Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmeacham98 | Hacker News Reader

"Private company", in this context, means "not the government". The opposite would be "public sector", referring to the government or companies it owns/runs.

View on HN

Except, how many government owned companies are there in the US?

What's the point in saying "private company" if 99.99+% of companies are private?

Twitter is a company.

Is that statement sufficient to stop further nitpicking?

I think there's a kind of ideology behind the phrase that personifies companies, giving them "rights" that become even more important than individual human rights. And there's the weird idea that companies can do whatever they want, despite the mountains of government regulation of corporate behavior.

Almost every use of "private company" is in contrast to a publicly traded company. Except when people start talking about "rights", and then they're apparently using it in a different way, which I find very odd and ideological.

The private nature of the company is the specific thing that matters here. It is right to emphasize that through use of the adjective. You’d better ask “why use the word ‘company’ at all” and the answer is that it’s a useful noun upon which to supply the critical adjective.

> The private nature of the company is the specific thing that matters here.

Is it?

Actually, no argument has been given why a government owned company couldn't block links to whatever the government wanted.

well, in the US, the First Amendment would start come into play in interesting ways, depending on whether the content itself is considered an expression of the government itself or just general.

What's the point in saying "private company"

Different rules, laws, regulations, etc. apply to private sector vs public sector.

Specifically in this case, OP is implying that a theoretical public sector social network wouldn't be allowed to block linking to mastodon because of the second (EDIT: no, wait, first amendment!) amendment, but that Twitter is well within its rights since they are in the private sector. Whether that's true or not, I dunno.

> OP is implying that a theoretical public sector social network

I dispute that the OP was implying or even thinking anything about a theoretical public sector social network.

OK.

Why wouldn't a theoretical public sector social network have the right to block any links that the government wanted to block?

I know I mistakingly had the second amendment written as the reasoning in my previous post when you had replied, but I meant the first amendment.

Like I said, I don't know how far the first amendment would or wouldn't apply in this situation. In any case, it would likely have to be tested in court.

> wouldn't be allowed to block linking to mastodon because of the second amendment

I don't know how I feel about a well regulated Militia overthrowing the government to protect free software and open standards...

The government controls some things. Companies control some other things. Gov things are 'public', company things are 'private'. I don't know what you are trying to argue. This is how the west works 101 stuff.

> The government controls some things. Companies control some other things.

The government actually controls companies. In fact they wouldn't exist as legal entities without the government.

I feel there is a common misconception that "private companies can do whatever they want", belied by the existence of government regulation, but nonetheless a misconception regularly employed to dismiss antitrust concerns, for example.

I don't think anyone is unaware of the concept of law. There are significant 'firewalls' between the public and private sectors, otherwise we would just have facism/communism or anarcho-capitalism.

> I don't think anyone is unaware of the concept of law.

They're aware of the concept of law but frequently unaware of specific laws. ;-)

Helpfully, the US Government, specifically the SEC, defines the term “public company” for us:

“There are two commonly understood ways in which a company is considered public: first, the company’s securities trade on public markets; and second, the company discloses certain business and financial information regularly to the public.

In general, we use the term to refer to a company that has public reporting obligations.”

They’re talking about $TWTR, not Amtrak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com