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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

The US is going to start looking like China if big companies can ban you for doing anything they don't like.

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.

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We’re like three terms of use updates and a bad decision from Tesla disabling your car’s charging for a day because you got a warning on Twitter.

Internet enabled cars were never a good idea. I dread the day I have to give up my mid-00s Honda and replace it with something new, since everything seems loaded with phone-home spyware and killswitches now.

I have a VW from 2019. I think it's the last generation to only have Bluetooth connectivity. Still, every time I talk to an official VW employee they ask me to install their app and update the car firmware, so they can spy on me. I politely refuse.

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.

Could they bundle it with some safety recall so it's a mandatory update (or else warranty void, insurance says you're at fault, etc)?

Yeah, it’s becoming more and more obvious that keeping a vehicle SOMEWHERE that doesn’t connect to the internet is going to be important in the future - even if it’s just a bike or motorcycle or M32A2.

A ton of recent, modern, safe, efficient, and reliable cars lost internet connectivity in the last year.

https://www.toyota.com/audio-multimedia/support/3g-faq/

https://www.subaru.com/support/3g-network-retirement.html

Etc.

I say let them. It will make people weary of big companies and value community based solutions instead which are much harder to just buy out or corrupt. You're seeing this play out with Twitter vs Mastodon right now for example.

how is this company “generally discriminating” or “suppressing free speech”? i feel like your comment is about the right to deny service more than the use of face recognition.

The company is denying service BECAUSE the customer is involved in a lawsuit.

If you don't think that's suppression of free speech, then I guess it's subjective - but I disagree.

the government is not involved here so there is no free speech issue.

if someone bans me from MSG or twitter free speech has nothing to do with it.

You mean it's not a First Amendment issue. Free speech is a broader principle about how a society should conduct itself, not merely a set of restrictions for governments.

I like this framework for discussing free speech.

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.

> The company is denying service BECAUSE the customer is involved in a lawsuit.

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.

The lawyer who's organisation is involved in a case, is being denied service.

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.

If I were taking this at all seriously, I suppose I would have to agree with you. The whole thing just seems frivolous, and both parties entirely unsympathetic; a terrible case for setting any precedent we should care about.

A publicly traded corporation is not "someone." They don't have points of view or the ability to speak. In many ways, they are far more similar to government institutions than to private citizens, and should be treated as such whenever free speech is concerned.

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.

> Why should that be unreasonable? Seems a little cheeky to sue someone and expect them to keep on entertaining you.

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.

MSG offers entertainment to the public. They sell tickets which are fungible.

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?

Say what you want, but they never would let us starve..

Primarily Democratic backed company that doesn't like Republicans and don't want to provide them service? Boom excluded - "We reserve the right to refuse you service!". And honestly with as much data that has been collected they could legally do it on a data point that's not tied to your politics(ie misdemeanors, felonies, court cases, etc). It's absolutely going to be discriminatory, and they can hide it in the algorithms. And, not to pick on Democrats this is possible for any group, or individual to clearly point at any other group/individual. This is just the start, but it might be the actual end of individual expression without repercussions.

Why is "Democrat vs Republican" relevant here, except as flamebait?

Not OP, but likely because Democrats have been doing this to Republicans online for the last 20 years or so (and almost never the other way around), so it's likely that we'll see the same behavior escape into the real world now that it's possible.

Hardly, the culture wars have been hitting in both directions for decades. The extreme right has been less successful at growing huge online companies, but giant companies can’t afford to kick off 1/2 their customers.

It’s really smaller website that can kick people off without consequences.

I've seen a video showing something like this, of a shop clerk refusing service to a customer because he had a maga hat (or some other sort of trump paraphernalia, I don't recall exactly.)

As far as I know, that was legal. But the clerk did lose his job when his boss found out.

Wear a MAGA hat in a solid blue county and just go about a typical daily routine. The prejudice and discrimination is eye opening.

In fairness the MAGA hat is generally understood to stand for hateful positions (screw your feelings, screw immigrants, remove rights to minorities and women), which is a bit antagonistic. I assume a different republican piece of apparel (like a McCain 2016 shirt) would yield no reaction. I still don't think people should discriminate but I do think MAGA in particular is objectively tainted, it's essentially the slogan of an attempted coup after all (I know officially it was "KAG" at that time, but MAGA remained the main "brand")

> Wear a MAGA hat in a solid blue county

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.

Performative political advocacy makes you look asinine. Especially when the novelty wears off.

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.

Probably not very different from wearing a swastika armband.

Well thats A-OK because the good guys are in charge here! We love our corporations and when they work with government agencies we love them even more. You’d have to be some kind of nazi to have a problem with that.

> The US is going to start looking like China if big companies can ban you for doing anything they don't like

This sounds very similar to concerns around social media platforms banning users arbitrarily (usually ideologically).

Or not banning users regardless of what they did if they are popular enough.

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