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Comment by bargl | Hacker News Reader

It's legal for entities outside the government to censor things. IANAL so if I'm wrong let me know. But my understanding is that censorship is perfectly fine for any company.

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It's (typically) perfectly legal, but not necessarily perfectly fine.

I find undesirable to buy a phone where a company can arbitrarily decide what I am and am not allowed to run on my device. Because economies of scale make things cheaper if many people want them and because I generally believe in fighting the power of arbitrary or harmful corporate decisions, I try to convince others of the importance of this "feature" (really it's more of a lack of an anti-feature).

Luckily you can still sideload apps on Android. The day they remove that feature is the day I take the time to figure out how to use an alternate OS.

I fully agree with you on this.

It also use to be legal to deny people based on their skin color. Just because something is legal doesn't make it right.

And the laws changed. Hopefully we'll see that. We can't expect companies to be our moral compass.

Is Google refusing to distribute Parler different from the NYT refusing to publish an article I send them?

Yes. NYT is making an editorial decision. Google publishing an app is much more akin to you making a phone call - they are the carrier, nothing else, because they control the end of line.

Phone companies also have terms of service. Here’s AT&T’s:

> AT&T may immediately terminate all or a portion of your Service or reduce or suspend Service, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) is illegal, fraudulent, harassing, abusive, or intended to intimidate or threaten; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation, or tariff (including, without applicable policies or guidelines (including the Acceptable Use Policy), and AT&T may refer such use to law enforcement authorities without notice to you.

And yet somehow have never resorted to saying who can and cannot use their service based on their political beliefs.

Keep trying.

Parler wasn’t pulled from Google’s app store for discussion of Conservative policy. It was pull for hate speech, incitement, and for the illegal conspiracies being plotted. Plus Parler isn’t enforcing their own terms of service.

If it was just politics then Google would also pull New Republic magazine.

Apple has said that they need to step up their moderation game and they can get back into the App Store. I’m guessing that would be good enough for Google as well.

Private market censorship is legal w.r.t. the first amendment. If it's good for society is a separate question.

That wasn't the question being asked.

Unless you do it to a privileged group. Then it’s discrimination.

There’s a difference between what is legal and what is morally correct.

Encouraging violent insurrection against the legally elected congress isn't moral either.

Agreed. And these companies are following what they believe is morally correct.

Also, this isn't going to be effective Parler is a website, people can just browse to it in Chrome/Safari...

We should be promoting apps that encourage and promote healthy discourse between people not echo chambers, but that's what I think is morally correct.

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