms of de-personing
I think we have very different perspectives on what it means to be human, how much all of this (waves around hand in the general direction of social media) is worth, and what is important.
I value tiktok, and all other social media platforms, at nothing. $0.00, maximum. If you built your business on them, you fucked up. If you use them for news, you fucked up. And if you feel that they are needed or important, you DEFINITELY fucked up.
Want to know of road closures? Better check the relevant DoTs Twitter pages.
For critical services it may even be illegal, since you can’t access Twitter pages without logging into Twitter, and you can’t signup to Twitter without passing a CAPTCHA and other user-hostile gating mechanisms.
> It should be impossible to remove someone from banking, PayPal, Shopify, social media, etc.
As a freelancer I can choose my clients. I would hate to live in a world where a bad client could force me to continue to work with them unless they broke the law.
That's a very bad idea. Because then you have to create a myriad of laws that forbids discrimination on ever growing number of things. It turns ensuring everybody's basic economic freedom into a game of lagging whack-a-mole.
If a business advertises a product or a service to the public with a price they shouldn't be allowed to refuse the product or a service to anybody willing to pay the price.
Besides, how does the first amendment enshrine that?
> how does the first amendment enshrine [the right of association]
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALD...
That's fine when we're talking about mom-and-pop baptist bakers that don't want to bake your gay wedding cake, or little mastodon instances that don't want Nazis coming in. (An example from both the social left and social right to choose whom they associate with - but that's not what we're debating.)
But when you're dealing with 100M MAUs or daily transaction volumes in the billions, you're no longer a person - you're infrastructure. A public square. And moreover these giant companies are few and they all move in lockstep with one another, which means you have no avenue to turn to when you get removed.
Make all the cakes you want for a limited clientele out of your house.
[Citation Needed].
Straight up, a singular company having control over something was well established at the time of the First Amendment.
1. "Monopoly" is a greek word which was used to describe a company that had a monopoly in Greece. This long pre-dates the first amendment.
2. Kings routinely gave out exclusivity of a product to a company, this is the whole backstory on the Tea Act [1].
3. Being denied access to something isn't a new concept. They could've written the first 10 amendments to address private citizens and choose not to. It's not like private citizens didn't try to surpress speech.
Times are not new. Technology is new. Every problem is old.
The few hundred corporations that existed by 1800 were chartered by individual states, couldn't do business outside that state, weren't allowed to participate in the political process, and couldn't buy stock in other corporations.
During and after the civil war is when "modern" corporations started to show. They made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges and even presidents. They lobbied and bribed their way to more relaxed laws that allowed them to accrue even more money and political power, leading to the first Gilded Age.
Then in 1886, the Supreme Court decided that Corporations are People, too[1], and it went downhill from there (except for a brief blip in the 1930s).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern....
I’m free to refuse to do business with a company for racial reasons but a company is not feee to refuse to do business with me due to my race.
EDIT: I’m pointing out one of the ways that “free association” for corporations is different than for people.
how can the customer have a right to choose when there is only one option due to [de-facto] monopoly? Or say there are only 2 options and each has deplatformed the customer/user. How the right to choose would work for that customer/user?
Monopoly's right to choose their customers destroys the last remnants of the customers' right to choose (which gets already severly damaged when the monopoly forms).
<s> Of course, I'd like to only rent hotel rooms to the sort of people that I'd like to have as my clients & guests. However, this has been illegal for me to do since 1965. </s>
Utilities lend themselves to monopoly well.
The economy of scale allows one company to efficiently become the only source of that utility for an region.
Meanwhile, the customers of the utility are subject to the dark side of monopoly. Unjustified rate increases or cutting off service for any reason whatsoever.
It makes no sense.
This setup only works well for Power companies, airlines, water, waste, etc. when there are robust regulation around them.
Could you imagine if the power company could cut you off because of your political leanings? or the water company?
It is no different for monopolies on the internet.
Everything they do is heavily regulated. They cannot do things like cut off service for any reason whatsoever, or raise rates without justification.
The problem is that, due to lack of anti-trust enforcement, we have quasi-utility companies that run commerce. If they have the market position of a utility, they need to be regulated as such.
Certain large internet companies might eventually be considered utilities or common carriers, but I think that this would be a bad thing because it would tend to favor monopolization.
