At a certain point, these platforms have such enormous, unprecedented influence and control over public discourse, that they aught to be thought of differently than, say a restaurant refusing service to a guy without a shirt or shoes on. We're clearly in uncharted territory, when it comes to the control and release of information.
Just using Twitter and Facebook for example - they've silenced the second-most voted for President in American history, because he isn't their brand of politics. Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?
How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?
They didn't "silence" him because his brand of politics. Their stated reason for banning him from their platform was literally " due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
Their TOS have specific "Glorification of Violence policy", which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate.
Further, the claim that Twitter "Silenced" the President of the United States, a man who literally has a press room in his house, and could have a room full of reporters convened at any hour of the day to speak to. He could issue any statement from official whitehouse channels and it would instantly be disseminated across every news outlet around the world.
He chose not do those things, because he is a coward. The quintessential Keyboard Warrior/troll who likes to rile up people safe from any counter argument.
Everyone and their cat understands that it is hypocritical bullshit. They'd let his incitements slide easily if he was their political ally and not an opponent.
I don't have a horse in that race, but it is disgusting how people defend this blatant and obvious bias as perfectly normal thing.
And what sort of incitement is coming from the left? is it "socialize healthcare" or "we should throw molotovs at protests", because the latter isn't allowed on Twitch either.
Because the Summer of Love 2020 was so peaceful and innocent from either side of politics... seriously, get over it. Both the left and the right are cut from same cloth. They'll torch whoever doesn't agree with giving them the power. Both sides are just different flavors of control.
Let's not forget how it was Trump's DHS that was mistreating folks on the border back in the day. Is it still Trump calling the shots on the border? Is it still Trump wanting to bring manufacturing to the US instead of China? No, Biden is now implementing the same policies as Trump, except in blue flavor instead of red.
Get over yourself thinking your political party salute has meaning. They're all the same assholes. Twitter and Facebook are not against violence or hate, they're against whoever doesn't agree with them.
Regardless of which flavor of capitalism is currently being pushed[0], this thread is about private platforms being able to exercise their first amendment right to choose who they associate with, which is why Twitch is allowed to ban people for their political views and Parler is also allowed to ban people for 'left-wing trolling'[1].
The Maxine Walters quote (she's a goldmine of things a professional politician is irresponsible to say) was the one I was thinking of but here's a link with a bunch of other stuff too.
Twitter is a company, not a court of law. Trump tarnished their reputation like nobody else, so they ceased doing business with him when it was convenient. This was facilitated by him flagrantly violating their rules for years, culminating in the riot he incited via their platform. It's as simple as that.
Precisely. They can have their cake and eat it too. That they attracted a lot of eyeballs while he was in office doesn't mean they want to be "that website that Trump rants on" forever.
No one inciting violence is a company's ally, unless that company sells guns, ammo, etc.
Twitter, same as every other corporate entity, benefited from Trump's tax cuts. They went years without silencing him, despite cries that his posts were dangerous. They -wanted- to keep him on their platform; he kept millions engaged with it. They even created 'world leader' exceptions -just so they wouldn't have to apply their own terms of service against him-.
It is disgusting how people act like this is bias against Trump/the GOP, when it's so obvious that the bias flows the other way, and it took an actual armed invasion of the US Capitol for these companies to finally step up and do something.
Armed invasion? It was meeker than peaceful protests from the last summer! Not even one building was burned! That shaman guy blessing everyone in capitol chamber (including guards!) was an extreme threat to the society, right.
It is unfortunate how personal biases stop you from understanding the danger to society from unchecked 'private companies'. Trump haters are ok with it so long as Twitter and Facebook silence him but too shallow to imagine that one day they'll silence the politician they support.
Meeker....? 4 people died. You are insane if you can look at the footage of that riot and equate it with "meeker" ... do you mean "they weren't black" ?
I personally have no idea where to find Trump's latest babble. This is also true for pretty much everyone I know.
He has been effectively silenced. (And at least in the case of Twitter, it was definitely not for glorification of violence given the two tweets they cited in their blogpost)
>I personally have no idea where to find Trump's latest babble.
We'll ignore for a second that just because he can't post on twitter doesn't mean that you can't find things he's saying on twitter - so that would be the first place. 30 seconds of searching and they've got 4 posts about trump in the last 48 hours.
