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Comment by alentist | Hacker News Reader

> censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

Why do you conflate any discussion of censorship and freedom of speech with the First Amendment of the US’s constitution?

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The folks that are pro-private company censorship always do that. It's the only way their argument works so they have to avoid the nuance that free speech has a law and a principle.

It's constant to read opinions like that in threads like this. We used to have this argument in the 60s where private businesses argued they didn't have to serve blacks since they were a private business. Political speech/activity is protected when it comes to labor law. It's not hard to see the law updated at some figure point. Discrimination is discrimination in my book, and free speech is paramount even the most repugnant opinions.

Twitter suspending/banning for violations of policy is discrimination in the same way barkeeps throwing unruly patrons out of the bar is discrimination.

Depends on the policy. Obviously harassing or obscene speech is one thing and even the government is free to restrict it in certain ways (eg. you're not allowed to scream obscenities in public.) Viewpoint-based discrimination is given much more scrutiny, however, and there's a good argument that that's what Twitter et. al are engaging in. Which is less like "throwing unruly patrons out" and more like "calling people whose ideas you dislike unruly and then throwing them out", which is obviously discriminatory.

> there's a good argument that that's what Twitter et. al are engaging in.

Is there? Who's making it? Can you give examples?

Only if the barkeep walks past a hundred other patrons at least as unruly as that one patron is, and the barkeep's history suggest he's spending most of his time focusing on the unruly patrons that he disagrees with politically. All while his policies and public statements claim otherwise.

> ction fees cannot support the mining hardware as is, miners sell of their hardware to recoup their costs and the chain becomes vulnerable.

I mean unless you are logging this and charting it I'm going to assume people are seeing whatever is confirming their priors on this one.

Because for you to see something on twitter, twitter has to repeat what they said.

Forcing twitter to quote trump would be coerced speach rather than free speech.

Otherwise, I'm censoring trump right now my not putting his tweet content in this comment, and so are you because you didn't put it in yours

So then I guess McCarthyism was completely ok. Why would Hollywood be compelled to hire leftist sympathisers, and let then disseminate their ideas through their productions.

> So then I guess McCarthyism was completely ok.

Are you under the impression that the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations is a private entity?

The freedom of the platform holder and the platform user are at odds. The topic does not need to focus on government or the US constitution.

> The topic does not need to focus on government or the US constitution.

Exactly.

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