If a town banned you from the train station because you refuse to give them your phone number, that would open them up to being sued. That should absolutely apply to Discord, Google Mail and Amazon AWS.
Nice example you gave, because this literally happened between 2002 and 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List The No Fly List eventually swelled to close to a million people. There was no one entity you could sue, because airlines had their own algorithms for matching, so even if you werent on the list, but the algo fuzzy-matched you, you were effectively on the list. Matching names is notoriously bad. There was an ACLU lawsuit, but it was a much bigger effort than anything being described on this thread.
In summary: lawsuits against Government systems are slow and not necessarily something to aspire to as a better system.
there is a different fundamental problem at play.
If you want government-run services that act as public versions of these services, advocate for that. But I don't support this particular method of socializing private businesses.
There's even precedence when a private company is a de-facto public space (and must follow the governments' mandates on public spaces) in the physical world; extending this to the digital world makes sense.
Yes it’s easier to gain a following online, but throughout MOST of history, people started these movements/conversation offline. Don’t let these companies trick you into thinking you don’t have a voice, or power, without voicing your thoughts on their “platforms”. You have a voice, and you can use it. You’ll just have to get out the house and start talking to people face to face.
Edit: I didn't mean to establish a condescending tone with the second sentence - I was simply making an observation.
Ok, if the internet is not "real" life, then what is it?
Is it "in" reality? Do we interact with it? Does it interact with us, or within the ineffable, largely unseen soup of causality from which how things are/become in this world emerges? Does anything matter?
"Don't forget that everything you see online is a facade. 15+ years ago, I fell in love with the internet because it's somewhere I could go to be something that I'm not. I could be LOUD, or I could say things I would normally never say away from the keyboard, and I think everyone bonded together online with this fact in mind. The internet was an escape.
Soon, people began to view the internet as a reality due to the rapid homogenization into 3-4 major websites which are controlled mostly by advertisers. But what I've noticed is that most of the opinions you read online aren't very honest.
Commenters on reddit will grift in the comment section for upvotes. Some commenters on HN will purposely avoid certain topics because their account is tied to their reputation in certain very partisan circles in California. Both of these examples are often the loudest and MOST SEEN (or unseen...) replies due to the low effort alignment with the popular opinion at the time.
Although the internet seems more real everyday, I truly believe it's never been further from reality. No one is truly able to say what they want due to the (seemingly) dire consequences of saying "F*ck it" and stating your true opinion (which isn't all the time, but the option no longer exists). And this even applies in the short term. If you aren't banned, you're downvoted (HN, reddit, Lobste.rs, every website with a comment section...) or filtered by an algorithm tuned to keep corporate sponsors and advertisers happy (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)."
That our government requires you to use the internet puts lie to the idea that you can live a complete life without the internet.
And since the government does not provide an email system, you still need to use a private service to access those public resources.
Unless you contact them through USPS, which is a public service.
It is highly inconvenient without the internet, but not required.
It turns out there's more email providers than just gmail.
Which I am going to interpret as "yes, you do need the internet to live your life, and you also have to be either savvy or unremarkable to keep from getting stomped on by private entities."
I agree with this. There are many government functions which need the internet to be able to use. But getting banned from Discord does not prevent me from accessing a government website. Getting banned from Gmail does not prevent me from sending or receiving an email from the government. Getting banned from WhatsApp does not prevent me from calling 911.
You practically do need an ISP to use the internet, often (in the US) your choice of ISP is very limited, and I do support common carrier regulations on ISPs. Maybe this will change with more wireless connectivity options becoming available to the broader public, but as it stands you normally don't have much of a choice which ISP will service your home.
But Gmail isn't an ISP. Facebook is not an ISP. You can still use the internet without having to log into Facebook. You didn't need an Instagram account to write this comment. Tiktok could ban me and I'd still be able to send emails to the government. I'd still be able to schedule a DMV appointment even if Spotify cancels my account.
If McDonald's banned me from their establishments I would not go hungry. You're essentially arguing I'd starve if they did. McDonald's makes up 24% of all fast food establishments, they're the largest player in the space. Clearly I would have a hard time ever eating without it. There's other providers out there! There are other places to get food other than McDonald's! You don't need a Gmail account to receive email!
And yes, you literally did just suggest that I needed a Gmail account to receive emails from the government. I regularly receive emails from the government to an address unrelated to Gmail.
IME it is exactly the opposite. People are more honest and open with their opinions on the internet; in real life, they are more likely to stay quiet or lie where they feel their interlocutors may not be accepting if their true thoughts were to be expressed.
Most couples now meet online. Good luck convincing them all the internet is not real life. And those stats are from 2017. Given a few years of lockdown the trend has surely accelerated.
