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Comment by chaos986 | Hacker News Reader

That's part of the Sophie's Choice. If we have private owned social media, then they will moderate according to public opinion. If we have us government run social media then we have no moderation at all because 1st amendment applies only to us government.

So is it morally allowable to discuss <abhorrent topic> online? Should it be law to allow or disallow <abhorrent topic>?

Who decides what the majority of people consider to be abhorrent?

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I think you central questions it the most important one, but the dichotomy between private and public is forced. A phone company is not forced to moderate the communication of its clients.

I don't believe parent said they were forced, only that they would do it. And that makes sense, since their desire is to minimize damage to their brand.

There is a simple solution to this if you don't like the way they behave: stop using their product, and recommend others do the same.

Of course, your not using it doesn't prevent others from using it if they want to, but that's freedom of choice for you.

I am all for the free market, but when companies grow too dominant it no longer works, and we should not pretend otherwise. Just look at what happened to Parler.

These companies hardly have a monopoly on internet communication, case in point: Parler is still around!

One of us is misinformed . Parler is not around as a working social media website as of a few minutes ago.

Alright, I jumped the gun there I guess. Last I heard they did find hosting elsewhere because, and this is the important point, none of the companies that shut them down had a monopoly on internet communication.

true but the analogy falls apart when you realize that 99% of phone conversations are peer to peer and between 2-4 people.

social media posts can be a single person communicating with millions.

the damage per unit of effort is much much lower for the unmoderated phone vs the unmoderated social

I agree, its an open problem. One one hand no one elected these companies as arbiters of what is good but on the other society at large is not equipped to handle the tsunami of speech that the internet enabled. Something has to be done.

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