The ethics of banning users from platforms.

Everyone deserves a second chance.

Upwork, Fiverr, Instagram, etc are monopolies though. If you want to freelance online and are banned from Upwork/Fiverr then you really have no other options aside from crappy knockoff sites with bad clients.

Hard to base it on trust when 99% of people use the platform just fine, but the 1% who are banned are a tiny disgruntled minority who are blamed for their own issues.

An example is someone I know is banned from Stripe for some reason and has to use some alternative sketchy credit card handler that drastically reduces his conversion rate. Me along with 99+% of people have no issues with Stripe, so as a whole nobody really cares (until it happens to them).

Platforms should ban people because they aren't a good fit. What I mean is that Twitter should ban you not for being "bad" because it's not their job to decide good from evil. It's their job to create a community that helps people love each other. The reddit model is the best. Allow different communities. Yes Reddit bans people, but that's inappropriate. Platforms should not ban anyone for anything. Instead they should limit such users to areas where they will be appreciated, such as with other racists.

This sounds like a terrible idea, but you have to realize, racist people are racist because they never learned that people have value. They do not understand how valuable a black person is, for example.

So here's my solution. Ban the user to a community of racist people. Let them share with all the racist people all their racist thoughts. Forgive them. Eventually they will realize how stupid they are. But it's not our job to make them. It's our job to love them.

When people do evil things, we should forgive. Sometimes we have to take actions to protect ourselves. But if people are just speaking, we should let them speak. When you suppress something, it grows stronger. It produces hate. It fuels revenge. Our country can find healing quicker if we let people say stupid things, just move them into an area where others want to hear it.

That's my opinion. I know it's unpopular. I just think that we should be kind to bad people, because that's the only way to teach them how to live. If our truth is so much better, why do we have to hurt people in order to get them to change? We should have better methods besides muzzling them (which a ban is, in effect). Property is smart. Have people talk on their own property to the people they want to. It should be a microcosm where people can leave or enter communities when they want to. If you hate racist communities, just hit "filter" and you won't see anymore racist content.

We should be kind to bad people and let them speak their mind. Then after a year or two, they'll get the toxins out and can move on from their racism. This is the best way to handle it because it heals people and helps them leave their racism, instead of just putting a muzzle on them. People have the right to speak. It's stupid to limit it. When we limit people's ability to speak we cause extreme pain in people who are already troubled. Think about it. People become racist because they grew up in a home where people were not valued properly. That's why people are racist. Because they suffered through years and years of poor treatment. They don't want to be at the bottom any more. So they push someone else there. The easy way to fix the problem is to treat people like their opinion matters so they'll stop hurting people. When you treat them that way they will come to learn that black people really are important. How? They will vent and get their anger out, then they'll be able to see that black people are normal people and forgive them. As black people forgive them, they prove that black people are, in fact, great people. But if you don't allow people to speak their mind, you don't give black people a chance to forgive. That forgiveness brings healing to the white person and makes change.

This is a revolutionary concept. When you begin to understand that forgiveness heals people you stop getting angry when people do bad things. Instead, you see it as an opportunity to heal them through love. EVERYBODY KNOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS BAD FOR YOU. THE COMMUNITIES ARE MODERATED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT HEALTHY. IT IS AUTHORITARIAN, NOT AUTHORITATIVE. They take on the role of a parent who tosses a bad kid in the closet because he cried. It is much easier to kill than heal, but healing is critical to getting where we want to be. When you ban a racist, he slinks back to his hate. But when you let him voice his opinion, people who are wiser than him can come along side and guide him into truth. They can help him learn to let go of the pain that he feels every day, that nobody loves him. They can help him learn that God loves him. And when I mean God, I mean whatever force created the world, whether that's Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or matter. When people are kind, they help people think differently, and help evaporate racist thoughts.

The danger with allowing people to speak is that they might convert people to their ways. I get that. It's a huge issue. We are all terrified of Hitler that we will allow another to come if we allow racist speech. However, Hitler could have been avoided if the European countries FORGAVE Germany for it's crimes. Nobody wanted Hitler, except the people who were angry about what the world had done to them. If the other countries had forgiven, Hitler would have been avoided.

Donald Trump arose for four years because a minority was angry that no one heard them. The traditional white people were being treated like they weren't important anymore, and laws to hurt them were created (hate crime laws specifically criminalize white people. Or at least that's the intent. All murder is hate). When you silence a powerful minority, it will rear it's head and fight back. That's why Trump won. The whole fiasco of Donald Trump hurting so many people could have been avoided if people would have honored white people and forgiven. But instead the minorities got angry and attacked. Shockingly, Trump signed a criminal reform bill, indicating that he forgave minorities to some extent. However, he lost his second bid for office, because he did not forgive. Specifically Black Lives Matter was a test sent by God to see what he would do. He chose to be angry and promote law over healing. He got booted because Biden chose to promote healing over hate.

We have to learn as a society that if we don't forgive, we won't be forgiven. People hate mods that purge evil. They aren't even right. Racism is a normal human event. Not being racist is a sign of extreme mental health. Most people aren't healthy. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to get people to look beyond family and kin. It's worth the effort though.

Thank you for reading this long response. I hope it has blessed you. I hope we can learn to forgive. By waiting patiently we accomplish more than all the killing in the world because we give healing a chance. I love you guys (and gals) and I hope everybody becomes an Indie Hacker Hero!

I agree. But someone should be able to say "I got banned because [insert reason]" and not "I have no clue why I'm banned". Close to every big tech company has 0 transparency as to why you're banned.

I read a story almost daily of someone getting banned from Fiver/Upwork/Gumroad and losing an income stream and not even knowing why.