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Comment by deogeo | Hacker News Reader

Will censorship apologists claim this isn't censorship, because "no-one is owed a job", or "they're private companies that can do what they like", then link to this 'insightful' comic https://xkcd.com/1357/ ?

I know this comment may seem shallow and argumentative, but these arguments regularly show up when the speech is unpopular, to explain why it's "not censorship".

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First: I am literally one of the least-informed people on the current situation in Hong Kong, and specifically Big 4 employees' roles in the protests. So I am in no ways casting judgment or agreeing with either side here - I have no position from which to do so.

But taking the article at face value, they specifically mention "violence" and "illegal acts", which are by no means "free speech."

If an employee of a company is indeed objectively causing violence and performing illegal acts, that's certainly a fireable offense.

Which is all the anodyne statements from the companies come out and say - we don't condone violence or illegal acts, and individual employees' free speech and political participation otherwise is their own.

if you don’t see the difference between a business not hosting what they consider hate speech and a business firing its employees at the direct request of the government, I don’t know what to tell you.

The difference is the power of the censor - the act is the same (Yes, people have been fired for controversial statements. And less controversial ones: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/media/cartoonist...).

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