Landlords cannot just evict renters based on the landlord's own terms of service, not even a renter's non-paying children or girlfriend with whom the landlord didn't contract, and not even the renter himself although the stopped paying: The landlord needs to follow the rules of society, go through a bailiff's court or follow similar strict procedures defined in society to ensure that mandatory law is followed.

Not everybody can set up a medical clinic on their private property, even if they offer their services for free.

TV stations in many European countries can't show hidden ads in programmes and cannot show ads for kids for certain products. Even though the viewers didn't pay. Even though they are free not to watch.

In most places landowners cannot freely decide to do what they want with their land, like building a factory, without taking into consideration zoning laws and without hearing the neighbors or wider community as well.

For millennia, what we today call criminal laws, have applied on private property as well. You can't just hit somebody in the face because they are in your house and the terms on the door clearly says that you can. Think that's ridiculous? Well, it used to be that restaurants in America could chose to serve whites only. It was the choice of the property owner. Until it wasn't. Courts and congress decided that such practices were so despicable that the general interest of non-discrimination outweighed the interest in business owners getting to decide for themselves. Same with businesses hiring men only. Today most of us regard it as obvious that non discrimination laws trump the interest of private owners. A few decades ago, most people thought the owner could choose freely whom to hire.

I hope we will start regulating the new advertising industry comprised of social networks and search engines more tightly.

It's intuitive - I'll give you that - but we need to decide amongst ourselves whether this behaviour is something we want to encourage or discourage into the future.

This may be worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine

Your response is especially bad because according to the linked article:

"..as a place in which that person has protections and immunities permitting one, in certain circumstances, to use force..."

Note that is says, "in certain circumstances". Flexie wrote that you can't just hit someone in the face in your house. Flexie is correct in this and the castle doctrine in no way disputes this.

I think this answer missed a (somewhat) negation in the middle of the parent posts' argument

Facebook is a significant part of our society. It is not clear why it should be free democratic oversight.

And in all fairness, FB originally started that way when you needed a university email address to join.

My point was more that it is not unreasonable to look to regulations to deal with Facebook. The regulations do not necessarily have to be "public accommodations", I just cited them as the most relevant legal concept I was aware of.

No worries though, other sovereign entities are trying to do what you suggest, so we get the best of both worlds. It's a wonderful demonstration of why nation-states should defend their independence.

This adage is beginning to show its age - virtually all services that can get their hands on your data end up selling it nowadays, whether you pay them or not. I heard even some restaurant chains sell data on who they served and when.

Not gonna stop now, they just have the money to buy market share. If people had jumped ship after the Insta acquire then it could have been a blow to them wasting all that money on a dead space but nah people still kept using it and fell for it because they didn't change things right away and now Instagram is a mess of ads and stolen features and the creepy data sharing from FB is oozing in through friend "suggestions".

Rely on them for convenient access to your files...but not as your prime copy, or your essential backup. You use their services at their whim.

Why not? Our UK micro-business's (PLC's) internal motto is "be nice" seems to work well.

> Lol, yes, of course if it makes lots of money then it doesn't need to be run morally or with any degree of humanity. /s

Why did you add the sarcasm tag? The proof's in the pudding: When Facebook throws people off their platform, the first, second, and third reactions of the victims seem to be trying to climb back on. Apparently, they don't "need" to be run morally.

That's not what a back up is. Facebook can be a backup for your photos.

Nonsense. Try getting the originals out of Facebook.

That seems... impractical for a lot of use cases.

It's not about business or legality, it's about being a dick or not, or, as demonstrated here, about being a coward or not when someone's being a dick to your friend. Of course, seeing how hard Facebook and other middlemen try to insert themselves into fucking everything, it's about a bit more than just being a dick, but it's pointless to discuss the ocean before we're clear about what is the water drop and what is the sophistry.