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Comment by bob33212 | Hacker News Reader

There are two separate issues:

1. Is it good that a few people at a few large companies can decide what is and isn't acceptable speech in America.

2. Do media companies have the right to end business relationships with companies who they feel violate their contracts and Terms of Service.

The obvious answer to #2 is yes. Otherwise you would be forcing Fox News to run adds calling all Fox News viewers racists, and forcing MSNBC to run adds with racial slurs in them.

There isn't a clear answer to #1.Do these people have a conflict of interest? Who would do a better job? Biden? Trump?

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> 1. Is it good that a few people at a few large companies can decide what is and isn't acceptable speech in America.

Sure, but that's not like it's a new issue. And while I'm not suggesting you personally are raising it in bad faith, it's quite striking how much of the discourse - and I use that word in the broadest possible sense - on HN has appeared only after a pro-facist social media site lost its hosting, from folks who don't seem to have been concerned with, or even aggressively in favour of, companies banning "woke politics", or the constrol the Murdoch family exert over discourse in the English speaking world, and so on.

Like sure, there's a legitimate social issue there, but most of the posting here just reinforces Satre.

I think you are conflating multiple groups. There is a group of people tired of woke culture invading their workspace. There is another group of people who are in a Pro-Trump bubble and believe that the election was stolen. There is another group of "libertarian / free speech" ideologues. There is another group who are surprised that a US President who had just received 74 million votes was "silenced" by big tech.

My guess is that most of the concern you see on HN is from people in the last group that are afraid of what it means for society if a President can be cancelled. Personally, I think that their concern is overblown because Trump wasn't silenced he is just too lazy to take the time to come up with another messaging plan. I assume he is still on Twitter under a fake name hurling insults out at everyone.

3. Corporations and the government are MERGING in the USA.

Biden just hired a tonne of ex-big tech staff to work on tech oversight policy, lol.

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