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A comment on Removing Bad Actors on Facebook. Parent comment

Re:Removing Bad Actors on Facebook by marcus_holmes on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @08:41PM (#17658662)
as I understand it, the Domain Name Registrars operate under government licences for all the various country-specific TLD's, and under a US government licence for the rest (for historical reasons). Some governments do operate very strict laws about what can be said on websites that operate under their country TLD, and use their ability to grant/deny a domain as a method of controlling speech on the internet.

That makes it protected under US free speech laws, because the authority to grant/deny a domain ultimately derives from a government mandate.

The ability to post random shit on Facebook does not derive from a government mandate, so therefore isn't covered by free speech laws.

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Re:Removing Bad Actors on Facebook by Amezarak on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @08:47PM (#17658701)
That isn't true. Domain registrars in the US are free to terminate service or even seize your domain for any reason they like. Domain registrars are not bound by US free speech protections.

This is, for example, what happened to the contemptible Daily Stormer. There is no practical difference between a major domain registrar like GoDaddy or Google and a social media website like Facebook in terms of speech, except that at least if Google Domains shuts you down you can hypothetically (unless they seize/freeze the domain, which they have done) move to another registrar and the process is "transparent" for your viewers relative to being banned from Facebook...at least until they all run you off, with the most notorious example being The Daily Stormer again.

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Re:Removing Bad Actors on Facebook by marcus_holmes on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @06:16AM (#17661168)
Thanks for the clarification. I was mistaken. I'm not sure why free speech laws don't apply, though. The registrars are operating under a government licence, so would seem to be covered by this? Anyone know why they're not?
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