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Isn't that a strawman? You can call out companies for doing crappy things with their products without advocating government intervention.

Is this a new thing? I see this argument all the time.

When Coca Cola made their impopular recipe change were people defending it with "oh it is a private company, haters gonna hate".

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Seconded. This “private companies can do what they want” isn’t the “gotcha” many people think it is. Societal values exist independent of the specific implementations of laws meant to protect them, and in places where the law doesn’t reach—like the USA’s 1st Amendment not applying to private businesses—I think it’s still worth talking over “Hey, the law doesn’t really enforce this value here, but maybe it’s a good idea to abide by it anyway”. Saying private companies can do whatever they want is just stating the obvious and avoiding the question of what they should do.

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