Hey Platforms: Your Violent Content Policies Are About To Meet The Pentagon’s Firing Squad

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?

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.