Look, if you get a reputation for entering businesses and shitting on the floor, you'll find yourself banned from all of them eventually.
The same is true for online businesses.
The same is true for online businesses.
Pay for hosting.
> that thing should not be controlled by a private company
How would this be possible in a capitalist country?
And what's to stop whichever company is hosting me from dropping hosting at the first whiff of a Twitter mob?
> How would this be possible in a capitalist country?
So you are saying free speech on the internet is incompatible with a capitalist economy?
Money that you pay them for the service. This is almost always enough since that's all any of these companies actually care about. There are very rare exceptions where high-profile nazi groups have had their service contracts rescinded, but this isn't a real problem in practice. Nobody is having their service contract rescinded because their website is made up of conservatives, which is usually the implied subtext in these discussions.
> So you are saying free speech on the internet is incompatible with a capitalist economy?
No. I'm asking you how you envision people owning their own websites without any private companies involved, in an economy built around the concepts of corporate ownership.
"almost always" is not a guarantee of free speech.
> There are very rare exceptions where high-profile nazi groups have had their service contracts rescinded, but this isn't a real problem in practice.
...yet. What is "very rare" today can become "more common" tomorrow if there aren't strong legal protections.
> No. I'm asking you how you envision people owning their own websites without any private companies involved, in an economy built around the concepts of corporate ownership.
IANAL, but clearly there needs to be stronger legal protections in this arena. My ISP should not be able to disconnect me from the internet on the basis of speech. They should be like a utility company. My power company can't disconnect my electricity if I use the electricity to charge batteries for a megaphone that I then use to spread hate speech. My ISP/server host should be the same. Charge me for the compute resources I use, do not attempt to disconnect my service on moral or ethical grounds. Leave that to a higher layer in the stack.
There is no such guarantee with respect to someone else's private property.
> What is "very rare" today can become "more common" tomorrow if there aren't strong legal protections.
Yes, that's the slippery slope fallacy. I could make a similarly flawed argument in reverse, e.g. allowing Nazi propaganda to flourish unchecked is what lead to the rise of Hitler, so we should make Nazi ideas illegal before the acceptance of nazi ideas in wider society becomes "more common". Just to be clear, I am not actually arguing this position, only demonstrating why this reasoning is fallacious. Simply pointing to the existence of a rare event is not evidence that it will become more common.
> My ISP should not be able to disconnect me from the internet on the basis of speech
I agree, but only because ISPs control a shared, finite, public resource (the physical ISP lines, paid for in large part by the tax-payer).
> server host should be the same
No they shouldn't because they're not at all the same.
Remember that only a handful of companies today have the infrastructure to handle large attacks.
AFAIK I don't know any instances of, say, car companies refusing to sell a car to the KKK or some other neo-Nazi group, and I think a lot of people would be very uneasy if all your purchases, even from private companies, were vetted based on your political ideology. To clarify, I don't think that's what's happening in this instance (as others have noted this looks like a set of pretty standard KYC questions), but I think it's very fair to ask why we think certain company behaviors that would be pretty unacceptable in the physical world should be acceptable in the online world.
Okay. Did you limit your research to car companies? Private businesses can and do deny service to the KKK.
Also let's not pretend that these people's rights are getting unfairly stripped from them - they are not entitled to accessing any of these services. Further, it's not like they are banned from all these things, it's more like not letting them on stage during an open mic night - they can still browse all aspects of the internet.
As I understand it, the reason a physical business would ban someone engaging in the behaviour you described is that it would create costly first-order work for the business (cleaning up) and result in a second-order loss of profits due to deterring other customers until the cleanup is complete. Does anything of the sort apply in the case of politically questionable entities using a near-monopolist payment processor to process payments?
Honestly, it's worrying I even have to say this. It's utterly nuts people here are defending this.
You can stop being a Proud Boy. If you look at what are deemed by law to be "protected classes", they are generally things that can't be readily changed - age, gender, disability, race.
Nice standard of intolerance we are building here.
But to play along with your logic here, what if someone was a member of a feminist organisation? Do you believe it would be acceptable for a company to refuse to do business with people who are members of feminist organisations?
And if your argument is that it's possible to pretend not to be a feminist, can the same not also be said for someones sexual orientation?
On a legal level, yes. I would avoid doing business with that company as a result, but they'd be well within their rights to do it. I'd be well within my rights to boycott and tell my friends about it.
> And if your argument is that it's possible to pretend not to be a feminist, can the same not also be said for someones sexual orientation?
My employer's health insurance would allow me to add a same-gender spouse, but doesn't ask if they're a feminist.
You say "unpopular political belief", I say "DDoS target, litigation risk, potential product boycott".
no one is going to stop using those platforms...
Maybe this should be patched in Section 230 legislation versus 18 USC § 1960, would have to read more statute to provide a proper opinion on which statute should protect money as speech transmittal (IANAL, would like to hear a JD's legal opinion).
Proud Boys are not a protected class.
OP mentioned "if you're not breaking the law".
[The idea that the government may restrict] speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.” -- Justice Samuel Alito [1] [2]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
[2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1293_1o13.pdf (Matal v. Tam)
What you are arguing here is that free speech is unlimited because the things you don't like aren't actually speech.
Kaepernick would beg to differ, I suspect.
Before the narrative drumbeat of snowflake libs and cancel culture started, conservatives were stereotypically pearl-clutching and easily offended.
Just to make sure I've covered all my bases here: If this was about denying services to a protected class, then you'd have a different response for a different reason -- businesses cannot discriminate on the basis of a protected class. But political beliefs are not a protected class.
As for changing Section 230. The Senate could certainly do all sorts of things to change the way this works. It's clearly an interstate commerce issue, so the federal government could pass all sorts of laws. I don't have an opinion one way or another about how they'd do it, since that's more policy than law.
-JD's opinion.