What a mystery. Abuse upsets people, and upset people leave businesses where they get upset. And those businesses ban the abusers?

What. A. Shock.

Let’s pretend this isn’t online space and is, instead, say, the local deli. People go there to get food and see that a fellow customer likes to abuse people. The staff of the deli do nothing about it. So now people stop going to that deli and go somewhere else. (Note: not just the people being abused, but people who witness the abuse going unchallenged by the owner.)

So let’s go over the decision-making process:

1. Say “meh” and let the abuser drive off multiple customers. (Lost customers: >> 1)
2. Ban the abuser from the premises. (Lost customers: 1)

Which is the approach that doesn’t kill the business?

Now jack up the paint job, insert an online space, lower the paint job. Do you think the calculus is any different?

And in case you think people don’t leave because of this kind of abuse, I dropped Twitter (loooooooooooooooong before Apartheid Manchild was its owner!) despite only rarely being the recipient of abuse. It was the culture of abuse that was everywhere, in practically every thread, that made me decide Twitter was a festering shitpile. (Again, even before the Manchild took it over.) Sure the abusers were a minority, but they were basically in any thread that was in any way public. And that just wasn’t the vibe I was interested in.