Discord is how a lot of young people talk these days. If you're banned from Discord, it's not very comforting to hear "you don't need Discord son, in my day we didn't have Discord and we wrote to our pen pals. I'm sure you'll make some new friends."
>it's not very comforting
That's the problem. Your comfort doesn't matter. If you want comfort, go buy a hammock. If you want to boss companies around with overreaching regulations, then get into politics.
The fact is, companies can do what they want (within existing regulations). "They should" or "They shouldn't" arguments are outside of both of our control.
1. someone who broke site rules
2. someone who did not break site rules
I advocate group #1 suffering the consequences for their actions. I do not advocate group #2 losing access due to factors outside their control. Not sure why you're getting the two confused.
So I'm glad to see we agree. When you break the rules, it's OK for the site to ban you. So in this instance, Discord did nothing wrong, they banned someone who broke the site's rules.
Why can't it be regulated? Phone is and it's provided by private companies. The law even allows me to port my number between them.
Yes, due to your own lack of contingency planning.
I respect your intentions, but government regulation is not always the answer. At some point, we have to admit that we are far too reliant on these services (that many luddites refuse to use, and live a normal life).
My second sentence is true as of now, but maybe things could change in the future. However, I only base my arguments on present circumstances.
I do agree that some of these companies need to at least offer some sort of human support team or call center available to serve users that were falsely banned or randomly booted. However, forcing the hand of these companies is not only unfair, but pretty entitled.
Gmail is a free service.
I suspect you're older - imagine the US without a public highway system. Imagine every highway is private. Imagine what arbitrary bans from those highways would do to impact how you live. Talk to me about how well we should communicate face to face in that situation?
Idea not that appealing? That's what you're advocating for today.
A complete loss of a highway system that has no public replacement. By the way - those "18-24 age range" are all being forced to help pay for those "private highways" with their tax dollars anyways, in the form of govt subsidies to private cable companies.
Should we discount the ability to still communicate face to face? Nope. Damn well shouldn't.
Does that make this ok? Nope, Damn well doesn't.
No, I'm younger than you.
> Imagine every highway is private. Imagine what arbitrary bans from those highways would do to impact how you live. Talk to me about how well we should communicate face to face in that situation
First off, this is a flawed argument because my taxes don't pay for the servers running Discord or other similar services.
Also, your response is proving my point. I said in my original comment that your entire argument is based on the desire for instant gratification through through the use of private services that can boost your voice/reach online - These are private services, and you are not entitled to them at all.
I understand you want faster results (in a time where you can go online), but it's still very possible to get results face to face - That was my response. This is a fact that doesn't lean on any quasi-moral bulwarks to manipulate the conversation.
Your example ignores the fact that you can get anywhere using public roads instead of highways - Which would take more time, but are still very functional. This reinforces my original point. Additionally, beginning your response with made up scenarios is generally a low quality way to frame an argument to your liking, but I'll give you a pass on that.
> Does that make this ok? Nope, Damn well doesn't
Says who? You aren't entitled to any private service. Mind you, you're the one using words like "shouldn't" that don't fall under any moral authority other than the owner of the platform itself.
And that's simply a complete mistruth (I'd call it delusional - in the case of tech companies). They might be private companies, but they cannot (literally - full stop, without room for debate) exist without the infrastructure that we are providing them.
From the roads that they use to provision their datacenters with equipment, to the power we generate with power plants under government supervision, to the police/lawyers/judges that ensure their property rights, to the firefighters who deal with their emergencies. To the cable companies that we subsidize to provide them internet, and connect them to their customers. To the trash we collect from them, the water we provide, the clean air their employees breath.
I don't understand how you keep missing this point. "Private" does not mean self-sufficient, and it is an insufficient standard to claim that being "private" means you have carte-blanch control of how you operate.
This is why we have regulations over all sorts of industries. Do you think private companies are free to ignore accessibility laws? Or that they can violate discrimination laws? Or that they enter into any contract, regardless of the clauses?
Basically - "Ownership" is only a concept that exists BECAUSE we enforce it. There is no such thing as "ownership" without the participation of all of us in this make believe game.
---
So in this case - it's complicated. I think in general I don't mind private companies being allowed to remove users from their platforms, but I think it matters quite a bit what sort of impact that has on the user, and what sort of actions provoked that removal.
Should a store be allowed to remove a jewish person because they are jewish? Nope - damn well shouldn't.
Should a store be allowed to remove a jewish person who is breaking shit and making a mess? Sure.
Should discord be able to ban malicious users spamming other customers? Sure
Should discord be able to ban a user because they changed email addresses? Probably not.
Intent and actions of both parties MATTER.
