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Official Response: Request to Freeze Canadian Edge Users’ Accounts
- basisword 5y agoWhat a childish response and a great way to invite future regulation. I’m not an Edge customer but if I was I wouldn’t be anymore. Why would I entrust my money with a company that ignores the law and responds in memes?
- ren_engineer 5y ago>What a childish response and a great way to invite future regulation why should private citizens have to lick the boots of government officials when they make stupid demands? They deserve mockery and being able to mock authority without fear of reprisal is the foundation of democracy >I’m not an Edge customer but if I was I wouldn’t be anymore you aren't their target market
- parkingrift 5y agoYou would rather store your money with an institution that would freely comply with a request to have your assets frozen without due process? To each their own, I guess.
- basisword 5y agoI would prefer to store my money with an institution that follows the laws of my country. That seems pretty sensible.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoWhat would you want your institution to do when the government decides that your money is no longer yours because you supported somebody they don't like? That is what is happening here. A government attempt to silence dissidents.
- familymart 5y ago[dead]
- philistine 5y agoTake a chill pill. The money is frozen, not seized.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoIf you don't have absolute control of your money it isn't yours.
- oh_sigh 5y agoIs it against the law for a US company to say "No" to a "request" by the Canadian government? Does edge even have a presence in Canada or need to follow Canadian laws(if the request is actually a demand)?
- cldellow 5y agoTo me, it's not even clear from that article that Edge received a request from the Canadian government. This reads more as good PR / linkbait to get eyeballs.
- berberous 5y agoThey are not ignoring the law: “And most importantly, we can’t even if we wanted to.” Sounds like they are a non-custodial wallet or similar. While they may truly believe the law is amoral and are in part happy to make that statement, this is primarily a marketing stunt for the pro-privacy and unseizable aspects of self-custodied crypto wallets.
- djbusby 5y agoThey should have opened with the facts. Then put the meme. Plus, that wasn't even the best "no" meme to choose.
- berberous 5y agoI’ve never heard of them and everyone in this thread now has. I think they succeeded with the marketing stunt. If they led with the facts it wouldn’t have been as viral as it leverages people’s extreme interest in this political issue.
- basisword 5y agoI’d never heard of them. Now I have and know to never use them.
- laverya 5y agoPresumably because "government not able to seize my money" >>>>> "government able to seize money of my opponents". (I am not an Edge customer either)
- fallingknife 5y agoIt's amazing how many people don't understand "government can take money from people I don't like" == "government can take money from me"
- irthomasthomas 5y agoI envy you that you aren't aware of the intimate relationship between crypto and memes. Cryptobros talk in memes. They love this. Thumbing your nose to the legacy governments and establishment is de rigueur.
- Waterluvian 5y agoNot sure what Edge is but clearly it’s a deeply unserious organization that uses memes to respond to serious (and absolutely worthy of debate) requests.
- bpodgursky 5y agoThe Canadian government is a deeply unserious organization that abuses emergency powers to lock people out of the financial system. > and absolutely worthy of debate No, it's worthy of ridicule, which is the right move here.
- jazzyjackson 5y agosmall-time crypto- exchange getting some free press for itself
- peter_retief 5y agoSo they want to get good press, good luck to them, I now know who they are.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoRight. I'd also never heard of them before. Now I have.
- peter_retief 5y agoActually a little funny.
- TMWNN 5y agoWhy did you post the same comment as by user kajal7052?
- Waterluvian 5y agoI didn’t read the comments.
- stefan_ 5y agoWhen nobody has even requested anything of you but you find it's a great opportunity to make your mark among the various bag holders. (If only these people would actually use the decentralized tools they can't stop talking about, they wouldn't need some exchange posting memes to reassure them)
- ohCh6zos 5y agoI'm very anti-crypto, but if governments are going all tyrannical they do have a point about seizure resistance.