I wish such matters were decided in a Court of Law with evidence. And not by private arbiters. Twitter banned Trump simply because they could so without any repercussions. All that "Glorification of Violence" is sheer hogwash. Risk of further incitement of violence is even more hogwash. Most of the democratic party leadership should be banned from Twitter in such a case.
Twitter made the mistake of publishing their reasoning [0] where they attempt to construct a violent interpretation of two perfectly mundane Trump tweets, including the jaw-dropping "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.".
After the 2016 election, the left ginned up enough hatred that some bloke attempted to gun down a Republican representative [1]. It passed with comment but not any particular shock. This is a good example of the routine (happened in 2011 against a Democrat) level of violence in US politics. The US famously resorts to action when passions are high. Trump simply wasn't inciting anything violent, especially against that high baseline.
Twitter's actions are unjustified, and it is highly likely that all the big tech companies are thinking like this, they are known to be left-leaning. This is a wake up call to the right that these companies are threats. Any right wing government anywhere in the world that ignores the tech companies is at risk of them becoming powerful and effective politically opponents - that is a much bigger thing than people have cottoned on to. This move was big.
>How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?
Quite easily. Freedom of speech is freedom from government suppression of that speech - it's quite clear in the constitution. Freedom of speech doesn't mean I or anyone else has to give you a platform to speak from.
And antitrust laws are designed precisely to prevent corporations from monopolizing and abusing market position. Freedom of speech means I have the right to hear from people I choose to assemble with. Monopolies dominating the market for speech and then dictating the terms of speech is an antitrust situation. Not least of which because by the same mechanisms they can use to silence political opponents they can use to silence and squeeze out competition or mentions of competitors.
This isn't crazy or unprecedented. We don't give unlimited contractual rights to landlords. You'd end up with a virtual serfdom otherwise. So we grant tenant rights exclusive of any contractual terms. Past time to do the same for social media participants.
The notion that any entity can "dominate the market for speech" is absurd. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have a right to free eyeballs at <insert company here>'s expense.
Freedom of speech and freedom of association mean that Twitter has the right to put or not put whatever it wants on its website.
This is a well-reasoned response. The comparison to the tenant / landlord relationship is excellent.
It seems that breaking up monopolies as in the past is not viable with tech empires like Twitter / FB, therefore some type of regulation in this area is where the focus needs to be, and I say this as someone who usually takes the libertarian position.
That's apples and bananas. A more apt comparison would be: does your local newspaper HAVE to print anything you want on the front page? No? Then why should a social media site be forced to?
Facebook doesn't control whether you pick up the phone and call your friend to voice your opinion. Twitter can't prevent you from driving to your local bar and telling your drinking buddies what you think of the president. Then again, the bar owner can kick you out of his establishment if he disagrees with your thoughts and gets sick of listening to you.
Because again, your freedom of speech doesn't mean a business has to host you.
> [Y]our freedom of speech doesn't mean [that] a business has to host you.
We are truly in uncharted waters at this point: historically, your newspaper comparison would have made sense, but it simply isn't applicable anymore.
At what point do we need to acknowledge that these platforms are the public square? When they control 99+% of online speech? When there is a worldwide quarantine meaning that people head to the internet to speak to each other, and meeting up isn't even an option? When being banned from one implies being banned from all of them?
Increasingly, there are difficult questions that we need to answer around this: Does this argument imply that even if all speech was transmitted through Facebook's servers, that wouldn't change the calculus around what "freedom of speech" means? How does this interface with laws worldwide? How does this interface with morals worldwide (the morality of the coastal US is not as universal as many people would like)? Is it morally acceptable for all businesses of a particular kind to collude wrt refusing to serve a particular person? Would it be morally acceptable for every business of every kind to collude wrt refusing to serve a particular person, whatever the reason?
Arguing from this place of finality by appealing to the way things currently work means that people get to ignore these questions. Not to mention that failing to look at changing circumstances is usually a bad idea: omnis conventio intelligitur rebus sic stantibus. This sort of argument generally reads a bit like rules lawyering to me: even if this is how the law works in letter today, it seems to be against the spirit of the law and broadly self-interested ('as long as the people getting banned are people I think deserve it, I'm all for letting the social media companies decide').
