[HN Gopher] Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that o...
___________________________________________________________________
Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from
its site
Author : pseudolus
Score : 225 points
Date : 2021-04-07 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| tonfreed wrote:
| I don't have an issue with this in theory, but the problem with
| this kind of policy is that they never actually release a full
| set of rules to follow.
|
| I see a ton of breadtubers advocating for pedophilia and
| bestiality on Twitch itself sites, can guarantee those won't run
| afoul of the hidden rules. However, calling someone a simp is a
| bannable offense on Twitch now.
|
| Any company implementing this kind of rule now ultimately does it
| at the behest of a very loud and cuntish section of the internet
| that'll brigade any and all wrongthink. This will probably be the
| beginning of the end of Twitch, because the demands on good
| behavior are going to be completely unfollowable.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Twitch has a reasonably thorough "community guidelines", a few
| pages https://www.twitch.tv/p/en/legal/community-guidelines/
| koluna wrote:
| What's being missed in this thread is that nobody (streamers) is
| an employee of Twitch - Twitch graciously offers them their
| platform, but that's like your local fruit stand offering you a
| place to juggle next to it. They can take that away at any point
| because you are not their employee. If you had some legally
| enforceable contract, maybe there was a leg to stand on.
| Otherwise, twitch is under no obligation to give anyone a
| platform.
| [deleted]
| reificator wrote:
| > _If you had some legally enforceable contract, maybe there
| was a leg to stand on. Otherwise, twitch is under no obligation
| to give anyone a platform._
|
| Twitch partners _(I.E. most of the people who make a living on
| the platform)_ absolutely have a contract with Twitch. Twitch
| affiliates don 't as far as I know, but those are _(mostly)_
| the people in the awkward stage between hobby and profession,
| and most of them are trying to achieve "partner" status.
| mondoshawan wrote:
| > "Twitch said it would rely more heavily on law enforcement in
| "off-service" cases and is partnering with an investigative law
| firm to support its internal team."
|
| So if a user becomes noteworthy, expect to have investigative
| checks periodically done by the agency? What an insane concept --
| this is how we end up with corporate governance and unjust
| punishment without societal review by _fiat_ , without review by
| our peers.
|
| Consider that Twitch is owned by Amazon. If Amazon were to start
| doing things like this, suddenly someone so accused can't walk
| into Whole Foods?
| mustbedreaming wrote:
| Your point about corporate governance being a generally bad
| thing is valid, but I don't think this case is anywhere near
| that.
|
| A "user" and a "streamer" are two different things. Anyone can
| create an account and be a viewer who consumes content on
| Twitch. That's not the same as being a content creator who
| draws viewers to the platform and implicitly represents the
| brand.
|
| You can go scream racist nonsense in the town square and then
| quietly shop at Whole Foods. But if a Whole Foods employee was
| found screaming racist nonsense in the town square, Whole Foods
| might fire them for it, and they are well within their rights
| to do so.
|
| Obligatory "I know streamers aren't employees." Their
| relationship to Twitch is similar enough to that of an employee
| that the same logic applies.
| cik wrote:
| Is there any doubt that we've entered the era of approved, or not
| free speech. 'Severe misconduct' today means racist behaviour,
| perhaps tomorrow it means support for the NRA, or anti-
| environmental behaviour. The thought police have finally invaded
| ever part of society.
| Bud wrote:
| Please look up what "free speech" actually means, in order to
| disabuse yourself of the notion that private companies' actions
| have anything to do with it.
| anchpop wrote:
| Free speech isn't a concept that was invented or defined by
| the United State's first amendment. What kind of logic is
| that? When foreign governments kill dissidents, do you say
| "don't worry guys, the first amendment only applies to the US
| government, so nobody's right to free speech is getting
| violated here".
| colllectorof wrote:
| No.
|
| If you know anything about history, you know that attacks on
| free speech do not have to start or stop with official
| government sanction. In Soviet Union it wasn't uncommon for
| dissidents and their families to be nominally "free", while
| being unable to find employment, housing or otherwise get
| basics for operating in the society. It worked through a
| backstage "reputation" system that begins to look eerily
| familiar.
|
| And BTW, the driving force behind a lot of free speech
| suppression in the past wasn't "the government" per se but
| "the party" that happened to control the government.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > It worked through a backstage "reputation" system that
| begins to look eerily familiar.
|
| A system that was government driven. Don't try to pretend
| that decentralized consequences are authoritarian.
| justapassenger wrote:
| You should really educate yourself on what free speech actually
| is in USA. It protects you, from government limiting your
| speech (with some exceptions). Private companies can do
| whatever they want - that's their free speech law, that was
| reaffirmed by Supreme Court in 2010.
|
| I don't support twitch decision, but it's their business, they
| are free to set their own rules. And I'm free not to use their
| services as a result.
| fX0rObfoMN4 wrote:
| You are talking about the 1st amendment. Free speech is a
| principle whereas the 1st amendment restricts the government
| from violating that principle in its relations with the
| populace.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Free speech as a principle you're after (aka truly free
| speech without any consequences whatsoever) never existed.
|
| You're free to say whatever you want, and I'm free to take
| actions based on that. You cannot give free speech benefits
| only to one side of the argument.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _without any consequences_
|
| This is a pretty big distraction that is often used in
| these types of discussions. It's a distortion of what
| people actually want. The "consequences" being advocated
| are often just the whims of today's favored group. Giving
| free speech benefits to only one side of the argument is
| exactly what people are asking for when they ask for
| "consequences" -- freedom for A, consequences for B.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Sure, favored groups will get more benefits. But that's
| different from free speech. Free speech doesn't guarantee
| equality.
| crowbahr wrote:
| Right, and it's worth emphasizing that companies do not
| provide free speech, nor are they required to.
|
| If you want that to change talk to Congress.
| vsareto wrote:
| Companies were already willing to fire you for posting racist
| stuff before Twitch made this decision.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Posting racist stuff just means you're stupid and the company
| made a mistake in hiring you.
| zionic wrote:
| We're already way beyond that. I saw someone get fired
| because their wife tweeted something that wasn't PC 10
| years ago and a coworker found it.
| dimgl wrote:
| The issue with this sentiment is that while some things are
| blatantly racist, there are other things that aren't so
| black and white. This is one of those slippery slopes where
| if left unchecked, anything and everything will be
| considered racist.
|
| Also, you don't have to have good morals or even be
| intelligent to be good at your job. Some people are
| fantastic at their job, but are pretty damn "stupid" as you
| put it.
| c1337us wrote:
| > if left unchecked, anything and everything will be
| considered racist.
|
| Interesting that you feel that way. It's certainly not
| something I'm worried about.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Isn't this slippery slope argument technically a logical
| fallacy? Wouldn't we just not accept the unacceptable
| change?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Slippery Slope is not _necessarily_ a fallacy because it
| 's a very real phenomenon. My test is examining the
| "slippery slope" by asking if it instead "establishes a
| precedent". And then I see how easy it might be to
| justify going further down such a path based on past
| justifications.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Fair, I just don't see how my acquiescence to one thing
| is an endorsement of a distinct, if similar, thing.
|
| I guess I reject the idea that policy (a well considered
| and debated, long lasting decision) would actually fall
| for something like a slippery slope.
|
| The proverbial boiled frog just jumps out of the pot when
| the water gets too hot, in reality.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I appreciate that, and for what it's worth I agree you
| that slippery slope/establishing a precedent is countered
| with concrete and well thought out criteria that need to
| be met.
| adzzzz wrote:
| That the slippery slope is an inevitability is the
| fallacy, not that it exists. See also "Overton window"
| kevinpet wrote:
| No, because of group dynamics. Once you start un-
| personing people, you have the in group and the out
| group. The in-group repeatedly redefines acceptable
| behavior to exclude some small margin. Repeat and you end
| up with absurd extremes.
| challengly wrote:
| Yes, but that was when we had an agreed upon definition. Now
| the definition is so broad it includes mere disagreement.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| If your speech is really valuable you shouldn't depend on the
| free services of a privately-owned ad-supported company meant
| for streaming games to propagate it.
|
| Furthermore speech as the forefathers probably meant was people
| physically going to town squares and talking there.
|
| There is free press, which is what social media is more like,
| and the owner of a press has the right to decide what he/she
| will print--the Constitution prevents government interference,
| not private interference.
| dimgl wrote:
| Just because you (and dozens of others on this site) continue
| make this argument over and over doesn't mean that it isn't a
| problem.
|
| Edit: someone built that town square. Someone founded those
| forums. At the end of the day, someone is always in control
| of something.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Free speech includes reacting to what someone else has
| said.
|
| You can make an argument about whether or not people should
| have thicker skin, but you can't make an argument that
| people should not be allowed to react to speech without
| forfeiting the moral concept of freedom of speech.
|
| Someone did build the town square, and if that someone was
| a private entity, that someone can kick everyone right the
| heck out of the town square, because it's theirs. If the
| people of the town want to make that reality different,
| they should probably band together and purchase the town
| square and own it collectively, as a government.
|
| If you think Twitch, Twitter, HN or Reddit are such
| critical infrastructure, then you should lobby your
| government to purchase them.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They are like a mall. It appears to be a public space. It
| shares the characterics of one. But at it's heart it is a
| private space with camera everywhere and eager to
| throwout those who do not appear to be the norm.
|
| Homeless, poor, young and oddities get removed from malls
| for being themselves. We're seeing the same online.
|
| Governments don't buy malls. Malls are designed to get
| you to spend. These sites want you to spend and if you do
| or don't they will send all of the info they collected
| about you and sell it to someone else.
|
| We need more hobbiest sites. Government should provide
| free spaces.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| We arguably gave up that freedom when governments started
| forcing people to bake cakes with specific messages.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| This is such a bad faith argument. No one is being forced
| to write specific messages, but merely follow the law. The
| law that states that to legally do business then the
| business will not discriminate against certain classes of
| people -- This is not unusual, there are tons of laws a
| business must follow to stay open.
|
| Protected classes are narrowly defined. You may or may not
| have an issue with what those protected classes are, but
| that's a separate argument. The main argument is that
| businesses must follow the law to stay in business.
| Spartan-S63 wrote:
| So much this. Society is balking at the cession of power from
| governments to private companies and are all of a sudden
| upset that private companies don't have to grant them any
| rights.
|
| If we really want free speech platforms, lobby government to
| craft spaces for it in the digital age. Instead of muddying
| public rights in private property, let's just fund more
| public property (i.e. nationalized social media platform).
| throwaway33432 wrote:
| There's no cession of power from governments to
| corporations; consider the recurrent social media hearings
| in DC, which as far I can tell are effectively just the
| bullying of CEOs to censor less/more.
|
| Even this latest Delta, Coca-Cola, etc. seems to be just
| bullying: https://twitter.com/AmyBeePhoenix/status/13792953
| 93301868546
|
| It's just an upheaval of the elite.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > If we really want free speech platforms, lobby government
| to craft spaces for it in the digital age.
|
| _"A government big enough to give you everything you want,
| is big enough to take everything away."_
|
| I disagree this is a job for government directly. No, I
| don't want government socialized Facebook!
|
| I want the government to enforce the spirit of antitrust
| law. They are ignoring that a competitor to Facebook CAN
| NOT exist because Facebook will smother or absorb them. I
| would like government to compel Facebook to use open data
| standards I can use to take my data to a service that isn't
| actively trying to psychologically bleed me daily.
|
| If Google trying hard couldn't dent Facebook, there is no
| chance an organic startup will do it. And double extra
| certain a state run expensive and uninspired clone would do
| it - not to mention you'd be more wise to trust Facebook
| with your data than the government directly.
| makomk wrote:
| > If your speech is really valuable you shouldn't depend on
| the free services of a privately-owned ad-supported company
| meant for streaming games to propagate it.
|
| Remember, this announcement is about speech that occurs
| outside of Twitch entirely. So what you'd really need to
| argue is that anyone who ever wants to be able to speak
| freely on their own time shouldn't depend on income from big
| companies... including, at the rate things are going, even
| income from minimum wage retail jobs.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| You can host nearly anything you want here for a modest fee:
| https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
|
| No one owes you free hosting or access to their audience
| platform. If you take free shit from someone, expect to be at
| their mercy. It's really not that complicated or dystopian.
| paxys wrote:
| What was this magical era of free speech that people keep
| referring to?
| teachtwolearn wrote:
| Probably the eras when it was feasible to regularly
| communicate with small groups of people outside of a few
| highly-centralized platforms.
|
| At this point, there's a credible argument to be made that
| the Facebook empire is a sort of natural monopoly, like our
| public utilities. They need to be heavily regulated, split up
| into regional operators, and/or legislated out of existence.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You can communicate with small groups outside of a few
| central platforms. Stormfront remains alive. The incels
| have their own site as well.
|
| You want the ability to communicate with everyone (tweeting
| is a message to the world) or if you aren't allowed to do
| that, for nobody to have that ability.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Probably the era when the entire history of any and all
| activity you've ever done is logged, photographed and held to
| standards of when it is viewed, not when it was said or done.
| goatcode wrote:
| Some time up until people started getting the internet on
| their phones, roughly. Of course, no definition is perfect.
| paxys wrote:
| Before people had internet it was ~5 media companies that
| decided what could be said in public and who could say it.
| It was hardly as "free" as people imagine.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| He did not say "before internet".
| leephillips wrote:
| This was never true. Anyone could stand on the street
| corner and say anything. Anyone with some spare cash
| could print up political booklets or flyers and hand them
| out, and many did.
| paxys wrote:
| And you can't do that today?
| ttt0 wrote:
| You can't. Lockdowns.
| leephillips wrote:
| You lost me.
| corndoge wrote:
| And when they had internet but before they had it on
| their phones, you could work around those media companies
| by saying things online. I believe parent was referring
| to that period.
| marcinzm wrote:
| And very few people, relatively, were online so you could
| reach only a small number of people. You can probably
| still reach just as many people online in unmoderated
| channels as you could back then.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Before then we had control of most media by a small set of
| companies (with many fun documented examples of people
| being blacklisted for going against the owners). Before
| that we had the Television Code, Comic Code, and so on.
| Before that we had McCarthyism.
|
| Public and media speech was always moderated. In the past
| it was simply harder to notice since there were fewer un-
| moderated channels.
| [deleted]
| Lammy wrote:
| *Amazon will ban users from their Twitch property
| notyourday wrote:
| This is actually creating an opportunity for a reasonable
| competitor to show up - with Twitch deciding they are going to
| play "Internet police" their competitor does not actually need to
| be "Wild west", it simply needs to offer "We only police our
| service" while providing similar quality of experience.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Have a clear set of rules. And apply those equally. I don't ask
| much, like if you stream outright porn on platform and that is
| banned, maybe you should stay banned... Or if someone gets a
| pass everyone should get a pass...
| deft wrote:
| Interesting, but this policy already exists. Nairo a top 10 Smash
| Bros competitor was banned after false accusations of pedophilia
| months ago. He remains banned to this day.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder what are the data protection implications of such
| actions. Like can they really store your name and perceived
| actions somewhere if you aren't even associated with their
| service yet? Is that legal in EU? Should it even be?
| [deleted]
| redm wrote:
| "The company said users will be able to report such behaviors but
| it may also investigate cases proactively, for instance if there
| is a verified news report that a user has been arrested."
|
| So we've arrived at "innocent until accused" instead of "innocent
| until proven guilty"? And if proven guilty, they will both be
| punished under the law, and again by companies like Twitch? If
| proven innocent will they be restored? What a slippery slope.
|
| It's hard to argue with the goal of removing sexual predators or
| terrorists, but the reality is these are subjective standards
| being applied. It's just as toxic as cancel culture.
|
| :/
| Bud wrote:
| "Cancel culture", of course, is a deliberately-misleading
| epithet, used by the right wing to describe the phenomenon of
| people being held accountable by society for their conduct.
|
| This phenomenon is not "toxic"; it's long overdue and it's
| deeply healing to society. It's how society is supposed to
| work. It's how it needs to work.
| saul_goodman wrote:
| No one understands the true nature of the "woke mob" and
| "cancel culture" until several thousand people on the
| interwebs threaten to have you fired, shot, and your family
| murdered because of a simple mis-understanding. Until this
| happens to all the virtue-signaling crusaders out there they
| will continue to claim cancel culture doesn't exist, that
| only the racists, white supremacists, and "people who
| deserved it" have this happen to them.
|
| It's not possible to apologize in these cases as if you admit
| any culpability it WILL be used against you to do as much
| additional damage as can be done. You can't backtrack, you
| must simply weather the storm and hope your employer who's
| known you much longer than a pack of wild woke-mobbers will
| give you the benefit of the doubt rather than assume that you
| eat minority children for breakfast.
| adzzzz wrote:
| There was no "red scare". Joe McCarthy was simply holding
| Communists accountable for their beliefs.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| This is such an apt retort that I'm sure people are
| downvoting you out of pure cognitive dissonance.
| ta20210405 wrote:
| It's insanely apt and spot on. I'm going to be using it
| from now on.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| He's being down-voted because it's whataboutism. It's no
| different than the 50 Cent Army that suddenly cares about
| Native Americans when the topic of the Uyghurs comes up.
| Yes, the red scare was bad, yes the US's treatment of
| indigenous people was bad. Everyone agrees about this.
| There's no school district in the US that uses a history
| textbook that says the Sioux deserved it and McCarthy had
| the right idea. The fact that similiar bad things
| happened in the past does not excuse them in the present.
| If anything it makes it more reprehensible that they
| happen today despite the example of what to do.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Whataboutism can sometimes be a valid declaration of
| hypocrisy.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| But there's no hypocrisy. Nobody is saying McCarthy was
| right or endorsing his tactics.
|
| Edit: It appears I may have misinterpreted the initial
| comments sarcasm as a "if McCarthy could do it then it's
| fair game" rather than a criticism of modern outrage mob
| tactics.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > Nobody is saying McCarthy was right or endorsing his
| tactics.
|
| You are correct that they are in fact not saying that;
| the hypocrisy is in then turning around and saying that
| cancel culture _is_ right and endorsing _their_ tactics.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I don't understand where you're coming from because I
| absolutely see the woke crowd using McCarthyite tactics.
| ta20210405 wrote:
| >"Cancel culture", of course, is a deliberately-misleading
| epithet,
|
| No. Stop right there. You're not going to gaslight anyone
| into thinking "cancel culture" is a right-wing invention just
| because it's politically expedient for you to do so.
|
| Cancel culture is well studied by social psychologist. It is
| absolutely toxic, and has done effectively zero healing. As a
| matter of fact, it's one of the things accelerating
| polarization.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| It's also nothing new. Consider the Congressional hearings
| about rock and roll in the 80s[0], or other moral panics
| like Prohibition. Anti-abortion groups are a particularly
| vile form of cancel culture. Politicians will be silently
| cancelled (not elected) for not publicly pretending to
| believe in the right sky fairie.
|
| Societies have always shut down behavior and media they
| collectively find inappropriate. There's no need to track
| this as anything other than a continuation in a long
| history of collective groups of humans doing what they do.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OceijOEVqU
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > There's no need to track this as anything other than a
| continuation in a long history of collective groups of
| humans doing what they do.
|
| That's fair and accurate as far as it goes, but it
| doesn't really negate the need to oppose this particular
| continuation of said history, any more than it negated
| the need to oppose eg Prohibition or the Spanish
| Inquision when those were happening.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| The claims of "cancel culture" may well be from people who
| should be "shunned from society" (as some would say), but
| it's very true that some people (definitely not all)
| "practicing" cancel culture can have a "guilty until proven
| innocent" mindset. Being correct often does not mean you're
| always correct; The left is not immune from hiveminding.
|
| I say this as a left leaning person.
| adzzzz wrote:
| It's not even left leaning thinking. It's just socially
| extremely progressive neo liberalism. Most marxists would
| be aghast at the idea of siding with giant corporations to
| unperson and deny dignity to an individual with a non
| mainstream political opinion or what have you.
| Veen wrote:
| Yes, mob justice and public humiliation are very useful when
| people do and think things you don't like. Just what we need
| to deeply heal our damaged society.
| ttt0 wrote:
| There is nothing useful or healing about it. You can do
| that to a single person, not to a half of your country.
| Bud wrote:
| Except there was no "mob justice" here; you are
| overreacting and using terms that should be reserved for
| violent consequences in situations that do not justify such
| words.
|
| I understand why you have to exaggerate, though.
| neither_color wrote:
| You don't wait for a violent consequence you prevent it.
| In classical realism or game theory you prepare your
| defenses according to what your adversary COULD do, not
| what you think they're going to do. Any and all pushback
| against giving tech companies the power to do something
| awful they haven't done yet and may never do is
| justified. You don't just roll over and say "oh, don't
| worry, it'll be fine they'd never do that."
| Veen wrote:
| And I can understand why you have to minimize. Although,
| I don't understand how anyone fails to fear the
| consequences of "people being held accountable by society
| for their conduct"--an idea that gladdens the hearts of
| authoritarians, sectarians, and zealots who are
| absolutely convinced of their righteousness and moral
| superiority. It will not result in healing, but in deeper
| division and ever greater polarization. Healing starts
| with forgiveness and compassion, not with insults,
| firings, banishments, purity spirals, and language
| policing.
| Bud wrote:
| I would say that a compromise position can be found.
|
| Certainly I join in your healthy fears of some misguided
| actions which have been attributed to "cancel culture".
| And I also concede that there have been quite a few such
| actions.
|
| However, I'd also ask that you recognize that many of the
| reactions and consequences attributed to "cancel culture"
| have been entirely justified, and appropriate, and have
| resulted in overall good outcomes to society.
| [deleted]
| chrismcb wrote:
| Cancel Culture is not deliberately misleading, unless you
| think it is ok to lose your job because you cracked your
| knuckles. Being held accountable by society is one thing,
| losing your livelihood is another. Most major crimes have a
| statue of limitations, but cancel culture doesn't. If you
| said something 10 years ago, that is enough that apparently
| you should never work again. Is that the kind of
| accountability we want? One person asked me, why should
| someone keep their job who doesn't believe in Sandy Hook? Why
| should they lose their job because of their belief? The
| punishment doesn't fit the crime. Look at the recent
| Madorlorian firings. One person says we are going down a dark
| path, and is fire. Meanwhile her corworker likens American to
| nazis (using photos from a different country) and he keeps
| his job.