And simply claiming that it's "Cost efficient" to not deal with problems that are trivial to a company, but utterly life changing to an individual (such as loss to a primary communication channel) is not acceptable. It's cost efficient for the company, and debilitating to the individual - they are harmed immensely so the company can save pennies.
We've long had established law around unequal bargaining power (it's where roughly all of our labor laws come from...) and it's been a concept for literal centuries.
So I'm inclined to say this on the matter:
Just because they currently "can" remove a user for this, doesn't mean that - ethically - we should allow that practice to continue.
It just means our laws are woefully out of date for this application, and technological progress is outpacing political progress.
Edit: Basically - I'm claiming complete and utter rubbish on this
> First off, this is a flawed argument because my taxes don't pay for the servers running Discord or other similar services.
Our taxes DAMN WELL DO pay for discord to be able to run their servers. We pay with our taxes, our time, sometimes our lives - so that the environment in which discord runs their servers can exist at all. Just because discord happen to be paying the costs for the servers themselves is almost immaterial. Society is an organism. We are all part of a whole.
Discord isn't the only group chat platform on the internet. WhatsApp isn't the only text message service out there. As long as you can get on the internet, the highway, you can drive to another club. You can use Matrix. You can use Mastodon. You can use tons of other services out there.
"Private" clubs and golf courses banning only Jewish and black people are not allowed anymore, for reasons.
Ejection from Willowdale Odd Fellows does not keep you out of Springfield Odd Fellows.
Seriously, do you feel the private organization should be able to choose who can be a member or not? Generally speaking, not trying to bring any particular protected class.
Say the Odd Fellows club did ban me, globally. Maybe I had friends I knew through the club. Does the fact I have friends who meet in the club let met petition the government to do violence against the group to enforce my ability to go to the meetings despite the leadership of the group not wanting me there?
Should a church be required to accept everyone in their services, even if that person is running around the room screaming "God is a lie! God is a lie!" Should a restaurant be required to seat every potential customer, even if that customer orders an ice water and starts screaming profanities and making other customers uncomfortable?
Why can't Discord decide to exclude those which abuse their platform?
Another user talking about being banned from Discord was supposedly involved with a server trading child pornography and then continuing to get banned by creating additional accounts which is once again against Discord's terms.
I'm not seeing a lot of examples of people truly getting banned for no reason. It's not my place to tell Discord what is and isn't abuse of their platform. They're allowed to make their own membership rules.
But please, answer my question. Is discord allowed to exclude those who they feel abuse their platform? That's kind of the key point here.
Does that mean they cannot "exclude those who they feel abuse their platform"? That is a tendentious, disingenuous question.
Does that mean they should be obliged to have a legitimate justification for such action, and offer an avenue to challenge it? Yes.
Does it mean the list of justifications should be subject to public review? Yes.
Does it mean that permanent bans for trivial, correctable reasons should not meet the standards of such public review? Yes.
The company which delivers electricity to my house is a utility. I have no choice but to use them.
McDonald's isn't a utility. There's lots of other places I can go to get food.
Discord isn't a utility. There are tons of other chat platforms available on the internet.
Gmail isn't a utility. There are lots of other email hosts available.
Are you seriously suggesting Discord is the only place to communicate on the internet to the point it's a utility like water and power?
Are Odd Fellows a utility?
Is Hacker News a utility?
An NGO I consult for runs its entire business on Google. All its documents are on Google docs, all digital assets on google drive, using google play store for their mobile app, using firebase on the backend ....
They work on children's education, and have lots of photos of children attending their workshops. My biggest fear is that Google AI will identify some photo as objectionable and shut the entire operation down in a hurry. Without recourse.
Sounds like an egregious lack of contingency planning. This situation is the fault of the engineer who stood up their infra. Your argument wouldn't exist if there were a Plan B and Plan C in place.
Do you believe it's fair that your client's lack of preparation is somehow grounds for overreaching government regulation?
No government regulation means existence of these will for all practical purposes depend on Google's whim. I don't see any other viable option, you do? can you elaborate?
lol you're a consultant?
Consider the postal service — imagine if you could permanently lose the right to send things in the mail at the whim of an unaccountable customer service rep in the USPS. No trial, no recourse. Unthinkable. I suspect you CAN be banned if, e.g. you commit mail fraud or send something hazardous, but only after you're convicted with due process. That's the part that's missing. You can argue that the USPS is a government-owned entity and thus different rules apply... but again, that's the point. The carrier of last resort, at least, should be run in a way that is accountable, whether technically government or not.
The current situation is pretty goofy. We've hyper centralized speech into a tiny handful of outlets, with those outlets increasingly recklessly operating with exactly 0 accountability to anybody, in spite of the dramatic and undeniable consequences of their actions are having on both individuals and society at large. IMO the one and only reason this hasn't been dealt with is because we're going through a brief phase of dystopia. Governments seems more interested in trying to myopically exploit the centralization speech to their own benefit, instead of actually thinking of the longterm, to say nothing of making society a better place.