> So it is quite a bit more complicated than just saying "its their platform, their rules"
How about this example instead: Do phones have to serve you? Phone companies are user communication companies, after all. Seems like an appropriate analogy. Whereas a newpaper is more of a publishing company.
> That's apples and bananas. A more apt comparison would be: does your local newspaper HAVE to print anything you want on the front page? No? Then why should a social media site be forced to?
Yes, but there is the other side of that coin: a newspaper (as in the company) can get sued for libel or other such things, precisely because they have editorial control.
It's seems that social media companies would like to have their cake and eat it too. They are explicitly protected from their users content (thanks to section 230), and yet they seem to flex this immunity by arbitrarily blocking users, often without recourse. IIRC they have even occasionally flipped between being publisher or a platform depending on the question.
To be fair, there is no winning for large social media companies, either they preform this filtering and everyone hates on them, or they don't and everyone hates on them. I do not believe there is a perfect way to block only people who everyone agrees should be blocked, as every method has both false positives and false negatives.
I can agree with you, but still think there's a problem. The fact is nobody who wrote the constitution thought we'd get to a point where there was such a dominant private speech player.
So yeah, it made sense at the time, since government was the big player historically, but we're looking at a different situation now.
I think HN has a gross overestimation of twitter's influence. There are 7.9 Billion people on the planet, and 185 million daily active twitter users. I can't say I've ever once gotten my news from twitter and don't plan on ever starting. In my social circle I've got exactly 2 people who use twitter daily.
> Papers in the 1700s had just as much dominance in speech as social media does today.
The important difference is that less than a billionth of what people communicate was through those newspapers. Nowadays? Maybe half is the the internet and most of that is through the big players (e.g. Facebook).
> There are 7.9 Billion people on the planet, and 185 million daily active twitter users.
Twitter is a US platform first and foremost. It doesn't make sense to compare the total number of Twitter users against the number of people on the entire planet. According to Statista:
> Social network Twitter is particularly popular in the United States, where as of January 2021, the microblogging service had audience reach of 69.3 million users
I can’t get this sorted out in my brain but y’all think self-help with breach of peace(had to look up that phrase) ought to be casually tolerated in a modern nation...?
...nevermind, I just realized that US is a union of States where a repossession man just casually walk into front yards and tow away a Camry from debtors.
Who decided that Freedom of Speech only applies to government suppression? Does the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment only apply to the government as well?
> Who decided that Freedom of Speech _only_ applies to government suppression
Which freedom of speech are you referring to? Because if you're thinking of the first amendment, then the people who decided that are the ones who wrote it, and it's pretty clear in the text.
I feel like you're being obtuse. The concept of free speech was not invented by the US Constitution and has existed long before it was written. Free Speech as a societal principle and ideal has been around for hundreds of years.
"Free speech" might be a societal deal, but it's never meant what you are claiming it means. You are free to redefine it as you like, but it's never meant people are forced to publish your book or an employer can't fire you for being rude.
> they've silenced the second-most voted for President in American history, because he isn't their brand of politics.
I think that is disingenuous. Twitter said "specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter" [0]. It wasn't his brand of politics it was how his supporters were interpreting him and incitement of violence like what was seen when his supporters stormed the Capitol.
How it was interpreted was a mere interpretation in itself on Twitter's part. You can get rid of literally anyone for any reason if this is the standard.
How about we get rid of these 'white privilege' theories, because people are interpreting it as if every single white person is somehow inherently racist and evil?
That "censorship and silencing" is just those platforms using their free speech back. If you think the corporations running these platforms don't have that right, you'll want to meaningfully differentiate this decision from e.g. the decision of Fox News to not give equal airtime to someone like AOC.
I think both of those platforms should have editorial discretion.
> he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks
Honest question: Why? It is a bit my outside perspective that the US has too big of person cult thing going. Not just in politics and independent of brand.
How did previous generations claim to value free speech when mainly reading heavily curated newspapers and watching network television? (...where you could famously prick your finger, but not the reverse...)
We can tolerate the existence of nazis, but there's no obligation to give them a platform.
It's Trumps own fault that he chose Twitter to be his way of messaging the public. Why not build whitehouse.gov/words_from_the_pres? Twitter isn't funded by taxpayers and we aren't entitled to it.
