Yet another Hacker News

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

36 points hn_acker 1 hour ago 35 comments

hn_acker 1 hour ago | parent

The original title is:

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

ASalazarMX 31 minutes ago | parent

Pentagon solution: We are going to ex3c*te this man

penskymaterial 54 minutes ago | parent

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 52 minutes ago | parent

> 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 49 minutes ago | parent

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 45 minutes ago | parent

Fiduciary duty (to shareholders)?

valleyer 39 minutes ago | parent

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 29 minutes ago | parent

> 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 5 minutes ago | parent

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 28 minutes ago | parent

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.

jawns 39 minutes ago | parent

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 37 minutes ago | parent

As I said in another thread. The point is to desensitise society before moving on to more extreme behaviour.

penskymaterial 37 minutes ago | parent

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 31 minutes ago | parent

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.

Natsu 18 minutes ago | parent

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 36 minutes ago | parent

It will happen on Truth Social. Did you forget the president OWNS a social network?

pluc 31 minutes ago | parent

bruh https://www.whitehouse.gov/trumptv/

ronsor 30 minutes ago | parent

That's just a YouTube embed

pluc 28 minutes ago | parent

No, it's a brand, a platform and societal acceptance. YouTube embed is just what it does now.

verdverm 17 minutes ago | parent

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...

carefulfungi 19 minutes ago | parent

The one he wants to sell algo traders high speed front-runner access to for a smooth $100k a month?

t1234s 30 minutes ago | parent

We need Monday Night Rehabilitation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLts-sXlLEM

bolangi 29 minutes ago | parent

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 27 minutes ago | parent

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.

whycome 28 minutes ago | parent

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.

penskymaterial 26 minutes ago | parent

Reddit and other major sites are filled with gore, weird pornography, and all sort of atrocities imaginable.

Don't forget diaper fetish communities.

But this is where the pearls are clutched hardest?

ygjb 17 minutes ago | parent

glanced sideways at 40 years of media documenting and using televised state sponsors violence as satire and dystopia

I wonder what could possibly go wrong by setting the precedent for the state to execute people by firing squad on national news.

penskymaterial 15 minutes ago | parent

You can search major news right now and watch Saddam Hussein having his neck broken, that was at the bleeding edge of video streaming.

This is a natural evolution of technology.

How many people outraged at this have clicked out of a tab of streaming toilet cams? It's greater than zero I assure you.

tokai 7 minutes ago | parent

If you don't understand the differences between journalistic considerations of a news organisation versus a government, then up is down and nothing matters. Its a completely unserious position you have.

majorchord 25 minutes ago | parent

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.

ChrisArchitect 24 minutes ago | parent

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

klaff 8 minutes ago | parent

Capital punishment should be abolished. These people are yet another reason why.

mr_toad 4 minutes ago | parent

Look! There’s a dead cat on the table!

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