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Comment by mattbee | Hacker News Reader

> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?

No, because you don't need AWS or Twitter or Cloudflare or any of the name tech companies to run a high-traffic web site successfully.

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This is disingenuous. Already credit card companies have begun to de-platform people. Once Visa and AmEx refuse to do business with you, you are on increasingly thin ice. If both Google and Apple refuse to host your app in their App Stores, what exactly is your recourse?

Nowadays, the public square, the thing that the constitution is supposed to protect, which is the difference between feudalism and democracy, is de-facto (though not de-jure), owned by monopolistic corporations. They are only accountable to their shareholders, and they have nearly complete power over their platforms. The vast majority of public discourse, news and financial transactions take place on these feudal fiefdoms.

This is an oversight in the current legal framework, and will have to be corrected eventually.

> Nowadays, the public square, the thing that the constitution is supposed to protect, which is the difference between feudalism and democracy, is de-facto (though not de-jure), owned by monopolistic corporations.

That's quite the exaggeration. You can quite literally still gather in a physical public square. Just because it's more convenient to do so online doesn't mean it's a granted right.

> The vast majority of public discourse, news and financial transactions take place on these feudal fiefdoms.

And? If a bank decides they don't want you as a customer, you can still perform cash transactions. You aren't entitled to a bank account just because the majority of people do banking.

Also, what Parler was doing was not so much "gathering in the public square" as they were renting a storefront in a privately owned mall. The mall owners are well within their rights to evict the tenant.

> You can quite literally still gather in a physical public square.

You can? Last I checked I can't, if I do that I get arrested for breaking social distancing...

> you can still perform cash transactions.

You mean, like in Japan and Sweden, that decided to attempt to go cashless by creating more and more rules on cash so that only debit (or credit) cards are practical?

> if I do that I get arrested for breaking social distancing...

This is inaccurate at best. The gathering in D.C. last Wednesday had a legal permit for thousands of people to join.

That’s quite a pedantic interpretation of gathering in a public square at a particular moment in time where doing so is detrimental to the health and economy of a community. In the event that you’re not disingenuously asking that question, as with all things, “it depends”, on specific local ordinance, how many people, the ability to maintain six feet distance, etc.

We've built a society without physical public squares, for the most part, though, and substituted them with the virtual.

> This is disingenuous. Already credit card companies have begun to de-platform people. Once Visa and AmEx refuse to do business with you, you are on increasingly thin ice. If both Google and Apple refuse to host your app in their App Stores, what exactly is your recourse?

Host on your own infrastructure. Present a mobile-responsive web site. Take Bitcoin.

(we're talking, politely, about free speech extremists - so none of this seems wildly inappropriate, right?)

> Host on your own infrastructure. Present a mobile-responsive web site. Take Bitcoin.

This is all fair. If your goal is to exist on the fringe of the acceptable and legal, you're going to have to DIY.

> Already credit card companies have begun to de-platform people.

For a while now. Sex workers, sex shops have complained about it for years. Nobody cared. I find it ironic that the same group of people advocating against consumer and worker protections now seem to demand them.

It's tempting to think that it's concern trolling by fascists, really. No interest in whether Google wants to get rid of a high-profile AI ethicist, because hey, it's a private company. No interest in Facebook censoring breastfeeding groups because OMG NIPPLE. No interest in, as you say, making it impossible for legal sex work to operate. No complaints that Apple forbid R18 material in the app store years ago because Steve Jobs didn't like it.

Now, suddenly, it's a great big issue because a bunch of neo-Nazis got run out of town? Not a great look, eh.

If banks and a score of major tech companies independently decide not to do business with someone, maybe that someone is the problem.

I don't doubt that it could be used as a hint among other points, but doesn't that approach scream "tyranny of the mob"? How often in the past has a minority view been objectively right and a majority view been wrong? For example, Galileo was accused of heresy due to his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun. The "maybe that someone is the problem" view would say Galileo was the problem.

History is full of people whose thinking stopped at "no smoke without fire". Those people are still here today.

The free market argument is that it isn't tyranny of the mob. It's tyranny of the market. The companies are responding to market forces, which implies that so many people are concerned that it's actually a democratic push of people voting with their wallets.

There was a time when many businesses refused service to blacks and jews. By our logic, that would have been right and proper.

As a bonus, I'll just add this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

Not my logic. Refusing service to someone based on their sexual orientation, religion, or color of their skin is a very different moral proposition than refusing service based on facilitating the subversion of the democratically elected government that sustains said business.