Free speech protects you from the Government, that's it. We as society commonly confuse free speech with free from consequence speech which doesn't exist. Donald Trump is the reason Donald Trump has been silenced.
I'll never understand the argument that Trump was "silenced." As you said, he's a former US president. He has ample resources to get his word out. The only people who think he has been silenced are people who spend too much time on twitter or people who are being disingenuous.
>If Trump really wants to get his thoughts out to the world, he can host his own website and publish them there
And what's the recourse when the same forces collude to shut someone
or some group out of the hosting platform for wrongthink? Build your own server farm? Build your own cloudflare? Build your own DNS? How far do we go in allowing tyranny by a loud and powerful minority? If we can regulate corporations to prevent corporate monopolies, perhaps it's appropriate to implement loose regulations against social monopoly. Collusion to silence an entire set of viewpoints by unilaterally associating them with a minority of extremists is quite literally oppression.
> And what's the recourse when the same forces collude to shut someone or some group out of the hosting platform for wrongthink?
I don't believe that "violent overthrow of the democratic process" specifically is a valid political position. I am comfortable discriminating against it. I am also comfortable with private parties exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of expression.
> Build your own server farm? Build your own cloudflare? Build your own DNS?
Yes, or find someone else to do business with. Or... change your behavior so it is less objectionable to those companies.
I consider a free society to be a competitive marketplace for ideas. Some ideas thrive and grow, others wither and die. The first amendment is a mandate for minimal governmental regulation so the forces of competition can evaluate ideas.
> How far do we go in allowing tyranny by a loud and powerful minority?
We don't allow it at all, that's why these companies are able to set these policies and issue bans. Exercising first amendment rights is not tyranny.
> If we can regulate corporations to prevent corporate monopolies, perhaps it's appropriate to implement loose regulations against social monopoly.
It's not and whatever the concept of "social monopoly" is can only make sense if there is one party controlling all social expression, which is obviously not the case. You could also call this "social discrimination" and reuse the ideas of protected classes. But political views are not (and IMHO should not) be protected. This would be the equivalent of picking winners in the free market of ideas.
Regulating social consensus and private beliefs is itself tyranny. The constitution is clearly designed to prevent exactly that outcome.
> Collusion to silence an entire set of viewpoints by unilaterally associating them with a minority of extremists is quite literally oppression.
This is not "literally oppression". There is no evidence that there was any collusion, only that violent overthrow of democratic processes is widely objectionable to many corporations and individuals. That many independent organizations came to the same conclusion is evidence that the system is working and that the idea itself has failed in the marketplace of ideas.
Trump did not advocate for a violent overthrow as far as I know.
> I consider a free society to be a competitive marketplace for ideas
That requires those ideas to be heard. If everyone segregates into their own political bubbles there will be no competition of ideas, just endless echo chambers.
> It's not and whatever the concept of "social monopoly" is can only make sense if there is one party controlling all social expression, which is obviously not the case
Eh?
The people controlling the big corporations that control most communication in the English speaking online world are of very particular political leanings. They might not control all expression but they certainly control most of it.
> But political views are not (and IMHO should not) be protected. This would be the equivalent of picking winners in the free market of ideas.
I don't see how preventing the silencing of some ideas is equivalent to picking winners.
I'm not necessarily saying political views should be protected, just disputing the validity of your logic here.
> That many independent organizations came to the same conclusion is evidence that the system is working and that the idea itself has failed in the marketplace of ideas.
You say "independant", but there are strongly dominant cultures in those organizations and the people admitted to them are from a specific subset of the population. They might be somewhat independant in that Facebook doesn't decide what Twitter does (though I expect there's cross-polination of people moving back and forth between them), but they're both drawing from mostly the same pool of people and ideas.
I expect that Trump supporters, for example, have little influence in Facebook the company.
Facebook and Twitter are not essential platforms, and I detest the idea that they must be made to allow anyone to say anything on them.
If Trump really wants to get his thoughts out to the world, he can host his own website and publish them there. He can write letters to the editors of news sites and see if they’ll publish them. He can do TV interviews - any network would kill for those ratings right now.
Or he can stand outside and yell.
No one is entitled to a privately owned platform publishing their demonstrably violent rhetoric, even if they’re famous. Media platforms have always been allowed to be gatekeepers of whatever content they choose; the internet age didn’t change that.
