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Comment by stevesarmpit | Hacker News Reader

Free Speech isn't a thing that applies to Internet companies, only the government and how they must deal with people who wish to speak in public forums.

Internet providers and services aren't "public forums" given their infrastructure is not a public space, but a private space they control. Whether or not someone thinks these services are "censoring" things or not isn't a real argument, again for the reason it must be a ruling authority that violates law by removing a person's speech from a given area or location, which then is censorship.

A company can't censor someone who is on their platform given the platform is owned, not ruled.

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Free speech is a cultural value and a philosophy it, can apply to anyone and everyone. The first amendment of the US constitution protects the people from politicians and bureaucrats.

Just because it’s done by a private party doesn’t mean it’s not censorship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4t6zNZ-b0A

So does that mean if I am hosting a dinner at my home on my own private property and someone starts spewing hate at people I have to let him because it's his free speech? No, I'm kicking that asshole off my property and banning him from returning.

It's the same for these tech companies. They are private companies and if you break their ToS for inciting violence or posting illegal shit then they have the right to ban you. You have freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences.

> So does that mean if I am hosting a dinner at my home on my own private property and someone starts spewing hate at people

Well, if that "private property home" is the only place where people in your surroundings can get something to eat; and if that someone "spew at others" but says something vile quietly to his friends, so that only people actively listening in on the conversation hear it, then - maybe you should not be able to police what that person says.

Again, free speech isn't a legal thing that is a right to an individual in all settings. It is baked into the constitution, but that has zero to do with dinner parties and more to how government can act when dealing with people speaking their minds.

This is a very thorny issue and my own personal views don't matter, but the views of others are indeed interesting. I was listening to an episode of The Taylor Report[0] and he was saying that no corporate platform should block speech based on its moral compass. He noted that while Twitter flagged Trump's tweets regarding the Capitol Hill protest as inciting violence, Twitter didn't flag Trump's tweets threatening nuclear violence against Iran and North Korea as incitements to violence.

[0] https://ciut.fm/shows/the-taylor-report/

Oh I agree that corporations shouldn't be able to block speech but right now constitutionally they can so what we really need is a change to the constitution. Those laws were written hundreds of years and meant to change with the times.

Your home is not infrastructure. Internet service, banking and online payments are infrastructure just like water, gas and electricity and companies shouldn't have the right to cut you off on ideological grounds or because your spew out so called hate speech.

Note I said internet service not a subscription to a social media service. Your internet provider may decline to provide you with email, hell the may even decline you to provide with you with DNS, but they sure as well can't refuse to route your packets or accept incoming connections.

Apple and Google were within their rights to cut off access to the App store, but Amazon were in the wrong because they are an infrastructure company. At the very least they were obliged to allow Parler enough time to transfer to new providers.

> gas and electricity and companies shouldn't have the right to cut you off on ideological grounds or because your spew out so called hate speech

All of us here in the US are entitled and reserve the right to do business with whom we want as long as it doesn't violate discrimination laws, which focus on race, religion and things like that - not opinion about whether there are lizard people ruling the government or that an election was "stolen" because a few people made up some good stories about it but there is no actual proof that can be viewed in person...at all.

Wrong again. Infrastructure for the most part depends on govt licensing and lends it self to monopolies or oligopolies.

When those oligopolies act in concert or along the same ideological lines what options do you have?

E.g. the authorities can seize cash from you as has happened to store owners who went to deposit it at the bank. If every bank refuses to serve you which you claim to be their right, then why do you have laws which to criminalize cash holdings if that forces you to withdraw your cash from them and hold it in the street or at your home?

One cannot criminalize large cash holdings arising from cash payments which is okay with many people while at the same time giving banks the right to deny service.

There is one electric company that serves my apartment. If I get cut off, I don’t get electricity.

On the other hand, there are a thousand different cloud providers; surely at least one would have taken Parler on as a customer. And even failing that, it’s much easier for Parler to run their own servers than it is for me to run my own power plant.

Yes but they can only cut if you off for non payment, they can't cut you of for your political views. They can't even cut you off if you use your electricity to commit crimes.

Yes, because they’re a regulated monopoly. There are quite literally zero other ways to make electricity come out of my wall sockets. That’s not the case with AWS.

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