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Comment by goatcode | Hacker News Reader

Easy solution any side can get on board with, for potentially different reasons: If a corporation receives tax or direct financial benefits from the US federal government, it must be bound by the same laws as the US federal government. Even the ones the US federal government ignores.

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Ok, then what do you do once all these companies stop doing business with the US government? The US government will find someone else to buy these services from - maybe they will have to pay more... no big deal.

How is this a "solution"?

Governments pay more all the time for various social and political purposes. For Amazon and other tech companies "The government made us do it" is probably what they're after anyway. It allows them to service everyone and not have to face boycotts from anyone.

I think what the OP wants is amazon to not discriminate based on anything which would definitively lead to people boycotting them.

Drat, I didn't come up with a perfect plan, with no possible hypothetical what-if responses. Back to the drawing board.

It's a solution to keep corporations that grow big enough to cause societal issues, having grown that big through utilizing society's resources, somewhat more accountable. There might be issues, but I'd suspect there to be more issues with the current solution: being "nothing."

The article is saying Amazon made news by shutting down an ISIS propaganda site celebrating a suicide bombing that killed 183 people last week. It's fairly likely the US federal government is at least exploring plans to find and kill whoever owned that site, so I don't see how holding Amazon to the same level of restriction as the US federal government makes a difference here. Freedom of speech doesn't give you freedom to use the Internet to plot a criminal conspiracy to kill US soldiers.

Note that it's totally uncontroversial, bordering on mandatory, to support our return strike which killed dozens of people.

Also firmly in bounds to insist we stay there and do it on a nightly basis, forever. Majority opinion of people with microphones.

But the other guys? On the other side of the fight? Completely unconscionable to host any of their speech. We don't encourage violence.

I don't think the federal government is required by law to kill people.

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