At any rate, no one has or should have a state-enforced right to an account on a particular social media site. It’s silly how fast people jump to comparing Facebook to the electric company.
But it is now pretty much settled law that people cannot weaponize their freedom of association to discriminate on these grounds. If you offer a service, you have to provide the service to the classes of people that you could be reasonably expected to serve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States
You can have a "no brunettes" or "no people named Chris" rule and be entirely fine.
The article mentions disabled company accounts. I'm sure they froze some funds too, which Harr will probably never get back. This is the problem. Capital has all the power & we have no (legal) recourse.
Imagine you get to decide to stop working for a bad client, on whatever terms you want, without warning, and you still keep payment.
ETA: It looks like the shopify account was restored.
Also, the whole idea that companies are 'people' and therefore are protected under these constitutional rights is a bullshit concept. It was never the intent of the founders, it was act of corruption of the legal system.
So yes, our reliance on platforms which can cut us off is a problem, the chilling effect on online speech is a problem. But not over this.
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
The strongest good faith interpretation of "the CEO must die" is that it is not a call to action for murdering "the CEO". But we'll let the author clarify:
>“The CEO is more than an individual it is a figurehead of the capitalist order,” he wrote. “When we say the ceo must die, we mean the structure of capitalism must be broken.”
Good faith is for arguments, not calls to murder.
And now we wait.
Generalized calls to violence are perfectly legal and have been a part of American political culture for centuries. Sometimes it's much hotter than others (the 1960s were pretty hot), but so it goes. I personally wouldn't do it, and I don't agree with these statements or these cards, but people have a right to say it.
Unless you really think it's just a deck of cards with a particularly bizarre motif, and I don't think any of us really buy that.
To quote IdleWorlds above (once again, thank you for this info): "The guy also posted "the CEO must die" to his Instagram."
There's no "what if" here.
It's not as clear-cut as you make it sound, and that's why the Brandenburg test is such an important concept: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test
> The test determined that the government may prohibit speech advocating the use of force or crime if the speech satisfies both elements of the two-part test:
> The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”
Imminent is the keyword there. Saying "let's go kill that CEO" at the head of a mob outside their home isn't protected, as it passes the test - it is genuinely likely to result in the mob storming the house, as the mob is positioned to be able to do so as an immediate reaction to the speech telling them to, and the speaker knows it.
In contrast, consider some of the speech found to be protected by this standard:
> a KKK leader gave a speech at a rally to his fellow Klansmen, and after listing a number of derogatory racial slurs, he then said that “it's possible that there might have to be some vengeance [sic] taken.”
> In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co . (1982), Charles Evers threatened violence against those who refused to boycott white businesses. The Supreme Court applied the Brandenburg test and found that the speech was protected : “Strong and effective extemporaneous rhetoric cannot be nicely channeled in purely dulcet phrases. An advocate must be free to stimulate his audience with spontaneous and emotional appeals for unity and action in a common cause. When such appeals do not incite lawless action, they must be regarded as protected speech.”
Advocating violence in the abstract doesn't satisfy the imminence requirement. Unless there's a direct connection in time and place between the speaker and the lawless actor, it's protected.
A separate, but related issue is people assuming "free speech" and the First Amendment are equal; that you have "free speech" as long as you have a First Amendment, and only that. But obviously, a society where you can be totally ostracized from all markets and common society on the basis of your speech is not a free society, even if the government doesn't put you in jail. To live in a free society and to have free speech doesn't mean only the government tolerates speech, it extends to us.
Adding in what Idlewords posted below:
"The guy also posted "the CEO must die" to his Instagram."
Provisioning a hit-list in the context of a call to murder the people described isn't abstract or vague either. At best it's a terroristic threat.
And actually, regarding the Brandenburg case itself, this is what was said:
> We're not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.
So, actually, the speech was specifically directed against a named group of individuals - "our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court" - but is still protected because of the lack of imminence. I'll note that there is a distinction between "the President should be killed" and "I will kill the President" - the latter is a true threat, the former is not.
As the ruling says: "the mere abstract teaching . . . of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action."
I think we sped past that mile marker a long time ago.
We have been warning that speech moderation and rules about "distasteful speech" and the like would end up hurting those who were advocating for it but I guess it requires a generational learning event.
