Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

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I think that your point would be correct if businesses did not wield the enormous amount of power that they currently do. Who competes with Cloudfare right now? Who competes with AWS? There's already jokes about how if one of those services is down then the internet is down. While everyone might agree currently with getting rid of the Daily Stormer because they are assholes, the precedent and power is now set.

For the same reason is not ok for a public business to not make cakes for gay couples, we should not allow public businesses to pick and choose who is allowed to be part of the economy. If you want to argue against that, that is fine, but you have to accept it when people with the completely opposite set of morals start discriminating against _you_

edit: In case it wasn't clear, I am not a fan of Nazis, but I don't want to even set up the opportunity for businesses to have the power to just exclude me from normal day to day activity just because the CEO has decided he doesn't like whatever group I am in

Somebody started these companies. They are free to setup their own Nazi friendly servers and compete head to head.

And people said that gay people could make their own cake shops. Would you be fine with that?

Gay people can't choose not to be gay. People can, however, choose whether they're going to be part of a political movement dedicated to the oppression and eventual "cleansing" of large groups of people primarily based on things those people can't choose. I really don't get why you can't see a difference.

If gay people could choose not to be gay, would you have a different opinion about the cake shop?

I'd still think it's awful because I don't see being gay as a bad or immoral thing - there's pretty much no imaginable situation in which allowing gay people to exist unhindered causes damage to anyone. I'd suggest that if being gay were a conscious choice, the shop should have a right to refuse service to gay people, but again, I'd have a right to stand outside their shop with placards, shout about it in the news, etc etc.

On the other hand, allowing neo-nazis to go unhindered may quite reasonably result in people's deaths, so.

Why are you even going down this road? Human beings are tribal. Tribes based on "choice" and tribes based on our DNA. We form numerous institutions based on this fact. Stop pretending otherwise. If I don't initiate force against you, you have no right to initiate force against me. If I don't want to trade with you, you have no right to demand me to trade with you. Why are we overlooking something that should be taught in Kindergarten???

The crucial difference that many people in this partly appalling thread (and partly even more appalling, mind-bogglingly fascist moderation) don't get is that gay people have not committed a Holocaust against 6 million Jews and also do not generally sympathize with people who advocate genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc.

This thread is so full of false analogies, it's unbelievable.

Should any business be obliged by law to make business with and thereby indirectly support advocates of genocide and racism? Should any business be forced to make business with Nazis, Red Khmer, Stalinists, etc.? If your answer is Yes, then I have bad news for you. No need to spell it out, though, as it's obvious...

Define "fine"? I believe that bigots should have the right to be bigots.

I'm genuinely shocked at how some people can so blithely, and possibly obliviously, throw out textbook pro-discrimination arguments when the target of the discrimination is something they don't happen to support.

Society is self-regulating, it's important to avoid herd-mentality within society, and that's why people talk about protecting free-speech, but when everyone agrees that something is not ok, e.g. sexual harrasment is not ok and shouldn't be protected by free speech, then there's really not a problem with allowing these rules to exist. A society where everything is ruled by some sacred maxims, like some sort of philosophical school, doesn't exist, life isn't that simple.

Let's say you own a café. The local political youth group "Club Hitler" submits a proposal to have their weekly meetups in your venue. You agree, and they host a number of meetups. They then begin to publicize your venue's support for the Nazi cause as part of their promotional materials.

At what point in this process do you think it would be been morally appropriate for you to cancel your service to this group?

There exist laws which were explicitly written to address that kind of specific situation. If someone communicate a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual person, business, product, or group, that someone can be charged under defamation laws.

Let say a local youth group submits a proposal to have their weekly meetups in your venue. They then begin to shoplift. What is the rational behavior to address this issue?

I would start by calling the police and report the crime. I could then start denying service to them (which casinos are known to do). But if I start to do general statements about any people which share identity, belief, political membership, or sexual orientation with the local youth group then I am likely stepping a bit to far into the realm of discrimination.

In a perfect world I think Cloudflare should have filed a police complaint in regard to the daily stormer and then canceled the account. Such decision would have nothing to do with regulating content, censorship, vigilante justice, or freedom of speech. It would just be a simple matter of a customer not obeying the law.

After I warn them that I will cancel the service if they don't stop falsely claiming I endorse the Nazi cause, and they ignore my warning.

Would it be an important matter of principle for you that you give them sufficient time to retract their claims, instead of terminating their service immediately?

Of course. Otherwise why even provide a service in the first place?

Lotharbot suggested the following standard, which I think makes good sense: if a business provides a generic product, they should not be able to discriminate in who they sell it to, and in turn, we as society recognize that they are not saying anything about support or disagreement with their customers' views by selling them things. If, on the other hand, a product involves customization and expression, the business can refuse customers for ideological reasons, and we can infer from their work what they support.

So a bakery making generic wedding cakes must provide them for everyone, and we as society are crystal clear that this does not imply the baker supports interracial marriage. However, a bakery providing custom cakes based on the couple cannot be compelled to write "Arranged marriage between children is beautiful" on a cake.

A web host is required to sell you webspace regardless of your content, unless it is actually illegal or contrary to technical and ideologically neutral terms of service. But a web design firm may decline to design a page for you based on its content.

I think this is a really good principle, and a great way to preserve both free speech and freedom of conscience.

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