|
| So no, it isn't a way to describe people behing held
| accountable. It is a thing that is going on, by a small group
| to get rid of people that they don't like. It is abhorrent,
| and it is very toxic. It is most definitely not how society
| is supposed to work. I may not like what you have to say, but
| I will fight for your right to say it, and "sticks and stones
| will break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is how
| society is supposed to work.
| [deleted]
| subjectsigma wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/barack-obama-slams-call-
| out-...
|
| > Former President Barack Obama derided "call-out culture" in
| a speech at the Obama Foundation summit on Tuesday, saying
| achieving real change was more complex than being "as
| judgmental as possible."
|
| > "That is not activism," he concluded. "That is not bringing
| about change. If all you're doing is casting stones, you are
| probably not going to get that far."
| otterley wrote:
| The reason we have a high standard for criminal convictions is
| that your liberty or life can be taken away by the state, and
| the cost of a mistake is therefore high.
|
| Here we are talking about... the inability to show yourself
| playing video games to others.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| I laughed a little when I saw the phrase "esports career".
| How decadent a society we have when people can make a living
| from other people watching them play games. No sillier than
| professional sports but still both are ridiculous IMO
| thelean12 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you say "arrived". People have always been
| fired for arrests at some companies. Twitch is basically their
| employer, so it's not much different here.
|
| Whether it should be allowed or not by law can be a different
| discussion, but we don't have to pretend that this is _new_
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Twitch is closer to being their pimp than their employer.
| madamelic wrote:
| >Twitch is basically their employer, so it's not much
| different here.
|
| Oh awesome. I am sure Twitch streamers are looking forward to
| guaranteed minimum wage, paid time-off, health insurance,
| etc.
| thelean12 wrote:
| What's your point? Does it change my point if they're
| considered contractors vs employees vs hobbyists vs
| whatever?
| anoncake wrote:
| Since your point is that "Twitch is basically their
| employer", whether they're basically employees is
| relevant.
| thelean12 wrote:
| Anyone with substantial following, who would be most
| likely to get snitched on with this new policy, will be
| making money from twitch.
|
| It doesn't matter to me how you categorize that
| relationship, my point is valid. "Basically employees"
| was a plenty fine layman's categorization, though. We
| aren't lawyers here.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Twitch is not their employer. Twitch collects money from
| them.
| vkou wrote:
| Twitch collects money from viewers, and pays money to them.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Twitch takes half of the subscription fee. Twitch doesn't
| employ streamers. Twitch takes platform fees.
| thelean12 wrote:
| You are all getting way too caught up in terms. It
| doesn't matter.
|
| A company firing an employee for getting arrested is a
| very close situation to Twitch "firing" a streamer for
| getting arrested.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Freedom of Association is a 1st amendment right. That isn't
| cancel culture (which isn't a real thing.)
| mlindner wrote:
| If it isn't a thing, why does a wikipedia page exist for it?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
|
| You can say you disagree with "cancel culture" being used
| pejoratively, but it absolutely exists in the minds of many.
| austincheney wrote:
| As horrible as that sounds it doesn't bother me.
|
| When I was very young I remember a story of a high school
| student who horribly tortured a cat and drove around with its
| mangled but still living body. The high school baseball coach
| kicked that student off the team even though the student wasn't
| arrested. This wasn't considered cancel culture then and it
| didn't bother me then either.
| Alupis wrote:
| We may be arriving at a time and place where we must consider
| broadening the scope of the First Amendment to not just apply
| to government.
|
| I'm fully aware there's good reason for organizations and
| companies to limit free speech, but it often (lately) has gone
| way too far, dabbling in political witch hunting.
|
| I can think of few things less inline with classical American
| Constitutional ideals than to cheer on organizations that hunt
| down individuals and silence them for thoughts expressed on
| other platforms.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > I can think of fewer things less inline with classical
| American Constitutional ideals than to cheer on organizations
| that hunt down individuals and silence them for thoughts
| expressed on other platforms.
|
| The moderation team of twitch is pretty much universally
| hated by the internet. I don't think anybody is cheering them
| on.
| Alupis wrote:
| Twitch is just the latest organization to jump onto the
| political silence bandwagon.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Personally I find it hilarious that American
| conservatives who have for decades been advocates of
| silencing people for things like being against wars,
| sex/violence in music/film/video games, and
| homosexuality, are now campaigning on being victims of
| the "cancel culture" they themselves have advocated for.
| Alupis wrote:
| I wonder if you're confusing public debate and a vocal
| minority with actual bans of things? I'm not aware of any
| actually banned video games in the US, for instance.
|
| We should talk about those things in public - and not
| everyone will agree. That's how it's supposed to be.
|
| It's brand new, however, to wield the power to literally
| cut off your political enemies from more than half of the
| population with a single click of the mouse.
| coldpie wrote:
| > It's brand new, however, to wield the power to
| literally cut off your political enemies from more than
| half of the population with a single click of the mouse.
|
| Indeed. The remedy here is to enforce anti-trust laws.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm not aware of any actually banned video games in the
| US, for instance._
|
| There was an Atari 2600 game that involved rape which was
| banned in some community on Long Island. That's the only
| one i can think of.
| Alupis wrote:
| Interesting, however I doubt this community had any
| mechanism to actually ban the game, other than just
| saying they disapprove. Kind of like the "banned books"
| we all read in high school.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Some schools banned Harry Potter in America.
|
| Also this article states that Twitch that the misconduct
| is this:
|
| "It said examples of this "severe misconduct" include
| terrorist activities, child sexual exploitation, violent
| extremism, credible threats of mass violence, carrying
| out or deliberately acting as an accomplice to sexual
| assault and threatening Twitch or its staff."
|
| Which one of these are just political opinions?
| Alupis wrote:
| No public schools banned Harry Potter, because they
| cannot do so.
|
| And a private school "banning" a book isn't an actual
| ban. You could still purchase and read the book if you
| desired.
| Jonnax wrote:
| So a private company can do what they want?
|
| But Twitch can't?
| Alupis wrote:
| I think we're having that debate right now, no?
|
| Was it wrong for a private school to "ban" a book? I
| think so... do you?
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Well, they already call out terrorist activities, which
| makes me wonder what "violent extremism" refers to. Maybe
| something as simple as taking a hard line against
| abortion and peacefully holding a sign outside a clinic
| could be considered violently extreme?
| rodgerd wrote:
| Feel free to ask the Dixie Chicks about how no
| conservative has ever participated in cancel culture.
| danShumway wrote:
| > We may be arriving at a time and place where we must
| consider broadening the scope of the First Amendment to not
| just apply to government.
|
| It would be a violation of the 1st Amendment to require
| Twitch to host objectionable content against their will.
| Freedom of association and freedom _not_ to speak is part of
| the 1st Amendment. I am very doubtful a proposal that
| mandated that Twitch had to host certain streamers would
| survive a court challenge. This is like looking at declining
| church membership and arguing that the only way to preserve
| Freedom of Religion is to mandate that everyone needs to go
| to church.
|
| And there are ways to attack censorship that don't require
| throwing out the Constitution. Ways like antitrust, like
| expanding Internet access and building infrastructure to make
| self-hosting easier, like providing government-run
| alternatives to certain services like financial payment
| networks -- services that would be subject to the 1st
| Amendment. We could revise copyright so it's easier to build
| content mirroring sites and migrate people off of social
| media/streaming sites into other services. We could revise
| the CFAA so that it's easier to build migration tools without
| getting sued by Facebook. We could start putting even a tiny
| bit of effort into not allowing Amazon/Apple/Google to look
| at new markets that are attractive and just buy the entire
| space.
|
| I don't think you're mad that Twitch is moderating, Twitch
| has to moderate to some degree. You're mad that there are
| realistically only 2-3 usable streaming services and that our
| Internet infrastructure and Internet laws are set up in such
| a way as to encourage that kind of consolidation, to allow
| companies like Amazon to buy anyone who competes with them,
| and to sue anyone who builds compatible wrappers and services
| in a way that might make it easier to migrate off of Twitch.
|
| And sometimes I bring up antitrust and decentralization and
| people accuse me of not being realistic, but honestly, does
| anyone really believe that antitrust is harder than passing a
| Constitutional amendment? Because it's not, antitrust doesn't
| require 38 states to ratify it. I genuinely do not understand
| the point of view that looks at mass media consolidation and
| says that revising the 1st Amendment is a preferable
| alternative to breaking up Amazon.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > It would be a violation of the 1st Amendment to require
| Twitch to host objectionable content against their will.
|
| There are already communication companies that are
| basically forced to host content that they object to right?
|
| Those are called common carrier laws, and they apply to
| things like the phone company, which are communication
| companies.
| jb775 wrote:
| My first thought was that this is likely politically
| motivated. They are building "cancel culture" into their
| platform.
|
| They're opening the door to threaten influencers making money
| using their platform that support the "wrong" political
| party. If they say the wrong thing on Twitter, they will be
| banned on twitch/fb/google/etc. Incredible times we live in.
| clairity wrote:
| i don't buy into the cancel culture meme, but what you're
| describing is exactly how accumulating power exerts itself
| to eradicate dissent. it happens with every form of
| governance throughout time once a tipping point of
| consolidation is reached (which is why i don't buy into
| this meme, because it's only a specific and ultimately a
| distracting manifestation of this larger phenomenon).
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| We've always been there.
|
| We lock people up pre-trial, sometimes for months if they
| cannot pay. People lose jobs and have trouble caring for
| children and so much more while this happens.
|
| You can lose a job if you get arrested. This happens before
| trial. We (Americans) don't really regulate the folks that do
| criminal background checks, so that arrest can cost you later
| too.
|
| Civil forfeiture is legal. Though some places have reined it
| in, not everywhere requires a guilty verdict in a criminal
| trial to take your stuff. And as a "bonus", the standards for
| proof are lower in civil proceedings than they are for criminal
| ones.
|
| In many areas, you can get fired for any reason, so all it
| takes is a boss that suspects you of something. Even if they
| cannot prove it, they can site loss of trust.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What's so unfortunate to me is that I thought we were moving
| away from that. Just 4 years ago, my state passed a law
| prohibiting employers from hiring or firing based on arrests
| which didn't lead to a conviction. It's confusing and
| terribly disheartening to discover that many of the same
| people who pushed for that bill have no interest in the
| underlying principles of due process.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we 've arrived at "innocent until accused" instead of
| "innocent until proven guilty"_
|
| For a platform like Twitch, this is fine. They have a brand.
| They're akin to a modern television channel, and television has
| always been this ruthless. There are lots of other streaming
| sites.
| exolymph wrote:
| ethics =/= legality
| sigzero wrote:
| This is not "fine". This is in fact "bad".
| fX0rObfoMN4 wrote:
| If someone who stream on Twitch does something bad off of
| Twitch, would people blame Twitch for that? I know I
| wouldn't.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| People can, and do. At any given moment you can probably
| find at least one hashtag campaign excoriating Twitch for
| having not banned some streamer for something for other.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| They wouldn't blame Twitch for what that person did, but
| they would blame Twitch for continuing to host them on
| their site.
|
| For example: if Twitch hosts a well-known sexual abuser and
| groomer who's known for taking advantage of vulnorable
| fans, then people will be rightfully upset with Twitch for
| giving them an audience.
|
| This is why Ryan Haywood got permanently banned from
| Twitch. Some of his victims and many of his former fans
| reached out to Twitch and said "hey, this guy is an abusive
| and manipulative piece of shit who will take advantage of
| vulnerable fans if he gets the chance. Please don't provide
| him with a megaphone and a potential audience."
| beej71 wrote:
| Depends on what they did. If Twitch lets, say, the
| Unibomber stream video, it looks bad to advertisers
| (Twitch's customers). They don't want to be associated with
| that.
|
| It all makes sense when you look at it from a money angle
| rather than an ethical angle.
| rodgerd wrote:
| The context is that the last six months or so have been a
| shitstorm of prominent streamers caught in various forms of
| grooming, sexual assault, and so on. Much of this has
| happened off-Twitch, but it's certainly affected the
| reputation of Twitch to be associate with such.
|
| It's no different to the owners of M:TG banning people for
| serious misconduct, for example.
| Ekaros wrote:
| To me it sounds very similar to M:TG banning people for
| bringing up and reporting that kind of misconduct in
| their community...
| aeturnum wrote:
| I agree that twitch is _within their rights_. I also think we
| 're within our rights to pressure them to adopt standards we
| would like. The law has long recognized different rights for
| "public figures" and private citizens, and I think that most
| Twitch users are better understood as private citizens. Even
| if I felt the behavior policing history of media was perfect
| (I do not), I think this is different in important ways.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > I also think we're within our rights to pressure them to
| adopt standards we would like.
|
| I think this is what's happening, it's just that the users
| of Twitch want something different than what you want. You
| might think they're the vocal minority or something, but
| Twitch is almost certainly making a data driven decision
| here.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I am sure there are many different groups here! But yah,
| there are definitely folks that will be happy. I was just
| trying to say that, beyond Twitch being within its
| rights, people can still yell at them and say they
| shouldn't (or should) do it. No need to leave it at "this
| is legal and in line with previous behavior."
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Sure. I find it extremely tiring to read about how this
| is a slippery slope, and how this is somehow oppressive
| or unusual for American media.
|
| I don't mind folks coming in and saying, "Hey, this is a
| change that I dislike." But a lot of the discourse here
| today is just outrage and finger pointing and yelling
| about free speech absolutism.
|
| I think that HN's downvoting system actually makes it
| harder to have a reasoned discourse about topics like
| this, because if I disagree with the prevailing opinion
| in this community that Twitch is doing a bad thing, it's
| likely my comment gets strongly downvoted, rather than
| opening a line of discussion.
|
| I don't know how to solve this. Maybe separate "I
| disagree" vs "Off-topic/poor quality comment" downvotes?
|
| There's a reasonable discussion to be had about the
| decision Twitch made. I happen to think it's a good
| decision, and I'd love to be able to have that discourse
| in a calm way, but I don't know how to have it in
| something like HN where comments get swept up in voting
| and yelling and hostile replies.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I very much agree that unmarked voting systems like HN's
| do a really poor job of keeping comments "high quality."
| Everyone has a different definition of quality.
|
| I understand that there are UX challenges to adding
| different kinds of votes, but I totally agree that the UI
| affordances we have right now make conversation harder
| instead of easier.
|
| I wonder if separating "quality" (vote + or -) from
| "reports" ("excessively rude", "inappropriate", "off-
| topic") would be useful. I do think that people can be
| excessively rude and useful at the same time. Edit: So,
| this would change from "-3 points" -> "-3 points [rude:
| 3, off-topic: 5]".
| FuckButtons wrote:
| I think that's exactly what is happening though, they're
| adopting the standards that their advertisers, and by
| extension their users want.
| pope_meat wrote:
| ...I don't know, I'm a user, and uh, I hate the
| advertisers, and their dumb standards, they're killing
| creativity, only allowing brand safe content to exist,
| and be consumed. I think that's an overall net negative
| for the users. The need to make everything conform to
| advertisers is destroying the online spaces we congregate
| on, making them shallow, and vapid feeling.
| tastygreenapple wrote:
| It's fine without boundaries - just as we accept that
| restaurants can have dress codes, it's not okay for those
| dress codes to be filters for the undesireables.
|
| I can imagine twitch's standards will be applied differently
| for different protected classes - does anyone expect twitch
| to treat women and men the same? Black and White the same?
|
| It's going to be pretty problematic when some groups get
| banned for things that other groups wouldn't be banned for
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Twitch is not a television channel. Twitch is tens of
| thousands of television channels.
| alacombe wrote:
| Be careful, it's almost as if Twitch was to qualify as a
| "common carrier"...
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| what would be the implications of that?
| SkyBelow wrote:
| This does not scale. Imagine if every grocery store, doctor,
| and gas station decided to deny someone service because of an
| unproven criminal charge. Given that innocent people are
| charged with crimes they did not commit, the morality of
| denying someone for something they do not have control over
| is the same in this case as in cases involving protected
| classes.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _For a platform like Twitch, this is fine. They have a
| brand._
|
| As someone who does not operate a streaming platform, I don't
| care whether they have a brand or not - I care about the
| pragmatic benefits of living in a society where principles
| like innocent-until-proven-guilty are available and practiced
| in a way that benefits average people like me. I think the
| number of people who would consider "they have a brand" to be
| a good justification can't be higher than the number who own
| major brands.
| leephillips wrote:
| Nobody is "innocent until proven guilty". You are either,
| as a matter of fact, innocent or guilty. Our constitution
| prohibits the government from depriving you of life,
| liberty, or property without due process of law. But
| Twitch, or I, or you, can make up our own minds about your
| innocence or guilt, trial or no trial, and proceed
| according to our rights and inclinations. That right, the
| freedom of association, is as important as the right to be
| free of penalty _from the government_ absent due process.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Due process was invented for a _reason_ , and that reason
| is that innocent people like us do not like being
| unjustly punished. Any entity powerful enough to deliver
| an unjust punishment qualifies for the reason that due
| process was invented.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I'm really not sure what you're saying. Are you suggesting
| websites shouldn't be able to moderate itself?
| adventured wrote:
| Identity politics is all about witch hunts ultimately. It
| requires targeting, attacking, hunting and splitting people by
| tribes. If there are not enough targets, more will be made by
| inventing new divisions. Once you begin dividing people so
| aggressively by identity - as is happening now - cultural war
| inevitably breaks out. Tribalism always leads to conflict. What
| Twitch and all other social media platforms have begun doing is
| an inevitable consequence of that cultural war, they're very
| willing participants.
|
| You want a prediction for the future re this subject that is a
| certainty? The big tech companies will require (and will
| deploy) military style protection and will have to wall off
| their campuses in the not very distant future. No other outcome
| is possible given where things are heading, the cultural
| tension will keep rising until it explodes.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| _innocent until accused_
|
| That concept has been going on for a while.
|
| Women who were sexually harassed or assaulted were ignored for
| so long, we over corrected and we became cautious of just being
| accused. And now you get stories of male investors not engaging
| with female founders or execs who won't meet with women without
| the presence of a trusted woman in the room.
|
| Cancel culture is more of the same. Let's dig up tweets people
| made years ago and call them out. As though people don't learn
| or absorb new ideas as they age and change their behaviour
| accordingly.
|
| We're more interested in making sure we catch everyone that is
| guilty and some innocent people are acceptable casualties. In
| fact, let's widen the net slightly for more by-catch. Then we
| know for sure we got everything.
| kvia wrote:
| You'll be less confused if you stop conflating government and
| private business.
| cl0ckt0wer wrote:
| It's a website, not a court of law
| choppaface wrote:
| The lack of the internet is the original cancel culture. Before
| the internet, it was easy for speech to get confined to some
| small region due to financial status, ethnicity, etc. The
| internet fundamentally counter-acts cancel culture.
|
| However, the "right to free speech" does NOT imply a right to
| be heard. Internet entities can and will do stupid things that
| interfere with individual expression, but they don't trample
| upon individual rights. If literally nobody wants to hear a
| message, that doesn't preclude one from expressing it to one's
| self.
| john_moscow wrote:
| If nobody wanted to hear a message, they would just not
| subscribe to a person sending it. We are not talking about
| that, we are talking about privately owned platforms directly
| deciding what kind of ideas are allowed to circulate in our
| society. And I find it quite worrying. Because right now it
| is in their direct interest to make sure an average American
| doesn't have a family, doesn't have kids, devotes their
| entire energy to their corporate job, and doesn't accumulate
| a single dollar worth of savings. It looks great on the
| financial statements, but it makes people across the board
| miserable.
| refenestrator wrote:
| You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
|
| Now that access to large broadcast mediums is the norm, it's
| absolutely a blow to free speech to selectively censor some
| of it. Maybe we choose to make tradeoffs, but let's do so
| with our eyes open.
| weego wrote:
| Presumption of innocence is a legal principle and does not and
| will never apply to a corporation providing you services at
| their own discretion.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| This is such a lazy argument that I'm so tired of hearing
| applied to quasi-public services. Maybe Twitch isn't a great
| example, but a few social media sites are. They might not be
| the government, but they're platforms with billions of people
| on them. Justice Thomas recently pointed out that we'll soon
| have no choice but to grapple with this distinction and
| determine how principles like the First Amendment apply to
| non-governmental public forums. I think it's a bit naive to
| hand wave it away as "if it's not the government, the
| principles of free speech don't apply." Maybe not legally...
| yet... but when people complain about this, it's the spirit
| of the 1A that they're concerned about, and I hope that some
| forthcoming legal doctrine will provide some legitimacy to
| their concerns so I can stop hearing this trite
| counterargument of "muh facebook isn't the government."
| weeblewobble wrote:
| It's not a lazy argument, you're just tired of hearing it.
| It's actually a very strong argument. "quasi-public",
| "maybe Twitch isn't a great example", "maybe not legally...
| yet", "some forthcoming legal doctrine"-- these are weak
| qualifiers. What are you proposing, exactly? How many users
| is a service allowed to have before their content
| moderation policies are nationalized?
|
| Somewhat ironically, whatever you're proposing would almost
| certainly require _weakening_ the first amendment.
| Personally, I 'd prefer a strong first amendment (which is
| concrete and actually means something) to the nebulous
| "spirit of the 1A".
