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Comment by danijelb | Hacker News Reader

What is the alternative? Do you think that the government should nationalize private companies? Or perhaps they should dictate to them who should be their clients? If a company like Google doesn't want to do business with Parler, that is their right. That is free market. If the market didn't agree with it, the free market forces would make sure that Google dwindles and another company replaces them.

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Google and Apple have a duopoly. In the wake of 2016 we collectively agreed that Big Tech has the ability to influence elections, now is the time to think about how to protect our democracy.

My take is simple: either treat social media conglomerates like we do telecom or break them up like we did AT&T.

I agree with breaking up companies which are monopolies/duopolies. But why do you think that those broken up companies wouldn't behave the same in this case (ban Trump, Parler, etc). If that's what the majority of users want, then such decisions increase their profit. If there was 5 mobile OS/store companies today, I'm pretty sure the same would happen on all 5.

I agree, it's probably wishful thinking. My hope would be that "we don't ban anything that's not explicitly illegal" would be a profitable stance for at least one of the competing app stores.

If that's what the majority of their users want, why shouldn't they ban those services? What better proxy is there for what they should do? Aren't they beholden to their users and shareholders? Is the suggestion that all platforms have to cater to the most vocal minority? That doesn't seem like a good strategy.

> Is the suggestion that all platforms have to cater to the most vocal minority?

I think this is what they're doing right now. I'd imagine the average voter doesn't care whether Trump is on Twitter or Parler is on the App Store.

I think you're wrong. These companies are very aware of what their customers/users think (think of all the data!). It's asinine to think that these companies, with corporate boards and a legal mandate to produce profit, would just out some amount of users and reduce revenue. They clearly don't think the amount of users they are affecting with these actions are significant enough to damage them, especially compared to the costs of enabling these domestic terrorists.

These groups are not some good ol boys looking to have measured debate about monetary policy. They are literally trying to kill elected officials and undermine democracy.

More directly, the average voter very clearly seems to care, when you're looking at these actions in an economic light.

Well, we could simply treat them the same as phone companies, using our existing laws.

Social media companies are indeed large communication platforms. There are a lot of similarities, even if they aren't exactly the same.

Or do you believe that our existing laws that apply to phone companies are somehow a tyrannical infringement on their rights?

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