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Comment by MarkMc | Hacker News Reader

I suspect that the primary purpose here is not to uncover bias or censorship on social media platforms - it's to get people to identify more strongly as Trump supporters.

This is the classic psychological 'consistency' principle at work. When someone takes the small step of "sharing their story with President Trump" it strengthens their self-image as a Trump supporter. This is then reinforced by receiving frequent emails "from President Trump" thanking them for their support to eliminate censorship. This makes the person more likely to get off the couch and vote for Trump in November 2020.

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I think it's because Twitter has shown they will reverse bans for cases that get too much negative publicity rather than adhere to a consistent policy. This is a logical counterreaction to aggregate and lobby for banned accounts, conservative or otherwise.

Or alternatively, after a sufficient public outcry, will reverse themselves after improperly banning an account when they actually screw up.

It also reinforces the narrative that Trump and his supporters are under constant persecution by the organized conspiracy of leftists and globalists controlling all media and purging and all non-leftist speech from social media en masse.

Nothing gets voters to the polls quite as effectively as a shared identity built around a persecution complex and the threat of an enemy at the gates.

This shows lighter in my browser, like it's voted down, but it's by far the most insightful comment.

Also, if you're a company and you have a platform like facebook and Twitter, and you're a private company, not the government, you can kick whomever you damned well please off your service, or delete their posts, or edit them to make them look stupid. It's not censorship if you're not the government. If facebook gets all progressive and the conservatives don't like it, let them make their own conservative platform. Too bad techies lean left, going to make that difficult.

Freaking 'merica's biggest political activity is now whining.

FWIW, there is a precedent for treating monopolies differently than other companies. Utility companies, which are natural monopolies, are highly restricted in their ability to refuse service to customers, for instance. Social media companies seem to be natural monopolies.

These companies are providing services for free. Can you force a natural monopoly to provide free services to anyone who demands it?

Based on what we’ve done with hospitals... yes.

Do Hospitals provide their services for free? No.

Are Hospitals and their staff subject to government regulation given the required license to practice medicine? Yes.

I'm not sure your example applies here.

I’m referring to EMTALA, which requires hospitals to provide emergency services to everyone, regardless of ability to pay:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_...

Note that I’m not making a moral point here; I’m only pointing out that we do in fact require a natural monopoly to provide free services on demand.

Individual hospitals are not a monopoly.

>These companies are providing services for free.

No. These companies are not offering a free service. You not paying them directly does not mean it’s free. This is a comment that shouldn’t have to be made here, we all know how they make money and the price you pay to use the service.

The services in question are provided to the end-users for free - they allow you to share your content, your messages and content from others, and to more easily keep in touch with friends and other entities you want to stay informed about. The companies also offer paid services to anyone who wants to place highly targeted messages to very specific audiences.

If a group of people are not a profitable audience to be targeted (or that can't be targeted for legal reasons), or that actively discourages other more financially valuable users from participating, should they be forced to keep providing services for free to those who are considered a toxic presence?

Social media companies aren't natural monopolies. There are no intrinsic high fixed costs, for example. The only significant barrier to entry is lock-in of existing users via their social graph, but that barrier is entirely artificial - Facebook could be a part of a larger federated network, for example, it just chooses not to (but could be forced to).

They are natural monopolies. It’s no accident that each vertical has only a single viable option. Network effects result in Facebook remaining dominant in the “connect to the people in your life” market for the same reason that they result in eBay remaining dominant in the collectibles market.

Wikipedia defines a "natural monopoly" as "a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors."

That's the case for Facebook. The barrier to entry isn't the cost of the machines or software, but the Network Effect: if your friends aren't on the new network there's little reason for you to go there. Once large network is more effective than many small ones. Facebook could give up that natural monopoly, if they chose to, but they won't unless forced.

You're talking common carrier. I am all for designating facebook and twitter and whatever else as a common carrier. But I think if you look into it, those companies have fought hard to not be designated as common carriers. My guess is that common carrier status means that something very much like net neutrality rules would apply, and they wouldn't be able to profit so much from advertising, and they would have service guarantees to meet.

Uh oh, now you're greyed-out.

Better fire up that White House site and send in a report! /s

This is so beautiful.

> Also, if you're a company and you have a platform like facebook and Twitter, and you're a private company, not the government, you can kick whomever you damned well please off your service, or delete their posts, or edit them to make them look stupid.

According to at least some court decisions, this may not be true if you control enough of the public space to be effectively a "public square". This is what people are building their arguments around.

When the Constitution was written, there was a smaller population and towns had a clear center, so you could reach people effectively by standing on a soapbox on Main Street. That simply isn't possible anymore. Now that large corporate entities control both the physical public square (malls) and the virtual environment, there is nowhere left to set up a soapbox. This diminishes the natural right of free speech. There is an argument to be made that any entity large enough to constitute part of the public square should have to allow open access for people to stand on their soapbox.

Not an originalist take by any means, but that's not necessarily a disqualifier unless you're a strict constitutionalist.

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