Comment by wegs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wegs | Hacker News Reader

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It's an analogy. None are perfect. But people need livelihoods to live. It's not okay or fair to destroy a business arbitrarily and capriciously.

My lesson here is that the Internet is essential infrastructure, and once companies reach a certain size (Google, Facebook, AWS), they should be regulated similarly to public utilities.

An electric company shouldn't be able to cut off electricity to a crack house or brothel unless law enforcement first asks for it. Law enforcement should have due process appropriate to the situation; a terrorist attack should be cut off right now. A company making pirated copies of Windows should have their day in court. Your propaganda-believing gun-toting drunk crazy uncle should probably keep their electricity (which isn't to say he shouldn't be handled somehow, but perhaps committed to a medical facility).

I don't feel good or bad about them being taken off-line, since I don't actually know what they hosted. I do feel bad about that decision being made by corporations behind closed doors.

> It's an analogy. None are perfect

It's more than just an analogy when the parent comment claimed that if you support one, you should support the other. I'm not disagreeing that the scenarios aren't analogous. I'm disagreeing that the same logic that makes one of those things essential to a functioning society should be tried to be wedged in as an argument for the other.

Should it be illegal for me to cancel a subscription because the vendor needs the money?

No one is entitled to income from their source of choosing. Government provides welfare, not whoever you want to do business with.

There is, perhaps, a slightly different power dynamic between you as a subscriber paying $9 a month, and you as a client of a huge near monopoly who can kill your livelihood at the whim of an algorithm.

That’s is because the electric company are monopolies created by the government. And unlike power utilities there are zero laws about which cloud provider you are forced to used.

Parler is not some rube. They are a company with access to legal counsel. They agreed to moderate their end users in accordance with Amazon’s content policy and chose not to. They made extremely stupid decisions they do not deserve to be coddled for.

Most utilities weren't created by the government. My local power company came from a series of merges of companies founded in the eighteen-hundreds.

The government, at some point, decided to regulate utilities. It certainly didn't create them or their monopolies. Most have a natural monopoly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly).

It was a good idea, at the time, and it's just helpful to update our list of what constitutes a utility.

>It's not okay or fair to destroy a business arbitrarily and capriciously.

Yeah! The employees of organized criminal gangs need to feed their families too!

They're honest, hardworking people. Why should they be penalized because the repressive system in which they live persecutes them for extortion, robbery, murder, sex trafficking and the like.

Arresting them and putting them in jail is just cruel and unfair!

>Arresting them and putting them in jail is just cruel and unfair!

Isn't this the point?

It isn't a responsibility of the electricity company or the landlord to investigate or apply punishments in criminal matters. Arresting them and putting them in jail is something the lawful authorities do, and there is a due process for it.

Haven't we been discussing for a long time now how section 230 of the CDA makes them immune for the content posted by users?

I don't think 'organized criminal gangs' is an apt description of Parler given that.

You're right.

Even though it's only a few hours ago, I'm not really sure exactly what point I was trying to make.

Which is kind of sad. I think I need some sleep.

If I can remember what the hell I was blathering on about after I wake up, I'll post again.

Thanks for calling me out.

This is a stressful time for a lot of people. I appreciate the note and wish you a good day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk The devil speech from 'A Man For All Seasons'

> perhaps committed to a medical facility

Even this might be a slippery slope – in the URSS at some point it was common to put political dissidents in mad houses.

But it's not a problem as long as there is due process… which wasn't the case for Parler !

Contract disputes between businesses get their due process after the fact in civil court, as has always been the case.

no analogy is perfect so every analogy is valid, huh

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