Thread

1. tolerance · 1789588420 · focus · HN ↗

   > Then came a threat. An account with a much larger following DM'd her and told her to take down the sign, or they would post about it to their local artist community. The person offered to help her find an artist to pay to make a new sign, or else they would post about it.

   > They gave her a day to "think about it."

   When this is sort of behavior that the "good guys" advance then it's hard not to expect a "bad guy" with money to show up on the scene and thwart it.

   1. ratelimitsteve · 1789588666 · focus · HN ↗

      why is talking about this with their community a threat?

      1. F3nd0 · 1789590613 · focus · HN ↗

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

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

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

         1. fakedang · 1789590882 · focus · HN ↗

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

            1. F3nd0 · 1789592193 · focus · HN ↗

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

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

               1. sippingabonedry · 1789596108 · focus · HN ↗

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

                  It's textbook extortion.

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

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

                  1. ratelimitsteve · 1789652056 · focus · HN ↗

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

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