Hawker News

Platforms' Violent Content Rules Are About to Meet The Pentagon's Firing Squad

techdirt.com

59 pointsby hn_acker51 comments

mr_toad[3 comments hidden]
Look! There’s a dead cat on the table!

Don’t mind high oil prices, inflation and the debacle in Iran.

lioeters[hidden]
Not to mention the 'philes.
EA-3167[hidden]
You're also required to performatively react to this news without considering the track, record this administration has in the courts. You are NOT supposed to notice the repeating pattern that "Monday Trump says the war continues and makes threats, Mid-week escalation, Friday resolution with negotiation 'progress' or some kind of 'deal'."

DO NOT LEARN FROM THE LAST 10 YEARS. Just stay in a constant state of distracted anxiety without realizing how you're being cynically manipulated.

t1234s[2 comments hidden]
We need Monday Night Rehabilitation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLts-sXlLEM
pwarner[hidden]
Yeah between Mike Judge and The Simpsons all future is fortold.
whycome[hidden]
Live TV has allowed obscenities or graphic scenes when its for news/public interest (eg footage from war). It will be easy to use that as justification for this.
jawns[20 comments hidden]
I doubt this livestream will actually happen, but if it does, I hope people will realize ahead of time that this will not be enjoyable or entertaining to watch.

A paralyzed guy, sitting in a wheelchair, will be shot, slump over, die, blood will ooze from the wound, and then that's it.

His actions were murderous and atrocious, but there is no value in watching his life being extinguished in real time. Just because it is available to be seen doesn't mean it benefits us to see it.

I am afraid that many people will realize that too late and have to deal with the memory, if not the pangs of conscience, of having watched a snuff film.

password54321[hidden]
As I said in another thread. The point is to desensitise society before moving on to more extreme behaviour.
penskymaterial[10 comments hidden]
You've decided this unilaterally for everyone else, including the families of the unarmed service members who were murdered?

All executions should be public if not for transparency's sake.

wat10000[8 comments hidden]
If we have capital punishment, then executions should be public so that the public understands the weight of what's being done in their name. Unfortunately, that is very far from the reason this is being done here.

Edit: OK, apparently I can’t make a prescriptive statement without getting piled on with people saying that’s not how it actually is. Noted.

infamouscow[4 comments hidden]
You've been lied to your entire life about this.

Executions used to be public because people love watching bad people die. You might not like it because of some Englightenment-era idea to the contrary, but it's an inescapably true facet of human nature. The only reason Britain and France stopped holding public executions is the crowds eventually started to get too rowdy and governments needed to move them indoors.

The moral-outrage excuse was invented afterwards.

fc417fc802[3 comments hidden]
> s/bad people/the designated outgroup/

You seem to be overly optimistic about the average person's moral compass. It's entirely driven by mob mentality and an authority figure.

infamouscow[2 comments hidden]
Calling it 'mob mentality' is a strawman. Democracy is ultimately just two armies going to the ballot box to see which is bigger. The winner gets to write the laws and, by extension, define who the 'bad people' or 'outgroups' are. You can dress it up in moral terms, but majority rule is always going to look like a mob to the minority that lost.
fc417fc802[hidden]
No, those are different things. I was using mob mentality in the true sense there to describe the psychology of the individual participants.

Certainly that can also occur at the ballot box or in any of the processes leading up to it but that's far from a given.

How the resultant situation appears to any given minority will again vary. Regardless, appearance is not reality.

As to the response of the general public to any given enforcement action, no that can not typically be described as mob mentality. That's precisely why the situation of a public execution as a spectacle being discussed here is noteworthy. It is very much the exception.

In parting I will note that I don't think the term straw man quite means what you appear to think it does.

I'll also note that describing democracy as "two armies" is specific to the dysfunction that has developed in the US. It's not an accurate description of most modern democracies.

SmirkingRevenge[hidden]
That used to be the norm in many places and times. I don’t think it ever really cultivated public appreciation of its weight - and more like the opposite. It makes it lighter
ReptileMan[hidden]
What weight? Shooting someone is way more merciful than long prison sentence.
mrguyorama[hidden]
You should read some history.

The general public fucking loves watching executions. It used to be regular entertainment. They were massive events.

It was like going to the circus. You would bring your young children and goad them to cheer when the trap door opens.

Sating their bloodlust regularly will do nothing to undo their simple-mindedness.

We are barely literate and naked apes. We love violence.

The people who wanted to see this guy dying will thoroughly enjoy it, and teach their children to enjoy it. They will teach them that this is "Justice". They will feel fulfilled and heard and represented. They will literally feel safer, now that a "Bad guy" got solved just like in the movies and other stories.

Do you not realize how goddamned popular the torture porn of "24" was? Including to the Heritage Foundation which paid for the cast to come run a panel at one of their conventions? Including a supreme court justice who explicitly pointed at "24" as justification for allowing torture?

This isn't solely in conservative circles either. Right now you have lots of people who usually vote democrat showing that their only complaint about this administration's stupidity and crimes and crassness is that it isn't being used to oppress the specific rich people they want to watch die in agony.

