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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

This is a fallacious argument often brought up in this discussion.

It's not about forcing someone. It's about forcing mega-corporations that provide what could be termed essential infrastructure to modern life.

There is a lot of precedent. Banks, electricity companies, railway operators, ... cannot arbitrarily refuse to serve customers. I see nothing immoral and fully support extending this to big tech (while not suppressing competition of course, i.e. it should only affect companies once they reach a certain size).

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Banks, electric companies, and railway lines do not publish speech as their main service, so it's kind of a different story. Regulation of commerce and speech in the US are different, legally and culturally, for better or worse.

> Banks, electricity companies, railway operators

These are bad examples in a discussion about speech protections... those businesses are providing services, not just engaging in speech.

Also, those businesses _do_ act to arbitrarily refuse to serve people. My bank sent me a letter last year saying that in ~10 days my account will be closed and they'll send me a check with the account contents. No reason, no appeals.

> I see nothing immoral and fully support extending this to big tech (while not suppressing competition of course, i.e. it should only affect companies once they reach a certain size).

The problem here isn't really Section 230 in particular, it's the market power these companies have in general. It's not just censorship, it's also high fees and lack of customer service and lock-in / barriers to entry created by vertical integration.

And this isn't a natural monopoly like the power grid. Federation gives the same economies of scale as long as the dominant network is federated. So the better solution to these companies isn't to mess with Section 230, it's to break them up.

"Mega-corporation" isn't a legal classification. Section 230 covers providers interactive content and does so without exception. Whether a website or an app is "essential infrastructure" (whatever that means) or not has no bearing. Anyone or anything that hosts publicly accessible information to an electronic network regardless of the location or means. (satellite, underground collocation center, private home server) is affected, not just Silicon Valley.

In addition, no bank is required to give you a $1 loan even if you have an 850 FICO score. No electricity company is required to keep supplying you with 1 MWh of electricity a month even if you can pay for it. No rail company is required to get a consumer from A to B if the company doesn't serve those areas or doesn't want to. They're not legally required to provide services to anyone and everyone indiscriminately. What they're not allowed to do is pull a bait-&-switch.

In short a company, CAN arbitrarily discriminate against you but cannot do so systematically, not withstanding a legal "business interest" exception.

Banks can and do arbitrarily refuse service to customers, E. g. based on account size, etc.

Railways, electricity lines etc are monopolies, there is just one possibility, it's not feasible to build a new one. These should be regulated.

Facebook, Google, etc are not providing anything crucial, there are billions of people living without it, and there are thousands of (worse but functioning) alternatives, and anyone can switch by simply entering a different address into the address bar.

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