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > whatever you're proposing would almost certainly
| require weakening the first amendment
|
| I assume you're referring to the 1A rights of the
| corporation, e.g. Twitter's right to decline to publish
| content it disagrees with. I agree with you there. It's a
| complex problem. My complaint is more with the argument
| that only the government can restrict free speech. It's a
| lazy argument because the reality is far more nuanced
| than that. For example, consider the fact that AT&T
| doesn't have the right to drop your phone calls when you
| start talking about Verizon to the person on the other
| end of the line.
|
| It's totally fair to talk about the "spirit" of the
| constitution -- that's why we have the Supreme Court in
| the first place, to interpret the constitution when its
| words are not clear. I would also note that the
| Declaration of Independence doesn't mention any self-
| evident truth about corporations, but it does describe
| the rights of the people, and government's role in
| preserving them. If corporations appear to interfere with
| those inalienable rights, it's not unreasonable for the
| government to step in to preserve them.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > What are you proposing, exactly?
|
| Do you require a detailed solution before you will even
| admit there is a problem?
| analognoise wrote:
| "I don't understand free speech" isn't a strong argument
| the other side needs to work around.
| s7atic wrote:
| No, presumption of innocence is first and foremost a moral
| principle. Our legal systems are reflections of our
| collective morals.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The moral principle in this case is that we don't think
| jail (or worse) should happen without being proven guilty.
| That does not mean we collectively believe all consequence
| requires proof of being guilty. Morals and punishment are
| not binary systems.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There's a point where this kind of ostracism becomes
| worse than jail. For many Twitch users, streaming is a
| substantial part of their social environment or even
| their full-time job. If I had to choose between a couple
| weeks in jail and a lifetime ban from working in my
| industry, or a couple weeks in jail and being banned from
| all my friend group chats, I'd take jail in a heartbeat.
| kube-system wrote:
| On the other hand, one person's ostracism is another's
| right of association. It is just as wrong to force
| someone to work with a person they do not want to work
| with, as long as that reason is justifiable (i.e. not a
| protected class)
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| For Twitch and other corporations it seems like it's not
| the "right of association", but more the "sin of
| association" that makes them heavy handed towards
| individuals with banning, censoring and demonetizing:
|
| The extreme social media dynamics somehow holds these
| corporations accountable for any wrongdoings someone
| might post on their platforms which is impossible to
| prevent or moderate in a timely fashion. They respond
| with more sophisticated and sweeping algorithms that lead
| to self-censorship by content creators and unexpected
| actions like shutting down the demoscene event a few days
| ago.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Well, I agree with what you're saying, although I'm not
| sure we're on the same page. I don't think Twitch should
| be _forced_ to work with people they 'd rather ban; I see
| some proposals in other comment threads to pass a law,
| and I don't support that. What I want is for Twitch to
| recognize that this new policy is a bad idea and
| voluntarily retract it.
| fwip wrote:
| Nitpick: The offenses for which Twitch is considering
| removing users usually result in much more than a few
| weeks in jail, if convicted.
|
| Further, Twitch is not the entire industry, the same way
| that Microsoft is not the industry.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Many of the offenses are in that category. My concern is
| the offenses like "violent extremism" and "membership in
| a known hate group", which are not generally illegal and
| very easy to abuse for censorious purposes. (I've seen
| quite a few people identify mainstream organizations as
| "hate groups" because of some political dispute.)
| kube-system wrote:
| Presumption of evidence is morally important because the
| force of the state is ultimate: they can deprive a person
| of life and liberty as a consequence.
|
| The suggestion that it is immoral for a different standard
| being applied to a private clubhouse is not something that
| was supported by the influential thinkers who gave us the
| former idea.
| adzzzz wrote:
| In a capitalistic society where corporations hold as much
| power or more than governments do in our day to day lives
| you surely must see how this is a moral principle that
| must apply to them also. There's life ruining things
| beyond jail such as being homeless and shunned.
| kube-system wrote:
| For sure, and we've done that through regulations where
| appropriate: e.g. landlord/tenant law, utility
| commissions, etc.
|
| Twitch is hardly in that category, though.
| [deleted]
| himinlomax wrote:
| Presumption of innocence exists in the legal system for a
| reason, mainly that it is necessary for a judgement to be
| rendered fairly.
|
| Twitch is not the legal system, but it is passing judgement
| and renders punishment that can be harsher than the justice
| system in some cases (losing your main income compared to a
| small fine). Therefore, it needs presumption of innocence as
| much as the justice system. I rest my case.
| [deleted]
| PeterisP wrote:
| Presumption of innocence and proven beyond all reasonable doubt
| is the bar that has to be met in order to put someone in
| prison.
|
| However, people are completely entitled to decide to shun
| someone or not do business with them based on mere suspicion or
| some arbitrary subjective standards (with certain narrow
| exceptions e.g. discrimination of protected classes) - "freedom
| of association" is the default condition and a key freedom,
| people and companies are free to choose with whom they want to
| (not) associate.
|
| Freedom of association is not absolute, some limitations can be
| justified (the discrimination laws are a good example) but
| there does need to be a solid justification and specific
| serious harm prevented if you want to argue that someone or
| some organization needs to be denied that freedom of
| association.
| adzzzz wrote:
| Yes they are entitled and we are allowed to disagree with it.
| That's the point everyone is trying to make. These legalistic
| arguments are silly and distracting.
| coldpie wrote:
| Apparently Twitch's employees like these policies for
| ethical reasons, and/or their businesspeople and
| advertisers think these policies will bring in more money.
| Personally, I like these policies and I'd like to see more
| of this kind of proactive action. I like Twitch more
| knowing that they have this policy. It shows that they
| understand their role in shaping public discourse and are
| taking responsibility for it. It's a difficult balancing
| act, and there's plenty of ways it could be done badly, but
| pretending that platforms and their algorithms don't play a
| role in public discourse is silly.
|
| I do feel most of this whole issue could be sidestepped
| with some long overdue antitrust enforcement.
| tw04 wrote:
| So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking private
| companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-
| discriminatory means.
|
| That's called a free market.
|
| Will they be restored if they're proven innocent? Maybe. Maybe
| not. Again, that's called a free market.
| standardUser wrote:
| You just described a big part of why people do not like free
| markets. Corporations are allowed to accumulate an enormous
| amount of power and then use that power to abuse whoever they
| want (aside from a sliver of circumstances covered as
| protected classes).
|
| I think want most people want is a reasonable middle ground,
| not unchecked corporate power.
| scarmig wrote:
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| How deep does your commitment to private corporate power go?
| For instance, suppose Comcast decided it doesn't want to
| provide cable or internet service to a particular cancellee.
| Does this bother you, or no? Does it matter if it's a
| monopoly setting? If it does, suppose we're in a duopoly
| market, and both companies refuse service to the cancellee.
| Does this worry you?
| rdiddly wrote:
| It seems to me excluding even convicted criminals, is
| discriminatory. Let's pretend we're talking about an
| "ordinary" crime like armed robbery, instead of one of the
| ones the news media like to obsess about (which would be
| terrorism, hate crimes, child porn, and mass shootings - and
| back in the day that list would've included the Mob). Once
| the ordinary armed robber has been convicted and served their
| sentence, they come out of prison and face enormous barriers
| and discrimination, and that's not exactly fair. It's not
| clear from the article what Twitch will do in those cases
| though; all they do is define a list of exotic "misconduct"
| activities, most of which are crimes (and by the way, ctrl-F
| "crim" yields zero results in the page). I don't see a link
| to the original announcement they're reporting on, and I have
| to admit that I don't actually care enough to go hunt it down
| from the horse's mouth, but that is usually better.
|
| Anyway on to the "free market." I have yet to see one in
| action. There is always meddling by unfairly-advantaged
| players and competition is never perfect. But more to the
| point, a free market is not magic or a god or even
| intelligent, and doesn't necessarily make good decisions on
| behalf of humans. It knows nothing of what's good or what's
| right. The one thing it does well is allocate finite or
| scarce resources. But humanity is not a resource, and even at
| their core task, markets make mistakes all the time.
| indymike wrote:
| > we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to
| do business with via non-discriminatory means.
|
| The phone company can't cut you off because they don't like
| your behavior or who your associate with. Why should Twitch
| be able to? Twitch is a communication platform, too.
| caturopath wrote:
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| I don't think OP actually said this.
|
| But yes, like most people, I want this to happen sometimes.
| For example, I want a hotel to have to lodge Indian people,
| whether they actually want to or not.
|
| In other cases, I don't want this to be legally required, but
| still will complain if I see something that indicates a lack
| of character. Not everything I think is shitty should be
| illegal.
| smt88 wrote:
| It's incredible stupid to say that protecting an ethnicity
| (something that can't be changed) is tantamount of
| protecting ideology (something you are not born with and
| something that sometimes includes advocating for violence).
|
| Also, no one is illegalizing anything by banning it from
| Twitch.
| concordDance wrote:
| Is being alterable really the important distinction here
| though?
|
| If I invented a machine that could change physical
| features between the various ethnicities of the world,
| would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| no such thing as free market under natural monopolies
| enforced by network effects.
| Alupis wrote:
| At a certain point, these platforms have such enormous,
| unprecedented influence and control over public discourse,
| that they aught to be thought of differently than, say a
| restaurant refusing service to a guy without a shirt or shoes
| on. We're clearly in uncharted territory, when it comes to
| the control and release of information.
|
| Just using Twitter and Facebook for example - they've
| silenced the second-most voted for President in American
| history, because he isn't their brand of politics. Regardless
| what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US
| President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we
| disagree or think it's outlandish - no?
|
| How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet
| allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence
| political enemies?
| dopamean wrote:
| I'll never understand the argument that Trump was
| "silenced." As you said, he's a former US president. He has
| ample resources to get his word out. The only people who
| think he has been silenced are people who spend too much
| time on twitter or people who are being disingenuous.
| tryonenow wrote:
| >If Trump really wants to get his thoughts out to the
| world, he can host his own website and publish them there
|
| And what's the recourse when the same forces collude to
| shut someone or some group out of the hosting platform
| for wrongthink? Build your own server farm? Build your
| own cloudflare? Build your own DNS? How far do we go in
| allowing tyranny by a loud and powerful minority? If we
| can regulate corporations to prevent corporate
| monopolies, perhaps it's appropriate to implement loose
| regulations against social monopoly. Collusion to silence
| an entire set of viewpoints by unilaterally associating
| them with a minority of extremists is quite literally
| oppression.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| You're being facetious but I would unironically
| contribute to a community Cloudflare to escape their
| tyranny.
| mulmen wrote:
| > And what's the recourse when the same forces collude to
| shut someone or some group out of the hosting platform
| for wrongthink?
|
| I don't believe that "violent overthrow of the democratic
| process" specifically is a valid political position. I am
| comfortable discriminating against it. I am also
| comfortable with private parties exercising their
| constitutional rights to freedom of expression.
|
| > Build your own server farm? Build your own cloudflare?
| Build your own DNS?
|
| Yes, or find someone else to do business with. Or...
| change your behavior so it is less objectionable to those
| companies.
|
| I consider a free society to be a competitive marketplace
| for ideas. Some ideas thrive and grow, others wither and
| die. The first amendment is a mandate for minimal
| governmental regulation so the forces of competition can
| evaluate ideas.
|
| > How far do we go in allowing tyranny by a loud and
| powerful minority?
|
| We don't allow it at all, that's why these companies are
| able to set these policies and issue bans. Exercising
| first amendment rights is not tyranny.
|
| > If we can regulate corporations to prevent corporate
| monopolies, perhaps it's appropriate to implement loose
| regulations against social monopoly.
|
| It's not and whatever the concept of "social monopoly" is
| can only make sense if there is one party controlling all
| social expression, which is obviously not the case. You
| could also call this "social discrimination" and reuse
| the ideas of protected classes. But political views are
| not (and IMHO should not) be protected. This would be the
| equivalent of picking winners in the free market of
| ideas.
|
| Regulating social consensus and private beliefs is itself
| tyranny. The constitution is clearly designed to prevent
| exactly that outcome.
|
| > Collusion to silence an entire set of viewpoints by
| unilaterally associating them with a minority of
| extremists is quite literally oppression.
|
| This is not "literally oppression". There is no evidence
| that there was any _collusion_ , only that violent
| overthrow of democratic processes is widely objectionable
| to many corporations and individuals. That many
| independent organizations came to the same conclusion is
| evidence that the system is working and that the idea
| itself has failed in the marketplace of ideas.
| concordDance wrote:
| > violent overthrow of the democratic process
|
| Trump did not advocate for a violent overthrow as far as
| I know.
|
| > I consider a free society to be a competitive
| marketplace for ideas
|
| That requires those ideas to be heard. If everyone
| segregates into their own political bubbles there will be
| no competition of ideas, just endless echo chambers.
|
| > It's not and whatever the concept of "social monopoly"
| is can only make sense if there is one party controlling
| all social expression, which is obviously not the case
|
| Eh?
|
| The people controlling the big corporations that control
| most communication in the English speaking online world
| are of very particular political leanings. They might not
| control _all_ expression but they certainly control most
| of it.
|
| > But political views are not (and IMHO should not) be
| protected. This would be the equivalent of picking
| winners in the free market of ideas.
|
| I don't see how preventing the silencing of some ideas is
| equivalent to picking winners.
|
| I'm not necessarily saying political views should be
| protected, just disputing the validity of your logic
| here.
|
| > That many independent organizations came to the same
| conclusion is evidence that the system is working and
| that the idea itself has failed in the marketplace of
| ideas.
|
| You say "independant", but there are strongly dominant
| cultures in those organizations and the people admitted
| to them are from a specific subset of the population.
| They might be somewhat independant in that Facebook
| doesn't decide what Twitter does (though I expect there's
| cross-polination of people moving back and forth between
| them), but they're both drawing from mostly the same pool
| of people and ideas.
|
| I expect that Trump supporters, for example, have little
| influence in Facebook the company.
| zp33 wrote:
| It's Trumps own fault that he chose Twitter to be his way
| of messaging the public. Why not build
| whitehouse.gov/words_from_the_pres? Twitter isn't funded by
| taxpayers and we aren't entitled to it.
| smoe wrote:
| > he is a former US President - we aught to know what he
| thinks
|
| Honest question: Why? It is a bit my outside perspective
| that the US has too big of person cult thing going. Not
| just in politics and independent of brand.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| Are you seriously equating inciting an insurrection with
| "not their brand of politics"?
| ctdonath wrote:
| What insurrection?
| literallyWTF wrote:
| Oh I don't know, I think it was that mob of people who
| were spurred into literally storming the US Capitol
| building?
|
| Ya know, that mob that followed the beck and call of a
| man who still refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy and
| results of democratic election?
|
| Yeah I think that was the one...
| [deleted]
| amalcon wrote:
| That "censorship and silencing" is just those platforms
| using their free speech _back_. If you think the
| corporations running these platforms don 't have that
| right, you'll want to meaningfully differentiate this
| decision from e.g. the decision of Fox News to not give
| equal airtime to someone like AOC.
|
| I think both of those platforms should have editorial
| discretion.
| tw04 wrote:
| >How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet
| allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence
| political enemies?
|
| Quite easily. Freedom of speech is freedom from government
| suppression of that speech - it's quite clear in the
| constitution. Freedom of speech doesn't mean I or anyone
| else has to give you a platform to speak from.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I can't get this sorted out in my brain but y'all think
| self-help with breach of peace(had to look up that
| phrase) ought to be casually tolerated in a modern
| nation...?
|
| ...nevermind, I just realized that US is a union of
| States where a repossession man just casually walk into
| front yards and tow away a Camry from debtors.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I can agree with you, but still think there's a problem.
| The fact is nobody who wrote the constitution thought
| we'd get to a point where there was such a dominant
| private speech player.
|
| So yeah, it made sense at the time, since government was
| the big player historically, but we're looking at a
| different situation now.
| tw04 wrote:
| >The fact is nobody who wrote the constitution thought
| we'd get to a point where there was such a dominant
| private speech player.
|
| I'm quite certain that's not true. Papers in the 1700s
| had just as much dominance in speech as social media does
| today.
|
| https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-
| collections/themes-of...
|
| I think HN has a gross overestimation of twitter's
| influence. There are 7.9 Billion people on the planet,
| and 185 million daily active twitter users. I can't say
| I've ever once gotten my news from twitter and don't plan
| on ever starting. In my social circle I've got exactly 2
| people who use twitter daily.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Papers in the 1700s had just as much dominance in
| speech as social media does today.
|
| The important difference is that less than a billionth of
| what people communicate was through those newspapers.
| Nowadays? Maybe half is the the internet and most of that
| is through the big players (e.g. Facebook).
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| > There are 7.9 Billion people on the planet, and 185
| million daily active twitter users.
|
| Twitter is a US platform first and foremost. It doesn't
| make sense to compare the total number of Twitter users
| against the number of people on the entire planet.
| According to Statista:
|
| > Social network Twitter is particularly popular in the
| United States, where as of January 2021, the
| microblogging service had audience reach of 69.3 million
| users
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-
| active-...
|
| That is about a _quarter_ of the US population. Your 185
| /7900 figure is off by an order of magnitude.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| When we privatize infrastructure where do we draw the
| line between government and private citizen?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| There is a precedent for having first amendment
| protections on private property.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Who decided that Freedom of Speech _only_ applies to
| government suppression? Does the prohibition of cruel and
| unusual punishment _only_ apply to the government as
| well?
| CocaKoala wrote:
| > Who decided that Freedom of Speech _only_ applies to
| government suppression
|
| Which freedom of speech are you referring to? Because if
| you're thinking of the first amendment, then the people
| who decided that are the ones who wrote it, and it's
| pretty clear in the text.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I feel like you're being obtuse. The concept of free
| speech was not invented by the US Constitution and has
| existed long before it was written. Free Speech as a
| societal principle and ideal has been around for hundreds
| of years.
| staticman2 wrote:
| "Free speech" might be a societal deal, but it's never
| meant what you are claiming it means. You are free to
| redefine it as you like, but it's never meant people are
| forced to publish your book or an employer can't fire you
| for being rude.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| And antitrust laws are designed precisely to prevent
| corporations from monopolizing and abusing market
| position. Freedom of speech means I have the right to
| hear from people I choose to assemble with. Monopolies
| dominating the market for speech and then dictating the
| terms of speech is an antitrust situation. Not least of
| which because by the same mechanisms they can use to
| silence political opponents they can use to silence and
| squeeze out competition or mentions of competitors.
|
| This isn't crazy or unprecedented. We don't give
| unlimited contractual rights to landlords. You'd end up
| with a virtual serfdom otherwise. So we grant tenant
| rights exclusive of any contractual terms. Past time to
| do the same for social media participants.
| kvia wrote:
| The notion that any entity can "dominate the market for
| speech" is absurd. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you
| have a right to free eyeballs at <insert company here>'s
| expense.
|
| Freedom of speech and freedom of association mean that
| Twitter has the right to put or not put whatever it wants
| on its website.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| This is a well-reasoned response. The comparison to the
| tenant / landlord relationship is excellent.
|
| It seems that breaking up monopolies as in the past is
| not viable with tech empires like Twitter / FB, therefore
| some type of regulation in this area is where the focus
| needs to be, and I say this as someone who usually takes
| the libertarian position.
| tw04 wrote:
| That's apples and bananas. A more apt comparison would
| be: does your local newspaper HAVE to print anything you
| want on the front page? No? Then why should a social
| media site be forced to?
|
| Facebook doesn't control whether you pick up the phone
| and call your friend to voice your opinion. Twitter can't
| prevent you from driving to your local bar and telling
| your drinking buddies what you think of the president.
| Then again, the bar owner can kick you out of his
| establishment if he disagrees with your thoughts and gets
| sick of listening to you.
|
| Because again, your freedom of speech doesn't mean a
| business has to host you.
| eindiran wrote:
| > [Y]our freedom of speech doesn't mean [that] a business
| has to host you.
|
| We are truly in uncharted waters at this point:
| historically, your newspaper comparison would have made
| sense, but it simply isn't applicable anymore.
|
| At what point do we need to acknowledge that these
| platforms are the public square? When they control 99+%
| of online speech? When there is a worldwide quarantine
| meaning that people head to the internet to speak to each
| other, and meeting up isn't even an option? When being
| banned from one implies being banned from all of them?
|
| Increasingly, there are difficult questions that we need
| to answer around this: Does this argument imply that even
| if all speech was transmitted through Facebook's servers,
| that wouldn't change the calculus around what "freedom of
| speech" means? How does this interface with laws
| worldwide? How does this interface with morals worldwide
| (the morality of the coastal US is not as universal as
| many people would like)? Is it morally acceptable for all
| businesses of a particular kind to collude wrt refusing
| to serve a particular person? Would it be morally
| acceptable for every business of every kind to collude
| wrt refusing to serve a particular person, whatever the
| reason?
|
| Arguing from this place of finality by appealing to the
| way things currently work means that people get to ignore
| these questions. Not to mention that failing to look at
| changing circumstances is usually a bad idea: omnis
| conventio intelligitur rebus sic stantibus. This sort of
| argument generally reads a bit like rules lawyering to
| me: even if this is how the law works in letter today, it
| seems to be against the spirit of the law and broadly
| self-interested ('as long as the people getting banned
| are people I think deserve it, I'm all for letting the
| social media companies decide').
| chabad360 wrote:
| > That's apples and bananas. A more apt comparison would
| be: does your local newspaper HAVE to print anything you
| want on the front page? No? Then why should a social
| media site be forced to?
|
| Yes, but there is the other side of that coin: a
| newspaper (as in the company) can get sued for libel or
| other such things, precisely because they have editorial
| control.
|
| It's seems that social media companies would like to have
| their cake and eat it too. They are explicitly protected
| from their users content (thanks to section 230), and yet
| they seem to flex this immunity by arbitrarily blocking
| users, often without recourse. IIRC they have even
| occasionally flipped between being publisher or a
| platform depending on the question.
|
| To be fair, there is no winning for large social media
| companies, either they preform this filtering and
| everyone hates on them, or they don't and everyone hates
| on them. I do not believe there is a perfect way to block
| only people who everyone agrees should be blocked, as
| every method has both false positives and false
| negatives.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > So it is quite a bit more complicated than just saying
| "its their platform, their rules"
|
| How about this example instead: Do phones have to serve
| you? Phone companies are user communication companies,
| after all. Seems like an appropriate analogy. Whereas a
| newpaper is more of a publishing company.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| n.b. "aught" means "anything at all", as in the opposite of
| "naught" (nothing at all). you are looking for "ought".
| hackersword wrote:
| They didn't "silence" him because his brand of politics.
| Their stated reason for banning him from their platform was
| literally " due to the risk of further incitement of
| violence."
|
| Their TOS have specific "Glorification of Violence policy",
| which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that
| could inspire others to replicate violent acts and
| determined that they were highly likely to encourage and
| inspire people to replicate.
|
| Further, the claim that Twitter "Silenced" the President of
| the United States, a man who literally has a press room in
| his house, and could have a room full of reporters convened
| at any hour of the day to speak to. He could issue any
| statement from official whitehouse channels and it would
| instantly be disseminated across every news outlet around
| the world.
