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Comment by theptip | Hacker News Reader

Every company is free to determine its terms of use. If USG doesn’t like them they should sign a contract with someone else.

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Every company is free to state their terms of use, but not all have been upheld when challenged

What’s your angle here? I’m genuinely curious. If the government told you that you had to muck out portable bathrooms with your bare hands even if you didn’t want to, wouldn’t you find that objectionable?

I’m sure they would find it objectionable, just like how many reacted negatively to the draft, but it was imposed anyways.

The government should have far less control and power over individuals and businesses than it currently does.

Well, the rates are different from country to country, but everyone knows taxes. I really don't want to give away almost 40% of my income... Does anyone care what I want or like?

Taxes aren't forced labor or indentured servitude, and aren't prohibited in any democracies. They're imposed by law through the actions of our duly elected representatives.

What grounds for challenge do you imagine here?

> Every company *

* excludes tiktok

Can I run a business and say “No use by insert race here”? If they don’t like it, they can shop somewhere else, right?

Ofcourse we're gonna compare being against the use of technology for Mass surveillance/Autonomous weapons with being racist, like wtf kind of argument is this? So because businesses can't implement racist policies they shouldn't be allowed to have any policies concerning the use of their tech? Mindblowing.

Well, the question is the fine line between racism and discrimination. Or, whats the difference between misogyny and pacifism? What am I allowed to dislike? Is it already across the line if I dont like dogs? What if I had really bad experiences with dogs in the past? Is it OK now, or still not? What if my childhood was basically a crazy mess because of my mother? Am I allowed to be careful around women now? Or am I creepy because of that? What if I escaped a warzone during my childhood? Is militant pacifism OK now? What if the military saved my family from being killed? Is it OK if I am pro military budget, or am I a system-whore now?

Of course not, nor can you write a contract that places your customers in indentured servitude. Those would be illegal contractual terms.

But this is irrelevant to the case we are discussing, where Anthropic used legal contractual terms, and the government willingly signed them, then demanded they be changed after the fact.

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