> second-most voted for President in American history
The population of the USA is continuously rising. This is not an achievement. All it takes is an unusual voter turnout and a somewhat close election.
> because he isn't their brand of politics.
No. They banned him because at that time they determined that his violence encouraging speech was a real danger to society.
> he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?
Also no. Traditionally, former presidents live a more private life to pave the way for a new generation of politics. And even if you think he should be able to continue to influence the day-to-day political news, he has the ability to release press statements and contact any media outlet he wants.
Trump literally is an example that being banned from social media does NOT limit his public speech. Anything he puts out is discussed in mainstream media. Just a few days ago we were informed of his utterly stupid idea of using cancel culture to protest cancel culture.
> they've silenced the second-most voted for President in American history, because he isn't their brand of politics
1. The second - and third, for that matter - most voted for President is Obama (69.5 and 65.9M votes). Trump is the fourth (62.9M votes)[1].
2. He was not banned because he wasn’t ‘their brand of politics’, he was banned for inciting violence against the terms of those platforms. You can certainly argue Twitter and Facebook had - and have - a very inconsistent enforcement approach for those policies. But that’s not what you are saying.
The guy got 74,216,154 votes in 2020. The second most votes in American History, only outclassed by the current President with 81,268,924 votes.[1]
Your other point is based on your own personal political biases, which just furthers my point about these platforms controlling the release of information (or disinformation) to the general public.
Just imagine if Twitter was a Right-Wing organization, and decided to silence the current President. How would that change this discussion?
That probably would change the current discussion, yes. An amazing number of people would flip positions.
For that to happen, though, the current president would have to do something that was at least colorable as a violation of terms and services. I haven't heard even right-wingers claim that this is so, so far. (But maybe I just haven't heard, not being one who listens to those circles.)
Right, but Trump wasn't suspended for political lying. He was suspended for inciting violence. Political lying is not a violation of the terms of service, so far as I am aware.
And the other side can point to the congressional hearings that didn't conclude he directly incited any violence. It's a tit-for-tat sort of thing, which is incredibly dangerous when we're talking about how the general public is "allowed" to consume information.
My point, which you continually seem to miss or ignore, is this: Trump said things that could be construed as violating terms of service (even though congressional hearings did not conclude that he did incite violence). And so we're in a he said/she said situation - was it incitement to violence, or not? But even if you don't agree, you could see that Twitter could consider it incitement to violence without being completely insane or completely political.
Biden has not, to the best of my knowledge, said anything that could sanely be considered incitement to violence. Banning him would not be in the same category as banning Trump. It would be much more blatantly political, because the excuse would be much more transparent.
Has Biden not violated Facebook and Twitters TOS when he deliberately continues his messaging about the Georgia voting laws? If you spend 2 minutes reading the thing, you'll see his claims are false at best, and deliberate misinformation at worst.
Are we to just ban politics from these platforms wholesale?
The spread of deliberate misinformation is banned on both Twitter and Facebook. Here's Facebooks[1]
You may not use our Products to do or share anything:
* That is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent.
Here's an entire section from Facebook regarding "False News"[2].
Joe Biden's rhetoric regarding the Georgia State voting laws is clearly 2-3 of those. Why has he not been banned yet?
And the incitement of violence thing has been debunked pretty clearly. If one guy at Twitter can decide something was inciteful just because that's their opinion - despite all evidence presented during Congressional Hearings, then we're far more lost than previously assumed.
"he was banned for inciting violence against the terms of those platforms"
So technically Trump should be un-banned after claims of incitement were contested and disproved in congress, right?
You and I and McConnell might agree, but the congress didnt. Moreover, Trump was calling for everyone to chill when he got banned, which to me indicates really bad risk management on behalf of twitter and fb. They risked further escalation to avoid responsibility.
Congress' opinion didn't matter in this case, Twitters did, and since its their TOS they said he violated, they were free to kick him off their website.
Ever read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? There’s a certain speech you might find enlightening if you think Trump was trying to cool things off with those tweets.
> Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?
So he aught to be able to grab a soap box and stand on your lawn every day and preach? He is a former US president so you are proposing he can go onto private property and say whatever he wants at any time.
> How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?