|
| He chose not do those things, because he is a coward. The
| quintessential Keyboard Warrior/troll who likes to rile up
| people safe from any counter argument.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Everyone and their cat understands that it is
| hypocritical bullshit. They'd let his incitements slide
| easily if he was their political ally and not an
| opponent.
|
| I don't have a horse in that race, but it is disgusting
| how people defend this blatant and obvious bias as
| perfectly normal thing.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It's really difficult to know whether that's true or not
| when we have a sample size of 1
| lostcolony wrote:
| No one inciting violence is a company's ally, unless that
| company sells guns, ammo, etc.
|
| Twitter, same as every other corporate entity, benefited
| from Trump's tax cuts. They went years without silencing
| him, despite cries that his posts were dangerous. They
| -wanted- to keep him on their platform; he kept millions
| engaged with it. They even created 'world leader'
| exceptions -just so they wouldn't have to apply their own
| terms of service against him-.
|
| It is disgusting how people act like this is bias against
| Trump/the GOP, when it's so obvious that the bias flows
| the other way, and it took an actual armed invasion of
| the US Capitol for these companies to finally step up and
| do something.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Armed invasion? It was meeker than peaceful protests from
| the last summer! Not even one building was burned! That
| shaman guy blessing everyone in capitol chamber
| (including guards!) was an extreme threat to the society,
| right.
|
| It is unfortunate how personal biases stop you from
| understanding the danger to society from unchecked
| 'private companies'. Trump haters are ok with it so long
| as Twitter and Facebook silence him but too shallow to
| imagine that one day they'll silence the politician they
| support.
| kvia wrote:
| Twitter is a company, not a court of law. Trump tarnished
| their reputation like nobody else, so they ceased doing
| business with him when it was convenient. This was
| facilitated by him flagrantly violating their rules for
| years, culminating in the riot he incited via their
| platform. It's as simple as that.
| gsich wrote:
| Tarnished? No.
|
| Twitter was in the news every day. They profited
| massively, but now that his presidency is over there is
| no interest anymore.
| kvia wrote:
| Precisely. They can have their cake and eat it too. That
| they attracted a lot of eyeballs while he was in office
| doesn't mean they want to be "that website that Trump
| rants on" forever.
| judge2020 wrote:
| And what sort of incitement is coming from the left? is
| it "socialize healthcare" or "we should throw molotovs at
| protests", because the latter isn't allowed on Twitch
| either.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Because the Summer of Love 2020 was so peaceful and
| innocent from either side of politics... seriously, get
| over it. Both the left and the right are cut from same
| cloth. They'll torch whoever doesn't agree with giving
| them the power. Both sides are just different flavors of
| control.
|
| Let's not forget how it was Trump's DHS that was
| mistreating folks on the border back in the day. Is it
| still Trump calling the shots on the border? Is it still
| Trump wanting to bring manufacturing to the US instead of
| China? No, Biden is now implementing the same policies as
| Trump, except in blue flavor instead of red.
|
| Get over yourself thinking your political party salute
| has meaning. They're all the same assholes. Twitter and
| Facebook are not against violence or hate, they're
| against whoever doesn't agree with them.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The Maxine Walters quote (she's a goldmine of things a
| professional politician is irresponsible to say) was the
| one I was thinking of but here's a link with a bunch of
| other stuff too.
|
| https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/11175084604074475
| 52
| Alupis wrote:
| All of the "fight like hell" statements and similar that
| have been common-place in American politician's
| vocabularies for decades.
| lenkite wrote:
| I wish such matters were decided in a Court of Law with
| evidence. And not by private arbiters. Twitter banned
| Trump simply because they could so without any
| repercussions. All that "Glorification of Violence" is
| sheer hogwash. _Risk_ of further incitement of violence
| is even more hogwash. Most of the democratic party
| leadership should be banned from Twitter in such a case.
| roenxi wrote:
| Twitter made the mistake of publishing their reasoning
| [0] where they attempt to construct a violent
| interpretation of two perfectly mundane Trump tweets,
| including the jaw-dropping "To all of those who have
| asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January
| 20th.".
|
| After the 2016 election, the left ginned up enough hatred
| that some bloke attempted to gun down a Republican
| representative [1]. It passed with comment but not any
| particular shock. This is a good example of the routine
| (happened in 2011 against a Democrat) level of violence
| in US politics. The US famously resorts to action when
| passions are high. Trump simply wasn't inciting anything
| violent, especially against that high baseline.
|
| Twitter's actions are unjustified, and it is highly
| likely that all the big tech companies are thinking like
| this, they are known to be left-leaning. This is a wake
| up call to the right that these companies are threats.
| Any right wing government anywhere in the world that
| ignores the tech companies is at risk of them becoming
| powerful and effective politically opponents - that is a
| much bigger thing than people have cottoned on to. This
| move was big.
|
| [0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/su
| spensio...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_
| shootin...
| concordDance wrote:
| I personally have no idea where to find Trump's latest
| babble. This is also true for pretty much everyone I
| know.
|
| He has been effectively silenced. (And at least in the
| case of Twitter, it was definitely not for glorification
| of violence given the two tweets they cited in their
| blogpost)
| tw04 wrote:
| >I personally have no idea where to find Trump's latest
| babble.
|
| We'll ignore for a second that just because he can't post
| on twitter doesn't mean that you can't find things he's
| saying on twitter - so that would be the first place. 30
| seconds of searching and they've got 4 posts about trump
| in the last 48 hours.
|
| https://twitter.com/oann
|
| Fox News? OANN? Newsmax? He's on almost daily and not
| exactly difficult to track down if you want to.
|
| Sure you don't get his diarrhea of the mouth for 18 hours
| a day, but that's a far cry from being silenced.
| concordDance wrote:
| The fact it's filtered makes a big difference.
|
| I've been mislead too many times by filtered stories to
| have any trust in them.
| zapnuk wrote:
| > second-most voted for President in American history
|
| The population of the USA is continuously rising. This is
| not an achievement. All it takes is an unusual voter
| turnout and a somewhat close election.
|
| > because he isn't their brand of politics.
|
| No. They banned him because at that time they determined
| that his violence encouraging speech was a real danger to
| society.
|
| > he is a former US President - we aught to know what he
| thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?
|
| Also no. Traditionally, former presidents live a more
| private life to pave the way for a new generation of
| politics. And even if you think he should be able to
| continue to influence the day-to-day political news, he has
| the ability to release press statements and contact any
| media outlet he wants.
|
| Trump literally is an example that being banned from social
| media does NOT limit his public speech. Anything he puts
| out is discussed in mainstream media. Just a few days ago
| we were informed of his utterly stupid idea of using cancel
| culture to protest cancel culture.
| objclxt wrote:
| > they've silenced the second-most voted for President in
| American history, because he isn't their brand of politics
|
| 1. The second - and third, for that matter - most voted for
| President is Obama (69.5 and 65.9M votes). Trump is the
| fourth (62.9M votes)[1].
|
| 2. He was not banned because he wasn't 'their brand of
| politics', he was banned for inciting violence against the
| terms of those platforms. You can certainly argue Twitter
| and Facebook had - and have - a very inconsistent
| enforcement approach for those policies. But that's not
| what you are saying.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_pr
| esiden...
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| "he was banned for inciting violence against the terms of
| those platforms" So technically Trump should be un-banned
| after claims of incitement were contested and disproved
| in congress, right?
| thomaslangston wrote:
| "There is no question that President Trump is practically
| and morally responsible for provoking the events of that
| day." -Mitch McConnell
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| You and I and McConnell might agree, but the congress
| didnt. Moreover, Trump was calling for everyone to chill
| when he got banned, which to me indicates really bad risk
| management on behalf of twitter and fb. They risked
| further escalation to avoid responsibility.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Congress' opinion didn't matter in this case, Twitters
| did, and since its their TOS they said he violated, they
| were free to kick him off their website.
| Alupis wrote:
| The guy got 74,216,154 votes in 2020. The second most
| votes in American History, only outclassed by the current
| President with 81,268,924 votes.[1]
|
| Your other point is based on your own personal political
| biases, which just furthers my point about these
| platforms controlling the release of information (or
| disinformation) to the general public.
|
| Just imagine if Twitter was a Right-Wing organization,
| and decided to silence the current President. How would
| that change this discussion?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_pres
| identia...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That probably would change the current discussion, yes.
| An amazing number of people would flip positions.
|
| For that to happen, though, the current president would
| have to do something that was at least colorable as a
| violation of terms and services. I haven't heard even
| right-wingers claim that this is so, so far. (But maybe I
| just haven't heard, not being one who listens to those
| circles.)
| Alupis wrote:
| Well, just like anything can be securities fraud,
| anything can be a political lie. It just depends on
| perspective.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Right, but Trump wasn't suspended for political lying. He
| was suspended for inciting violence. Political lying is
| not a violation of the terms of service, so far as I am
| aware.
| Alupis wrote:
| And the other side can point to the congressional
| hearings that didn't conclude he directly incited any
| violence. It's a tit-for-tat sort of thing, which is
| incredibly dangerous when we're talking about how the
| general public is "allowed" to consume information.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| My point, which you continually seem to miss or ignore,
| is this: Trump said things that could be construed as
| violating terms of service (even though congressional
| hearings did not conclude that he did incite violence).
| And so we're in a he said/she said situation - was it
| incitement to violence, or not? But even if you don't
| agree, you could see that Twitter could consider it
| incitement to violence without being completely insane or
| completely political.
|
| Biden has not, to the best of my knowledge, said anything
| that could sanely be considered incitement to violence.
| Banning him would not be in the same category as banning
| Trump. It would be much more blatantly political, because
| the excuse would be much more transparent.
| Alupis wrote:
| Has Biden not violated Facebook and Twitters TOS when he
| deliberately continues his messaging about the Georgia
| voting laws? If you spend 2 minutes reading the thing,
| you'll see his claims are false at best, and deliberate
| misinformation at worst.
|
| Are we to just ban politics from these platforms
| wholesale?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _Deliberate misinformation != incitement to violence_.
| What part of that is so hard to understand?
|
| Is lying against Twitter's TOS? If so, then you have a
| sensible point. But I kind of doubt that it is...
| Alupis wrote:
| The spread of deliberate misinformation is banned on both
| Twitter and Facebook. Here's Facebooks[1]
| You may not use our Products to do or share anything:
| * That is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or
| fraudulent.
|
| Here's an entire section from Facebook regarding "False
| News"[2].
|
| Joe Biden's rhetoric regarding the Georgia State voting
| laws is clearly 2-3 of those. Why has he not been banned
| yet?
|
| And the incitement of violence thing has been debunked
| pretty clearly. If one guy at Twitter can decide
| something was inciteful just because that's their opinion
| - despite all evidence presented during Congressional
| Hearings, then we're far more lost than previously
| assumed.
|
| [1] https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms/plain_text_terms
|
| [2]
| https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/false_news
| sdenton4 wrote:
| How did previous generations claim to value free speech
| when mainly reading heavily curated newspapers and watching
| network television? (...where you could famously prick your
| finger, but not the reverse...)
|
| We can tolerate the existence of nazis, but there's no
| obligation to give them a platform.
| willk wrote:
| > they've silenced the second-most voted for President in
| American history, because he isn't their brand of politics.
|
| I think that is disingenuous. Twitter said "specifically
| how they are being received and interpreted on and off
| Twitter" [0]. It wasn't his brand of politics it was how
| his supporters were interpreting him and incitement of
| violence like what was seen when his supporters stormed the
| Capitol.
|
| [0]: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/sus
| pensio...
| ttt0 wrote:
| How it was interpreted was a mere interpretation in
| itself on Twitter's part. You can get rid of literally
| anyone for any reason if this is the standard.
|
| How about we get rid of these 'white privilege' theories,
| because people are interpreting it as if every single
| white person is somehow inherently racist and evil?
| wvenable wrote:
| > Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a
| former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even
| if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?
|
| So he aught to be able to grab a soap box and stand on your
| lawn every day and preach? He is a former US president so
| you are proposing he can go onto private property and say
| whatever he wants at any time.
|
| > How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet
| allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence
| political enemies?
|
| Because you misunderstand free speech. Is the government
| going to arrest you for posting on twitter? No. However no
| one is required, not even the government, to provide you
| with a platform to speak on.
|
| You want free beer speech. Speech without paying for it.
| Speech without restriction of any kind by anyone at any
| time. Why should we care about that?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Free speech protects you from the Government, that's it. We
| as society commonly confuse free speech with free from
| consequence speech which doesn't exist. Donald Trump is the
| reason Donald Trump has been silenced.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Along those same lines, freedom of speech != entitled to
| an audience
| mustbedreaming wrote:
| Facebook and Twitter are not essential platforms, and I
| detest the idea that they must be made to allow anyone to
| say anything on them.
|
| If Trump really wants to get his thoughts out to the world,
| he can host his own website and publish them there. He can
| write letters to the editors of news sites and see if
| they'll publish them. He can do TV interviews - any network
| would kill for those ratings right now.
|
| Or he can stand outside and yell.
|
| No one is entitled to a privately owned platform publishing
| their demonstrably violent rhetoric, even if they're
| famous. Media platforms have always been allowed to be
| gatekeepers of whatever content they choose; the internet
| age didn't change that.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| I didn't see him mention the government at all. Just because
| you think something is wrong to do, doesn't automatically
| mean the government has to get involved.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Would you be ok with businesses refusing to serve
| accused/convicted criminals? How about illegal immigrants? If
| the standard is law-breaking does it meet the definition of
| non-discriminatory?
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Do people really deserve an entire lifetime of exclusion
| even after doing their time? Even the Catholic Church in
| medieval times was more forgiving in many cases
| mdoms wrote:
| Where did GP say anything about the government?
| ellyagg wrote:
| The "private" companies live in a heavily-scrutinized
| regulaory environment, where politians also routinely demand
| that they take action.
|
| These are no longer private companies anymore.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Why does everyone talk about the government forcing companies
| to do things whenever somebody criticizes a company policy? A
| company can be criticized without the speaker implying that
| there needs to be legislation.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Why does everyone talk about the government forcing
| companies to do things whenever somebody criticizes a
| company policy?_
|
| Because there are plenty of people claiming companies are
| being unconstitutional and/or that there should be laws
| that prevent companies from taking actions like banning
| people from platforms/etc.
| ben509 wrote:
| Especially when such critique is how we're supposed to
| resolve most disputes in a free society.
| SllX wrote:
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| OP didn't make that argument, and I'm not going to make that
| argument.
|
| That said, with or without government coercion on the counter
| party, innocent until proven guilty is a fairly good standard
| to apply. It's _more_ important when it concerns the use of
| government force, but that doesn't mean it is unimportant
| when dealing with private parties and it is fair to judge
| Twitch for not applying innocent until proven guilty as a
| standard when it comes to Twitch-streamers.
|
| It's easy to get someone arrested, and it is easy for a cop
| to make an arrest. An arrest is not a presumption of guilt
| and shouldn't be used as a signal of guilt.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| Yes.
|
| > We aren't talking protected class here
|
| That's besides the point. There are many limitations on
| private companies picking and choosing who to do business
| with that apply beyond protected classes, including common
| carrier regulations[1], regulation of (some) private property
| as a public square[2], and requiring broadcasters to run
| political ads[3].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
|
| [3]: https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2012/01/articles/why-
| broadc...
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use
| was the rule?"
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking
| private companies picking and choosing who to do business
| with via non-discriminatory means.
|
| These are discriminatory means, they just aren't ones we have
| universally decided are wrong to deny services based upon.
| What happens when we start denying services to those arrested
| regardless of conviction? Won't this have disparate impact on
| certain protected classes?
| john_moscow wrote:
| I want the government to force private companies to charge
| the end users for their services, and to start enforcing
| anti-monopoly laws. This will very quickly introduce
| competition to the market and will align the corporate
| behavior with the interests of the users.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Every decision is discriminatory. The "protected classes" we
| have chosen are arbitrary selections based on our societies
| current opinions about minorities. Every time a business
| chooses to not do business with somebody, they have
| discriminated against them for a particular reason. Not
| enough qualifications, not enough money, didn't like their
| personality, didn't get a good vibe, didn't like their
| attitude. Whatever. You can find multiple other people to fit
| into those same categories.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > So you want the government to force
|
| Not OP, but I don't want the government to force private
| companies to do anything - I want everybody to wake up and
| stand up against corporate censorship and abandoned Twitch en
| masse in protest. That's probably as likely as government
| enforcement, but a man can dream.
| centimeter wrote:
| Do you support the right of businesses to refuse business to
| homosexuals, for example, on religious grounds? If you come
| back with "homosexuals are legally a protected class", that's
| evading the question and functionally equivalent to "no I
| don't actually support freedom of association".
|
| I ask because in my experience most people on HN only support
| freedom of association when it's politically expedient for
| them.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| To mirror fishe's comment:
|
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| redm made no such suggestion. They lamented what they
| perceive to be a problem. They offered no comment on
| remedies.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| The parent clearly didn't say any such thing. One can
| criticize a company without demanding simplistic, heavy-
| handed government intervention.
| simion314 wrote:
| >That's called a free market.
|
| Does for example a few giants that dominate social media
| ,mobile platforms, consoles,media, ISPs actually/really/100%
| meet the criteria of a free market ? I am no economist so my
| naive interpretation is that you need many smaller agents
| actually competing no 2-3 giants sharing a market and abusing
| their share by killing any small competitor that appears.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| You said it yourself though, the market isn't completely
| free, and this is widely believed to be a good thing.
|
| You cannot discriminate against me because you don't like
| where I come from. You cannot discriminate against me because
| of my race.
|
| Some people believe these protections should generally be
| extended to beliefs or political tribes or other forms of
| identification.
| pgsimp wrote:
| People invest massive amounts of time to build a following
| and create content on those platforms. It seems reasonable to
| ask that it can't be taken away from them at a whim. However,
| in theory, they should have read the contract before entering
| it. If they accept those terms, perhaps they should have to
| live with it.
|
| An analogy would perhaps be a musician signing a contract
| with a record label? I think they expect some reciprocity,
| like if they owe three albums to the label, the label also
| owes them marketing for those albums.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > We aren't talking protected class here
|
| We do. All the people should be protected. That was the point
| of the French Revolution, no special rights to anyone,
| everyone is equal under the law.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > So you want the government to force private companies to
| continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to
| provide services to?
|
| We do have a set of reasons you can't refuse service to
| people for (race, religion, etc), and if you get classified
| as a utility you generally have to serve everyone, so it's
| not exactly an exotic idea.
|
| Some of these services are entering a more ambiguous state.
| Twitter and Facebook have official government communications
| flowing through them. Banning people may eventually have more
| serious consequences closer to the "having your water cut
| off" situation.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _Banning people may eventually have more serious
| consequences closer to the "having your water cut off"
| situation._
|
| This can be resolved by improving interop and competition
| among social media, not by forcing moderation decisions on
| private companies.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm getting to the point where yes, I want to force these
| "private" companies to uphold civil liberties and principles
| such as innocent until proven guilty. I care way more about
| citizen freedom and expression than the concept of a "free
| market" which is a platonic ideal that has never existed and
| never will.
| tw04 wrote:
| Sure it exists, but you need collective bargaining for it
| to be a level playing field. Content creators want to fight
| back against Twitch? Form a union.
| morelisp wrote:
| This is the correct, and only viable, solution.
|
| https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/
|
| _The labor of digital creatives and innovators, sutured
| as it is to a technical apparatus fashioned from dead
| labor and meant for producing commodities for profit, is
| therefore already socialized. While some of this
| socialization is apparent in peer production, much of it
| is mystified through the real abstraction of commodity
| fetishism, which masks socialization under wage relations
| and contracts. Rather than further rely on these
| contracts to better benefit digital artisans, a Marxist
| politics of digital culture would begin from the fact of
| socialization, and as Radhika Desai (2011) argues, take
| seriously Marx's call for "a general organization of
| labour in society" via political organizations such as
| unions and labor parties. Creative workers could align
| with others in the production chain as a class of
| laborers rather than as an assortment of individual
| producers, and form the kinds of organizations, such as
| unions, that have been the vehicles of class politics,
| with the aim of controlling society's means of
| production, not simply one's "own" tools or products.
| These would be bonds of solidarity, not bonds of market
| transactions. Then the apparatus of digital cultural
| production might be controlled democratically, rather
| than by the despotism of markets and private profit._
| anthonypasq wrote:
| companies have speech rights that you would be infringing
| on by doing this
| yeetawayhn wrote:
| "Corporations are people too, my friend."
| notamy wrote:
| I'll believe it when Texas executes one.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| But why is a company's right to speech more important
| than a real person's civil rights? A company is a mere
| legal fiction and it's rights should not be given equal
| weight to those of actual human beings, especially for a
| corporation as large as Amazon.
|
| Edit: I know the issue becomes murkier for things like
| mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships, but I am
| willing to make distinctions based on scale.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Because a company is a group of real people making
| decisions together. There is no "legal fiction" deciding
| to not associate with certain others.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I still fail to see how that coordinated group of people
| motivated by profit takes precedence over the civil
| rights of an individual.
| Goronmon wrote:
| I fail to see how an individual loses their civil rights
| just because they joined a "coordinated group of people".
