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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

The opposite of a contradiction is another contradiction.

Why are people that believe in regulation of the world's largest corporations suddenly laissez-faire libertarians?

If you have opposed the Citizen's United ruling for a decade, don't suddenly act like you care about a corporation's civil liberties, including freedom of association and freedom of expression.

The answer is obvious: both sides want power more than they want to stick to their expressed ideals.

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You’re unintentionally making a straw man. There is no contradiction.

I believe social media should be regulated more tightly. Until then they have the freedom to remove the content according to their TOS.

Just because I’m pointing out that they have the freedom it doesnt mean I believe they should continue to have the freedom.

Government regulations are desperately needed.

Even more so, government enforcement of existing regulations are needed. There’ve been many threats of violence on social media with few being investigated.

Or they should be regulated in some ways but not others. There's a big distance between "run by the govt" and "totally free of govt meddling".

That's a good way of putting it. I think this happens often - the progressive/leftist/etc. position involves multiple points of departure from our current society, and if you try to look at the merits of any single strand by itself, it falls apart.

For instance, many progressives are advocates of people losing their jobs for harassing coworkers. If you look at this position in isolation, it looks like they're arguing for a cold corporatism, that anyone who threatens the reputation of the corporation should be thrown onto the streets. However, many progressives are also advocates of stronger social safety nets for people who lose their jobs, whether by their own misdeeds or misfortune - from increased unemployment (or even UBI), to stronger tenants' protections, to government-provided healthcare. Firing someone for their misdeeds is much less cruel once those safety nets are in place, and the moral calculus very rapidly shifts to protecting their coworkers.

I haven't really made my mind up one way or the other about FB, Twitter, et al.'s actions these past couple weeks, but simultaneously believing that corporations should be limited in their electioneering activities and that they should be allowed to moderate the content that appears on their platforms does not seem like a contradiction to me.

I get that people tend to cluster into two main groups in the US, and that this seems to be strongly encouraged by the existing power structures.

I would also argue that there are a lot of folks (myself included) that see the curtailing of speech - regardless of "side", as a real long-term threat to productive and open communication. We need actual discourse and understanding, or all we're going to get is more us-vs-them polarization and ramping up of rhetoric and violence.

I strongly disagree with most of the opinions being voiced on the (far) right, but if they don't happen in the open they will fester into something grotesque and far more dangerous. Just because I'm disgusted by the opinions of a group of people doesn't it's a good idea for me to make the situation worse by silencing them. Not least of all because we will eventually reap what we've sowed once they grab power again.

I still can't help but shake the feeling that there are those with a real vested interest in a continuing and growing divide (and conquering) of the populace, regardless of the (externalized) cost.

Inversions are happening faster than ever. The red and blue tribes swap their positions in sync at this point.

Historical times!

I'm an engineer, not an ideologue, and don't make it a practice of painting myself into a corner just to be consistent. Though I think the big tech companies have too much power, I think the need to avoid having the US government overthrown by a violent coup trumps other considerations. The material they are shutting down includes plans for next weekend to attack both Washington DC and state capitals. Some innocent content could be swept up in this.

Once all this calms down, we can address the excessive power of the platforms with antitrust, so there are more of them to choose from.

I think the government has too much power and the cost of losing the presidency shouldn't be so traumatic.

So much of the executive craziness of the last 4 years is due to the ever growing power of the executive branch and executive orders being de facto law.

All this presidential overreach is about to (hypocritically) be put to use and further expanded.

I believe that Facebook, structurally, should not exist. I don't believe that it's good for society to have corporations that are this large and this powerful.

I also believe that every association of citizens should have civil liberties. I have no desire or plans to become Facebook, but I want the freedom to make much smaller companies (or collectives, or charitable organizations, or whatever) and have the discretion to associate with whomever I want. If that right is taken away from Facebook, I am harmed.

If the ability to become Facebook-scale is taken away from Facebook, I am not harmed, because I have no interest in doing so. So that's what I advocate.

(If you search through my comment history, you can see this is not a new belief for me, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19338090 from two years ago agreeing unironically with Paul Graham's strawman suggestion that Google should not exist, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797482 from three months ago arguing in favor of Elizabeth Warren's proposal, and motivation, to break up Big Tech in a specific way following specific principles.)

If your side wants power more than you want to stick to your expressed ideals, go ahead, but don't drag me down to your level. My side's ideals look like an opportunistic and self-contradictory version of laissez-faire libertarianism simply because our position is not laissez-faire libertarianism at all.

I fully support regulating and/or breaking up Facebook. However, my preferred regulation would not prevent them from moderating misinformation on their platform.

"stop the steal" isn't simply misinformation: it's about planning violence for next weekend. Facebook doesn't have to allow its platform to be used to try again to overturn the presidential election and harm any politician or police officer who resists.

The people who are supportive of this move by Facebook and similar moves by other tech companies aren’t motivated by a newfound sense of liberalism. Many have been arguing that the government should have been forcing FB et al to do this kind of stuff (ie, stopping “hate speech”) for years now.

Which brings us full circle, to state sanctioned firewalls (China).

The negation of a contradiction is a tautology:

¬(A & ¬A) = ¬A | A = True

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don’t see a contradiction here. The point of classical liberalism is well-regulated capitalism. Economic freedom combined with a rule of law to protect the citizenry. You can want to regulate Twitter and believe they have the freedom to kick whoever they want off their platform without a contradiction.

This. Regulation would be of harmful misinformation. Arguably, these companies are late in their self-regulation. People were tired of the endless excuses for double standards.

In other words, corporations should be able to do whatever they wish within the rules, but in order for that to happen, there should be rules.

Nobody is switching sides, I don't care one bit about corporations getting hit with regulation. In fact, I'm for it.

That has nothing to do with enjoying watching this chickens come home to roost.

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