Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Free speech is vitally important, but this decision has nothing to do with it. Yiannopoulos can still speak and write in many other public places, including any public part of the US, his own personal blog, and any other unrestricted platform (such as Facebook).

Twitter is selling a product, and they have a right to decide what kind of product it is. They have a right to decide what their brand is connected to. If you argue that free speech requires private companies to be neutral toward everyone who wants to use them as a medium, you're also arguing that newspapers must publish any editorials that are sent to them. You're arguing that TV networks accept all ads, no matter how repugnant, and that phone carriers allow stalkers to contact anyone they wish.

People should be willing to die to defend free speech, but let's also be clear on what is and isn't actually an attack on free speech. Yiannopoulos is a troll, and Twitter (in the interest of their shareholders) should have started banning people like him a long time ago.

hmmm.... It certainly has nothing to do with the first amendment protections since twitter is a private company, but - at least from my POV - it does have to do with censorship, bias, and, depending on how you define it, free speech.

Yes! It absolutely is censorship and bias. I agree with that. But private corporations are allowed to censor and be biased.

That's why a bar can kick you out for screaming racial slurs if they want to: it hurts their business by making their customers unhappy. That's also why corporations can donate to any political cause that they want. Some private corporations exist only to be biased! The ACLU is an example.

"Free speech" means, to me, the freedom to speak without fear. Twitter has not given Yiannopoulos a reason to fear speaking. He's just no longer free to use Twitter as a broadcast medium. It's like if Twitter lent him a huge megaphone that said "TWITTER" on it, listened to what he said, and then decided they didn't want him to have it anymore.

Is it really censorship if they're only "targeting" people who happen to be rude to other users? Or personalities who encourage their followers to do so enmass.

The only difference between Twitter and old school BBSes in this case is reach. You still need to break out the ban hammer sometimes or it turns into a cesspool.

I’d like to posit this scenario to everyone, and hear your responses:

A privately-held telecom provider (i.e. utility) disagrees with my political views. As a result my internet service is terminated.

Let's agree the definition of a public utility is "Furnishes an everyday necessity to the public at large".

Has the provider restricted my First Amendment right?

At what point (if ever) would you consider Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter public utilities?

It doesn't make sense as an analogy to this situation. Public utilities are usually public (at least in the US) because they need to be monopolies. You can't have 10 companies running competing power lines throughout a city, so you have one. Because you only have one, it gets heavily regulated to ensure fairness. The same is true of broadcast frequencies.

Public utilities more commonly exist as oligopolies–not dissimilar to the social media market, in which the number of (major, national) firms can be counted on one hand.

The difference is that where you live you can't choose another utility provider, so they are in a way localized monopolies.

On the internet you can choose whatever service you like.

In your scenario: Yes.

Is Twitter or any other application layer non-government service on the internet a utility? No.

So is this what happened? No.

They didn't ban him for his political views, nor are they a utility.

They did ban him for his political views. But it's clever how you snuck in that one subjective statement into an otherwise objective line of reasoning.

They did not ban him for his political views. They banned him for impersonating tweets of another user, and for leading a harassment campaign against other users. Nothing to do with his political views.

> They did ban him for his political views.

No, they banned him for soliciting harassment, not for the views which motivated the solicitation of the harassment.

That policy is used to silence dissenting opinion. Don't spread this PR. It's equivalent to police claiming they detained you for a broken tail light. Dorsey and his Saudi owners are on a purge.

You have it backwards.

I believe you are referring to twitter being used to silence a dissenting opinion when you said "that policy", in reference to Nero. I actually think it's the other way, the bullying sent toward the SNL actresses' way, the sexist and homophobic comments, those were actually meant to silence a dissenting view, someone those people did not like.

Stopping bullying is a good thing. No good comes from bullying someone you don't like.

Nero's alt-right followers "actually meant" to ridicule her. Twitter actually silenced him.

That's why they banned Jones as well. Oh wait, they didn't. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA44q8W_Xt0

I would like to change your scenario to one that more closely mirrors the situation at hand: You are using their service to harass other users. Your targeted harassment of these other users causes them to cancel the service.

Or, lets go for something simpler: Spam. You're using the telcom provider to send out spam. They cut you off for it.

> It certainly has nothing to do with the first amendment protections since twitter is a private company

I disagree. Because Twitter is a private company (and not a public utility), their being able to make this kind of decision is central to what the first amendment is about.

> it does have to do with censorship

Of course it has to do with censorship. Anytime a someone who owns an outlet chooses to allow or not allow their private channel to be used in a particular way, it has to do with censorship.

> Free speech

> article: a day after he incited his followers to bombard Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones with racist and demeaning tweets.

That sounds like fighting words[1] to me. Which, at least under the American constitution, is not covered by FoS. There's going to be internet fallout though, on the internet FoS is synonymous with "say whatever I want to say."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words

It wasn't really fighting words. Yiannopoulos is smart and may have had some legal advice on top of that, so he never does anything that crosses the (legal) line.

"Inciting" was a reference to the effect he created, without suggesting that we can be certain it was intentional.

I realized my mistake while smoking, you beat me to the edit/delete.

> legal

Is there any way for his lawyers to know for certain? Online harassment is still incredibly murky in terms of precedent.

> It wasn't really fighting words. Yiannopoulos is smart and may have had some legal advice on top of that, so he never does anything that crosses the (legal) line.

Fighting words are not illegal (unless specifically prohibited by statute), they are just outside the Constitutional protection against regulation. So, you could engage in fighting words without crossing any legal line.

But, even if it is protected speech, freedom of speech means that private parties (like Twitter) are generally free to choose not to relay your speech, too.

smt88 is entirely correct. In fact, his arguments in this thread are excellent, and there's nothing I want to add. Rights are a political concept, and the right to free speech is entirely an issue of government censorship. A private company witholding a service from you cannot infringe your rights.

Within that context, I want to point out that an action can be within your rights, but still be morally wrong. Influential private companies can create an anti-free-speech culture. This doesn't directly infringe on people's rights, but it paves the way for anti-free-speech legislation.

My other disagreement is whether your internet provider could shut off your internet, and not be infringing your rights. I say 'yes': you and your ISP have a right to sign whatever contract you want, and they can set whatever limitations they want on your use of their property (as can newspapers and online services). The rational way for consumers to deal with is not to get the state to step in, but to push for 'no censorship' contracts.

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