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The individual who joined the "coordinated group of
| people" (the corporation) still have their individual
| civil rights, but the legal entity they constitute should
| not have it's rights valued on the same level as
| individual human beings.
|
| If the corporation is being seen as a single entity then
| you should not consider it's employees' individual rights
| as the same thing. Or even combine them together to give
| more weight to the corporation's rights.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Freedom of association inherently involves groups of
| individual people mutually deciding to not associate with
| particular individuals.
| MR4D wrote:
| Twitch makes their streams public - no account needed, and no
| login needed to view them.
|
| It's arguable whether this is truly private - I'm not taking
| a position here, just that this is contested law [0].
|
| Twitch would have a much stronger position if you had to be
| logged in to view the content.
|
| One analogy to this is the regulating power that the
| government has over broadcast TV vs cable TV - the
| restrictions tend to be quite different.
|
| [0] - https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650/1
|
| - - - - - -
|
| EDIT: Added reference [0], which is from the _non-partisan_
| Congressional Research Service
| ttt0 wrote:
| Yes, and I don't care about free market. We're already doing
| this, we're forcing private companies to do business with
| people they don't want to do business with right now.
|
| I don't even care so much about social media, but banks and
| services that provide basic infrastructure to keep your own
| web services afloat shouldn't be allowed to discriminate
| people based on their politics.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _discriminate people based on their politics_
|
| It usually seems to be based on people's bigotry or sexual
| misconduct. I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban.
|
| Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should
| it be. If your political view is fascist, why should you
| have the same protections as someone who is born a
| minority? One thing can be changed and can be thought of as
| evil; the other can't.
| concordDance wrote:
| > I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban.
|
| Wouldn't Trump himself count?
|
| > Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor
| should it be.
|
| I think it should be, because attempting to ban political
| views gets in the way of finding out which political
| views are better. I don't know what "fascist" is, but I
| can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is
| a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in
| the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really
| don't like it.
| ttt0 wrote:
| You can label anything fascism. Trump was labeled a
| racist and it's as stupid as calling Biden communist.
|
| You should have protections so the corporations and
| bankers don't have too much power over politics.
| fishe wrote:
| Where are the calls for government intervention in the
| comment you're responding to?
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| >but it may also investigate cases proactively
|
| Translation: We're going to ban whoever the ADL and SPLC point
| the finger at.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| We haven't _arrived_ anywhere. We were already here.
| Personally, I 'd like to see less rather than more of this type
| of thing, but studios, sports leagues, and sometimes
| legislative bodies have long had traditions of removing
| celebrities from their umbrella for misconduct and various
| morality clauses even if they are never convicted of a crime.
|
| Twitch streamers are just another form of celebrity and subject
| to the same dynamics.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Given how likely it is in the future that we're going to see
| more Christchurch like 'livestream terrrorism', combining media
| spectacle with violence this is completely reasonable. If
| there's indication that you may use Twitch for that kind of
| thing not letting you on the platform makes sense.
|
| We need to stop throwing 'cancel culture' at everything. If
| you're known to be an advocate of violence or a lunatic they
| don't let you on public television or radio either.
| benja123 wrote:
| There will be false positives too and then the big question is
| will there be a proper appeal process or will users be forced
| to talk to a chat or email bot while trying to get unbanned.
|
| For some people this is their livelihood and they will
| hopefully take that into account.
| sneak wrote:
| Perhaps we should all stop donating free content to platforms
| operated by those that built an entire custom datacenter for the
| CIA to store its drone murder and torture videos in.
|
| I'm not sure how continuing to donate content to enrich such an
| organization can in any way be worth it, even if they do give you
| free bandwidth.
| falcolas wrote:
| Good to know what witch-hunt enabling policies are still in full
| force. I was getting a bit worried there with all this talk of
| free-speech and forgiveness.
|
| Burn them all!
|
| /s
| ronsor wrote:
| Because this is always brought up, I will remark that I believe
| what the majority of commenters likely mean by _free speech_ is
| the principle itself, and not the restrictions imposed on the
| government by the First Amendment. First and foremost, free
| speech is a moral principle.
|
| Secondly, while private companies _can_ do what they want, that
| does not mean they _should_. Private companies like Apple _can_
| avoid taxes, yet many here would not say they _should_. Morals
| and ethics are often divorced from what the law requires.
| Lammy wrote:
| We only call it "speech" because speech is the lowest-latency
| and highest-bandwidth method us humans have to exchange ideas.
| I tend to distrust people who are pro-eumemics the same as I
| would distrust a person who is pro-eugenics.
| paxys wrote:
| The fundamental problem always will be that a company running a
| large and popular platform on the internet has operating costs
| and wants to make money. The only reasonable way to do that
| right now is via advertising, and these advertisers only want
| safe, family friendly content to not tarnish their brand.
|
| I would love it if there was a similar platform with a monthly
| fee free of advertiser influence, but it's impossible to get a
| critical mass of people to pay for it.
| tssva wrote:
| Free speech is several principles. One is that you should be
| free to express yourself. Another is that others should not be
| able to coerce you into forced speech. Many commenters on HN
| like to forget that 2nd part because most of their 'solutions"
| to the first principle violate the 2nd.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| So if I say bad things on Twitch OR ELSEWHERE, that this is
| "their speech"? I disagree, but what you are saying is Twitch
| is a publisher, not a platform?
|
| If Twitch can't be compelled to publish my unpopular
| comments, then any comments they do publish should be legally
| theirs, and if illegal be held liable for them? Something
| tells me you aren't on board anymore.
|
| Are you trying to have it all-the-ways? That Citizens United
| is wrong and companies don't have free speech, but also that
| companies don't need to recognize free speech but can retain
| their platform status (when convenient), then also Citizen's
| United is right and companies have any speech they want if it
| means restricting yours?
|
| Quick question... socially, what do we do when I'm banned
| from Twitch for saying something NOT ON TWITCH that was at
| the time unpopular but eventually proven correct? Or
| similarly let's say I quote the CDC website but am banned
| because the data is unpopular. Or lastly I quote something
| that was true at the time according to "official sources"
| (sarcasm detectable) but later incorrect and I'm retro
| actively banned?
|
| Instead of all this shifting convenience and liquid
| enforceability... maybe we just stick to free speech and take
| the small bad with the giant good? Seems morally just and
| logically reasonable to me.
| HanayamaTriplet wrote:
| There are already narrowly-defined exceptions to the freedom
| of association in the form of anti-discrimination laws. There
| is clearly a question of balance to be made.
| mlindner wrote:
| Indeed. Unfortunately there's no governmental protection in
| the US of "political discrimination". Political view
| differences are not a protected class at the moment.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > First and foremost, free speech is a moral principle.
|
| Entirely.
|
| But... man I'm not so sure as many people believe this as they
| should. Can we not ignore that as soon as these tech companies
| get monopoly status, they close their fists in more every day?
| Something has to give.
|
| We would (should) not accept that someone with "wrong" views be
| denied a bank account or to shop at a grocery store. Why does
| government need to step in and whitelist which services are
| protected?
|
| When are we going to be honest that none of this is about
| protecting people, but protecting ideas? The idea my political
| wedge issue is correct, so I'll ban anyone that disagrees. The
| idea that I should be allowed to run a monopoly, eating and
| smashing any potential competitors?
|
| None of this is about Black Lives or Covid or Elections. That's
| the cover to get the thing they really want. Agreement with
| ideas you have or that keep you in power.
| sneak wrote:
| > _We would (should) not accept that someone with "wrong"
| views be denied a bank account or to shop at a grocery
| store._
|
| Why? I am fine with banks and grocery stores having freedom
| of association, just as any other business or person should.
|
| Being a KKK member is not a protected class, and
| discriminating against KKK members in hiring and in the
| provision of goods or services is entirely in-bounds.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| You're fine with preventing KKK members from buying food?
| You would literally have them starve to death? And you're
| fine with private corporations making decisions on who has
| the right to live and who doesn't?
|
| Personally, I value human rights. I think even KKK members
| have the right to live.
| sneak wrote:
| No, I'm fine with any individual who sells food (or any
| other thing) being able to opt to not do business with
| anyone they like. That's a big difference from what you
| claimed.
|
| That's actually already true now (outside of protected
| classes). Any restaurant can ask KKK members to leave if
| they so desire. Same with any supermarket.
|
| Any individual proprietor having freedom of association
| is a long long way from "specific types of customers
| should be barred from buying food from anyone and should
| literally starve to death". That's a strawman position
| that you invented.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| > It said examples of this "severe misconduct" include terrorist
| activities, child sexual exploitation, violent extremism,
| credible threats of mass violence, carrying out or deliberately
| acting as an accomplice to sexual assault and threatening Twitch
| or its staff.
|
| What points here will not already lead to jail time and an
| outright ban from all social activities? The bans are for
| criminal acts that are outside of free speech protections.
| Areibman wrote:
| It's strange to see a company that once prided itself on active
| engagement with its users to find product-market fit antagonize
| its content creators so much. And as a user, it gives me the
| perception that the platform is just plainly unfair. (Plus the
| platform is unusable without Adblock).
|
| Top streamers have been banned or lost partnerships for playing
| their own music[0], stating controversial political
| opinions[1][2], getting trolled by users who "snipe" streamers
| and shout vulgarities, or just accidentally showing movie clips
| with nudity [3]. From what I gather, the ban appeal process is
| byzantine and is heavily biased towards inaction. Oftentimes
| appeals are never even considered, or partnership staff plainly
| doesn't respond.
|
| The upsetting part is Twitch is such a great platform technology
| wise, and its competitors can't seem to recreate the same magic.
| I guess we're stuck with lousy moderation until the streaming fad
| dies down.
|
| [0] https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/twitch-reportedly-
| suspen...
|
| [1] https://dotesports.com/streaming/news/hasanabi-banned-
| from-t...
|
| [2] https://win.gg/news/5496/destiny-loses-twitch-partnership-
| fo...
|
| [3] https://www.ginx.tv/en/twitch/vinesauce-banned-on-twitch-
| ove...
| neaden wrote:
| First link: DMCA problems, this is super common but Twitch is
| reacting to a very poorly written law. Second link: Someone got
| in trouble for saying "America Deserved 9/11" which is a bit
| beyond a controversial political opinion. Third link: Person
| advocated that people start shooting protestors, a literal call
| for violence once again beyond a controversial political
| opinion. Fourth Link: Played a game (not a movie) that included
| nudity. Twitch has pretty clear policy on that and while it
| wasn't intentional on the streamers part, not allowing nudity
| is a pretty standard thing.
|
| None of your links back up the idea that Twitch is cracking
| down on free speech.
| Areibman wrote:
| I never said this is a free speech issue; Twitch is a private
| platform so they can do whatever they please. My concern is
| that the quality of the platform is going downhill because
| Twitch's response to everything is the ban button. For repeat
| offenders, I understand banning, but as far as I know, they
| don't even have a warning system in place. (Their ban
| policies are also wildly inconsistent when it comes to ban
| lengths).
|
| In my view, this just leads to overall lower quality content
| on the platform. Creators can't risk or innovate because
| their entire livelihoods at are at the whim of a
| temperamental moderator.
| willk wrote:
| Why would they need a warning system other than their TOU?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I think part of the problem is how inconsistent twitch is. eg
| some people have been banned for accidentally showing nudity
| in movies/games/websites. Whereas other people who stripped
| naked on twitch to advertise their OnlyFans account just get
| 72 hour suspensions
| Pfhreak wrote:
| To be clear, the controversial political opinions you believe
| should be platformed by Twitch are:
|
| "If that means white redneck militia dudes mowing down dipshit
| protesters that think they can torch buildings at 10 PM, at
| this point they have my fucking blessing."
|
| and
|
| "America Deserved 9/11"?
|
| Because those are the literal quotes from things that got
| people pulled from Twitch and you've labelled "controversial
| political opinions." I'm sorry, but suggesting that we
| unilaterally kill innocent people or that innocent people
| deserved to be killed by terrorists is absolutely beyond the
| pale and should result in consequences like losing partnerships
| or facing suspensions.
| [deleted]
| nitrogen wrote:
| Your second quote should be no more or less controversial
| than saying that any of the countries the US invaded
| afterward also deserved those invasions. 9/11 was, in part,
| blowback from previous American foreign policy.
|
| Interpreting that as saying that people deserve to be killed
| by terrorists is 1. confusing a country as a whole with its
| citizens as individuals and 2. an unrealistically literal
| interpretation of clear hyperbole. Interpreting common
| hyperbole literally is just as problematic as taking
| hyperbole to excess.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I think discussions about invasions and attacks, even if
| they are uncomfortable, is totally reasonable. I'll happily
| talk with you about why American Imperialism is bad until
| I'm blue in the face.
|
| I will say, when someone says we should attack civilians
| because of their government's foreign policy, I will say
| that crosses a line. It's unacceptable in my view. There's
| a huge gap between, "We should have uncomfortable
| discussions" and "those civilians deserved to die".
|
| And on the internet, it's really challenging to say what is
| hyperbole. Even if it was intended to be hyperbole, which
| is plausible, maybe it's a charged enough topic that one
| should choose a different (or more obviously) hyperbolic
| take.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _It 's unacceptable in my view._
|
| Mine too, but it's standard rhetoric among a very, very
| large part (possibly a near-majority) of the US
| population. Tech companies are fueling that fire by
| showing that (from that perspective), yes, they really
| are the paternalistic coastal elites that the other half
| of the country suspected they were. Leaving aside the
| many ways in which this weapon of platform banning can be
| abused by future shifts in power -- Google, Twitter, AWS,
| and now Twitch are not helping the causes they claim to
| be helping with prominent bans, they are just building
| taller walls around the various echo chambers.
| handoflixue wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when "gay people are all
| pedophiles" was the mainstream position given by the New York
| Times. It was utterly unacceptable to endorse such perverts.
|
| I'm not so old to remember the arguments about how women are
| too emotional to be allowed to vote, or the ones about black
| people, but it was pretty unacceptable to come out in defense
| of either of those groups either.
|
| Why in the world would I believe censorship is only going to
| squash the sort of stuff you list, when there's such a long
| history of it being used to oppress anyone who thinks they
| deserve the same rights as the rest of us?
|
| Are we going to ban any pro-abortion discussions, because
| "suggesting we kill innocent people" is absolutely beyond the
| pale? Do you really think there aren't millions of people in
| the US drooling at that sort of censorship opportunity?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I think you are correct in that these tools will
| undoubtedly be used against progressive folks and
| minorities, as that's historically where they've been used.
|
| I believe that Twitch has too much power/authority, but
| also I believe that it's reasonable to moderate speech in
| communities and platforms.
|
| That said, I believe there's a material difference between
| examples and what was shared in the parent comment. I don't
| think one can generalize from "speech calling for violence
| should be removed from Twitch" to "all unpopular opinions
| will be suppressed". Yes, it was unpopular (and career
| limiting) to stand up for LGTBQ+ folks, and those voices
| rarely got mainstream airtime. Suppressing those voices was
| wrong, but totally different than prohibiting endorsements
| of mass violence.
|
| I believe we, culturally, can evaluate the difference
| between "I think gay folks should have equal rights" and
| "America deserved 9/11" and understand why we should be
| open to the former and cautious about the latter.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Both "I think gay folks should have equal rights" and
| "America deserved 9/11" are fundamentally statements
| about ethics, and neither is calling for violence.
| thiskeyboard wrote:
| The full quote from Destiny--a liberal anti-racist, mind you
| --is:
|
| _The rioting needs to fucking stop. If that means white
| redneck militia dudes mowing down dipshit protesters that
| think they can torch buildings at 10 PM, at this point they
| have my fucking blessing. Holy shit, this shit needs to stop.
| It needed to stop a long time ago._
|
| To the rest of us, he is expressing exacerbation that law
| enforcement is allowing chaos from one particular political
| faction.
|
| If you do believe in good faith that Destiny is actually
| "suggesting that we unilaterally kill innocent people", then
| do you believe that bluechecks on Twitter who freely speak in
| similar terms about White people are actually advocating for
| the slaughter/genocide of Whites?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| First, Destiny describes himself as a "classical liberal",
| "hardcore capitalist", and "rule utilitarian." It's
| important to be specific, because the word "liberal" means
| different things in different contexts, and it is not
| always the same meaning as "progressive" or "leftist".
|
| > he is expressing exacerbation that law enforcement is
| allowing chaos from one particular political faction.
|
| You might read that from his comment, I believe that's one
| possible reading. Another is that he's encouraging
| additional chaos, literally calling for folks to be "mowed
| down" with his blessing.
|
| > do you believe that bluechecks on Twitter who freely
| speak in similar terms about White people are actually
| advocating for the slaughter/genocide of Whites?
|
| This is bait. It's also a distraction from the specific
| Destiny quote that was suspended on Twitch. Don't ask a
| leading question, state your thesis and provide specific
| evidence of it (E.g. "Twitch suspensions are applied
| unevenly for calls of violence, here are cases where the
| standards were inconsistent....")
| anchpop wrote:
| > First, Destiny describes himself as a "classical
| liberal", "hardcore capitalist", and "rule utilitarian."
| It's important to be specific, because the word "liberal"
| means different things in different contexts, and it is
| not always the same meaning as "progressive" or
| "leftist".
|
| None of the things you mentioned are incompatible with
| the group Americans call "liberal". He also describes
| himself as a social democrat. He could certainly be
| described as a progressive.
|
| Regarding that quote, here is his side (from
| https://positions.destiny.gg/docs/ , links omitted):
|
| > In general, I do not support vigilantism. I think Kyle
| Rittenhouse was clearly misguided in his attempts to
| cross state borders and should have stayed home. I also
| think there are steps he could have taken to minimize the
| risk of him needing to discharge a firearm.
|
| > Of a larger 20+ minute debate with someone, a short 16
| second clip was cut to make it sound as though I support
| violence against Black Lives Matter protesters when this
| couldn't be further from the truth. I am incredibly
| heated in this clip, but I am clear when I state that my
| main frustration is with the few rioters burning down
| private businesses and the idea that Trump's only path to
| victory was with continued arson and destruction of
| privately owned businesses across the US (full
| conversation in August of 2020 with context part
| clipped).
|
| > I have always defended the existence of BLM and its
| purpose, sometimes in front of live audiences as the only
| liberal member on a panel. (Jesse Lee Peterson panel in
| October of 2020 | Conversation with call-in defending the
| existence and effectiveness of BLM's protests | Panel
| debate in August of 2020 | Support in November of 2018 of
| Kaepernick kneeling in the NFL | Attacking Dave Rubin's
| criticisms of Kaepernick's protests in September 2017)
|
| > I've consistently pushed back against "white lives
| matter" and similar types of irresponsible rhetoric from
| the right. (Jesse Lee Peterson panel in October of 2020)
|
| > I have continually defended protesting, and even
| rioting against public institutions while condemning the
| rioting/looting of private businesses, as I believe the
| latter feeds into Republican tactics to draw attention
| away from the overwhelmingly positive protests.
| (Discussion about Minneapolis protesting/looting in May
| of 2020 | Debate with conservative/Neo-Nazi(?) Ethan
| Ralph in June 2020 | Discussion on my stream in September
| of 2020)
|
| > My specific issue in this debate was that I didn't
| believe it was morally acceptable to defend rioters
| destroying private businesses, regardless of their
| legitimate grievances with the local police. When I think
| of rioters attacking and destroying private property, I
| generally support citizens' rights to defend that
| property. I think back to the Korean-Americans that were
| defending their property in the '92 LA Riots, the Black
| Panthers in California defending their communities, or
| the tragedy of the "Black Wall Street" Tulsa massacre in
| 1921. I was especially moved by the frustrated, black
| local business owner who was screaming out in frustration
| about looters and rioters destroying his business in the
| '92 LA Riots.
|
| > It's incredibly frustrating that people have
| intentionally and maliciously misconstrued a 16 second
| cut from a larger conversation to make it sound as though
| I don't support the BLM protests or somehow approve of
| racist white people indiscriminately killing protesters
| when this is an issue that I have been ruthlessly
| consistent on throughout the years. I unequivocally
| support BLM's right to both protest and riot against the
| public institutions that they view as oppressive. I have
| not changed or wavered on this stance in years.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Thanks for the additional context.
|
| > None of the things you mentioned are incompatible with
| the group Americans call "liberal".
|
| Disagree. In some contexts leftist and liberal are
| distinct and incompatible things. In American politics,
| liberal often means 'progressive', but 'classical
| liberal' is typically associated with libertarianism.
| That's not to say a classical liberal cannot hold
| progressive beliefs, but it certainly does not imply they
| hold progressive beliefs.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Wait, destiny is banned?
| lrae wrote:
| No, iirc then he didn't get banned/temporary suspended
| for that comment. Twitch only decided to not do any
| direct business (partnership) with him anymore, so they
| unpartnered him. That means people can't subscribe to him
| anymore for a monthly fee and he can also not be tipped
| with Twitch's virtual tip currency. He also doesn't get
| any ad revenue split anymore. (And I think twitch is
| currently not running any ads on unaffiliated/unpartnered
| streams, not 100% sure about that.)
|
| He can still be tipped through third party services
| though. (Like streamlabs and streamelements)
|
| He's still allowed to stream, and now without contract,
| not exclusive anymore so that he also streams on Youtube
| and Facebook now I think.
|
| I think that is also something they should do with people
| who just got arrested. Distance yourself from them, but
| don't ban them. If it's severe enough then they won't be
| able to go live anymore anyway.
| mdoms wrote:
| Well, yes, these are controversial opinions. If they make you
| feel uncomfortable, that's fine - controversy does that. If
| you think anything that makes you feel uncomfortable should
| be illegal to say, then maybe you just don't care about free
| speech.
| [deleted]
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > If you think anything that makes you feel uncomfortable
| should be illegal to say...
|
| No one said that. Please don't put words in my mouth.
|
| > yes, these are controversial opinions
|
| That's a bit like calling a ghost pepper a "a bit spicy"
| and then when someone dislikes eating a whole one raw
| saying, "maybe you don't care for food with flavor?"
| [deleted]
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Your 2nd source links to Hasan saying "America deserved 9/11".
|
| Since not everyone will click on your sources, I just want to
| point out what you consider "political speech" for others to
| see.
| echelon wrote:
| That's a horrible and toxic thing to say, but thousands of
| teens on TikTok are saying exactly this and getting insane
| traction.
|
| Two social networks with very different ways of handling
| their communities.
|
| edit: My comment was fairly benign. What gives?
| patwolfe wrote:
| I think it's a bit of a disingenuous example because Hasan
| has enjoyed TREMENDOUS success since then as well. Like, I
| think he got a few day ban (which is nothing long-term if you
| already have a following) and is now a top streamer in terms
| of subscribers and viewership.
| alacombe wrote:
| > Your 2nd source links to Hasan saying "America deserved
| 9/11".
|
| Maybe it did.
| paxys wrote:
| It's hilarious that in a thread full of people hating on
| companies for deplatforming people for their opinions, you
| are getting massively downvoted for voicing your own
| opinion.
|
| Goes to show that no one really wants "free speech".
| alacombe wrote:
| > Goes to show that no one really wants "free speech".
