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Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

> ..when their product category is fundamental to modern life.

FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

They aren't even fundamental to gaining an audience. Lots of businesses[1] manage to turn handsome profits without advertising on those platforms.

[1] And that's what infowars/milo are -- businesses looking for make a profit by producing social commentary and then selling ad space / books / videos / merch for more than it costs to produce the commentary.

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>FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

Neither are cakes. But people on left celebrating Facebook for doing what they want on their platform - seem quite similar to the people on the left also trying to get a baker forced to make a cake.

Can't have it both ways.

(edited for clarity)

To clarify, the baker had no problem providing a cake. The problem was compelling speech on the part of the baker to write certain things on the cake.

You can have it both ways. Positions can be motivated either by process out outcome. A process position is "businesses should/should not be able to deny service to people based on <whatever dispute>". An outcome position is "We should protect gay couples and not white supremacists". You might not agree with the particular position, you might prefer developing supposedly content-neutral process positions, but many people think that the design of rules and systems is merely a means to getting to what they view as correct ends.

Your position is a bit like saying "Some people claim they're OK with the US/UK having nuclear weapons, but not North Korea. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want charities to be tax exempt but not businesses. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want gun control for civilians but not for the military. Can't have it both ways." Yes, many policies apply differently to different people for different reasons! That's a good thing.

Good arguments can be made that both charities and businesses should be tax exempt. As a sovereign nation, NK should be allowed nuclear weapons if China has them. And the US shouldn't have a standing army, at least if we're being governed by the rules of or founders.

All your examples ultimately boil down to force and have little to do with what ought to be.

> But the people celebrating Facebook for doing what they want on their platform - were also trying to get a baker forced to make a cake.

Do you have any data on this question? Or is this just a blind assumption that "people who disagree with me on X probably also disagree with me about Y"?

> FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

And, yet, content creators must upload their content to YouTube or someone else will--even if they host it somewhere else.

Therefore, YouTube is either a monopoly or a bad-faith actor--your choice--and we will, unfortunately, need laws to bring YouTube to heel.

You can pre-register with content-id and then aggressively dmca. I'm not saying it's fun or easy just that there are totally songs and artists that are completely scrubbed from youtube.

So, I, as a content creator, have to give my information to YouTube, whom I actively avoided in the first place, as well as spend an active part of my day policing rather than creating in order to prevent YouTube from monetizing my content?

And no part of this statement strikes you as a problem?

At least there's an option. Sure there's a problem but at least there's some level of ability to rectify. PDfs of my work show up on pirate sites who make money from ads all the time and I have little to no ability whatsoever to correct that.

That's just doing business in the current economy. You either have to ignore it or actively deal with it. Neither option will totally eliminate it.

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