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Comment by whoopdedo | Hacker News Reader

The correct analogy would be if someone is standing in the Walmart parking lot. And last I checked U.S. law permits Walmart to tell them to leave.

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Are there any other non-corporate "parking lots" with anywhere close to the same network effects?

Not a parking lot, but a lot of suburban communities are built around large shopping malls, operated by companies like Westfield. It’s not exactly conducive to protests, as the malls are private property and there’s no significant pedestrian traffic anywhere else.

Such arrangements are not conducive to the political process, and that should worry everyone. If something can be used against someone it can also be used against you.

by putting "parking lots" in quotations, I was meaning to ask for the alternative digital equivalent to major platforms like FB and Twitter.

If we're continuing the parking lot analogy, it's like there's an almost unending grid of parking lot after parking lot, and you can travel to any of them instantaneously and for free. Some parking lots have a lot of people, so you'd rather go there if you want to be heard, but nothing is stopping you from setting up shop in an empty lot, and nothing is stopping people from visiting your lot.

Now, given that major social network advertise pretty much everywhere, this might not be an entirely fair analogy. Some parking lots have ads for them posted in every other parking lot. But it's a point worth making that access is relatively egalitarian on the internet.

Thanks for the clarification. You're right, access to the internet at large is more or less egalitarian; having your voice heard (and not hidden), is not though, and therein lies the problem.

If a tree falls on the forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it even make a noise?

Also relevant is this very interesting research experiment conducted ~5 years ago on social media manipulation, in which they dubbed the term "Censorship 2.0"

https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...

That's true, we used to think of it in terms of access, but I suppose now that anyone can figuratively start their own news network, the issue is who gatekeeps the directories rather than the access.

The network effects are somewhat irrelevant and GP's comment is correct. If you do not use a retailer or service provider's business in a manner that they like, they are normally free to discontinue your service and ask you to leave. The same principle should apply to Facebook as they are a service provider like any other which has not (to my knowledge) explicitly been designated as having special status in legislation.

You can't decide Facebook is subject to a different set of laws or has fewer rights simply because people have arbitrarily decided to communicate on its platform more than another platform. Every private entity should be afforded the same rights to regulate their private property or services unless there is legislation specifically saying otherwise.

If you or any other person do not like the way Facebook is regulating usage of their platform, you are free to go start up your own social media platform with a different ToS (and many people do).

^This response is so blandly generic.

>You can't decide Facebook is subject to a different set of laws or has fewer rights

Oh but we can, that's what democracy and law makers are for, and if you've been keeping up with the news at all for the past few years, you'll know that's where we are increasingly likely to be heading.

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