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Comment by justinlaster | Hacker News Reader

A private company is refusing to do business with a particular publishing entity. How is that censorship? How am I advocating we just shut them down? I said I don't see it as frightening that a private advertising company would do such a thing, nor do I find it frightening that other publishing entities would attempt to call out Breitbart on their yellow journalism, and I'm not afraid to condemn Breitbart for their spectacularly immoral publications.

There is also a significantly small number of people that most likely use Buzzfeed as their primary news source, especially in relation to politics. So I'm not sure why you're attempting to draw a comparison there.

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What is the logical conclusion of your position if not censorship?

edit: in response to the second part about Buzzfeed, just in this thread there is someone with your stance on this who is advocating for them as a news source. Maybe a coincidence, but I'd say that speaks to it not being a "significantly small" amount.

The logical conclusion is obvious. We as private citizens, companies, and whatever have you, can denounce Breitbart and refuse to patronize them in anyway. We can spread awareness about the practices they use, and the people they employ. I will continue to denounce them until they prove they're willing to amend corrections to their articles, admit their mistakes, hire journalists with some amount of integrity, and cease their love affair with yellow journalism.

To claim I am calling for censorship is really kind of a cheap shot and completely distracting to the actual issues being discussed.

We don't allow businesses to ignore other ethical responsibilities - private companies theoretically aren't allowed to discriminate against or assault people. We shouldn't allow private companies - especially companies that effectively act as common carriers - to shape the messages we're allowed to see.

If your ISP refused to carry, eg, The Guardian because of the fake Duggan headline, would you be pissed off? I would.

Strawman / slippery slope.

This isn't an ISP blocking free speech, discriminating against minorities, nor assaulting anyone. It's an ad network that stopped doing business with a company that violated policies.

They're both common carriers. And I don't think there's a policy that's been violated - if there is please let us know since it's likely to be applied to a lot of sites on both sides of politics.

Genuinely curious: do you know precedent that supports the idea of an ad network considered a common carrier? I've seen people claim the same of websites like Facebook or Twitter, but I haven't seen evidence for this either. I've looked for some, but admittedly not extensively.

Was actually thinking of Twitter and FB rather than ad networks. Sorry, I appreciate original article was discussing ad networks, however same argument (no moral expectation of speech for private businesses) is always used to allow Twitter to inconsistency ban accounts that don't meet SF political mores.

Thanks for clarifying. It's still not clear to me that a website is a common carrier. Do you have a reference I can look at regarding the "no moral expectation…" argument?

Re 'no moral expectation of speech for private businesses', a frequent argument made against free speech is that free speech is only required to be enforced by the government, the first amendment doesn't apply to private companies. This is true, but assumes there is no moral imperative to compel private companies to enforce free speech.

Thanks for expanding. A related concept that I find powerful is that what is legal is not the same as what is moral or ethical.

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