Is this not “the market” deciding it doesn’t want to entertain this business? As a society it’s totally reasonable for us to draw the line at intolerable behaviour, we’re not obliged to put up with platforms that enable hate and vitriol, just as we don’t tolerate violence in the street.

If a business closes because nobody is interested in buying their products, or a club disbands because nobody is interested in joining, or a pub bars a patron who’s starting fights and nobody blinks an eye. The same thing happens on the internet and suddenly it’s the end of the world.

In those cases it's the business owner who decides. What happens when the decision comes after a mob puts pressure on the owner to drop that costumer or else?

If there is a market for it, presumably some business out of reach of the mob in question will take up the mantle for the money. If there's no money in it, then the market is deciding that the market doesn't want the opinions in question. The market still decides in the end.

We've banned this account for continuing to do political flamewar after we specifically asked you not to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25695444

So dissenting is now considered doing political flamewar? Ok.

Gratuitous provocation and name-calling are not dissent. You can express dissenting views without doing those things, and users here are required to.

There is a link, though: people with minority opinions are sometimes so frustrated with the majority that they lash out in frustration in ways that break the site guidelines. People with majority opinions don't usually do it that way. They're more likely to be self-righteous. Either way, though, users here need to follow the guidelines regardless of what their opinions are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's always easy to willfully misconstrue what opposition says to justify their silencing. It's exactly what we're seeing at a large scale.

You're skipping that you repeatedly broke the site guidelines and repeatedly ignored our requests to stop. What do you think we should do when people break the rules and flout polite requests by moderators?

For the vast majority, the BLM protests (which I assume you are referring to?) set out to be-and were-peaceful. Leadership made a big deal about remaining peaceful. Things escalated most of the time when the _police_ instigated attacks. Given the racial tensions, and generally charged atmosphere I am absolutely not surprised rioting broke out. Lets remember that low-impact/low-disruption protests had been done prior, and were not met with attention or change they were ignored and sidelined. Cripple peoples ability to be heard and they will use increasingly forceful methods to be heard. This is _not_ a case of protestors rocking up to a street and beating on random pedestrians - which didn't happen and is the kind of "violence in the streets" I'm talking about. In my opinion some broken windows and torched stores are less important than peoples human rights - if in the course of a legitimate protest some shopfronts are destroyed, I don't have an issue with this. I do have an issue with people using a protest (which went to lengths to remain peaceful) as a cover/excuse to destroy things "just because" or to loot - this I absolutely condemn, as it does nobody any favours and takes away from the issue at hand.

A {hosting, domain, ssl} company doesn’t have to accept another company as a customer.

What about the hosting company’s freedom of speech rights? If a hosting company doesn’t want to host your site, that’s their decision. If they don’t want to be associated with a site or app or spend their resources, that’s their decision.

These aren’t regulated monopolies that have to serve all customers.

Now, if you want to claim that they should be a regulated market — that’s a whole other discussion.

That's interesting.

Do you feel the same way about a company refusing to serve Jews or Blacks? Is it their right?

Under the current anti-discrimination laws, political affiliation is not a protected class. Religion, race, sexuality, etc., however, are.

Interesting, I didn't know that. So a business can actually deny a service depending on political affiliation.

Of-course this can be challenged in the courts. Well, unless, it's protected by 230.

The answer depends on what state and city the business is located in.

Political affiliation is a protected class in some states[0].

California[1], for example, also prohibits discrimination on gender identity, ancestry, sexual orientation, AIDS/HIV status, medical condition, political activities or affiliation, veteran status, or status as a stalking victim.

[0] https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimin...

[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-employmen...

Neither of those linked sets if laws apply to customers. Only to employees.

Anything can be challenged in the courts. And I believe there are some (limited, mainly religious based) exceptions that are pretty recent. But there is nothing that protects the political beliefs of a person as this isn’t a protected class. Protected classes protect things people are, not what they think.

Trying to conflate 230 here is disingenuous and has no role in a strictly business decision about whether of not a business has to accept a customer.

Meaning I can post a sign "No Trump Voters Allowed" on my restaurant?

Political affiliation is a protected class in California[0] but this may be legal in some states.

[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-employmen...