Because you misunderstand free speech. Is the government going to arrest you for posting on twitter? No. However no one is required, not even the government, to provide you with a platform to speak on.
You want free beer speech. Speech without paying for it. Speech without restriction of any kind by anyone at any time. Why should we care about that?
I'm getting to the point where yes, I want to force these "private" companies to uphold civil liberties and principles such as innocent until proven guilty. I care way more about citizen freedom and expression than the concept of a "free market" which is a platonic ideal that has never existed and never will.
But why is a company's right to speech more important than a real person's civil rights? A company is a mere legal fiction and it's rights should not be given equal weight to those of actual human beings, especially for a corporation as large as Amazon.
Edit: I know the issue becomes murkier for things like mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships, but I am willing to make distinctions based on scale.
> the issue becomes murkier for things like mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships
No it doesn't. The mom, the pop, and the sole proprietor are people; they have rights, which certain curtailments of their business might interfere with. The businesses themselves do not.
The individual who joined the "coordinated group of people" (the corporation) still have their individual civil rights, but the legal entity they constitute should not have it's rights valued on the same level as individual human beings.
If the corporation is being seen as a single entity then you should not consider it's employees' individual rights as the same thing. Or even combine them together to give more weight to the corporation's rights.
Sure it exists, but you need collective bargaining for it to be a level playing field. Content creators want to fight back against Twitch? Form a union.
The labor of digital creatives and innovators, sutured as it is to a technical apparatus fashioned from dead labor and meant for producing commodities for profit, is therefore already socialized. While some of this socialization is apparent in peer production, much of it is mystified through the real abstraction of commodity fetishism, which masks socialization under wage relations and contracts. Rather than further rely on these contracts to better benefit digital artisans, a Marxist politics of digital culture would begin from the fact of socialization, and as Radhika Desai (2011) argues, take seriously Marx’s call for “a general organization of labour in society” via political organizations such as unions and labor parties. Creative workers could align with others in the production chain as a class of laborers rather than as an assortment of individual producers, and form the kinds of organizations, such as unions, that have been the vehicles of class politics, with the aim of controlling society’s means of production, not simply one’s “own” tools or products. These would be bonds of solidarity, not bonds of market transactions. Then the apparatus of digital cultural production might be controlled democratically, rather than by the despotism of markets and private profit.
Yes, and I don't care about free market. We're already doing this, we're forcing private companies to do business with people they don't want to do business with right now.
I don't even care so much about social media, but banks and services that provide basic infrastructure to keep your own web services afloat shouldn't be allowed to discriminate people based on their politics.
It usually seems to be based on people's bigotry or sexual misconduct. I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban.
Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be. If your political view is fascist, why should you have the same protections as someone who is born a minority? One thing can be changed and can be thought of as evil; the other can't.
This is like saying that words don't mean anything, so we should stop trying to use them. No one agrees on a hard line between fascist and not-fascist, but that doesn't mean it's entirely an artificial distinction.
Is the ACLU fascist? What about Ron Paul? Obviously "no" to both of those.
And what about neo-Nazis who describe themselves as fascists?
> Trump was labeled a racist and it's as stupid as calling Biden communist.
Someone should tell that to Richard Nixon's Justice Department, who successfully sued Donald Trump for being racist in 1973[1]. Or you should tell the white supremacists who celebrated Trump's victory[2]. If you're going to fish for weak "both sides are the same" examples, you're going to have to find an example that isn't so easy to counter-argue.
> You should have protections so the corporations and bankers don't have too much power over politics.
Unfortunately the First Amendment gives corporations and bankers an enormous amount of power over what they choose to say and publish, which means they have political power. You can't do anything about that except scrap the First Amendment.
Sure, there are people who identify themselves as fascists. I didn't said it doesn't exist. But nowadays anything even remotely outside the status quo is called fascism by the lunatics on Twitter.
> Unfortunately the First Amendment gives corporations and bankers an enormous amount of power over what they choose to say and publish, which means they have political power. You can't do anything about that except scrap the First Amendment.
As you pointed out yourself, Trump was sued for refusing service to blacks. And yet, the 1A is still here.
> Or you should tell the white supremacists who celebrated Trump's victory[2]. If you're going to fish for weak "both sides are the same" examples, you're going to have to find an example that isn't so easy to counter-argue.
