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Comment by RobLach | Hacker News Reader

Free speech for a corporation is allowing them to ban whatever they want that's effecting their bottom line.

Hosting and publishing certain speech is a liability.

Why should the state dictate what a corporation must allow on their own servers facilitated by the services they created?

Should the state force YouTube to include videos no advertiser wants to be associated with?

EFF's statement is consistent with protecting digital rights.

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>Free speech for a corporation is allowing them to ban whatever they want that's effecting their bottom line.

That's freedom of association.

Conservatives are getting the teeniest taste of being the wrong color in the only grocery store in town that are mysteriously always out of everything, or trying to buy a wedding cake while gay.

Except they're not.

I would love the perfection of that, but all they're getting is the same treatment on-line as if they did the same screaming at the other customers and urinating in the isles in a grocery store.

They are stinking up the place, not merely by existing, but specifically through their deeds, and so it is not merely allowed, but an obligation, to deal with them.

I know more than one decent person who leans conservative in their politics.

I am sorry that you have never met good people of a different political leaning in your life. Hope it gets better for you.

The existence of #notallconservatives has no bearing, including no invalidating bearing, on this point.

Decent #notallconservatives, if they actually were so, could and should have policed their own indecent cousins. If they didn't, then they are complicit.

Any decent #notallconservatives didn't get kicked off of any other platforms in the first place. They lost nothing.

There is no cruel unfair intolerance to cry over here, any more than my comment getting a downvote, which favor you will note I didn't return, as long as we're trying to talk about intolerance. ;)

This isn’t Twitter. We don’t have to communicate with hashtags.

You have made your point. Have a nice rest of the day.

I'm sorry but it's not consistent with protecting digital rights.

This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino.

Below a poster liked a response by the ACLU which is a much better response to Freedom of Speech than that by the EFF. The EFF caved. They abandoned their one and only mission to promote freedom of speech.

How so?

The fact is that a company has the right to moderate their own content because that in and of itself is free speech. There is a difference between the government not allowing you to have a say vs. a company moderating their own platform that they own

> This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino.

In both cases the EFF sided with the company's ability to practice their free speech instead of the government compelling them to speak or not speak. Seems perfectly consistent.

Aha, so in your heart of hears if Tim was like, yes, FBI, here are 100 engineers, we'll let you into any phone you want!

EFF is HAPPY yes? That's what you're saying? I mean, in this hypothetical this would be what Tim/Apple wants...

EFF seems to dislike corporations and governments working together against people, whether voluntary or compelled. I expect they would dislike Tim Cook handing over info, and would dislike Twitter being compelled to carry speech by government officials.

ACLU counsel’s statement. As someone mentioned elsewhere here on HN, I don’t think it’s the official ACLU statement.

It’s still the weekend. We’ll see.

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