It all depends on politics. Some people have opinions on how much court "activism" should be allowed, but they reliably flip the script when one of their pet topics shows up.
People used to insist Antonin Scalia was a sort of "strict constructionist", himself among them. But the moment he got a case where he had a personal opinion that contradicted his "strict" claims, his true colors came out. Then it turned out his strictness really did just mean corporations always win and individuals always lose, as his record had always suggested and his critics had long asserted.
(Never guessed I would have cause to miss him... He was not, anyway, Bork.)
That's not some law of physics. Just a man made law that game them those "use of their private proverty" rights (or rather, rich and powerful people lobbied and bought legislation, and got them for themselves).
We can take them back. And we can also stop treating them as legal "persons" while we're at it.
>You may call them "public spaces" or "public services" but that is an abuse of the word "public".
Public in the legal sense is just what we deem public in the legal sense.
As for public in the dictionary sense, that's irrelevant here.
Besides, after offering a service used by millions, that's basically a public service (I mean in the dictionary sense: directed at a mass public) - and even legal scholars have argued that they function as a kind of public utility (and could/should be regulated as such).
If we're to take it even further, then it's also a historical fact that all countries, including the USA, have nationalized companies (made some private companies public the same way public libraries are, either entirely or in part - e.g. having the state be shareholders of large part of them). So it's not like it's some unprecedent thing.
https://thenextsystem.org/history-of-nationalization-in-the-....
We don't live in a libertarian utopia where private property is not regulated. If you're a store-owner, for example, there are some things you simply cannot do or must allow. In California, for example, a private space, like a mall, has to allow constitutionally protected speech[1].
You can regulate platforms to allow for, say, free speech rights.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...
"under the California Constitution, individuals may peacefully exercise their right to free speech in parts of private shopping centers regularly held open to the public, subject to reasonable regulations adopted by the shopping centers"
I made no judgment on the decision. The decision itself is periphery to my argument, namely that governments are perfectly capable regulating speech on platforms ... because they already are in many many other domains.
Maybe they roll a D20 if you don't fill out the survey and if you roll a 1, you're banned for life (what can I say, they make up the rules for bans). Would the almighty free market really build another grocery store for that 5% of banned people? No... they would go hungry.
AT&T can't restrict who can use their network to make phone calls based on the political views or the content of the call. Why should Google, Facebook, or Twitter? Especially when special liability exemptions were made without which they likely wouldn't even be in business.
Plus we could make them civilly and criminally liable for every bit of fraud, defamation, child porn, copyright violation, and etc. that involves their network.
I know it doesn't, but that doesn't change anything I said. All of the privileges corporations enjoy are negotiable and can be revoked by that which created them in the first place: governments.
If the USG were to approve a publicly-funded centralized chat program and contracted that work out to Discord, I would support/approve subjecting them to the rules people are suggesting here. But that hasn't happened and most likely will not happen.
Just because a company is "private" doesn't mean they can do anything (manufacturing illegal goods, selling things that are harmful, not hire a certain category of people, etc.) We could add to the list of illegal behaviors the fact of denying service without justification and recourse.
Secondly, when those companies confiscate our accounts, they deprive us of what we had stored there (emails, messages, etc.), which should be considered stealing, even if they don't directly profit from the steal.
But most importantly, the size of these companies make them akin to utilities; while not impossible, it's incredibly difficult to operate in today's world without a Gmail account, or in certain circles without access to Instagram, Facebook, Discord, etc.
Given the impact to someone's life to be deprived of such access, the decision should not be left to companies, "private" or not, but supervised public authorities.
In France, the fact, for a professional, of refusing to sell something for no reason is punishable by up to three years in prison[0]. (If the victim sues, the reasons for not selling have to be presented to the judge, who then decides if they're valid or not.) I don't think this has ever been used against a FAANG but it would be a very interesting test.
[0] https://www.economie.gouv.fr/dgccrf/Publications/Vie-pratiqu...
I know, because it happened to me, and it will happen to you, too. Eventually, you'll have a "hot take" on a topic against the hive mind of whatever media you use, and you're done.
If media companies allow public access to their services, they MUST become public spaces, and/or public services. TOS be damned.
If they want to restrict users when they sign up (just an example) "you must be liberal or conservative," fine. They are preemptively limiting their customers to certain conversations. But if they allow everyone in, you cannot mute one set of people.
I can't wait for EU to propose something similar to fix these kind of issues, or a minimum level of customer service per every thousand users.
This should be the case even if the tenant isn't paying cash for services.
That will inevitably lead to more government spying at the end of the day. No thanks.