With megacorps owning bigger and bigger chunks of everything, these sorts of bans will start having deep effects on peoples lives.
Imagine being banned from all grocery chains within 200 miles because the parent corp that owns all grocery stores in the area decided that it doesn't like you.
I'm usually in favor of companies deciding what they want to do and how they want to price things - but anything related to general discrimination or suppressing free speech seems like a VERY slippery slope that companies shouldn't be allowed to do.
There's already a lot of companies sueing people for leaving bad reviews. This seems completely dystopian. Imagine if you say anything bad about Apple and you can't message iPhone users anymore. If you say anything bad about Google, you can't use any website with Analytics. If you say anything bad about Comcast, you have to sell your house and move to get Internet, etc.
This isn't a world I want to live in.
I'm sure we'll figure out the regulation sooner or later, but for now it looks like things will get worse before they get better.
https://www.toyota.com/audio-multimedia/support/3g-faq/
https://www.subaru.com/support/3g-network-retirement.html
Etc.
If you don't think that's suppression of free speech, then I guess it's subjective - but I disagree.
if someone bans me from MSG or twitter free speech has nothing to do with it.
https://popehat.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-free-speech-ped...
>there are three distinct categories of free speech values: free speech rights, free speech culture, and decency of speech.
Why should that be unreasonable? Seems a little cheeky to sue someone and expect them to keep on entertaining you.
> If you don't think that's suppression of free speech
Whose speech is being suppressed? The Rockettes are free to sing, the lawyer is free to complain about missing the show, and the venue is free to explain their point of view. Everybody involved appears to be speaking freely.
Specifically, the lawyer being denied service is a personal injury lawyer, who works for the law firm who is representing people suing the company.
So they work in an entirely different branch of the law firm, but are being denied service because their firm is representing someone who is suing the company.
I mean do you prefer the world where you are punished for the actions of 3rd parties who are semantically or logically connected to you?
Irrespective of the fundamental issues of this case, this seems a bit of an overreach.
The customer banned from MSG is not involved in the lawsuit, but even if they were, we shouldn't allow corporations to retaliate against people by banning them from public venues.
One things that’s being missed is the compartmentalization of the individual in their professional capacity and as a private citizen. The person was attending the venue as the latter.
The only time this partition is disregarded is in vindication.
How do you expect an attorney to be able to perform her professional responsibilities if she can be punished for doing so?
What happens when her firm is involved in litigation with Cushman & Wakefield and she can’t meet clients with offices in Rockefeller Center due to a ban?
It’s really smaller website that can kick people off without consequences.
As far as I know, that was legal. But the clerk did lose his job when his boss found out.
Pre January 6th, you'd get about the response someone wearing a BLM shirt in red country would. Heckling and adversarialism, but generally civil interactions. Post January 6th, yes, someone wearing a MAGA hat is showing specific stripes.
If you’re still on the red hat train in 2023, my associating with you makes me look a bit dim myself. It’s kinda like naming your kid Adolf… you’re projecting something gross.
This sounds very similar to concerns around social media platforms banning users arbitrarily (usually ideologically).
I'm not sure it is possible to write a good law that says you can't act against people for some set of reasons, without impacting the ability of venues to deny service in more reasonable cases. (Current trespassing law pretty much relies on notification, if you are told you aren't welcome in a private place and then refuse to leave or later re-enter it, you are trespassing).
Like say an attendant observes that someone is visibly intoxicated, sees them vomit in a spot that isn't part of the venue, and then tries to deny them service. In that case, an escape hatch that lets them add people to a list if they are ejected wouldn't work, but it's perfectly reasonable to deny that person entry.
The better mechanism to deal with things like this would be social pressure. Arbitrary denial of service is outrageous and people should punish them by not doing any business with them (don't book events there, don't attend events there). But no way is anyone going to inconvenience themselves over a few lawyers getting a bad deal. Maybe we'll get a more charismatic scenario sometime in the future.
And it wouldn't even need to be this nefarious. Like all paths to hell, it could start with a "bad people" list that becomes homogenized across the companies because one of them has special skill in this area and it's cheaper that way. Then the list starts to expand, and since all of this group of companies are linked, they all follow the same ban, use the same facial recognition etc.
(Walmart won't be allowed to control companies they compete with, and no one will control them)
Maybe in the US, but in Canada and elsewhere, anti-competitive behaviour is basically seen as a national policy objective.
“Strong & powerful industry is good for you” (as they no longer even need to collude to raise prices and reduce competition for labour).
(If your answer is “yes but many areas have just one store”, then maybe the real problem is uncompetitive markets?)
I, myself, am quick to point out that the first amendment only applies to the government, but I'm starting to think it might be better if those kinds of protections are broadened.