Comment by F3nd0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by F3nd0 | Hacker News Reader

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It’s more about the way it was phrased and presented. Just sharing publicly available facts with your community (or anyone really) is not a problem in itself, but the message does rub me the wrong way.

The message’s author is trying to present themselves as someone helpful and compassionate (‘I understand’, ‘I’m trying to help’), but at the same time, they’re one-sidedly setting a firm and short deadline (‘I’ll give you a day’) unprompted and suggesting the café owner strike a deal with one of the people they’re going to recommend. They might have written this with good intentions at heart, but it also wouldn’t feel out of place in a mafia setting (as in ‘do business with us, or else’), so it’s a hard sell.

If they really were compassionate and wanted to help, they easily could have suggested to get the owner in touch with some affordable artists and left her with time to mentally deal with the backlash and all. They didn’t need to emphasise how they were going to tell on her like they were about to launch a vendetta smear campaign or something.

HN needing an explanation of how protection rackets work is like looking up money laundering in the dictionary in Office Space.

protection rackets involve crime and violence. talking to people about a business doing things you don't like is neither of those things. that's just coopting actual victimhood in an effort to make people disapproving of how you do business a crime.

I agree, they should've just shared it immediately without contacting the owner

There are no good intentions here. This is the mafia playbook through and through - "It would be a pity if something were to happen to your <insert valuable property or reputation here>".

Well, the basic idea of it is not so bad. A business generally wants to keep their customers happy and care for their reputation, so telling a business when we’re unhappy and influencing their reputation is the feedback mechanism we have at our disposal.

The important thing is how we go about it, and whether their reputation remains reflective of their actions, or we try and make it worse than it ought to be. We can’t say for certain the author of the message was going to do the latter, but it does not inspire good faith.

> Well, the basic idea of it is not so bad.

It's textbook extortion.

> so telling a business when we’re unhappy and influencing their reputation is the feedback mechanism we have at our disposal.

Telling a business we're going to fuck you up unless you send our friends work, even by implication, is literally extortion.

I wrote my comment with the assumption that the ‘basic idea’ was intentionally making reputation worse on account of poor behaviour, and communicating that to the business owner. Of course, if you imagine the basic idea to be the extortive aspect, then it is literally extortion.

Threatening to damage the reputation of the business unless the business paid their friends to redo the art.

It's only not extortion if you ignore the extortative parts.

I did make a distinction between ‘the basic idea’ and the rest. That implies temporarily focusing on some parts more than the others, yes.

but the only way they can "fuck up" this business is by influencing their reputation. no one is getting a brick through their window. this is an attempt to try to mutate basic feedback mechanisms until they're equivalent to physical violence and turn "I won't shop here and neither will my friends" into "literally extortion".

> "A business generally wants to keep their customers happy and care for their reputation, so telling a business when we’re unhappy and influencing their reputation is the feedback mechanism we have at our disposal."

Yes, except this case isn't about a customer—it's a disgruntled vendor (commercial artist) acting on behalf of an association of other vendors. Not (AFAICT) on behalf of real customers.

A customer complaining about their needs and preferences is useful feedback.

A vendor whom you have no business relationship with (and want none) is not helpful.

If they criticize your business practices in public, that's certainly their right. But, if they're threatening to do that, with an attached demand of commercial services to them (or to their associates), that's something else. It's the linked demand for payment that loses them all legitimacy. (Possibly even into criminal racketeering; I'm not an expert).

Certainly, but considerate the alternative: the account simply publicly posts about a public posting (not private business). Which happens all of the time for public ridicule or shame. At least this provides some recourse for the person affected. Sure, the alternative is simply to not post in the first place; but such is the nature of large social media accounts.

In this case, the account clearly stated: -

1.) We don't like your poster so you better remove it or we'll badmouth you within our network.

2.) You have 1 day to comply.

3.) You can instead work with an artist we will recommend (aka connected to us), and we'll cease.

Textbook mafia-style extortion.

the crux of whether or not this is extortion isn't just "something I don't like happens". it's not extortion to dislike a business's practice, and it's not extortion to tell your friends about it. it may be distasteful, maybe even shitty (in fact I'd go so far as to say that even while I agree with the idea I really don't like how they did it) but to criminalize what this person said is to criminalize the idea of not doing business with someone because you don't like their actions and is an attack on free speech.

It's extortion when you tell the business as a conditional statement. Perhaps you're lived a fortunate life as to not have dealt with a mafia gang ever in your sheltered life.

I don’t deny that based on the screenshot there is both strong-arming and a lack of sympathy or empathy from the other account towards the fact that it seems like many people are just using AI tools without giving it a second thought.

However, I’m just pointing out that as far as the implications of the threat goes, in most instances it would’ve just happened anyway, without a “warning”, because people simply post things to make fun of them and mock them. Sometimes those accounts might at least anonymize their subjects, but this might be a name them and shame them type situation.

This is ludicrous, I'm sorry. People are treating this minor social scuffle like they're going to burn the business down. No, they're not saying 'work with us or die' unless you read it in the most hostile way possible to be terrified of something mundane. To them, the AI is the problem, if the owner took it down and replaced it with a Microsoft Word printout, they would be satisfied. Trying to recommend an artist they know may come off as an advertisement or as trying to get ahead of the owner claiming there's no one who can do this kind of work, depending on how charitable you want to be. But no matter how you read it, this isn't a mob boss forcing you into a protection racket. It's just some guy who probably wanted to name and shame on a Facebook group but decided to hold off for one day.

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