Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

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> Spare me the tired arguments that these private companies have a right to not serve customers at will.

Some people's hypocrisy doesn't undermine the core principle of freedom of association.

There is a lawsuit where a mining company owned an entire town, including the roads. A Jehova's witness won a lawsuit allowing them to distribute pamphlets there on the basis of free speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc

In any case, freedom of association shouldn't apply to online platforms. The average person isn't possessed by the illusion that any YouTuber's opinion is necessarily ratified by YouTube. If you don't want to hear someone's opinion nor associate with them, then you unfriend/block/unsubscribe. On the other hand, freedom of speech is very relevant from a practical standpoint.

For pretty much every online community starting from the smallest web forums, you need an ability to remove unwanted content and people from that platform. Even platforms for very free, unrestricted discussion need to fight commercial spam and simple vandalism. The ability to have a community of group A for topics that interest group A requires effective moderation, i.e. the ability to remove unwanted topics and people from that forum, blocking them before the majority of the group have had to encounter that unwanted content, otherwise you have a very, very poor experience full of spam that kills the forum, and that is very relevant from a practical standpoint.

For some of that content the proper answer is "go have your community somewhere else"; for other content (e.g. penis enlargement spam and people who post it) there probably is no community that wants them, and for that freedom of speech consists of being able to freely speak on a soapbox somewhere where all the 0 people who want to hear you can do it.

If I start a company that allows users to upload content over the internet, is it your contention that I should not be within my rights to control what is stored and who is allowed to use my services?

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