|
| Especially not on HN, where the SV/SJW group think
| prevail.
|
| Argument I often get is "you are free to voice your
| opinions and we are free to massively downvote you",
| well, same happened with 9/11, the US elites have been
| cunts to the whole world (including to "The People" and
| still are), they are totally free to be, by then 9/11
| came as a big slap in Wall Street America face, maybe
| they deserved it...
| sweetheart wrote:
| I think you're confused as to what upvoting and
| downvoting are for. The voting system is design to lift
| up comments that provide value to the discussion, and
| hide comments that don't. Someone being downvoted doesn't
| mean everyone is disagreeing with them, or punishing them
| for their opinion, rather just recognizing that it
| doesn't bring any value to the topic of conversation.
| paxys wrote:
| > Someone being downvoted doesn't mean everyone is
| disagreeing with them, or punishing them for their
| opinion
|
| Regardless of what the rules are, in practice this is
| _exactly_ how upvoting /downvoting works on sites like
| Reddit and this one. You can't override basic human
| nature with loose guidelines.
| echelon wrote:
| It's a minority (on both sides of the political spectrum)
| that doesn't want free speech, but they're very vocal
| about it. It's fascism, regardless of who is doing it.
|
| As long as the country and constitution remain in the
| "defend to the death your right to say it", we'll be
| fine.
|
| Diversity of ideas and opinions should be celebrated.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| People who don't want free speech are usually the ones
| complaining about how _other people_ exercise their free
| speech in ways that counter their own message.
|
| Like voting on comments, for example. That's free speech
| too.
|
| That said, HN is _definitely_ not anything even remotely
| resembling a free speech platform, in concept or
| execution. It 's the recruitment platform for Y
| Combinator, and all decisions are made here to optimize
| for that.
| analognoise wrote:
| It's because those "creators" are absolutely replaceable -
| there's no reason not to simply jettison them if there's any
| issue. There's an army of people willing to try their hand at
| being a similar "creator", and the vacuum caused by the loss of
| one of these "creators" is so miniscule people will just watch
| the next available stream.
|
| The replacement cost is so low and with such low impact, you
| can save even more money by not spending someone's time to
| review the appeal.
| saurik wrote:
| To verify, the aforementioned "magic" includes a strong network
| effect / community aspect? Or is the issue that the tech and UI
| is particularly well-optimized for this use case and if someone
| else could only get it write it would be easy for streamers to
| use it instead?
| [deleted]
| DavidVoid wrote:
| They already have banned people for this kind of stuff -- as they
| should.
|
| The groomer and sexual abuser Ryan Haywood was permanently banned
| from the site when he tried to start a career on Twitch after he
| got fired from Rooster Teeth. That ban was certainly earned
| considering how much of terrible human being he is and how
| supplying him with an audience would likely lead to more abuse in
| the future.
| benja123 wrote:
| I have a hard time with this. Don't get me wrong overall I am for
| banning terrorists, pedophiles etc. from services like twitch,
| but, it needs to be done in a smart way.
|
| The concerns I have around this is that
|
| 1. It's not clear where you draw the line of what counts as
| severe misconduct
|
| 2. What happens if someone did something that counts as severe
| misconduct five years ago and today they are a completely
| different person. Will services like twitch take this into
| account when deciding whether someone should be banned?
|
| 3. How easy will it be for people to abuse this system and get
| innocent people they don't like banned from using services like
| Twitch. Will they put in place a proper appeal process or will it
| be similar to the appeal processes we see in other big companies
| in which there is no one you can actually speak to.
|
| Banning people from a service is an often necessary but extreme
| action that needs to be done with care. When it is for something
| that someone did while using your system it is easier to be
| confident that the ban is justified. Banning people for actions
| outside of your system is really uncharted territory so it will
| be interesting to see how this plays out and to see how many
| false positives there are.
| ipaddr wrote:
| #3 is the interesting outcome. Many valid and not valid
| complaints will be made. Twitch will pick favourites and ban.
| Things will be unfair. Good people will leave and unwanted
| people will find a way to stay under new names. Revenge clans
| will be organized. Sounds ugly.
| athms wrote:
| >I am for banning terrorists, pedophiles etc.
|
| Who is a terrorist in your opinion?
|
| Pedophiles? Pedophilia is the sexual attraction to prepubescent
| children. It isn't anything more than that. Puberty normally
| begins from 9-11 in girls and 10-12 in boys. All the research
| done to date has shown that pedophilia develops in the womb,
| hence people are born this way. No different than
| homosexuality. Also, most pedophiles don't molest children and
| most child molesters are not pedophiles. The molestation is
| usually done because the person has access and control over the
| child, not necessarily attraction to the child.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Specifically, when it comes to entertainment and mass market
| stuff like this, the rules have always been crystal clear:
|
| 1. Make us money. Make us so much goddamned money. If you
| don't, we'll probably just get rid of you at some point
|
| 2. Don't embarrass us, cost us money, waste our resources,
| bring media scrutiny upon us, make literally any small part of
| our life even a little bit more difficult, or screw with us.
|
| Rule 2 is a very flexible scale that depends on rule 1. Wasn't
| there that streamer that abused her cat live on stream and she
| still is a golden child of the platform?
| benja123 wrote:
| I agree about rule number 2 although that has seemed to have
| changed a bit more recently with the banning of Trump and
| other extremely popular right wing social media users from
| multiple platforms
| lgleason wrote:
| I'd be fine with this if they would strip companies like this
| from having section 230 protections and allowed anybody to sue
| for liable for anything on their platform. The banning for
| conduct off the platform should be seen for what it is, namely
| discrimination that will not be applied equally to everyone. If
| you are a right wing person, the bar will be low for bans, but if
| you are an active Antifa type the bar for being banned with be
| much higher.
| challengly wrote:
| Are corporations the new government? New form of legal or justice
| system?
| dgellow wrote:
| That's of course a stretch, no corporations aren't governments
| and aren't a new form of legal system. They are still subject
| to regulation. But I get your sentiment. I see an interesting
| point here: corporations like Twitch, while registered in a
| specific country (here the US) have a global reach. But their
| culture and set of rules is generally uniform, and heavily
| influenced by the country the company is from. Twitch is a US
| company, their way to analyze cultural/moral issues is with an
| American point of view and framing, but they are applied
| globally.
|
| In some ways that extends the reach of US systems in a way even
| the US government cannot do, unless Twitch starts to create
| versions of their platform siloed by country.
| alacombe wrote:
| > They are still subject to regulation
|
| Not according to Section 230.
| Jonnax wrote:
| I presume you're unfamiliar with the East India Company.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dporter wrote:
| > The company said users will be able to report such behaviors
| but it may also investigate cases proactively, for instance if
| there is a verified news report that a user has been arrested.
|
| > ...
|
| > The new standards will apply even if the target of the offline
| behaviors is not a Twitch user or if the perpetrator was not a
| user when they committed the acts. Perpetrators would also be
| banned from registering a Twitch account, it said.
|
| > Twitch said it would take action only when there was evidence,
| such as screen shots, videos of off-Twitch behavior or police
| filings, verified by its internal team or third-party
| investigators. Users who submit a large amount of frivolous
| reports will face suspension.
|
| If you are accused of a crime you will be banned from Twitch?
| someonehere wrote:
| Here come the deepfakes for streamers to be deplatformed by their
| rivals/competitors!
| baud147258 wrote:
| so now you can go look for any controversial comment made by a
| streamer you dislike, on any platform and Twitch will gladly
| deplatform them, leaving them with the usual byzantine ban appeal
| process to get back on the platform?
| geraneum wrote:
| The point which is missing in a lot of discussions regarding this
| topic is that it does not matter if you believe a user (i.e.
| Donald Trump or anyone to whom these policies may apply) deserves
| to be banned or not.
|
| What matters IMO is that a certain individual lost access to a
| service or product based on a ToS (not the democratic law) of a
| company which may change at any time to reflect the corporation's
| interest (morally or otherwise). Also, these companies happen to
| intertwine with today's social fabric.
|
| There are no checks or balances on the amount of power these
| companies hold. Even if you believe, for example, Donald Trump
| deserved to be banned, you might think for yourself what will
| stop them to come for you next? Do you believe companies play a
| moral rule book?
|
| Imagine you lose access to your important email address, or your
| phone number (which is perhaps operated by a private
| corporation). Do you also have a podium in your house to fix it?
|
| Now you see where I am going with this. I don't want to take a
| side in a political argument. That's not the point here.
|
| With all that said, it's hard to not address the elephant in the
| room. Which is the "free market". Unfortunately, this is a
| difficult problem to solve which I don't have the expertise to
| propose a solution for. But what I can observe is that this
| phenomenon is not new and not exclusive to tech companies. Take
| banks, for example, you get a credit score that is shared between
| banks and you can be denied service. If you make insurance claims
| your premium may go up even if you switch providers. You can be
| denied coverage with a pre-existing condition. An airliner can
| deny you service based on a policy exclusive to them, a company
| abuses your private data, etc.
|
| In most of the instances I (an individual), have been denied
| service from a powerful minority and they decide to do so
| following their interest (fair or unfair).
|
| While there are a ton of arguments by different political,
| philosophical, and sociological views for these examples
| pro/against, I wonder if this problem can be solved in the
| current system without some fundamental changes/enhancements?
| ttt0 wrote:
| > Twitch said it would rely more heavily on law enforcement in
| "off-service" cases and is partnering with an investigative law
| firm to support its internal team. It declined to name the firm.
|
| So they're hiring investigation firms to spy on their users.
| Thank you Twitch, very cool.
| mlindner wrote:
| Does anyone know of any good software libraries for independent
| streaming? Say I wanted to set up a low res/low bandwidth video
| stream from my own website, how would I go about doing that?
| imgabe wrote:
| > It said examples of this "severe misconduct" include terrorist
| activities, child sexual exploitation, violent extremism,
| credible threats of mass violence, carrying out or deliberately
| acting as an accomplice to sexual assault and threatening Twitch
| or its staff.
|
| The thing is, most of these are crimes. If there is credible
| evidence that you engaged in terrorist activities, you should be
| in jail, making a ban from Twitch moot because you wouldn't be
| able to access it anyway. Why does Twitch feel they have to form
| a vigilante justice system that is outside of normal due process
| and has no right to a fair trial?
| rajin444 wrote:
| It would be much better if they stated they have sole discretion
| of who can use their site while adhering to the law. No other
| justifications needed.
|
| People get upset when these policies are put in place but
| selectively applied. Companies try to appear unbiased, but it's
| too lofty of a goal (for technical and ideological reasons). Why
| they are not straightforward about their policies probably has
| something to do with why google dropped "Don't be evil".
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Quite a few Twitch and Youtube streamers are moving to their own
| platform. I think the only thing holding them back was finding a
| way for people to make payments or to have advertising.
| Apparently people are finding ways around this obstacle?
| ipaddr wrote:
| People are learning to start on youtube and twitch but if you
| want to make money you have to transfer your audience over.
| Beached wrote:
| sponsored content, their own advertisements in their content,
| and patreon?
| jrockway wrote:
| I think that part is easy, but making the tech stack
| affordable is the problem. Serving a 5Mbps stream to 10,000
| users for 8 hours a day is 120TB of data, and if you do the
| naive thing and just use AWS for that, you're looking at
| egress costs in the range of $180,000 per month (that's 5
| cents per gigabyte). So you need some specialized solution,
| and that spirals into being a hard problem for content
| creators to solve.
|
| Having said that, you can certainly build a CDN that pays
| less than $200k/month in transit costs (the ISP I worked at
| charged $1000/month for 10Gbps IP transit) -- obviously
| that's not what it costs Twitch to provide the service. But
| then you start hiring software engineers and network
| engineers to build all that, maybe take some VC funding
| because you have an actual business model and tech stack now,
| maybe sign some advertising deals to placate your board and
| attract more streamers that want revenue share, and then the
| advertisers start being upset about content, and you create a
| content policing team, and boom! You're Twitch! You ban
| someone, the Internet hates you, and all you have to show for
| it is a 8 million dollar per month AWS bill :)
|
| Thought long and hard about how to build an open source tech
| stack for streaming video and somehow monetize it, and it
| always seemed like either I would become Twitch, or I'd just
| be UNIX helpdesk for some gamers with million dollar AWS
| bills. Didn't do it, but I wish those who are doing it the
| best of luck.
| pgsimp wrote:
| Translation: SJWs are in full control and can cancel you at any
| time.
| ricardoplouis wrote:
| > Live-streaming service Twitch will ban users for offenses such
| as hate-group membership or credible threats of mass violence
| that occur entirely away from the site, in a new approach to
| moderating the platform, the company said on Wednesday.
|
| Can't be part of a hate group or threaten violence no a mass
| scale. I believe the only reason that banning these two things
| are considered an infringement on free speech are because they
| are core to American ideals. If we viewed hate groups or mass
| violence with the same contempt we view something like child
| grooming for example then I don't think we would be having the
| free speech discussion, but here we are.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Being shunned is the oldest, most effective social strategy for
| enforcing conformance that's worked for thousands of years. It's
| lost a lot of teeth recently as everyone can now find supportive
| communities for whatever dumb ass opinions they come to support
| and a lack of need for communal support to literally survive.
|
| I tend not to buy into slippery slope arguments. I'm not going to
| bat an eye here.
| crisdux wrote:
| My employer can fire me for severe misconduct that occurs away
| from the office. Is that any different? Isn't this normal at most
| companies?
| dkersten wrote:
| What about your ISP or electrical company or other service
| provider? Can they shut you off because you did or said
| something they don't like? What about your payment provider or
| your bank?
|
| Twitch are providing a service to streamers, they are not
| employing them.
| alacombe wrote:
| > My employer can fire me for severe misconduct that occurs
| away from the office.
|
| I'm certain it would be considered wrongful dismissal in many
| jurisdiction.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Can your employee fire you for your religious beliefs?
|
| Twitch will most certainly fire you if you believe certain
| things about marriage, for instance. Things I don't happen
| believe, I have to add.
| elric wrote:
| Depends on where in the world you live. Also depends on the
| kind of misconduct. In general I'm of a mind that it isn't any
| of my employer's business what I get up to when I'm off the
| clock. If they can define "misconduct" in a sensible way
| they're probably free to add it to my employment contract, in
| which case I can decide for myself whether or not to work for
| them. Anything less is arbitrary nonsense and will likely
| result in legal action.
| kstrauser wrote:
| There's such a huge grey area, though. On one extreme: I work
| at a desk job and it'd be insane for my employer to fire me
| for getting a speeding ticket doing 70 in a 65 zone. On the
| other: if I were shown in a CNN video carrying a swastika
| flag in a parade, I absolutely 100% expect I'd be jobless by
| the time I got home. I wouldn't pause for a moment at an
| employment contract that says the latter violates their
| rules.
| kevinpet wrote:
| Not in California. Political activity off the clock is
| legally protected.
|
| Because it isn't ever actually carrying a swastika flag.
| It's supporting the opposite side of a current contentious
| issue like abortion.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's absolutely _not_ what I 've seen in the news. No
| one's "canceling" run-of-the-mill conservatives for run-
| of-the-mill conservative views, but there've been literal
| swastika flags in alt-right parades.
|
| I have and will cheerfully work alongside people with
| whom I have significant political disagreements. I
| absolutely would not share an office with, say, an actual
| white supremacist. That's a hostile work environment and
| I want nothing to do with it.
|
| Edit: There's a wide gulf between "political activity"
| and the stuff I'm talking about. You're a Republican?
| Fine, I'll discuss this with you over lunch and we can
| have fun teasing each other about our various beliefs.
| Get arrested storming the capitol? Yeah, that's a
| jobstopper.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Making a hostile environment at work probably isn't
| protected, though, and that's what carrying a swastika
| flag on national television will make.
|
| As soon as I know a coworker is running about carrying a
| swastika flag, I can never feel safe around that coworker
| again.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Prince Harry, John Cleese etc beg to differ. Or are we
| working with hypotetical actual nazis? 5g covid
| thruthers?
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Almost every rule has an exception or two. In general,
| however, most of us aren't working with folks seriously
| into theater and such things.
|
| Even when folks are, I'm still suspicious until they
| prove otherwise.
| nitrogen wrote:
| But what someone does outside of work and not involving
| coworkers is, by definition, not a part of the workplace
| environment.
|
| Treating everything about a person as within scope for
| personal concern is one of the things that really
| strongly turns people against each other. It shouldn't
| matter what someone believes or does on their own time,
| whether it's a right-leaning company with a gay employee,
| or a left-leaning company with a right-leaning employee.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's not reasonable, and I don't think anyone truly
| believes that. For instance, if a black guy's boss talks
| about attending a Ku Klux Klan meeting, you can't
| honestly argue that said boss leaves that all at home
| when they meet at work in the morning.
|
| Wherever you are on the political spectrum, I'm sure you
| can imagine someone engaging in some form out outside-
| work activities that would make you feel personally
| unsafe at work. If that person got fired, not for their
| beliefs but for their actions, then, well, that's the
| consequence of making a hostile workplace.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| This is exactly it - Thank you.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _you can 't honestly argue that said boss leaves that all
| at home when they meet at work in the morning_
|
| If they never mention their non-work life at work, and
| work is going fine, then isn't that pretty clear evidence
| that they are leaving it (whatever "it" is) all at home?
|
| _consequence of making a hostile workplace._
|
| It's pretty easy to argue, and yes argue honestly, that
| any hostility here is introduced by the person who brings
| up something from someone else's non-work life while at
| work, when previously the two were separate. That's
| _actual_ harassment.
|
| Someone having an opinion we don't like but that they
| never bring up at work, is clearly not workplace
| hostility or harassment on their part.
| clarifier123 wrote:
| After reddit started banning people for upvoting the wrong
| things, this is a logical next step. Contrary to the popular
| belief, slippery slope isn't a logical fallacy.
|
| Anonymity is the only way to combat this. Make sure your online
| identity isn't connected to your real name. Ideally, you should
| have separate identities for each website. Using Tor or a VPN is
| also a good idea.
| Diederich wrote:
| > After reddit started banning people for upvoting the wrong
| things
|
| As a daily reddit user, I wasn't aware of this:
|
| "Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within
| quarantined communities will receive automated warnings,
| followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent
| suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior
| across these communities."
|
| > Make sure your online identity isn't connected to your real
| name.
|
| Yeah, well, my userid here, on reddit, twitter, twitch,
| github.....is my last name, so I guess I'm stuck. (:
| voldacar wrote:
| The infantile hyper-moralization of online discourse, on social
| media but also elsewhere, is starting to get really, really
| tiring.
|
| Is there any solution other than total anonymity, keeping one's
| online and IRL personae hermetically sealed off from one another?
|
| What do you all think? Is this atmosphere here to stay or do you
| expect the winds of culture to shift anytime soon?
| Bud wrote:
| Private companies reacting to hate crimes is "infantile", now?
| Banning people for making credible threats of mass violence is
| "infantile"?
|
| No it's not. And you should retract that.
| dkersten wrote:
| The problem is that the "online outrage mob" often defines
| "hate crime" as anything they don't like or hurts their
| feelings. Ie something subjective.
|
| Now, I don't know how well Twitch define what you can or
| can't do. I didn't read their terms, the article states:
|
| _It said examples of this "severe misconduct" include
| terrorist activities, child sexual exploitation, violent
| extremism, credible threats of mass violence, carrying out or
| deliberately acting as an accomplice to sexual assault and
| threatening Twitch or its staff._
|
| Which by itself doesn't sound so bad. All of those things are
| definitely things I would want to disassociate my company
| from and are bad. But I question whether Twitch is a good
| judge... I certainly don't trust a corporation and its
| employees, many who have their own views and agendas, to give
| a fair "trial" and due process. There have been plenty of
| examples of rogue employees pushing their own agendas in
| companies and there's no oversight. What is the appeals
| process like? How thorough are their investigations (and how
| well will they handle the equivalent of swatting)?
|
| That's what the legal system if for, even if its not perfect
| either.
| banmyip wrote:
| If they were credible threats you think we might have seen,
| oh, any "mass violence" at all.
|
| (cue "Jan 6th was mass violence)
| falcolas wrote:
| How about we do something silly like letting the police and
| justice system handle things like "credible threats of mass
| violence" and "hate crimes", since both are fairly illegal,
| at least in the US.
| Bud wrote:
| How about we also defend the rights of people and companies
| to react in the way they see fit, to such actions, as well.
|
| As an aside, our police, to put it rather mildly, have
| historically sucked, in regard to such issues. And they
| suck right now, too. Badly. For hints on this, tune in to
| the Derek Chauvin trial, now in progress.
|
| Our "justice system" doesn't have a great record, either.
| falcolas wrote:
| History tells us quite clearly that extra-legal justice
| systems as a response to even some of the worst justice
| systems creates more problems, not fewer.
|
| So no we shouldn't, to use your phrasing, react as we see
| fit. That's how humanity has historically justified
| lynching.
| Bud wrote:
| Except this isn't a justice system, and doesn't have
| consequences remotely similar to a justice system.
|
| I've taken a -30 karma hit for this particular opinion
| already, despite very polite language. May as well go for
| -35.
| voldacar wrote:
| I don't think I will, actually.
|
| Assuming you aren't being disingenuous, by
| "hypermoralization" I was referring less to this specific
| action by Twitch and more to a general cultural phenomenon,
| developed over the past decade and greatly intensified since
| ~2015, which made Twitch's actions seem normal and possible
| in the first place
| pumaontheprowl wrote:
| I don't think the general public is anywhere close to
| understanding the full value of being able to control discourse
| on large platforms like this. We will likely continue to see a
| trend towards tighter control of speech as political activists
| realize that they can have greater impact by silencing their
| opposition on social media than they can by protesting in their
| local city center.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| You have nothing to gain by using your real information online.
| Everything to lose.
|
| I don't consider HN a social network but more like a casual
| linkedin.
|
| For all other uses, anonymous. Always. Put gibberish as
| username and drop in false info in bio fields.
| mlindner wrote:
| > Is there any solution other than total anonymity, keeping
| one's online and IRL personae hermetically sealed off from one
| another?
