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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

I can understand why you might feel that way. At the same time, I think censorship on an infrastructure level sets a very strong precedent. I think infrastructure players should refrain completely from that kind of action.

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I think we disagree on what censorship means. To me, censorship very clearly means an active effort to go out and eliminate a particular type of speech or a particular speaker. That means going out and finding that speech or speaker and shutting them down, everywhere.

In this instance, a platform decides, effectively "we refuse to host your ideas, go elsewhere." Facebook and Google and Twitter aren't going out of their way to scrub these people off the internet; they are just kicking them off their own platform.

You might consider this part of the "cancel culture", but it's not censorship.

I just don't think AWS should be considered core infrastructure. ISPs are definitely core infra, which is why I think net neutrality is so important. Domain name registrars and CC processors are a bit of a grey area for me, since those gate access to the internet and online financial services respectively, but there's plenty of precedent for blocking certain businesses from both of those services.

AWS is great the servers you run. Those can be anywhere on earth, including physically located at your business

Sorry, I don't think that is censorship. It is just the bar owner deciding he had enough about you insulting the patrons and kicked you out, but you can keep saying your shit. Just not in his bar.

AWS and Twitter are not infrastructure. Electricity and telecoms are infrastructure.

At the end of the day if my buisness is hosting something the market does not like, my buisness will suffer. It becomes harder to retain and attract new customers and grow my buisness and interfers with my marketing messaging. We live in a capitalistic society this is how the free market works.

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