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Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

I tend to agree with them here, but the thing that always gets me is how many people will support these same actions if, instead of being done by the elected government, they're done by unelected internet companies that hold monopoly power.

I get why that may be more of a problem legally, but not why so many people agree with it morally, because they come from people not otherwise inclined to agree with the proposition that a monpolist's business decisions are somehow above scrutiny.

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Because first amendment is to limit government power. Private companies are not obliged to give you right to free speech. In theory private companies compete against each other but government has a monopoly on legalized violence.

Yes, that's the legal claim. What's the moral claim?

TikTok takes down content it doesn't like on a regular basis. It's pretty well known if you use tiktok. Not saying they shouldn't be able to do that, its part of how they got their For You page so popular.

Whether a website wants to display tiktok or not is the same thing - it'll do whatever it thinks will get more users.

The last point I made is the moral argument "in theory private companies compete against each other but government has a monopoly on legalized violence." Government must be constrained because you can't get away from it.

Now it is true commercial monopolies can also exert coercion on their customers, so we have antimonopoly laws. These laws likely need updates to deal with natural monopolies coming from the strong network effect in the internet era. And the interaction with free speech right in social networks will be an extremely challenging issue.

It seems to me that you agree that morally, companies shouldn't be exerting monopoly power in this area, otherwise we wouldn't need updates to the law, so I won't quibble.

The moral claim is private companies maintain private property for the benefit of their customers.

That's definitely a concern, but the more pressing concern is allowing the government to hold this power – something I think we can all agree shouldn't be allowed (without due process).

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