- DethNinja 5y agoThis is nowhere near edgy enough as the nunchuk's response: https://twitter.com/nunchuk_io/status/1494885897577271299 https://twitter.com/nunchuk_io/status/1494885897577271299
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SSilver2k2 5y agoOof. Not a good look for edge. I'll be the first to admit I think this protest is about a bunch of idiots with a victim complex. They should just get the vaccine like 90% of the rest of their profession have done. It's safe and is what anyone should do to help their fellow humans. The Emergencies Act is law. If Edge wants to do business in Canada they have to follow it. I don't see this ending well for them. Maybe I'm an old curmudgeon, but I also don't want to see ANY financial company using memes in an official press release.
- nafix 5y agoAs a mid-30s sw engineer, I’d say it’s a good look. I hate professional facades and meme’ing is how people communicate now. I’d also say the first part of your your last statement is probably correct, in that you might be an old curmudgeon ;)
- basisword 5y agoNot OP but dropping a professional facade is often the first step on the road to actually becoming unprofessional. Not something you want from a company dealing in finance.
- whatshisface 5y agoIt's cryptocurrency.
- endisneigh 5y agoI’m sure you’ll begin to appreciate professionalism when your employer starts trying to pay you in memes
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoOr crypto.
- djbebs 5y agoIt's not a good look for the Canadian government.
- superfunny 5y agoKudos to Edge. This is a ridiculous request.
- basisword 5y agoIf it’s the law it’s not a request is it? More of a command or face the consequences.
- quotemstr 5y agoAre there not situations in which we're obligated not to follow the law? Every tyranny in history has been legal.
- bufferoverflow 5y agoSlavery was legal at some point.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoYes. Any law that breaks the highest law of the land is invalid and should be disobeyed. However, as long as there is a tyrannical government willing to enforce invalid laws there are still consequences for breaking them.
- whythre 5y agoBad laws should be disobeyed. That is the point of civil disobedience in the first place.
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
- polski-g 5y agoEdge is not a Canadian corporation. They are not Canadian citizens. If Canada wants them to do something, they should get a US Court order.
- margalabargala 5y agoWhen this protest started, people were complaining that the government was approaching the protest with relative tolerance compared to things like pipeline protests. Well, now protestors are being arrested and their accounts being frozen. They're no longer being treated nicely compared to environmental protestors. While I don't agree with their stance, I do think that "we should not have a vaccine mandate" is a valid political opinion, and I support people being able to protest in support of their opinion. Yes, it's legal to freeze the funds. The list of net-negative-for-society things perpetrated that have been legal in the jurisdictions in which they occurred is long. I would rather these protestors, environmental/pipeline protestors, and generally all other protestors be treated gently rather than quashing protest. Canada's laws protecting protestors are much more limited than those in the USA. If the Canadians have decided that this is how they would like their country to operate, that is their right, but I would hope that this sort of thing never happens in the US regardless of the cause.
- kennywinker 5y ago> now protestors are being arrested Environmental protesters are FREQUENTLY arrested, so if you’re upset about these arrests at least have the decency to also be upset about these ones last year: https://thenarwhal.ca/rcmp-arrests-wetsuweten-media-photos/ https://thenarwhal.ca/rcmp-arrests-wetsuweten-media-photos/
- csee 5y agoI am not upset about the arrest of any protester if their protest escalates into significant economic damage or other types of harm. That's when it graduates from protest to terrorism. But they should be swiftly tried with a specific crime in a court of law. That's due process and liberal democracy working as it should. Freezing assets without due process is a new thing which should be resisted as it's tyrannical and unchecked. Not good.
- kennywinker 5y ago> if their protest escalates into significant economic damage or other types of harm. That's when it graduates from protest to terrorism. First of all, look up the definition of terrorism. It’s not “thing you think is bad”. Pretty integral to terrorism is violence. No violence or threat of violence, no terrorism. Second, all protest causes economic harm - successful protest causes significant economic harm. Your line of thinking would have you condemn friggin’ Gandhi, a globally renowned and much celebrated peaceful revolutionary. His entire non-violent protest movement relied heavily on inflicting economic damage. E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March
- kache_ 5y agoMove your coins to your own wallet. Use Monero. Exchanges should be simply used as fiat onramps and offramps. It's only a matter of time
- hirundo 5y agoAs a boomer I had to do a visual search to translate the meme. Apparently it is a magic conch shell on SpongeBob and my cultural literacy is deteriorating.