I guess until it gets bad enough that we decide that ideas regarding free speech and censorship should apply to corporations we are left with what Mr. Munroe had to say: https://xkcd.com/1357/
* The backs of the Iraqi cards are just a WANTED stamp.
* The people on the Iraqi cards are military targets in an ongoing war. The rules are different for civilians.
It's violence either way, you just find it a more acceptable violence.
Probably, but motive matters in “killed” versus “murder”. I’m much more inclined to be mad about profit-driven medical decisions of this nature.
I think this "health care" "murder" thing is just a really bad analogy and people should stop using it.
I have a hard time seeing “we can boost profits by fighting claims until sick people give up” as all that dissimilar.
The NHS admins aren’t getting bonuses for boosting share prices.
Insurers are motivated to eliminate waste, which is absolutely rife in the US health care industry; insurers are getting continually worked over by hospital chains, which take in something like 9 times as much money as insurers and have 3-5x their profit margins.
I don't think the analogy is salvageable. Even if the point I just made wasn't true (it is), you'd have run aground on the distinction between wanting and intending to kill someone and not. But the flaws run much deeper than that. Respectfully, you should stop saying this.
This is Patrick Stewart levels of bald assertion.
Call it “negligent homicide” if you prefer.
It's not homicide at all, and it's deeply irresponsible to suggest otherwise. You should stop.
What's obviously happening here is that the behavior advocated by the person who made these cards, and of many people online reacting to the murder of the UHC executive, is obviously and categorically indefensible, and people are going through contortions trying to avoid a reckoning with that.
My wife worked as a nurse, my Dad’s a doc, and I pay about $50k/year between premiums (which went from $3k to $3.6k this month), copays, and uncovered stuff like compounded meds for the family. I am intimately familiar with the system.
Some of the denials we’ve received have only been survivable via family assistance, both in fighting them and paying when those battles are lost.
But again, the motivations for them differ.
> The distinction between the US and Europe is that we cover and perform more services…
That is hardly the only distinction.
> nobody gets to murder anybody because they disagree with the structure of our system
Sure. For me, it’s a “I don’t condone, but I understand” scenario, coupled with a “some things that are legal shouldn’t be”.
Whole bunch of "captured + executed/died in prison" on that list. The goal wasn't to give them a hug.
> The people on the Iraqi cards are military targets in an ongoing war.
Prime Minister, President, Head of Tribal Affairs, Governor of Basra... would we consider these legitimate military targets if someone hit our equivalents?
Just because we sometimes execute criminals doesn't mean there's something wrong with WANTED posters.
> Prime Minister, President, Head of Tribal Affairs, Governor of Basra... would we consider these legitimate military targets if someone hit our equivalents?
If we were at war? Sure. And if we weren't at war, we would be afterward.
Do you think Putin and Zelensky aren't doing everything they can to blow each other up?
Throughout the Iraq and Afghan wars, we deemed combat actions by insurgent groups to be terrorism, even if entirely against military targets.
Hell, the guy who threw his shoe at Bush got three years in jail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_shoe-throwing_i...
> Do you think Putin and Zelensky aren't doing everything they can to blow each other up?
I don't, really. I think Ukraine avoids targeting Putin directly because it'd lead to serious retalliation (doubly so if unsuccessful); I think Putin avoids targeting Zelensky these days as it'd make him a martyr.
You are naive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Volo...
Considering how famously paranoid Putin is, I doubt the Ukrainians get much opportunity. There's not a doubt in my mind they would take it if they could. What are the Russians going to do, invade?
The Ukrainians could hit the Kremlin with current drones, having hit targets in Moscow already. That they don’t is a deliberate calculation.
No one wants to discover Putin’s genuine red line on nukes and his own personal safety.
The Ukranians could certainly hit the Kremlin with drones. Unfortunately for them, Putin doesn't live in the Kremlin, and the drones that can reach Moscow are rather small. But I 100% guarantee you that Putin's "red lines" won't matter when he's dead.
> Horsley was named as a co-conspirator in a successful civil suit, Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists,[5] filed by Planned Parenthood over the information compiled by him and "Unwanted Posters" of doctors, which was judged by the court to constitute a threat of violence, even without an explicit call to violence.
