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Comment by pixl97 | Hacker News Reader

>The US has a tradition in rule of law, and it’s a social convention that applies broadly.

???

You are conflating all the different legal systems of the US. US criminal law is the one of beyond reasonable doubt. US civil law on the other hand is an entire other bag of worms and 'potential' contractual obligations. On top of that private property has a pretty massive leeway in reasons you can ban people from said properties. There is no contradiction here. "Fuck you, your tie sucks" is a completely valid reason to remove you from their private property. Said person being a dick to others is what is typically considered an exceptionally valid reason to remove them from the property.

If we want to follow a broad social convention, then it is be nice to others, how about that for a start?

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If the policy is “Fuck you, your tie sucks”, then that should be written into the policy.

YouTube’s policy does not say “Fuck your, your tie sucks.” They say they remove people for harm to users. But there are many creators who harm users who are not being removed. So that is not the policy.

They can easily fixing this by changing the policy to “fuck you, your tie sucks” or “we ban for any reason at our discretion.”

Until they make that change, it’s perfectly fair to point out the contradiction.

> They can easily fixing this by changing the policy to ... “we ban for any reason at our discretion.”

What makes you think that isn't already in their ToS?

Pretty much a staple of US law is "We withhold the right to refuse service to anyone". There are only a few preconditions (civil rights for example) that are exceptions to this rule.

>then that should be written into the policy.

Please feel free to take them to civil court and get the mto change it.

Now, I'm not one for this entire "corporations are people too" thing we have going on in the US, but trying to call Google out for this in particular when the courts have sided with businesses freedom of association until it becomes a civil rights violation in the vast majority of cases. You can point out it as much as you like, but it's mostly a waste of your time until you start championing for 'consumer rights'.

The only court that can coerce YouTube to change its policies is here... public opinion.

Well if you're looking to get a groundswell of people to get together and push Google to change... this is probably not the case you want to champion.

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