It's funny that you're posting Richard Spencer, because in this elections he was against Trump and he was celebrating Biden's victory.
He was supported by libertarians, nationalists, plain old conservatives or some liberals even. You can't be everything at the same time and this is a very stupid argument to make. Same goes for Biden.
> Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be.
I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better. I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it.
No. He was tolerated despite his politics until he (arguably) incited a seditious attack on Congress and his own vice president.
> I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better.
The problem is that "political views" is not a defined term. What if I employ 50% Irish employees and have someone who says, "I hate the Irish and wish they'd never ruined this country"?
It harms my business to have that person around. It is bad for my brand, it's bad for my other employees, and maybe I just don't want to hear those comments myself. Why should the government be able to force me to pay that person?
Or, in the case of social networks, why should the government force my employees to publish that content, maintain it, and keep it backed up for millions of people to see?
> I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it.
These kinds of comments are protected by the First Amendment. You can publish them, and you can shout them on the street. But you can't force people to like you or employ you if you say them. These ideas won't die out because of social pressure.
Also, thousands of websites (including Parler) already ban one or both of the statements you included. It's just that no one really cares because they're small sites.
So at what point do you say that a company is too big to be allowed to decide what they publish? Is it 100M users? Or 500M? If MSNBC or Fox News had 2 billion viewers, should they also be forced to air videos produced by any group?
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to?
I don't think OP actually said this.
But yes, like most people, I want this to happen sometimes. For example, I want a hotel to have to lodge Indian people, whether they actually want to or not.
In other cases, I don't want this to be legally required, but still will complain if I see something that indicates a lack of character. Not everything I think is shitty should be illegal.
It's incredible stupid to say that protecting an ethnicity (something that can't be changed) is tantamount of protecting ideology (something you are not born with and something that sometimes includes advocating for violence).
Also, no one is illegalizing anything by banning it from Twitch.
Is being alterable really the important distinction here though?
If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok?
> Is being alterable really the important distinction here though?
Yes. This is literally the entire argument against racism: judging someone for physical traits that have no bearing on their character.
> If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok?
No, for many obvious reasons.
1. Looking Indian (or not) still has no bearing on that person's behavior or character.
2. It would cost money and be an identity change, so not everyone could/would do it.
I can't believe anyone is seriously asking questions like this in 2021. Read a book.
> This is literally the entire argument against racism: judging someone for physical traits that have no bearing on their character
Isn't it the "no bearing on character" thing that's the issue? Rather than the "physical" bit?
> 2. It would cost money and be an identity change, so not everyone could/would do it.
This would also hold for political ideas.
> I can't believe anyone is seriously asking questions like this in 2021. Read a book.
Please consider whether what you are saying is more than empty posturing. If you actually did want to educate people you wouldn't say "read a book", you'd mention a particular book.
You just described a big part of why people do not like free markets. Corporations are allowed to accumulate an enormous amount of power and then use that power to abuse whoever they want (aside from a sliver of circumstances covered as protected classes).
I think want most people want is a reasonable middle ground, not unchecked corporate power.
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to?
How deep does your commitment to private corporate power go? For instance, suppose Comcast decided it doesn't want to provide cable or internet service to a particular cancellee. Does this bother you, or no? Does it matter if it's a monopoly setting? If it does, suppose we're in a duopoly market, and both companies refuse service to the cancellee. Does this worry you?
Would you be ok with businesses refusing to serve accused/convicted criminals? How about illegal immigrants? If the standard is law-breaking does it meet the definition of non-discriminatory?
Do people really deserve an entire lifetime of exclusion even after doing their time? Even the Catholic Church in medieval times was more forgiving in many cases
Why does everyone talk about the government forcing companies to do things whenever somebody criticizes a company policy? A company can be criticized without the speaker implying that there needs to be legislation.
Why does everyone talk about the government forcing companies to do things whenever somebody criticizes a company policy?
Because there are plenty of people claiming companies are being unconstitutional and/or that there should be laws that prevent companies from taking actions like banning people from platforms/etc.
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to?
Yes.
> We aren't talking protected class here
That's besides the point. There are many limitations on private companies picking and choosing who to do business with that apply beyond protected classes, including common carrier regulations[1], regulation of (some) private property as a public square[2], and requiring broadcasters to run political ads[3].
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to?
