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Comment by juanjmanfredi | Hacker News Reader

Twitter, Facebook, and any other entity that deplatformed Alex Jones are private companies and can deplatform whoever they want. In fact that is part of their freedom of speech. This is different from government-enforced silencing of speech, which is what is happening in China right now.

I feel no cognitive dissonance, but maybe you can explain more why I should.

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If you want to see that sort of cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy on display, just go a few threads over and state:

> "Blizzard Entertainment is a private company and can deplatform whoever they want".

They might not word it this way, but I think what people really mean is "X is a private company and can deplatform whoever they want with the approval of their users".

I haven't seen anyone saying Blizzard's actions should be illegal. The common response seems to be "boycott", which Alex Jones' supporters were free to do as well

Is "cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy" really the only reason you can think of why someone might support deplatforming Alex Jones, and not the Blizzard streamers in this case?

"Twitter, Facebook, and any other entity that deplatformed Alex Jones are private companies and can deplatform whoever they want"

Would you feel the same way if the deplatforming was done by, say, AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile? Because Twitter and Facebook specifically get the same protection as if they are communication pipes (as opposed to being publishers).

NBA are not legally controlled by Chinese laws. They're censoring speech because they want to (a.k.a. it's profitable), not because they're being forced to.

What speech is the NBA censoring? The commissioner came out in favor of free speech. The GM has not been fired.

On the other hand, the Chinese government has stepped in to block the NBA because of the NBAs stance on free speech of players, staff, etc.

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