Seriously though, you aren't the only person in this comment section taking this position, and I just cannot fathom how some of you missed this in every single part of history we know about. It wasn't subtle.

Natsu[hidden]
Executions are frequently public, the barrier is just that people have to attend in person, so relatively few people do so. Livestreaming is something new.
tencentshill[8 comments hidden]
It will happen on Truth Social. Did you forget the president OWNS a social network?
pluc[6 comments hidden]
bruh https://www.whitehouse.gov/trumptv/
ronsor[5 comments hidden]
That's just a YouTube embed
pluc[4 comments hidden]
No, it's a brand, a platform and societal acceptance. YouTube embed is just what it does now.
verdverm[3 comments hidden]
hardly anyone watches it (low 1000s), wouldn't be surprised to learn its just other news orgs looking for more news circle jerk stories or a bunch of bots there just for the comment feed / manipulation

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...

pluc[2 comments hidden]
Can you think of a promotional event that would be benefecial to that platform's notoriety
verdverm[hidden]
can you think of anything that would actually increase viewership long term?

or is it the audience of one taken to the extreme?

carefulfungi[hidden]
The one he wants to sell algo traders high speed front-runner access to for a smooth $100k a month?
hn_acker[4 comments hidden]
The original title is:

> Hey Platforms: Your Violent Content Policies Are About To Meet The Pentagon’s Firing Squad

ASalazarMX[2 comments hidden]
Pentagon solution: We are going to ex3c*te this man
dghlsakjg[hidden]
Oh man. That kind of self censorship BS is such a pet peeve of mine that I almost missed the point of your comment.
tomalbrc[hidden]
Not sure what is going on with these heavily editorialized titles recently.
majorchord[hidden]
Perhaps it will be streamed by Facebook or Reddit or some social media... they seem to like selective rule enforcement as it is. Or the government/Trump TV might host/stream it themselves.
klaff[hidden]
Capital punishment should be abolished. These people are yet another reason why.
penskymaterial[hidden]
You can only cry "muh terms of service" so many times before it's dismissed with a collective eyeroll.

Unfortunately they blew their wad back in 2020.

komali2[8 comments hidden]
> In theory, Hasan’s family could ask X to remove the video, and then the question is whether Elon would honor that request.

Why bother spending a blog post speculating like this and picking away at the rules? The platforms will all air the execution for the same reason all the tech CEOs attended Trump's inauguration.

valleyer[7 comments hidden]
I agree, though I still don't really know what that reason is. What is the point of fuck-you money if you won't use it to say "fuck you"?

Apple's execs, for instance, definitely had enough monetary and social capital to basically just ignore Trump, and they haven't.

bjornsing[4 comments hidden]
Fiduciary duty (to shareholders)?
valleyer[hidden]
That would be a steep hill for shareholders to climb, IMO. They'd have to prove that ignoring trump was not in shareholders' interest in the short term and (even harder) in the long term, right?

By your theory, couldn't (presumably other) shareholders sue over what Apple actually did? Like, maybe cowing to Trump has done damage to Apple's brand, in violation of fiduciary duty.

georgemcbay[2 comments hidden]
> Fiduciary duty (to shareholders)?

Even if that were a valid legal excuse (and it is not clear that it is), it doesn't hold up to moral scrutiny.

But realistically the reason they all bent the knee to Trump is probably not because they were cowards or because they wanted to protect their shareholders, but because they welcomed him being elected.

Partly because they knew it would kill off the anti-trust enforcement that was finally starting to gain steam with Lina Khan's FTC and partly because they are rich enough to play Trump's corruption game, where as long as you pay him off and linguistically publicly fellate him once in a while the world is your oyster.

fnimick[hidden]
So... you're saying that they are doing what they are doing because it benefits the company and makes the stock more valuable? Sounds like their fiduciary duty to me.

(I don't like it but that doesn't make it false)

jawns[hidden]
It's the prisoner's dilemma.

My guess is they'd all prefer to cooperate, but they know that if any of their competitors defect, then they're worse off for it. Plus, there are legal hurdles to direct cooperation among competitors.

We saw a show of uncoordinated unity after the Jan. 6 insurrection, but as soon as that unity showed signs of fraying, it became hard to sustain.

micromacrofoot[hidden]
apple was exempted from tariffs multiple times, they made a ton of money off of cozying up to him
ChrisArchitect[hidden]
Related:

Hegseth Wants Public to Watch First Firing Squad Execution Since WWII

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50011771

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013637

bolangi[3 comments hidden]
What a fig leaf! Hollywood has drenched its entertainment content with violence for generations. At the same time, concealing images of US and its allies war crimes.
WarOnPrivacy[hidden]
We engage with fictional violence of many types but are repelled by actual, unneeded violence. This seems like we're processing things properly.

    Old Guy Thoughts: In my experience, intellectual
    calculations of worthiness aren't intrinsically
    valuable. What is harmful are those things
    that turn out to be harmful. And that's it.

    For our calculations of what is harmful - those 
    fail all the time.
satellites[hidden]
What a straw man! Do you think pretend Hollywood violence is the same as real snuff films?