- kennywinker 5y agoI’m very very anti “freedom convoy” but even I thinks seizing assets and freezing accounts is a bridge too far
- Beltalowda 5y agoWhat is the given rationale behind it? I didn't really follow the news on this very closely as it's very far removed from my part of the world, but can't they just walk up to the protestors and say "knock it off mate, or we'll arrest ya"?
- kennywinker 5y agoNo a clue, honestly. They didn’t need to seize assets or declare an emergency to send in armed forces to remove pipeline protesters last year, so it’s confusing why they’ve been treating this with such theatrics.
- chickenimprint 5y agoThey are able to freeze assets suspected of being used to fund criminal activity. This only applies to the corporate accounts of the owners of the trucks and the millions of dollars raised by mostly US-based anti-vaxxers. If Antifa activists were to recieve 6 figures from mostly Chinese communists with the express intent to use those funds to cause economic damage, some of the commentators here might react differently. Of course there have been ample warnings, including the handing out of leaflets detailing the unlawful offenses. Many people were ticketed and arrested at border crossing protests, including 11 members of a splinter group, in posession of 13 long guns, ammunition, body armor and hand guns. The Ambassodor Bridge, accounting for ~30% of the cross-border land trade has since been cleared. The damage is estimated at above $500M. Damages at border crossings in Alberta and Manitoba have been estimated at 48 and $73M respectively.
- kennywinker 5y agoI don’t actually care which country wants to fund anti-facism. If you’re not anti-fascism, you’re the problem. And before anyone hit’s the “i’m not anti-anti-fascist, i’m anti-antifa” there IS no antifa. You can’t join antifa, you can’t donate to antifa, they don’t give out member cards. It’s just a name people who are anti-fascism apply to themselves.
- kajal7052 5y ago
- BossingAround 5y agoResponse itself? Good. But responding with a meme? An institution that presumably holds my money? Oof.
- tylersmith 5y agoThey don't hold money, that's the entire point of their response.
- stevens37 5y agoI've never heard about them but like this.
- aaomidi 5y agoAm I the only one who thinks responding with a meme is actually perfect? Stupid requests get stupid answers.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tpoacher 5y agoSerious question: how does content get flagged in HN? I'm assuming it's a case of "if enough users flag a topic", but is there a moderator involved at all? Can a topic get 'unflagged' once flagged? Could this system be abused by planted shills who coordinate 'flagging' when something is posted that is detrimental to a company? I read the post, I see people's point here that responding with a meme is perhaps not appropriate for some audiences on a serious matter, but I personally didn't find it in bad taste, and would never consider this as grounds for 'flagging'. Especially since 'flagging' in this particular case effectively means "censorship" / "shadowbanning" (in that it causes the topic to be removed from the list of topics, but does not kill the link itself). Reminds me of that quote: "The best way to keep people obedient is to severely limit the scope of conversation, but allow very vivid conversation within that scope" Seems like the few people who spotted this topic before it was removed from the list are allowed to discuss this topic as passionately as they like, while the moderator sleeps quietly at night knowing nobody will ever discover this passionate conversation. What a weird world we live in.
- grzm 5y agoSee the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), in particular: > How are stories ranked? > The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way. > Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action." and > What does [flagged] mean? > Users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN. > Moderators sometimes also add [flagged] (though not usually on submissions), and sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair. You might also find the guidelines helpful in answering your questions. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tpoacher 5y agoThanks gzrm! So effectively a single normal user can flag a submission. Interesting.
- yashg 5y agoThis childish response reminds me of Piratebay mocking legal notices and posting them on their website in the early days. Regardless of the legitimacy of the government's demand, such a response makes me feel it's being run by amateurs who don't realize the seriousness, power and reach of a sovereign government.
- mdoms 5y agoI tried to share this link with a group chat on Facebook Messenger and it was blocked.