Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thorentis | Hacker News Reader

The American obsession with the rights of private companies needs to end, especially when those companies serve the common good. I personally see open communication as a common good, and companies that we rely on to provide it should be expected to do so.

View on HN

No. What it needs to end is the American obsession with the rights of people to say whatever they want in any context and expecting no consequences whatsoever.

In my opinion, what needs to end is tech companies feeling like they need to silence opposing views, just because they can.

This is exactly why the 1st Amendment exists - to protect the rights of people to say what the majority does not agree with.

Doesn't apply to non-governmental entities.

The internet itself is the common good. Twitter isnt and Facebook certainly isnt.

What makes you do certain? The reach and minds share of FB and Twitter are unparalleled

This is nothing new. Media evolves.

20 years ago: The reach and minds share of Fox News and CNN are unparalleled

40 years ago: The reach and minds share of ABC and NBC are unparalleled

50 years ago: The reach and minds share of News Radio are unparalleled

70 years ago: The reach and minds share of New York Times and other papers are unparalleled

100 years ago: The reach and minds share of the town criers are unparalleled

I think we would also be hard pressed to find a political campaign succeed without the use of Twitter, Facebook, AWS and others. To claim that someone can successfully reach the masses without those tools is - an interesting proposition I personally don't think is possible.

That dramatically overstates the importance of Twitter, Facebook, AWS, and technology on political campaigns. Technology matters at the national level, any maybe even at the Senate level, but below that it's a nice-to-have and definitely is not an essential.

And Georgia demonstrates that technology matters very little even in high-stakes races. One In-person contact and live phone calls (meaning that the person from the campaign is an actual person, not a recorded message) matters more than a thousand tweets, more than a thousand Facebook posts.

AWS makes it easier not to use hardware, sure, but many campaign websites are just customized Wordpress. You can run that on any webhost, or even an old laptop in the back of the campaign office.

There is merit to both sides of this story. Businesspeople should be able to cultivate whatever sort of community they like, do business with whatever sort of people they like, and certainly - as a matter of conscience - shouldn't be required to support causes they find objectionable. On the other hand, people should be able to publish whatever opinions they like without being ejected from what is the de facto public square.

Determining appropriate limits for free speech is appropriately the job of high level legal philosophers, perhaps a statesman or two - it certainly seems above the paygrade of those who have simply competed as businessmen to create and build and maintain that public square.

When we faced this issue with the civil rights movement, we decided the citizens had the better claim than the businesses. This time around we seem to be leaning the other way.

I don't think the answer is obvious. I think it would take an ethereal genius to come up with an answer we all broadly considered fair and right, and all we seem to have is hacks playing for partisan advantage.

Rights of private companies allows media like newspapers to publish content critical of the government, protects those companies from illegal search and seizure in govt retaliation, and a host of other rights that enable a free and democratic country.

Open communication is good, but not when taken to absolute extremes. Blocking content designed to radicalize people is not communication that should be broadcast indiscriminately. And no provider should be forced to host any and all content any user can think up - a balance between these extremes is demonstrably better for society as a whole.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com