posted in Technology
Hey Platforms: Your Violent Content Policies Are About To Meet The Pentagon’s Firing Squad
www.techdirt.com/2026/10/09/hey-platforms-your-violent-content-policies-are-about-to-meet-the-pentagons-firing-squad/Replying to @dermanus@lemmy.ca
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.)
Replying to @schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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?
Replying to @atrielienz@lemmy.world
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.
Replying to @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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.
Replying to @atrielienz@lemmy.world
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.