It could be a collective defense mechanism. The idea of animal intelligence being a threat to what many people perceive as the necessary status quo of being able to endlessly consume the resources of nature without consequence.
In the wake of an unprecedented attack on the core institutions of a democracy; forums and websites that were being used to plot violence against lawmakers are discovering that all available sources of pressure on them to change their behavior are being exercised?
The Parler dudes are just lucky that they haven't been arrested for material support of terrorism yet.
There is also the viewpoint that bitcoin was a crime from beginning to end. That the goals of it's creation were to provide an unpreventable vector for money laundering. That it's current function of undermining the dollar order is also an intended result.
And let us not; in this age of ecological collapse, forget the emissions impact of cryptocurrencies.
Is it the phone people are addicted to, or the media available through it?
Especially Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter. All of which seem designed to cultivate obsessive compulsive behavior in their users with social proof, intermittent rewards and a builtin hedonic treadmill.
So if you are wondering why Clearview is so bad specifically for black people; it might help to know that the company has extensive ties to Right-wing white supremacists. And that many of those relatioinships were formed in Peter Thiel's orbit.
What we're seeing is a "stochastic insurgency" where loosely affiliated groups and individuals conceive, plan and execute infrastructure attacks and targeted assassinations. Relatively little operational coordination; but lots of online showing support and post-crime support.
I hope all congressional representatives and local government officials are reviewing their safety plans.
Construction companies seem to do fine even though building codes exist.
It's not uncommon for a mature industry to face a reckoning around damaging practices that were common when they were nascent industries.
Would you like to live below a dam that was built under a loose and permissive regulatory regime? How about storing sensitive personal data in a datacenter whose owner specifically disclaims liability for it's exposure?
This is an idea that should be explored more fully. The downside is that it will make information technology a much less freewheeling and innovative field.
Remember that these individuals are usually hired and given responsibility based on their ability to game class signalling games; they exist to justify the status quo.
If the status quo were more justifiable their actual job responsibilities to other people within the organization ( conflict resolution, scheduling, resource allocation, and personnel management) are things that could be automated in a hot minute.
I wonder how long until we see the first lawsuits for stock price manipulation using this feedback loop?
If an unscrupulous executive were to make factually true statements that were engineered to mislead automated assessment algorithms so that they or their associates could buy the dip.
Imagine if an automobile manufacturer allowed you to configure the safety features of your car and had the defaults set to unsafe but convenient values to help sell vehicles... do you think the manufacturers should evade liability?
This is all the result of confusing 1st amendment rights with the right to access the audience that gathers at a particular URL.
What Taibbi is asking for is that the guy who tells you that drinking rat poison is good for you should be allowed an audience and that even putting a warning alongside the video would be an infringement on his rights.
Looking at the comments here I have to conclude that HN is no longer on board critical thinking much less common sense.
Well, of course billionaires don't directly exploit people. They just build systems and take advantage of large scale features of the social environment that exploit people.
It's a completely different morally.
I mean, you can't hold airbnb responsible for either the housing crunch or any part of the homelessness crisis. They just created a system that allows landlords to cash in on high-return short term rentals. The negative externalities created by the mass adoption of their platform cannot be landed on their moral accounting. It's totally obvious.