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Comment by Gunax | Hacker News Reader

> Refusing to serve a customer when you disagree with that customer's goal is pretty far from being a "moral arbiter for society." Keep in mind that anyone is free to use other services (or roll their own) and gitlab can't do anything about that. Neither would it be overreaching for the workers building that product to request a say in how it's used.

I think this is the crux of the issue. Anyone is of course free to roll their own GitLab (or facebook, or news channel). But this ignores reality.

Facebook control ~90% of social media. There's a very high chance that Facebook could sway every election in America (and lots of other countries also) if they truly wanted to.

I think we are entering a new era. Just as it required a paradigm shift to outlaw anti-competitive practices, I think we need to re-consider what rights these platforms have around speech.

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Or, just break up the alleged monopoly under existing anti-trust regulation, instead of welcoming a terrifying new power of the government mandating that private business serve customers they disagree with?

On the list of ‘terrifying new powers’ this one is waaay down. If the customer is not doing anything illegal you have no reason not to serve them.

Other than that pesky nebulous western value of "Freedom", sure, I guess you have no reason to be able to make that kind of business decision. Compelled speech or compelled production of value come in many disguises, and are hallmarks of oppressive and dangerous regimes. It's disingenuous to suggest that starting down that path would be innocent.

But these things are already happening, such as forcing religious bakers to bake cakes for couples they don’t agree with

Of course, because the reasoning wasn't 'you are a jerk' or 'we don't want to make that type of cake' or 'we're too busy right now' but rather 'you are gay'. Sexual orientation is a protected class and acting like a jerk on the internet isn't.

No one is forcing all businesses to do serve all customers everywhere always. We are saying you can't discriminate on the basis of marginalized groups.

I lean libertarian, but sometimes realty breaks that.

True libertarianism dictates that I can ban whomever I want from my shop. But in reality most of the bans were of the 'No Negroes' variety. I would love to think that the free market would take care of discriminatory businesses, but history shows it will not.

I agree that the true issue is ultimately monopoly: if a town has 10 newspapers and one goes democrat-leaning, no one would really care. But it's different if there is only 1 newspaper.

I worry that there can only ever be a single Friendster/Google+/Myspace around, because people will always gravitate towards the most popular one.

If you see platforms being moderated, it's because the platforms want to survive. Because their usually is only one around, because once it becomes toxic the regular people flee and the toxic elements follow because having a platform is not the point for them.

Or the free market was hindered by the government's regulatory Jim Crow laws.

How would you break up a giant social network? What lines would you cut it along?

I mean, I personally wouldn't. I don't think this is an actual problem, but in the face of a suggestion that "tech platforms are too big, ergo they must not be allowed a choice in who they do business with", I'll pick the "use anti-trust framework to make them not so big" option over "force a business transaction" any day.

Of course, those who make the "publisher or platform, pick one!" false dichotomy aren't really genuinely concerned about the size of the company. They just want to force someone to host their content, which is why they jump to "free speech means more nowadays than what it says in the constitution [so platforms must carry my speech]."

Sorry for the tangent, just want to make sure my position is clear.

> Of course, those who make the "publisher or platform, pick one!" false dichotomy aren't really genuinely concerned about the size of the company. They just want to force someone to host their content,

It is not nice to lump us all together. Many of us here both

- despise certain content

- while we still find it totally unacceptable that tech giants are allowed to do whatever they want with their power "because hate speech"

This is just a variant of introducing bad laws "because of terrorism":

The laws are bad not because anyone wants terrorism but because we don't want anybody to be punished without a good reason.

And today as tech giants wields more power than many courts or - in many but obviously not all ways - even small countries it might be time to make sure they have to be careful with that power.

Force them to provide an openly accessible API to allow people to receive messages/event invites and send messages to the users of that platform. Then they can choose to use a different social network without having to give up their connections with people who haven't jumped ship. This way the advantage of the network effect of popular social networks will disappear.

Telcos have shown that there are ways to maintain network effects in the face of federation: ridiculous connection fees for users outside of your network.

The world has changed, USA are no longer the center of it, FB is not a giant if you compare it to WeChat

Now try to apply US anti trust laws to it.

> Facebook control ~90% of social media.

Source? That doesn't really match the numbers I've seen. Especially not for younger people.

Instagram and whatsapp are facebook. Ofc, even then 90% might be too much.

By MAU, 2.3 billion vs 1.9 for YouTube (arguably not a messaging-based SM site), and 1.0 for Instagram (owned by FB). Qzone is 4th at 563 million, 17% of FB+Insta.

Not quite 90% by that measure, but close.

https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-network...

Mindshare, reach, time-on-site, and media references are alternate measures. Definitions matter.

Remember that Facebook owns Instagram and Whatsapp.

They might not be 90+ everywhere, but they do own a significant amount

Eh, I guess this is not true. To me, 'social media' always meant websites like MySpace and Orkut where friends connect, and not just 'website where users can communicate in some way' a la Pinterest/Reddit/YouTube.

But I realise now that isn't the right definition... still not sure what the word is for the Friendster/MySpace clones--but among those I am pretty sure Facebook is more than 90% of the market (outside of China), possibly more than 99% with Google+ closing.

I didn't realize facebooi owned 90%. If you exclude twitter/reddit what's left snapchat?

Facebook owns Instagram - the 2nd largest social network - as well as Whatsapp which is ginormous in its own right as well.

I'd guess mostly WeChat/Alibaba/TikTok, and a few tiny players that ebb and flow in impact.

Ah the old "too big to fail" argument, alive and well.

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