OP didn’t make that argument, and I’m not going to make that argument.
That said, with or without government coercion on the counter party, innocent until proven guilty is a fairly good standard to apply. It’s more important when it concerns the use of government force, but that doesn’t mean it is unimportant when dealing with private parties and it is fair to judge Twitch for not applying innocent until proven guilty as a standard when it comes to Twitch-streamers.
It’s easy to get someone arrested, and it is easy for a cop to make an arrest. An arrest is not a presumption of guilt and shouldn’t be used as a signal of guilt.
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to?
I didn't see him mention the government at all. Just because you think something is wrong to do, doesn't automatically mean the government has to get involved.
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to?
We do have a set of reasons you can't refuse service to people for (race, religion, etc), and if you get classified as a utility you generally have to serve everyone, so it's not exactly an exotic idea.
Some of these services are entering a more ambiguous state. Twitter and Facebook have official government communications flowing through them. Banning people may eventually have more serious consequences closer to the "having your water cut off" situation.
Every decision is discriminatory. The "protected classes" we have chosen are arbitrary selections based on our societies current opinions about minorities. Every time a business chooses to not do business with somebody, they have discriminated against them for a particular reason. Not enough qualifications, not enough money, didn't like their personality, didn't get a good vibe, didn't like their attitude. Whatever. You can find multiple other people to fit into those same categories.
Does for example a few giants that dominate social media ,mobile platforms, consoles,media, ISPs actually/really/100% meet the criteria of a free market ? I am no economist so my naive interpretation is that you need many smaller agents actually competing no 2-3 giants sharing a market and abusing their share by killing any small competitor that appears.
Not OP, but I don't want the government to force private companies to do anything - I want everybody to wake up and stand up against corporate censorship and abandoned Twitch en masse in protest. That's probably as likely as government enforcement, but a man can dream.
People invest massive amounts of time to build a following and create content on those platforms. It seems reasonable to ask that it can't be taken away from them at a whim. However, in theory, they should have read the contract before entering it. If they accept those terms, perhaps they should have to live with it.
An analogy would perhaps be a musician signing a contract with a record label? I think they expect some reciprocity, like if they owe three albums to the label, the label also owes them marketing for those albums.
>We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means.
These are discriminatory means, they just aren't ones we have universally decided are wrong to deny services based upon. What happens when we start denying services to those arrested regardless of conviction? Won't this have disparate impact on certain protected classes?
I want the government to force private companies to charge the end users for their services, and to start enforcing anti-monopoly laws. This will very quickly introduce competition to the market and will align the corporate behavior with the interests of the users.
It seems to me excluding even convicted criminals, is discriminatory. Let's pretend we're talking about an "ordinary" crime like armed robbery, instead of one of the ones the news media like to obsess about (which would be terrorism, hate crimes, child porn, and mass shootings - and back in the day that list would've included the Mob). Once the ordinary armed robber has been convicted and served their sentence, they come out of prison and face enormous barriers and discrimination, and that's not exactly fair. It's not clear from the article what Twitch will do in those cases though; all they do is define a list of exotic "misconduct" activities, most of which are crimes (and by the way, ctrl-F "crim" yields zero results in the page). I don't see a link to the original announcement they're reporting on, and I have to admit that I don't actually care enough to go hunt it down from the horse's mouth, but that is usually better.
Anyway on to the "free market." I have yet to see one in action. There is always meddling by unfairly-advantaged players and competition is never perfect. But more to the point, a free market is not magic or a god or even intelligent, and doesn't necessarily make good decisions on behalf of humans. It knows nothing of what's good or what's right. The one thing it does well is allocate finite or scarce resources. But humanity is not a resource, and even at their core task, markets make mistakes all the time.
> we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means.
The phone company can't cut you off because they don't like your behavior or who your associate with. Why should Twitch be able to? Twitch is a communication platform, too.
Do you support the right of businesses to refuse business to homosexuals, for example, on religious grounds? If you come back with “homosexuals are legally a protected class”, that’s evading the question and functionally equivalent to “no I don’t actually support freedom of association”.
I ask because in my experience most people on HN only support freedom of association when it’s politically expedient for them.
We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means.
That's called a free market.
Will they be restored if they're proven innocent? Maybe. Maybe not. Again, that's called a free market.