Then add political affiliation as a protected class and prosecute people who break actual laws.

My personal opinion is that this discussion about tech, politics, censorship, etc. is something that needs to happen, and maybe all parties were completely within their rights to act how they did.

There are a lot of people who don't see that as self-evident, and what they are hearing is "if you are pro-Trump, you deserve to be a social pariah." That is a real quick path to radicalization.

Society is based on a set of mutually agreed upon rules. If you convince enough people through your actions that the rules are "Heads I win, Tails you lose", then they'll decide not to play by those rules anymore. And then all hell breaks loose.

> Society is based on a set of mutually agreed upon rules.

Agreed, and it follows from that that "political affiliation" protection cannot include "wants to destroy the government" -- no matter from what quadrant that sentiment flows (anarchist, socialist, fascist, whatever).

Agreeing to democracy -- and probably republicanism -- (note, both lowercase) is a bright line across which you've really decided to step outside of our mutual rules.

Neither "conservatives", "republicans", nor any other actual political affiliation are being shut out by any of these companies. People who affiliate with "opposing a democratic election with direct violence" are.

> People who affiliate with "opposing a democratic election with direct violence" are.

The trouble is that many of the same people saying these actions were perfectly acceptable also have a habit of casually stating that all people who voted for Trump are the irredeemable scum of the earth.

In 1984 everyone hated Goldstein's guts, but was he really the problem?

Read another book, for god's sake.

Try Homage to Catalonia. You'll find the author likes shooting fascists, not platforming them.

But you do need Google and Apple to have a mobile app.

I do agree with you that AWS dropping them isn't evidence of a monopoly. There's plenty of competitors in that space. None of them, however, are going to touch Parler with a 10ft pole at this point.

Apple and Google can't stop you from providing a working mobile-responsive web app

They could prevent people from accessing them on their phones though, let’s see how long it takes.

Like how they prevent people from getting the ISIS websites, Hamas websites, neo-Nazi web sites? Looks like they have more than a decade to do so and still nothing. Maybe your hyperbolic slippery slope argument is wrong?

Many of these are still allowed on Twitter, so I’m not sure what your argument is.

And I’m saying they “could”. They might decide not to.

Although I don’t think anyone could have foreseen level of censorship we have now, even 5 years ago, so who knows what it will look like in 2025.

And I think if you ask the average HN reader he wouldn’t be opposed to blocking websites for political reasons.

DoH is gonna throw a huge wrench into that plan.

Likely not at all for Apple.

Apple do it in certain degree. By makes their mobile browser extreme buggy and feature lacking. You don't even have proper notification support on it. How could it be used as a proper app? A social app that can't tell you that someone send a message to you sounds a no-go to me.

You don't need google to side-load apps.

You need an ISP right? You think telecom companies are anxious to provide them bandwidth?

Telecom companies are common carriers and do not have the luxury of being able to deny customers access if they are not breaking the law. Nothing preventing these people from starting up their own ISP and hosting company.

Nothing stopping them from fabricating their own silicon too, right? How far down this hole till we reach the bottom?

I wonder if this was the same sort of argument used to justify denying minorities homes / home loans? "Well they're free to build their own house!" "Well they're free to cut their own lumber!" "Well they're free to forge their own hammers!" "Well they're free to..."

Denying people homes or loans because of race is vastly different, because one’s race is an inherited physical characteristic.[1] Here, companies are denying service to Parler based on the beliefs (edit: and behavior) of its users.

This situation lies somewhere between “refusing service based on someone’s religion” and “refusing service because I just don’t like them.” Political affiliation is not yet recognized as a religious belief, so they are not a protected class. I don’t know enough about the law to say on what grounds a company stands if they drop/refuse service because they think someone is being a dick.

[1] it’s more nuanced than that of course, but I’m speaking broadly here

Thank you for this example. I’ll be using it. I’ve been struggling to articulate that just because technically someone is free to do something doesn’t mean they aren’t being meaningfully hindered from doing it.

Depends where in the world they are. But US carriers are nowhere near as fussy over who they supply unless their clients end up overwhelming their networks.

> No, because you don't need AWS or Twitter or Cloudflare or any of the name tech companies to run a high-traffic web site successfully.

The problem is you need to rely on someone.

You need to rely on the net as a whole - which allows for multiple hosts and carriers and a lot of flexibility between them.

But there are two problems:

1) Some parts are still single points of failure, e.g. domains, dns servers

2) There are switching costs (particularly on the infra slide) both in time and money (time was the issue here).

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