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Comment by caeril | Hacker News Reader

The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism.

Someone (probably), in 1934 Hacker News: "BASF, Deutsche Bank, Hugo Boss, Bayer, BMW, and Siemens are private merchants. They can choose what to sell, and to whom. Maybe this presents a survival problem for the Jews, we don't know."

I guess it's ok since the public-private authoritarianism and book-burning is left-leaning this time?

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I don't consider internet company cancellation authoritarian because they're just following the will of the market. It's a symptom, not the cause. If it were solely up to Ebay execs, they would rather people not be overly sensitive because they can make more money that way.

The same is true for content platforms like Reddit or Facebook. They were pro-free speech until they started to get bad publicity from it.

But market doesn't care about this, it's just some tiny group of insanely vocal people

The insanely vocal people will twist the narrative to convince the regular people to go on a morale crusade. The Youtube adpocalypse started because a journalist kept watching Isis videos before they got removed, until they found one with a Coca cola ad.

> The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism

So make a company yourself that specializes in trading items banned from other shops. It wouldn't be the first and it's completely legal. I bet someone is already capitalizing on the outrage over this news. I don't know how exactly and I don't mean the media.

About the companies you list, we study them to look at the rise of Hitler, and we have put anti-discrimination laws in place to hopefully stop someone from abusing their positions like that again.

This isn't the state entering your home and burning books. Wrong hill.

How will you make your business when your banks are cancelling you ?

If you make a website selling used Seuss books and your bank cancels you I'll support you.

If you make a social media site that organizes domestic terror and your bank cancels you then that's your problem.

"If you make a social media site that organises domestic terror"

You do realise that most of the organisation of the "domestic terror" was done on Facebook right ?

How about making a website selling banned, unpopular or borderline racist literature? And then payment providers cancel services to it. Can I then take orders using cash via letters? Seems like it can work. Hopefully the post office, Fedex and UPS and other mail carriers don't notice and cancel it for some obscure money-laundering law/regulation about mailing money! Must I maybe resort to selling that literature on the street corner, back alley maybe?

What you describe occurs in China with books that might criticize their government, only they can't even sell them in back alleys. I've never heard of it happening with any material in the US short of things that encourage acts of terror. And I think that is the right place to draw the line.

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