Why do we constantly see this comment popping up here, as well as the "vote with your wallet" one? Yes, market forces can drive change, but they don't at all guarantee ethical behaviour of corporations. That's what we need regulation for, by a government that was elected by a population where everyone has an equal vote. Unlike in a "vote with your wallet" or "just start your own competitor" mindset where rich actors have more weight than poorer ones. Market forces are by definition undemocratic and therefore unsuitable for the task of enforcing ethics. And sure, democracy isn't a perfect guarantee for it neither, but at least it is designed for this purpose, and has been proven.

Because this is how the First Amendment works (in the physical world as well as digital) and how Section 230 works. Section 230 has some exceptions, but those exceptions are very limited at this time.

Section 230 was implemented to ALLOW for moderation, not to prevent it.

I have no problem with moderation that's not editorial control in hiding.

If platform published their content rules and publicly demonstrated how they apply them equally I doubt we would be having any of these discussions.

Instead we have "moderation" that always favors one political line of thought. That's not moderation, that's editorial control and at that point I think it's more than reasonable to argue you have crossed the threshold from platform to publisher.

Usenet survived for decades and still does without some central bureaucracy lording over it. Have an issue with them? Plonk!

Freaking snowflakes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and this is the slipperiest road yet. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Remember when that used to be a catch phrase of the left? What a bizzaro time we live in.

> If platform published their content rules and publicly demonstrated how they apply them equally I doubt we would be having any of these discussions.

They do (or at least the publishing part). Who decides whether or not they apply them "equally"? The government? Like you want the Trump administration to have decision making power over whether or not Twitter is fairly moderating content?

> Instead we have "moderation" that always favors one political line of thought.

This is certainly a claim made. I view things differently: right-wing media and pundits have been treated with kid gloves for decades now. The shift to treating them "fairly" is viewed as discrimination, much the same way as certain groups on the far right have viewed every other example of "objective" fair treatment as discrimination, since they ultimately feel as though they've lost some privilege.

You may view things differently, but you're clearly biased (and perhaps, so am I). So why should I trust you to make objective decisions here?

I don't think that's the issue here. If you run a business that relies on these services, you now have to consider an operational risk which never existed before. Namely, that the employees of many tech companies seem to have bought into a weird sort of paternalism (or even authoritarianism), and may one day use that to cut you off. The fact that it's legal is irrelevant to the impact.

So are you saying that we should force a private company to carry speech and eliminate their ability to set standards for what they carry/publish? In this case it is particularly interesting since the reputation of a mailer is dealt with in the aggregate- a few “bad apples” (I will use UCE - unsolicited commercial email as the example here) can ruin the reputation of all the mail received from that source.

Either way it is a slippery slope.

I have no problem if people set standards.

It's when they are vague and applied unevenly that the line between platform and publisher gets crossed.

For example, I find it fascinating that Twitter doesn't put warnings on the leader of Iran's racist tweets (or even bans him for clear TOS violations) but peppers the US presidents tweets with warnings. With a straight face you are going to tell me that politics has nothing to do with it?

Legally, there is no line between platform and publisher. I’m not sure a line could actually be drawn that is consistent with the first amendment.

As Jeff Kosseff, a US Naval Academy professor who actually wrote a book about Section 230, put it in an interview last year:

“There has been an increased amount of criticism of the platforms. But it’s not accurate. There’s a First Amendment distinction between publishers and distributors. But since Section 230’s been in place, that’s not really been an issue for the internet.”

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-inte...

Everyone says this then lobbies to have banks, payment companies, registrars and hosting companies to shut them down.

As long as you can keep your DNS provider and hosting company from pulling the plug when pressured.

And bank and payment processor.

I'm waiting for people to go after someone's electric company.

DNS providers, hosting companies, banks and payment processors all have the freedom to associate with and do business with whomever they choose.

Why should the social class of people who work in Silicon Valley or choose to go into the relevant industries control the information that gets to all Americans? One of law’s great functions is to prevent such groups from capturing society.

There's a little something called "network effects" you should read up on

If you get banned from a mall for making a disturbance, you lose access to the stores within that mall, despite the fact that those stores may be valuable to you.

Just because there are network effects at play does not for a second mean that a private business loses the right to regulate who it has as a customer.

I was replying to someone saying gO MaKe yOuR oWn TwItTeR oR ReDdIt you absolute twit

your analogy doesn't even begin to apply. I can go to another mall if I'm banned. there isn't another dominant social network. Getting banned from Facebook and Twitter is like having your phone line cut off by Ma Bell in 1950, not like getting kicked out of a mall you incredible dunce

That someone was me. You were literally responding to me. I was responding to you because you should create your own Twitter or Reddit if you don’t like how they’re operated. They have no right to offer you access if you don’t want to follow their rules.

Now do discrimination laws. I assume you’re for repealing all of those too?

No, because those are laws, and those regulations exist for a reason. Sometimes the rule of law exists to create a norm. What is being argued for here is the removal of a norm—the ability of a private business to be associated with speech it doesn’t support—just because of the differences between the internet and the physical world.

> No, because those are laws, and those regulations exist for a reason.

Therefore you wouldn't see any problem with regulations or laws that restrict the rights of companies to enact this sort of policy that Mailchimp is.

No, because it’s an email provider and as someone who sends email, I know that if someone posts something spammy or offensive on their platform, I know it could negatively impact other customers, because email is based on an open, reputation-driven protocol.

In other words, someone posting dangerous content could threaten my deliverability, even though I didn’t do anything. Therefore, if I purchase services from an email provider, I will want them to moderate it.

You can make the same argument in favor of allowing racial segregation. In fact, those exact arguments were made. We decided that having an open society was worth it.

You also solve the coordination problem by making all businesses accept minority customers. Southern racists couldn’t boycott all businesses. Likewise, left wing activists can’t boycott you for allowing conservative speech if all of your competitors also have to allow it.

Conservatives currently dominate talk radio, cable TV news ratings, Facebook’s top 10 list of most read articles every week, the White House, and an entire chamber of Congress.

Stop comparing conservative speech to people who were actually oppressed because a large number of people want to use services that have someone moderating the content. It’s offensive.

Vocal conservatives get fired from their jobs in any well paying line of work. Conservative leaning stories are censored from all news outlets except those listened to exclusively by conservatives.

I'm not letting my email deliverability suffer just because you have an unearned martyr complex.

Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris would like to end discrimination bans in California in order to enact the right kind of discriminatory guidelines: racial quotas!

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...