|
| In my mind there really isn't. Or at least having a single
| platform that you are the "real you" that is completely
| whitewashed of anything other than harmless platitudes (see how
| most CEOs present themselves online for an example of this).
| (Oh and make it impossible to use that account from your cell
| phone so you're unable to use it when drunk or otherwise
| inebriated.)
|
| Then you can have a bunch of different accounts online that use
| other names.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Imagine if ISPs had rules like this. Oh, somebody from your
| company said or did something we don't like? We will suspend
| services for your company to combat this behavior.
| jccooper wrote:
| Well, they are doing that, just not quite as much yet.
|
| To the extent they're not, the difference is that ISPs don't
| have their logo on the services they host.
| tolbish wrote:
| You mean like a social credit score?
| post_break wrote:
| Twitch doesn't enforce their own rules. It's the reason why
| Amouranth is the highest paid female streamer.
| challengly wrote:
| What rule is she breaking?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| She frequently violates Twitch's clothing rules, and her
| account has been suspended many times as a result of Twitch
| enforcing its rules.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Mys statement was not a value judgement, it was statement
| of _what actually happened._
|
| Twitch has suspended her several times for what it viewed
| as rule-breaking. Twitch modified its rules several times,
| and she kept breaking the less restrictive rules, until
| Twitch finally created the NSFW category.
|
| If you have an issue with this, take it up with Twitch for
| having unnecessarily restrict rules.
| madamelic wrote:
| I don't believe she is breaking any rules. Having seen some
| of her streams, her behavior belongs more on a porn cam site
| than Twitch.
|
| She constantly is like "Stop objectifying me, I am just
| playing video games" but she wears extremely sexualized
| clothing, bends over into the camera and from seeing her
| streams multiple times, seems to only play dance games (if
| you see where this is going.)
|
| She isn't breaking any rules but Jesus Christ she is a really
| bad look for the platform.
|
| I have nothing wrong with sexualization. Heck, Twitch should
| add an 18+ category. Do it. But you can't have people like
| Amo and say you prohibit sexual content.
|
| I would not feel at all comfortable watching her streams at
| work if that's a metric.
|
| Go to 43m57 seconds in this video:
| https://www.twitch.tv/videos/972822254 (Partial nudity,
| sexualized behavior). "Don't mind me, innocently shaking my
| protein shake in my bra on camera"
|
| 1h05m34s: "Don't mind me doing splits and checking that the
| camera is well-positioned"
|
| Oh and she is wearing a sports bra for a sit-down gaming
| stream, then at ~5h she moves her stream to a kiddie pool
| wearing a pretty loose bikini top.
|
| I mean, absolutely get that money. She is absolutely in her
| rights to do this and I genuinely support her, but you can't
| have her on the same platform as streamers like SodaPoppin
| getting scared for showing a dildo on camera.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It sounds like you have spent a few hours enjoying her
| channel.
|
| There isn't anything wrong with that content. More innocent
| content is getting sexualized as we speak. She is playing
| into one aspect. Denying young people sexualized content
| means they will create sexualized content out of things not
| designed to be sexual in nature.
| madamelic wrote:
| Genuinely it makes me uncomfortable to watch her. It is
| pure dissonance.
|
| She is probably a lovely person and as I said, I fully
| support her business. I just wish Twitch would stop the
| double standard.
|
| They either need to make an 18+ category or they need to
| stop allowing streaming softcore porn.
| zp33 wrote:
| whats the double standard? A girl showing cleavage and
| jumping up and down is not softcore porn.
| newbie789 wrote:
| Coming from the perspective of someone that was an admin of a
| medium-large forum back in the vBulletin heyday of the early
| 2000s, I'm somewhat amused by people getting angry at moderation
| decisions.
|
| The rules were pretty clear: This is my website. I pay the bills
| and maintain it. Here are some clear rules that if you break
| them, you will be punished with a ban/suspension/shadow
| an/redirect to goatse upon login/etc. at my/the admin team's
| discretion.
|
| I can also ban you if I don't like you. Or if I think it's funny,
| or really any other reason.
|
| I was happy, my mods and admins were happy and the users (aside
| from some banned grumps) were happy.
|
| This is literally how the internet has worked forever. There are
| users, mods and admins on websites. Twitch is a website.
|
| People getting into deep nuanced discussions about moral good and
| government over/underreach as an outlet for being angry at the
| mods never changes.
|
| Note: I am not affiliated with twitch, nor have I ever been a
| user.
| Causality1 wrote:
| We really need a public utility alternative for electronic
| discussion and multimedia sharing. There's no argument that
| internet is an essential service so where's the internet post
| office?
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| You want government-run Internet or a government myspace? No,
| thank you.
| gh-throw wrote:
| This is what open protocols were for, but those stopped being
| viable when trapping users to spy on them became more
| valuable than selling good services and software.
| valparaiso wrote:
| Same with Apple and its policies regarding closed platform
| (walled garden). But with such analogy people will go mad.
| Hypocrisy at its best.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >medium-large forum
|
| That's the key. You were not operating a massive media platform
| with a significant marketshare that many people use to make a
| living with.
| [deleted]
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Exactly. The difference is a platform that controls 0.001% of
| the market and a platform which controls 90% of the market.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| that is a risk the people using platforms to make money with
| should have taken into account
| gentleman11 wrote:
| It's not just some site when you have no credible alternative
| because it killed all the competition years ago. The network
| effects are too strong
| maxerickson wrote:
| Would it be okay to like segregate the misconduct accounts
| under a domain like shitbirds.twitch.tv?
|
| Then everybody would know that they were only providing them
| service under threat of government force.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| If they did that all the popular streamers would end up
| there pretty fast for microagressions. Lets not pretend
| this isnt political. I dont think billionaires should
| decide what is socially acceptable and what isnt.
| hnbad wrote:
| YouTube Live exists. DLive exists.
|
| Sure, these don't have anywhere near the same reach when it
| comes to live streaming but people have been banned from
| twitch before and maintained an audience on other sites like
| these. There's also no "right to livestream".
|
| We'll see how liberally twitch applies this new policy. All
| sites are literally allowed to do these things already, the
| only difference is they made it explicit. You can have a
| "common carrier" argument about regulation of private
| companies, but there's nothing in this announcement itself
| that makes twitch any different from others.
| andybak wrote:
| I think that works up to a certain scale but it's insufficient
| if you're Facebook or Twitter.
|
| Now - is Twitch more like those or is it more like "Bob's
| Forum"?
| ctdonath wrote:
| There is no bright line between Facebook and Bob's Forum.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| There's no bright line between a wheelbarrow and a bulk
| freighter but even Hellen Keller could tell you they're
| very different.
| andybak wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
| Retric wrote:
| There are several bright lines like having an engine.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| That's not a really bright line
|
| https://www.homedepot.com/p/YARDMAX-Powered-Wheelbarrow-
| YD41...
|
| Having a crew isn't a bright line either since two people
| will often manhandle a single heavy wheelbarrow.
|
| The brightest line is probably that a bulk freighter
| floats. Still it's a series of small incremental changes
| all the way from wheelbarrow to mining dump truck (then
| there's some lines you cross before you get to a bulk
| freighter) though which IMO still illustrates my point.
|
| We're kind of nit picking here though.
| Retric wrote:
| _Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo
| buffalo._
|
| English reuses terms, but that's not a wheelbarrow
| anymore than there are wheelbarrows in a wheelbarrow
| race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow_race
|
| "A wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle..."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow while also
| saying "Power assisted wheelbarrows are now widely
| available from a number of different manufacturers." Your
| link uses _Powered_ Wheelbarrow, so while it's possible
| wheelbarrows will refer to both or even unpowered
| wheelbarrows become the the archaic term, like people
| being called computers, for now that's yet to happen.
|
| PS: I was hoping someone would bring that up.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| What do you mean "bright line"?
|
| The difference is plainly obvious, Bob's forum has <100
| users, FB has > 2,800,000,000 users
| api wrote:
| It's becoming a big issue because there are people trying to
| actually make a living being superstars and/or trolls on these
| platforms, and because they've become a vehicle for large scale
| political propaganda. There's money and power involved now, and
| that changes everything.
|
| That being said I agree that the argument is disingenuous.
| Freedom of speech is a human right. The use of someone else's
| platform on which to speak is not.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >medium-large forum back in the vBulletin heyday of the early
| 2000
|
| how many people were on such a forum, and how many of such
| forums were there out there to get on?
| fsociety wrote:
| Getting banned from Twitch can have serious career consequences
| for streamers and potential streamers. I think the real issue
| is being banned and not having a reliable appeals process to go
| through. The appeals process takes long enough that it can tank
| your viewership.
| coffeemug wrote:
| This attitude doesn't translate to market conditions governed
| by power law winner-takes-all dynamics.
| ctdonath wrote:
| The freedom of the press does not include freedom to use
| another's press.
|
| This is a hard lesson when a private press takes on near-
| monopoly scale by choice of clientele.
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| While that's true, you're speaking to an earlier time in the
| internet.
|
| Today, the internet has evolved into a two layered system,
| where a centralized "social" layer (for lack of a better term)
| sits on top of the underlying decentralized layer.
|
| Today, anything of consequence happens on the top layer. You
| can still run a forum on your own, just like you did in the
| 90's. Barely anyone will join.
|
| Yes, Twitch is a private company and can do what it wants. Of
| course they can. But it only takes a few platforms to
| completely erase a person from any significant social digital
| interaction. It's not a good thing.
| babesh wrote:
| Why stop at websites? Why shouldn't airlines, hotels, banks,
| apartments, stores, and private universities ban whoever they
| like? How about creating a rule banning people who dye their
| hair blue?
| yifanl wrote:
| I have to ask, what is the point you are trying to argue?
| That it shouldn't ever be possible to enforce rules on
| internet communities?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There is - of course - rules around this. Certain qualities
| like race and sex are protected classes against which you
| cannot discriminate. To your example - a nightclub very well
| might discriminate against someone with blue hair.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Oh look, another "but it's a private company" defence of this
| behaviour.
|
| Imagine a town with a single supermarket. The closest next town
| is a 10 hour drive away. A certain individual commits a crime,
| and is punished for it by the local authorities. The
| supermarket then decides that they are going to ban this
| individual from their store because of "severe misconduct" in
| the community. Is this fair?
|
| Obviously, Twitch is not the "only" platform online for
| streaming, but in the past few years we've seen rapid siloing
| of content and serviced around a few platforms. Defending the
| actions of these platforms simply further entrenches their
| roles as the de facto platform for their particular service,
| making competition even harder.
| psychiatrist24 wrote:
| Of course that supermarket should be entitled to ban the
| misbehaving person from their store.
|
| To turn the story around, why should a business that takes it
| on itself to provide for a remote community be punished for
| it by forcing them to accept unruly customers?
| wpietri wrote:
| That's not an argument against moderation. That's an argument
| against monopolies and oligopolies. Banning a guy from the
| store isn't even in the top 10 worst things that will be
| going wrong in that scenario.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Okay, that's another way to fix the problem then: break
| Twitch up into 100 baby Twitches, and don't let anyone have
| ownership/stake/control of more than one of them. If all
| 100 decide to ban someone, they probably deserve to be
| banned, and if they don't, then the person can keep
| streaming on one that didn't.
| dolni wrote:
| The problem with this for Twitch, specifically, is that Twitch
| involves money. Many people make streaming a career, and Twitch
| actively encourages this sort of behavior.
|
| At a normal workplace, while people _can_ simply be fired, they
| typically aren't. That sort of thing kills morale and may even
| result in protest resignations.
| originalvichy wrote:
| I would say that many (not all) things Twitch has banned
| users would not be so far fetched as reasons for terminating
| employment. Aside from obvious non-comparable things that
| only pertain to online interactions, there is probably a
| great overlap between "would I get warned/banned from Twitch"
| and "would I get warned/fired at my job".
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Here are some clear rules
|
| That will change arbitrarily and become more and more vague
| over time as the people you ideologically disagree with become
| better at obeying the "letter of the law".
|
| But you're right, it's your website, and (at least for now)
| somebody else is free to start up a competing website that
| picks up the users you're throwing away.
| dagw wrote:
| The significant difference is I (assume) no one depended on
| your forum for earning a significant part of their income. Once
| you set yourself as a place where you want people come and earn
| money, then banning them, and thus depriving them of something
| of real monetary value, takes on and entire different set of
| nuances.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But nobody owes you a market stall. And if you do have one,
| then you have to balance your business witht he
| extracurricular activities. If the latter gets you in trouble
| or attracts sufficient attention that it reflects poorly on
| your industry, your brand might suffer and other industry
| participants will do whatever they need to avoid contagion.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand both sides of this argument, so
| I need help grokking all these positions. I need more
| information before I know if I can support your position.
|
| If I work for a large company, and I go out and do something
| that may not even be all that bad. Say, publicly berating an
| Uber driver like that woman doctor in Miami, my organization
| will fire me. Just as her organization fired her. Especially
| if people start publicly connecting me to them. This has
| happened forever, no internet need be involved.
|
| The difference here, at least one side claims, is that the
| large organization paying your living exists on the internet,
| and so should be viewed differently than any other large
| organization. Since those other large organizations are not
| internet-based? I find myself unpersuaded though, I'm
| honestly not really seeing much of a difference.
|
| So just so I understand what you're saying, is your position
| that no large organization should be able to separate
| themselves from that lady doctor in Miami for instance? Or is
| your position that only large internet-based organizations
| should be precluded from separating themselves from her?
|
| (Dr in Miami that berated the Uber driver is just the most
| analogous offline example I could think of. Large
| organization with enormous market power paying her living.
| They fire her, no one else will touch her. I'm sure there are
| many many more.)
| otterley wrote:
| Building your business on someone else's property subjects
| you to a material risk that the owner may someday kick you
| out. Being a responsible business owner means you recognize
| that risk and mitigate it as needed for business continuity,
| and have contingency plans in the event that it happens.
| ccn0p wrote:
| kind of agree with this statement in a free market sense,
| but the problem with these winner-take-most markets is
| there are often no reasonable alternatives.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Sure, but the more important factor in these sorts of
| relationships is that there is in fact usually a binding
| contract. Twitch refers to these as "Partners" who they
| have extended a contract to. While I am sure Twitch has the
| ability to sever that contract essentially at will, it
| doesn't mean they are exempt from legal repercussions of
| doing so.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I believe there's precedent for them severing a massive
| partner at will, in the case of Dr Disrespect.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Yes, but it's always _always_ better to have a policy in
| place than to make one-off decisions.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Yeah that would be better, people should be able to know
| in advance what they're not allowed to do. I was just
| pointing out that they've done it before.
| shadowfox wrote:
| How different is that from at-will employment though? You can
| be fired at any time and for more or less any non-federally-
| protected reason (and can quit any time too). That seems
| pretty uncontroversial in the US at least.
| kingTug wrote:
| It isn't "controversial" in the US bc labor has no power.
| At-will employment is a gross, anti-labor practice that
| america has been brainwashed into thinking is normal.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| >How different is that from at-will employment though? You
| can be fired at any time and for more or less any non-
| federally-protected reason (and can quit any time too).
| That seems pretty uncontroversial in the US at least.
|
| Most Europeans would be horrified by this concept so I'm
| not sure it supports your argument.
| tesmar2 wrote:
| I'm not sure why Americans care? Europe makes a
| different, worse tradeoff.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| I doubt they would agree. Money != everything.
| tesmar2 wrote:
| Well, it's not just money. By lowering the taxes and
| regulatory environment, you increase individual freedoms.
| That's worth a lot to Americans.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| Sure, the freedom to be murdered in a mass shooting or go
| bankrupt due to a basic medical issue. I think much of
| the world thinks that the American "System" is rather
| disturbing and callous.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is a strawman, we are talking about workers right in
| the US, not healthcare or gun control. You may disagree
| with the way work is regulated in the US, but at least
| attack those regulations instead of trying to derail into
| two other, highly nuanced and emotional, subject matters.
| dudul wrote:
| And that's why nobody in the world wants to immigrate to
| the US.
| psychiatrist24 wrote:
| Should be easy to check by comparing applications for
| immigration.
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Most Europeans would be horrified by this concept
|
| But they'd be really happy to earn the same level of
| income.
| yoz-y wrote:
| When speaking about SV tech salaries maybe. But for
| majority of people, most definitely not.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even in the midwest, tech people earn a lot more in the
| US than in almost any European country. Sure, for the
| lower income levels it might be a different story, but I
| live in the HN bubble like everyone else here.
| gambiting wrote:
| That's a really shitty argument though. Would I be happy
| to earn $100k a year? Sure I would. Would I give up my 28
| days of paid holidays per year, unlimited sick leave,
| year long maternity leave, free healthcare, free
| education for my children, and yes, 3 months of notice
| that gives me incredible amount of stability in my life
| for that higher pay? Absolutely not. At will employment
| is an abomination of the American employment system just
| like a lot of other things about that country. High
| salaries don't make up for it in the slightest.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I make a lot more than 100K, I have unlimited vacation,
| unlimited sick leave. Only 12 weeks of FMLA, so there's
| that. And healthcare isn't free anywhere in the world,
| just financed differently. I pay for my insurance from my
| paycheck, but the paycheck is so much larger that it
| works out fine. My deductible is zero, out-of-pocket
| maximum is zero, so it's not effectively much different
| than 'free' healthcare.
|
| I am well aware of how much Europeans hate America. It's
| readily apparent on HN.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If a lot more than 100k is 150k you make more than 92% of
| Americans. At 180k it's more than 95% of Americans.
|
| We are all really happy for you but most people aren't in
| the same boat comparing Europe and America based on how
| well it works out for the wealthy doesn't seem useful.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>I make a lot more than 100K
|
| That's all well and good, but most Americans don't and
| therefore they cannot afford the same social benefits
| that nearly all EU citizens just have as standard. Yes, I
| am aware that you can live an extremely good life in
| America if you're rich. Most people aren't rich though.
|
| >>My deductible is zero, out-of-pocket maximum is zero,
| so it's not effectively much different than 'free'
| healthcare.
|
| And what is your insurance like if you get fired
| tomorrow?
|
| >>unlimited sick leave.
|
| Unlimited paid sick leave?
|
| >>I am well aware of how much Europeans hate America.
|
| I don't hate America, I would love to come over and
| visit, you guys have beautiful national parks. There's
| just zero chance I would ever agree to come and live
| there.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Unlimited paid sick leave?
|
| Yep. And unlimited paid vacation, too.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| >I am well aware of how much Europeans hate America. It's
| readily apparent on HN.
|
| There's a lot to dislike about how we have comported
| ourselves over the last 400 years and how we treat our
| people. If you reduce this to an irrational emotional
| hatred you do people a disservice. For myself I only call
| myself an American for lack of better options.
| smoe wrote:
| I don't think that the people most affected by at-will
| employment necessarily earn more in the US
|
| Just one a bit dated example I could find quickly.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-09/which-
| cou...
| cosmodisk wrote:
| There are a few bubbles in the US,where people make way
| more than in Europe: SV, Some finance jobs on the Wall
| Street, maybe the oil industry. That's about it. Outside
| of those, it's more or less the same like in Europe,
| minus safety net and holiday. There are pros and cons on
| each side of the pond,no doubt, but in my opinion, the US
| is probably better suited for those with a very high
| income,while an average person is better off in Europe.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My company employs people in Europe, and across the US.
| The highest paid Europeans still make less than any of
| our associates in the midwest.
|
| And we have unlimited vacation & sick time, so I'm not
| sure what advantage the 28 holiday thing is.
|
| I completely agree that the U.S. is better suited for
| high income earners.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| As always,it depends. I guess by mentioning midwest,you
| go with a notion that it's not a hcol area. The unlimited
| vacation & sick time probably also means a pretty decent
| white collar job.
|
| It's difficult to compare with Europe,as one unit, as
| it's as varied as the US is. There are quite a few
| countries in Europe, where I'd happily take whatever your
| the associates are making at your firm and I'd have
| amazing,high quality life with very little to worry
| about. Alternatively, if I go to London,or Zurich, most
| salaries would feel like pocket change.
|
| The other aspect,what in my opinion keeps tab on salaries
| in Europe, is the sheer volume of available quality
| candidates for jobs. There are tons of people with
| exceptional education. Not so long time ago, we used to
| have a running joke back home that why would anyone hire
| a cleaner without a masters degree?It also used to be a
| default option to only hire secretaries that only had
| double masters.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Advantage of 28 days is that company can't stop or fire
| you from using them. And will be punished for not
| allowing it.
| peytn wrote:
| Geez, I'm glad I live in a society where that's not seen
| as necessary. I don't need to invoke the power of the
| state to take a vacation.
| devit wrote:
| In most cases there are multiple employers for any job who
| pay similar wages so one can go work for some other
| employer if one fires them.
|
| But in the Twitch, YouTube, Amazon, etc. cases there is no
| other platform that pays the same.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _But in the Twitch, YouTube, Amazon, etc. cases there is
| no other platform that pays the same._
|
| Did you not just enumerate 3 different organizations in
| your comment?
| gh-throw wrote:
| For three different "jobs", though.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I don't know man?
|
| Do "Twitch Streamer" and "YouTube Streamer" really
| constitute different "jobs"?
|
| (I mean, to the extent that they are "jobs" at all, I
| consider them the same "job".)
| gh-throw wrote:
| Amazon: author
|
| YouTube: Youtuber
|
| Twitch (as discussed elsewhere in the thread): eSports
| tournament competitors
| enjoythecode wrote:
| There are thousands of other employers you can apply to and
| work for. You'll be unemployed in the short term, but
| getting fired isn't catastrophic long-term, for the most
| part.
|
| The parallel doesn't really exist for Twitch. Other than
| perhaps YouTube, are there any platforms that would get you
| anywhere close to the pool of potential users on Twitch?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Twitch has reasonable competition - YouTube and to a
| significantly lesser extent Facebook Gaming.
|
| But let's take a step back here - no one is entitled to
| be a Full time professional streamer. Say you do
| something egregious (or not) and get banned from all
| streaming sites - just go get another job? Twitch doesn't
| have a monopoly on employment.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's a good thing that there are 10.75 million employers
| in the United States.
|
| It has a little something for everyone.
| dkarras wrote:
| I don't think there really are "nuances" about what the
| owners can and cannot legally do. There are nuances about the
| decisions about people that are willing to participate in the
| website however.
