Hey Platforms: Your Violent Content Policies Are About To Meet The Pentagon’s Firing Squad
3 days ago by dermanus to c/technology
Imagine thinking a government is so fundamentally violent and unjust that you're motivated to kill 13 people at random in protest.
Then you're in jail and wondering if you did the right thing, tortured by doubt.
Then they announce your live-streamed firing squad execution and you're like, "yeah..."
(And this in the fantasy scenario where Hassan was only tortured by doubt.)
I already don't believe in the death penalty, but this shit is absolutely wild to me. Why are we using a firing squad in 2026? Who the hell decided to bring that back?
The low-T manbaby in charge of the Department of War. Totally on brand.
I've seen it argued that it might actually cause less pain and therefore be more humane than lethal injection even if it looks less clean, though not being an expert in how people die or how quick it is when someone is shot, I can't verify that. Personally though, I agree, I just dont feel like death can be a good thing and if you can execute someone, you sorta definitionally have them captured and under your control anyway, making justifications like preventing future violence irrelevant.
That doesn't take into consideration the damage it does to you as an individual when you have to be part of a firing squad. Part of the reason they fell out of fashion was because of the psychological effects on the people carrying them out.
That's not even to mention the fact that they can be botched (just like lethal injection), and I don't believe that being shot several times is humane in any way.
I assume that psychological issue would apply to any sort of executioner regardless of the method, there's not really a way around that if you're killing someone, there has to be a person, or likely several, that actually does the deed, or at least is the last human to be involved in it. I don't think its humane either, I just meant that in the relative sense where anything can be said to be if the other thing being compared can find a way to be just a bit worse.
I think the tradition is to have one blank bullet in one of the rifles so people can kid themselves into believing they didn't kill someone.
To your second point, with the way things have been handled these last few years, it would not surprise me in the least if those events were to transpire.
The newscasters will have to break the deep, mournful silence following the second shot. I hope the shooters prepare for the eventuality.
Otherwise, those horrid, panicked moments will stretch on for eternity. "What do we do?" Will be carved into their expressions, it will guide their jerky, indecisive movements. The senior enlisted leader of the execution squad will have to make a decision. And what's another pull of a trigger for an old veteran?
It won't have been done to avenge the victims, or in honor to his fallen brothers in Fallujah, Helmand, or Aden. It will have been done because he was presented with a problem, and had the tools, the abilities, and the wisdom under pressure to carry it out.
That doesn't take into consideration the damage it does to you as an individual when you have to be part of a firing squad. Part of the reason they fell out of fashion was because of the psychological effects on the people carrying them out.
One could argue that's why it's better. Executioners shouldn't get a clean conscience by lying to themselves.
Hegseth is doing this.
Nidal Hasan was a psychiatrist working with US soldiers. Guess where he got the idea?
Wonder how many advertisers will be happy to subsidize the spectacle.
They'll ignore the rules like they always do for the violent right.
As I said elsewhere, ISP’s and streaming platforms should refuse to carry it; FB and IG and things like that should smack it down as soon as it pops up.
They've been showing all kinds of extreme content, why would they care about this particular example?
I mean, I know why they'd suddenly care about this example in the "civilised" world. But that's kind of the point.
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They will immediately bend over backwards and give government accounts special treatment to post anything they want, because billionaires are fascists. Big Tech's TOS are made up rules that have no legal binding and have no requirements to be fair or applied evenly.
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