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
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.
Replying to @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
Historically that’s also why we moved away from execution methods like hangings.
We kind of distilled down a way to remove people from the equation as much as possible to both I guess spread responsibility (making a large group of people have a hand in the execution to the point where no one person is singularly responsible), but also we seem to have gone out of our way to automate a lot of what goes into an execution to sterilize it of guilt as much as possible. This is at least part of why I don’t believe in it.
I feel that execution is vengeance based. It’s not about making the person pay for their crimes (because very often prison is a worse experience than death).
Justice is about repaying a debt to society and being rehabilitated. If rehabilitation is off the table then the next best thing is to incarcerate a person so they can’t be a threat to themselves or others.
The US is terrible at both somehow and I don’t like or believe in our justice system but for a bar that was already in the basement we sure did find an elevator headed down didn’t we.
Replying to @atrielienz@lemmy.world
Lately I’ve come to have doubts about the ethicality even of prison, though I don’t yet know what I’d suggest instead. In general Ive come around to the idea that the very notion that causing suffering creates a “debt” that must be repaid with more suffering on the part of the perpetrator is itself toxic, because if some way can be found to cause a person to live a life that will not inflict more harm without hurting that person, then that method would be better, at least in a utilitarianist sense, than something more “fair” relying on punishment. The challenge of course is in finding that way is.