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Comment by dilap | Hacker News Reader

But I think Youtube is a public space, one of the most important ones there is right now. The fact that it is owned by a large corporation rather than a government is immaterial.

I also think the power Google of today wields over my life is probably comparable to the power the government of 1789 wielded over its citizens.

Is it really wise to so readily accept arbitrary behavior from Google just because they're a private company? At a certain point, companies become big and powerful enough that I think it's reasonable to hold them to similar standards as governments.

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You thinking YouTube is a public space doesn't make it so, even if you put is in italics.

YouTube is a company. It has employees, a business model, and a TOS. It decides what is acceptable content. You are free to patronize another video site if you don't like it.

In the 90s, if you argued your local mall was a public space because a lot of people spent time there and that's where the conversation was happening, you would be just as wrong.

In a certain sense, a mall is a public space, though. Meaning, you can't exclude people simply because they belong to a protected class. A privately-owned mall is very different from a privately-owned home or club in that regard.

I don't see why you could exclude people from a private club due to their protected class either. Homes are not businesses. This isn't convincing.

Are you disputing whether they should be allowed according to our current laws, or whether they actually exist? There are plenty of women-only or men-only or black-only or Jewish-only or Chinese-only or ... etc. private clubs/organizations. For example Augusta National Golf Club only recently admitted women, and solely due to public pressure / protest; not due to any legal requirement as far as I know.

Whether they should. I'm absolutely sure there exist organizations that break the law exist (sidestepping the issue of whether or not this does break the law).

Actually, some US states (including California, Massachusetts and Colorado) have concluded that malls are equivalent to public "Main Street" space and must be open venues for public speech. This notion is disputed elsewhere. See https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/12/22/protests-first-amen...

Too bad malls are on the decline.

The monster called Alphabet needs to be shaken down by the governments.

Your argument doesn't hold up as long as there are compeditors. When you start needing government or regulator approval and it comes qith strings attached, things change.

Yes. This. So Much Of It.

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