> The case was reheard en banc, and the court determined that the files constituted "true threats" that are not constitutionally protected.
These cards are really pushing the boundary of what is legal, and I have no problem with platforms choosing not to do business with him.
You'd better be very sure about that. The Secret Service doesn't find that kind of thing funny.
To your knowledge, has it worked with anyone?
I find that the more I warn people about the invisible problems of the internet, the less they care to change. But perhaps you are more persuasive than I.
I think that if you grew up using technology pre-2000, or are generally tech-savvy you can easily see the problems and they scare you because you understand the ways that things have changed so drastically. Windows 11 (for one example) doesn't even allow you to set up your computer without being connected to the internet? That's an objectively bad decision as far as a computer product goes; the ONLY benefit is to Microsoft and their data-collection business! But if its normal to you, it's "not a big deal." "Why are you complaining?"
I can be very persuasive, ive been told. But people today are addicted. There is no doubt. You can see the fear in their faces as they try to come up with reasons why "they" are the exception, as if they are different from every other person.
Not really. The 3 letter agencies (CIA, NSA) also have a stake in this.
Although CIA put NKVD and STASI in a negative light, they learned a lot from them.
I'll share something that might mitigate some of your turmoil: with any ascendant (and disruptive) technology, the only way to criticize it is by leveraging that technology.
Socrates' lament on the dangers of literacy is known today because it was written down (yes, by Plato... but it was written down).
So either be a hermit or teach/learn how not deal with it.
unless you move to amish country you are subject to surveillance which is only going to get worse…
Surveillance isn't even my main concern. It's the hijacking of people's attention, and the way it makes people think that they can somehow live out their life on the internet in a way that's comparable to real life, that makes me upset and has soured me on the internet.
Your phone knows where and who you are, your (new) car knows where you are. Same for your friends.
Either way, removing the cards from _their_ platform accomplishes their goal.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
Or this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/21/how-misin...
So I don't see how one could think some "most wanted" playing cards could create a liability?
Goodwill is literally an accounting line item.
And do you really think, if something like that happened in the US, that Facebook wouldn't get sued? Maybe they win, maybe not, but someone would definitely try.
Think about all of the things you see on Facebook. Where does a deck of satirical playing cards fall on the spectrum of causing liability in your mind?
If one of those executives ends up dead and the killer is found with this pack of cards in the pocket, everyone involved in the distribution chain is getting sued. Some may be criminally prosecuted. You might think it's funny, but judges and juries will not. Nor will grieving families.
Until recently, I ran a print-on-demand company. No way in hell I would touch something like this.
The tech platforms just don't want the content on their platform. Removing it from their platform accomplished the goal. Unlike Streisand, it's unlikely they care if the content is widely distributed on someone else's platform. Not their problem.
I wonder if they even realize they're responsible for this environment they've festered.
[1]: https://www.comradeworkwear.com/products/swoletariat-tee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
(This strict standard saved Trump on Jan 6, incidentally.)
For example, "we need to deport illegal immigrants" is a call for violence if you think about it, it's just violence through one of the acceptable channels - law enforcement.
The same is true of statements about war, whether it be in support of Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, etc. Maybe the violence is self-defense, but doesn't change the fact it is violence.
You don't see platforms removing these violent statements, because it's "acceptable" violence, but what violence acceptable is malleable. It changes in society over time, and it's different depending on who you ask.
Would you like to expand on how you came to this conclusion? It's at odds with most interpretations of labour camps and internment camps and "re-education centres"
Weird, how do the people get to the camps then?
Are you serious about that?
Denying Ruby Ridges the chance to attend an integrated school wouldn't have been violence on one hand, but the systemic chain of events inside the lack of equal opportunity could be perceived as such.
For example, nobody in their right mind would consider a policeman being distinguished for stopping a shooter as "glorifying violence" even if the officer had to use violence to him down.
The distinction only surfaces if someone insists on describing lawful violence as violence, as in the parent comment.
Maybe if you only listen to extremist diatribes instead of reasonable discourse.
The rules are reasonable as far as they prohibit glorifying illegitimate violence. Whether the platforms applies the rules in this way for other cases or not is irrelevant for this particular case, even if we know the TOS are applied pretty arbitrarily.