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Re:MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to... by causality0 on Thursday July 02, 2020 @03:34PM (#23717093)
Unfortunately no part of the internet is a public venue. There is no internet street corner, no "common carrier" internet phone company, no internet post office. Everything you do is subject to the whims of shareholder value. If tomorrow enough people decided left-handed people are the scum of the earth to affect Youtube's bottom line you'd start seeing left-handed videos demonetized. If enough people decided left-handed people don't deserve a voice to make a racket with their hosting providers and registars you'd see left-handed communities purged from the internet with no legal recourse whatsoever. In the real world that's only happened to Nazis and terrorists but I suspect we'll see it expanding as people realize the power an angry mob can wield.

It's a bit fascinating that media which attempts to censor this content seems to have worse problems with it than media which doesn't. There's nothing illegal about sending Nazi content through the mail but the mail isn't utterly swamped with Nazi newsletters but places like video games seem to fight an endless battle to keep half their users from turning racist.

Re:MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to... by iamstupidsimple on Thursday July 02, 2020 @06:18PM (#23718765)
I disagree. The internet is a place and it's special - far greater than the sum of it's constituent parts (servers, networking gear, websites, etc..) might all be privately owned, but the concept of the network itself is free and shared.
Re:MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to... by causality0 on Friday July 03, 2020 @01:51AM (#23721367)
Yes. I'm just saying it would be beneficial if there were a public alternative to services like Gmail, Youtube, Facebook, offered to the users at cost, and only moderated to the degree necessary to comply with the law. Perhaps in exchange for this "neutral media carrier" the user accounts should be linked to a Social Security number and with their real names attached to anything they publish.

Nobody blames the postal service for delivering racist newsletters or pirated DVDs or drugs. The responsibility lies solely on the user, who is prosecuted if their conduct exceeds the scope of the law. We need that for the internet.

Re:MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to... by iamstupidsimple on Friday July 03, 2020 @06:46PM (#23728282)
> the user accounts should be linked to a Social Security number and with their real names attached to anything they publish

No no, no! Look at the early days of the internet, where LGBT folk had a space to talk but lived in constant fear of being doxxed. We're stifling those people by forcing them to use real names.