|
| Say I own twitch, can't I just shut it down? Maybe I
| mismanaged it, maybe it isn't profitable, maybe it isn't
| profitable enough to make it worth the trouble, maybe I want
| to make a statement, maybe I am bored, maybe I am sick. The
| point is the effect on the users would be the same. If you
| can't make it illegal for me to shut it down (on the premises
| that it would risk my users' livelihood) then you can't make
| it illegal for me to kick users out (on the same premise). So
| yes, people depending on MY service to earn a living has a
| lot of thinking and diversifying to do, it is not as risk-
| free as it seems, and there are nuances around that. In the
| end though, the owner(s) do and should have the last word.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > If you can't make it illegal for me to shut it down (on
| the premises that it would risk my users' livelihood) then
| you can't make it illegal for me to kick users out (on the
| same premise)
|
| > In the end though, the owner(s) do and should have the
| last word.
|
| Thats not exactly true. A relevant counter example would be
| to look at other major communication services. For example,
| take telecom. A telephone company cannot just kick users
| off of the platform, for any reason. They have to follow
| common carrier laws.
|
| Obviously, the law would have to be changed, in order for
| these laws to apply to these new platforms.
|
| But, unrelated to any specific moderation policy, I think
| that there is a very nuanced and interesting discussion to
| be had, about how common carrier laws have not really kept
| up to date with some of the many new internet platforms
| these days.
| electrograv wrote:
| _> Say I own twitch, can 't I just shut it down? Maybe I
| mismanaged it, maybe it isn't profitable, maybe it isn't
| profitable enough to make it worth the trouble, maybe I
| want to make a statement, maybe I am bored, maybe I am
| sick._
|
| "Say I own a hospital, can't I just shut it down and pull
| the plug on all the patients? Maybe I mismanaged it, maybe
| it isn't profitable, maybe it isn't profitable enough to
| make it worth the trouble, maybe I want to make a
| statement, maybe I am bored, maybe I am sick."
|
| As a company gains more and more control authoritarian
| power over someone's life, there's a fair argument that
| increasing regulation may be necessary to prevent it from
| causing unnecessary harm (whether due to incompetence,
| malevolence, misguided benevolence, or whatever).
|
| Remember, constitutional/legal rights go both ways:
| Business owners deserve to have rights. But so do patrons
| of businesses.
| koluna wrote:
| So just like at will employment then? Anyone can fire you for
| wearing a shirt they didn't like that day - this is your
| problem, not theirs.
| Rompect wrote:
| > redirect to goatse upon login
|
| Okay, that is actually a great idea
| zouhair wrote:
| > This is literally how the internet has worked forever.
|
| I don't know what specific fallacy is this, but stating that
| how it always worked does not mean it should have worked that
| way or that it should never change.
|
| Twitch would not exists without content creators. Neither would
| exist without the other.
|
| In that relationship Twitch has the last word on everything.
|
| I would argue that it shouldn't be this way or at least not
| this one sided. Content creators should have a say on Twitch's
| decisions.
| pc86 wrote:
| Why though?
|
| They don't own Twitch. They didn't take any of the economic
| risk to start it. They're not on the hook for covering its
| server bills if revenue craters. If they wanted to put their
| money where their mouth is and buy a piece of the company
| proper, the current owners might be open to that, who knows.
|
| But you don't typically get to run a company you didn't
| start, haven't invested a dime in, and can walk away from at
| any moment, unless you're willing to take on some of the
| risk. Risk is what gets you the rewards.
| nsgi wrote:
| > redirect to goatse upon login
|
| That's a rather shitty thing to do. I understand it has a
| warning now or doesn't exist or whatever, but no one should
| have to see it without their consent
| Rompect wrote:
| Pussy
| nostromo wrote:
| This isn't comparable. You weren't one of five or so
| corporations that control the majority of communication on the
| entire web.
|
| Oligopoly changes the equation and requires more oversight,
| just as your backyard garden might not require regulation like
| an industrial food producer would.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| But it's railroad tycoon discussing these tracks belong to me
| and rules are simple to a man who built a driveway. Your
| vbulletin and big megacorp websites don't compare on any level.
| [deleted]
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Being an administrator/moderator is a big responsibly. Sure, if
| it's a small time forum, maybe nothing really bad would happen
| if someone gets banned,well you know, because you wanted that
| way. However, different platforms can have a detrimental impact
| on ones life, including employment, status in the society and
| so on. The worst part? You don't start measuring the throne of
| power immediately, you gradually descend into it. You start
| normalizing things you couldn't just a few months ago. I know
| from my own work that ultimate access and control of everything
| can poison most. You get these little challenges every now and
| then and you get tested, and eventually, depending on one's
| nature, you either say 'screw this,I'm not doing it' or you
| become a despot.
| echelon wrote:
| There is only one Twitch.tv.
|
| There were thousands of fourms. I ran one. Ezboard and other
| platforms made it easy to host one without even paying server
| bills.
|
| But there's only one Twitch, and when they ban you, you're
| gone. Your audience is too.
|
| This is what we get with platform monopolies.
| some_furry wrote:
| > They're essentially a public utility.
|
| No, they're a website owned by a private company.
|
| If you want there to be a public utility that provides the
| same service Twitch does, write to your representatives.
| proc0 wrote:
| I agree, once it's stated clearly, well it's clear and you are
| free to decide. The problem was the double standards, which
| should also be stated clearly.
| CBLT wrote:
| To add a little extra context to what other people are giving
| you: large, million-dollar digital tournaments stream on Twitch
| because they have no other choice if they want to reach
| viewers. ESL signed a deal with Facebook streaming that
| destroyed their viewership numbers because people go to Twitch
| to watch, not the website for the tournament. Organizers have
| clearly seen this and _will not_ move their stream to another
| provider unless a large amount of money changes hands (like
| Facebook sponsoring ESL).
|
| Additionally, Twitch will not allow banned users to appear on
| other streams _including tournament streams_. There was a
| kerfluffle recently where a Twitch-banned player was also
| banned from a tournament they tried to compete in, solely
| because the tournament organizer didn 't want to jeopardize
| their streamability.
|
| I hope I've impressed upon you that a Twitch ban is effectively
| a ban on all opportunities that involve money in the esports
| scene. There are incredibly few esports careers that could
| survive a Twitch ban, and not a single one would be unaffected.
| ohazi wrote:
| > no other choice _if they want to reach viewers_
|
| > are incredibly few _esports careers_ that could survive a
| Twitch ban
|
| (emphasis mine)
|
| People have never been entitled to a sports career, or to
| celebrity status by reaching viewers on someone else's
| platform. These platforms have democratized the "rags to
| riches" story, but whether it was the '30s or the '60s or the
| '90s, you've always had to play by the rules of the
| prevailing media empire. This is no different.
|
| The fact that you can sign up for an account in your bedroom
| in pajamas instead of signing documents at a lawyer's office
| in Hollywood doesn't magically make this a public square.
| beaner wrote:
| No, it just means your eligibility for a professional
| career may come down to whether or not a random mod on a
| streaming platform simply thinks it's "funny" to ban you.
| CBLT wrote:
| Pretend Harvey Weinstein is talking to you. And that he's
| reading the top-most comment (by newbie789) on this story:
| that he owns the company, so he can ban you at his
| discretion. Or gaslight you. Or show you shock porn. That
| this is fine, because it's how its always worked here.
|
| I'll tentatively assume you got some of the same visceral
| recoil I got from that mental image. And that we agree that
| following everything Hollywood does is probably not for the
| best. So I'll ask you: if you could solve this however
| you'd like (by passing laws, let's say), how would you do
| it?
| wongarsu wrote:
| But it does elevate Twitch bans far above the "this is just
| like a forum admin doing as he pleases, move along" of the
| original comment.
| max1984_2 wrote:
| I can't stand comments like this that obviously miss the
| overall point being made and tbh it is entirely done
| disingenuously.
|
| The terms of service are not in anyway enforced
| consistently or fairly. The way the terms and service is
| written is that they can basically boot you for any reason.
| It is well known that the "tiddie streamers" regularly get
| away with ToS violations, where some dude wearing a red hat
| will get a ban (and I mean a red hat, because that exactly
| what happened to one guy, he didn't even have a MAGA hat).
|
| "Behaviour off platform" can mean anything and will be like
| the current Terms of Service be not be enforced in any
| manner that is consistent or fair.
|
| Twitch is a monopoly in this space and it is abusing its
| position. This combined with the fact that the mobile phone
| platforms can remove an App for any reason it wants means
| that there is no open market where a competitor that has a
| different ToS can reasonably become competitive.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Well, then eSports stars are getting to be just like regular
| sports stars.
| CBLT wrote:
| I'm okay with that. I think sports approaches this with the
| appropriate level of maturity. Has any sports exec said
| something to the effect of
|
| > I can also ban you if I don't like you. Or if I think
| it's funny, or really any other reason.
| pc86 wrote:
| If they weren't dealing with dozens of 7- and 8-figure
| contracts, and earning millions themselves, but were
| instead moderating some piddly little forum nobody's ever
| heard for approximately $0 a year, they probably would
| have said almost exactly that.
| _jal wrote:
| > a Twitch ban is effectively a ban on all opportunities that
| involve money in the esports scene.
|
| I suggest you ask Colin Kaepernick about how it is in the
| non-'E' sports world.
|
| (Edit: misspelled name)
| exolymph wrote:
| The dude who landed a big advertising campaign with Nike
| based on his high-profile activism?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| In other words, he changed his line of work from a
| "sports athlete" to a "marketing guy".
|
| The esports guys should take note at what happens to
| sports athletes who behave "badly". They typically don't
| get to participate in sports anymore.
| anamexis wrote:
| I assume you mean Colin Kaepernick.
| _jal wrote:
| Thanks.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This is what I don't understand?
|
| People are complaining about something that has been
| happening since literally forever. Long before Gopher and
| Mosaic were even released. Why is it "bad" now? The answer
| is that it is not bad, it's just that it now affects them.
|
| Here's the thing though, waiting until it affects you, is a
| very poor strategy for changing what you consider to be a
| "wrong". This has all been litigated at this point. Now
| your only recourse is a wholesale change of the laws, which
| is not going to happen.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| In a way you have affirmed parent's point: it's the
| shareholders' website, and they can mod it as they wish.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| You just completely missed the point. Everyone knows who's
| website it is and that they "can" mod it as they wish. But
| at a certain scale some moral and ethical questions come
| into play.
| onethought wrote:
| Isn't this just like other sports, where a star is
| pilloried for some indiscretion outside of their sport
| which can result in them being dropped from a team etc?
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| That is up to the team though. This is closer to a TV
| station banning somebody so now they can't compete in a
| sport that will be broadcast on that station, forcing the
| team to kick them off.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Shouldn't a TV station be able to decide whether they
| want to promote a pedophile?
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| That is sort of the start of a strawman argument because
| Twitch bans for a lot of things, not just being a
| convicted pedophile. But even in that case I don't think
| it is fair to completely disallow somebody from appearing
| on a TV network. That also isn't what I would consider
| "promotion".
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I don't know if it's a straw man when the actual policy
| this article is about mentions it
|
| > The company is currently defining "serious offenses" as
| incidents of violent extremism, credible threats of mass
| violence, membership in a known hate group, sexual
| exploitation of children, and nonconsensual sexual
| activities, among others.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| That is for actions off of Twitch. You can get banned for
| actions on Twitch that are not bad at all or completely
| accidental
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Which effectively can also happen now. In fact the
| athlete is likely wealthy and will be ok despite his
| career crashing. This could in fact happen to the guy who
| waits on tables down town.
|
| If he became internet infamous and the tv station covers
| it the business he works at might be obliged to fire him.
| romwell wrote:
| >This is closer to a TV station banning somebody
|
| So the FCC won't let me be, or let me be me, so let me
| see...
|
| Yeah, TV stations (like MTV) _have_ been banning people
| in the past too.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| Plenty of major streamers would tell you them switch to
| YouTube did more good for their careers than twitch.
|
| ValkyRae, CourageJD, DrDisrespect, Anish Giri are some just
| off the top of my head.
| rodgerd wrote:
| It's funny how many people here suddenly want to control the
| means of production when the boss wants to ban Nazis or pedos
| instead of unions.
|
| (If you think I'm exaggerating, Twitch has had a huge run of
| prominent streamers outed for raping minors, grooming, and the
| like, and much of the terrible behavior has happened via
| Discord. Which will be why Twitch are keen to make it clear
| that you can't say "oh I was grooming on Discord, none of your
| business.)
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| At some point a website stops being just a website and becomes
| a social institution in itself. And with great power comes
| great responsibility.
| Goronmon wrote:
| That's a easy statement to make until you actually try to
| define what "some point" actually means.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| We agree that kids become adults at 18 and no one has a big
| problem with this. I don't believe demarcating this "some
| point" is far more complicated.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > We agree that kids become adults at 18 and no one has a
| big problem with this.
|
| We don't, though. Can't drink until 21. Rental cars and
| credit cards have extra restrictions until 25. Etc.
| edoceo wrote:
| Please do it then. What is this mark? 80% of TAM? Revenue
| over $250k/yr/employee? 10000 users?
| wnevets wrote:
| Everyone feels entitled to host their content on others
| platforms for free.
| jcranmer wrote:
| For people who are saying "but losing Twitch kills your
| career":
|
| In the entertainment industry _in general_ , facing
| repercussions (including being unable to get any gigs
| whatsoever) for your actions outside of direct involvement in
| entertainment has long been the norm. There are several recent
| examples that people attribute to cancel culture, but the
| problem goes all the way back at least as far as the 1940s (see
| the Hollywood blacklist during McCarthyism).
|
| Why should people who stream on Twitch be immune to pressures
| that those who work for Hollywood have to endure?
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| You are using the mcarthy blacklist as precedent for banning
| peoples ability to participate in a social setting. As far as
| im concerned, since forever that has been used as a reason to
| question and challenge censorship.
| dkarras wrote:
| I own Twitch. Can't I just shut it down if I wanted? Or
| should I be forced to stay open after becoming really
| popular because shutting it down would prevent millions of
| people's participation in a social setting?
| jamnik wrote:
| Of course you can't. It is illegal for you to shut down
| your own business just because you feel like it. It is
| illegal to make decisions that hurt your own business
| purposefully. You can get prosecuted fined and/or
| improsoned for willfully destroying your own business.
| You can sell it if you dont like it so much.
|
| Moreover, one can clami that social settings should be
| regarded as utilities. It is illegal for utilities like
| electric companies to shut down service on their paying
| customers. Will end up exactly the same with FANG
| companies. Why? Because people are growing increasingly
| tired of being regulated by some stupid websites and
| politicians will eventually notice this.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If you shut it down, competitors would immediately spring
| up and become way more popular. If you "just" ban someone
| you don't like, that won't happen.
| babesh wrote:
| Such an advocate for neo McCarthyism.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It's not only entertainment.
|
| You behave badly in a bar or restaurant as a doctor for
| instance, your hospital or clinic will fire you and good luck
| getting a job anywhere else.
| [deleted]
| asah wrote:
| medium-large is not the same as dominant, where users don't
| have a choice but to engage, e.g. to be competitive in their
| industry.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > I can also ban you if I don't like you. Or if I think it's
| funny, or really any other reason.
|
| Yeah, just like a game server admin that banned you simply
| because he lost to you in a game. Everyone loved them. Just
| because you can abuse your powers doesn't mean you should.
|
| If social media that are influencing the outcome of the
| elections (reminder that we're in the middle of Covid
| lockdowns) are not aware that they shouldn't abuse their powers
| then it's time for the government to step in.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Does it ("social media influencing elections->government
| should step in") also apply to traditional media ?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Yup, the usual debate of innocent-till-probven-guilty vs private-
| companies-wcan-do-what-they-want.
|
| I propose a simple solution: iff company owns > X% of the market
| (for some TBD value of X, maybe 80%), then it must follow the
| same laws as federal gvmnt (respect freedom of speech, proper due
| process, etc. Reasoning: if they own that much of the market,
| they may be unavoidable (like gvmnt) and thus must follow the
| same restrictions to make them palatable to the public.
| kodah wrote:
| I had to type in this box more times than I'm willing to admit to
| produce something that didn't violate the guidelines.
|
| Let's examine why this is problematic:
|
| - This will absolutely be leveraged on anyone in a precarious
| position. It's their ultimate out. Minority groups, majority
| groups, it doesn't matter - you're in trouble and need a platform
| to tell your story? Not happening on Twitch. Expect more to sign
| on to this idea; it is the ultimate tool for cancel culture
| proponents.
|
| - Foreword: I am not making a constitutional argument. Private
| companies now own most of the highways we use for speech, much
| less widespread speech. Sure, Newspapers and mail can be argued,
| but there's plenty of examples where they had to tolerate nasty
| messages for some self-imposed access to speech principles.
| Secondarily, nobody used a newspaper to talk to their auntie,
| while Twitch isn't Facebook or Twitter self-expression is not
| limited to certain platforms. That is lost on tech companies.
|
| This new stage of American moralism is pretty tiring no matter
| what group or direction it comes from. I can't imagine staying in
| this country much longer.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think it's an interesting consequence of accountability, that
| the people being held accountable tend to vocally dislike being
| held accountable, but don't want to say so for some reason.
|
| It'd honestly be pretty refreshing for a leader to come out and
| say, "I don't think my actions should be held against me like
| your actions should be held against you because I'm
| special/different." Insane, but refreshingly honest.
|
| For what it's worth, I'm increasingly with you re: leaving the
| US, for what basically amount to the opposite reason. I'm tired
| of people not being responsible for themselves, their actions,
| and the outcomes that happen beyond the first order
| consequences.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Held accountable by whom? We didn't elect twitch.
|
| Who decides who needs to be held accountable, and for what?
| Shouldn't that be the justice system?
|
| Twitch mentioned proactively banning people who are arrested,
| without using the word 'convicted'. Which demographics is
| that likely to affect?
| kodah wrote:
| I think people generally mention accountability when it suits
| them, specifically when it suits their group morals.
|
| Accountability to me is that the government teaches them a
| lesson, some company doesn't need to jump in line to punish
| them for me to feel satiated -- that job is done by the
| government. Moral communities are just that though, tiny
| groups that would like to exercise their power and
| worldliness on others in pursuit of their utopian society
| free from democracy and government oversight. Having come
| from a repressive religion, I have no argument against why
| this paradigm is flawed, but maybe it takes the eyes of
| someone who has lived that to see it.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| So you think companies are acting in a moral interest and
| not in perceived financial interest?
| kodah wrote:
| I think the financial interest is connected to moral
| interest.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The responsibility starts to fuzz when you try to follow
| that thread.
|
| It's clearly with the company executing the decision to
| remove someone from their platform, but trying to
| decipher whether or not what they're doing is a financial
| or moral decision (despite their claims, that's part of
| the financial choice) becomes fairly pointless.
|
| If you want to rail against a changing society, that
| seems like a waste of time. If you want to rail against a
| specific set of companies who have acted in a specific
| way, I think that's more productive and addressable.
| salawat wrote:
| I'm still waiting for the inevitable shitstorm that'll ensue when
| someone "innovates" a Relationship Management platform that is
| effectively a Shunning-as-a-Service (Read: Online Presence
| Surveillance and Data Broker interface) offering and suddenly
| discovers they've re-invented corporate organized blacklisting,
| which has been illegal for years. Yes, technically only for
| employment purposes, but the practice is generally abhored
| wherever it rears it's ugly head outside of that that comes down
| to just defending yourself from bad actors, where bad actors is
| defined as "Those seeking to cause direct harm for financial or
| other gain." Things that aren't just able to be chocked up to
| "having a controversial viewpoint".
|
| I really wish people would wake up to the fact that right now,
| computing is still in its "enumerative innovation" phase where
| the computer will get thrown at every human problem under the sun
| to see what sticks, or what causes complete outrage and cannot be
| allowed.
| Nadya wrote:
| >I'm still waiting for the inevitable shitstorm that'll ensue
| when someone "innovates" a Relationship Management platform
| that is effectively a Shunning-as-a-Service
|
| This had existed, for Twitter at least. Apparently it shut down
| last year. I had ended up on several blocklists or at least one
| commonly shared once because I'm blocked by a good 20-30% of
| Twitter's blue checkmarked journalists that I've never once
| interacted with or Tweeted at before.
|
| https://blocktogether.org/
|
| I could easily see being randomly blacklisted/blocked with no
| real understanding as to why you are blocked other than some
| well-connected person that you peeved off once had added to a
| shared blacklist. This likely already happens.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| >corporate organized blacklisting, which has been illegal for
| years.
|
| Does that mean Uber and Lyft sharing lists of drivers that have
| been banned from their platforms is illegal?
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Depends why they've been banned, probably.
|
| Corporate blacklisting is illegal, but there have been
| substantial carve-outs in the name of safety. DISA [1] is a
| great example of this - fail a drug test and you're banned
| from about 10% of the US economy for 7 years.
|
| [1] https://disa.com/why-disa
| trutannus wrote:
| Uber and Lyft drivers are technically external contractors.
| Not employees. As far ask I know, there's no law about
| sharing bad contractors names.
| kps wrote:
| In some jurisdictions, they are legally employees. 'Move
| fast and break laws' doesn't work everywhere.
| potions wrote:
| right. If this were illegal then so would be BBB, or
| Angie's List, or Yelp?
| makomk wrote:
| It's funny you should mention that. A few years back, the
| operation of the shared Twitter ban list used by the Twitter
| left was, ah, slightly disrupted by the fact that it was being
| run by a British person who thought the Data Protection Act
| didn't apply to them and eventually received a polite official
| letter pointing out how completely wrong they are. (For
| context, their justification for why it didn't apply were that
| they were storing the data on a US service which had no
| contractual obligation to protect the data, and the list
| contained just about every kind of information categorized as
| sensitive under the DPA in the comments field... sexual
| orientation, political affiliation, all sorts.)
|
| Anyway, I remember pointing out at the time that the Data
| Protection Act had been used to shut down corporate
| blacklisting efforts run by people with very good lawyers and
| much cleverer attempted loopholes than theirs, and that their
| chances of somehow finding a loophole where everyone else had
| failed were basically zero.
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