That's only for employers discriminating against employees. It doesn't apply to customers -- a business can almost always refuse to do business with you, for almost any reason. Example: you can get thrown out of a restaurant for not adhering to a dress code.

Good catch! I'm not sure what I was thinking.

I did some further searches; Madison, Wisconsin[0] and DC[1] forbid discrimination on political affiliation in public accommodations.

[0] https://library.municode.com/wi/madison/codes/code_of_ordina...

[1] https://ohr.dc.gov/protectedtraits

Sure thing. Right next to the commonplace "no shirt, no shoes, no service" and "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" signs.

So as we soon as we pass law making it a protected class, that argument will be null and void, correct?

Great, I cannot wait!

> So as we soon as we pass law making it a protected class, that argument will be null and void, correct?

For business discrimination in general, maybe.

For specifically constraining the expressive freedom of media (including social media) businesses, quite plausibly not, because a statute designating a protected class can't negate other people’s First Amendment rights, since the Constitution is superior to statute law.

I wouldn't hold your breath.

That's alright, I'm sure you would have said the same to civil rights advocates in the '60s, too.

Except, the civil rights advocates in the 1960's would have agreed with me. Denying business to racist institutions, starting with the Montgomery bus system, is how they got started.

Ok, Can businesses refuse gays, lesbians and transgenders now ? Can one refuse to serve depending on whether customers are republicans or democrats, white or blacks ?

Surely, this should all be just OK by your logic ?

This is the natural possibility of closed systems we all subscribe to. Your ISP is only one government call away from disconnecting you.

The answer is relying on corporate sponsored freedoms is not enough. Open source tools and communication technologies need to be available.

Open source can’t solve the problem if government control exists.

If government can control everything then why are we even discussing anything? Clearly this discussion is in the realm of citizens having _some_ free will.

Rather, we're talking about whether or not the government should forcibly allow/deny corporations from supporting extremists. This has nothing to do with government control, imo.

You just described the coordinated takedown of Alex Jones from Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Cloudflare et al in less than 2 hours.

Infowars is still up.

This isn’t possible without government control of the underlying components of the web, such as domain system. Otherwise private persons and companies can always create their own domain providers.

Yet you seem to advocate more government control. You see the dichotomy in your thoughts?

Hasn't breaking up monopolies been a central tenet of ensuring a free market since forever? Suddenly you defend monopolies. Interesting, isn't it?

There is no hosting monopoly, there is no payment processing monopoly, there is no domain registration monopoly, there is no SSL CA monopoly.

Payment processings are monopolies. More precisely, oligopolies. See how easily Mastercard and Visa drop PornHub payments after the news paper article. It's not a court order or even a trial. There is mainly zero way of doing business without fully government controlled banking entry-points.

Yes, there are cryptocurrencies available, so if we can fully legalize it and promise that we don't touch anyone's private transactions (as well as businesses officially accepting crypto) - that would be an argument.

For better understanding how bad it is: it's non trivial to even accept worldwide payments for small business/individual in the internet if you are, say, from Ukraine, Russia, China or lots of other countries not processed by stripe/paypal for some political or legal reasons. Apart from that, there is a "free" market of two payment processors in the internet and two card processors =)

This is bizarre. You offer cryptocurrencies as the alternative for Mastercard and Visa. How about bank transfers?

It's perfectly normal in Europe to pay for your ecommerce purchases with a bank transfer directly to the merchants account. There are thousands of banks out there, there's no monopoly or oligopoly at play.

It's sufficient to push undesirables to services which are more expensive, more inconvenient, unreliable, and so on. Relegate them to their internet ghetto.

However, there clearly is a small number of players in mobile platforms, cloud, and payment, and they act in a unified way. It has been sufficient.

>mobile platforms

Sure, there are in fact only a small number of players in this space.

>cloud

There are vast amounts of hosting providers. A quick google suggests over 300k, but that sounds somewhat unlikely.

>payment

There are a thousands of banks in the world, most of Europe manages just fine using bank transfers for payments without involving external payment processors.

>It's sufficient to push undesirables to services which are more expensive, more inconvenient, unreliable, and so on. Relegate them to their internet ghetto.

Is this really a problem? That's just the inherent nature of being undesirable.

If nobody wants to do business with you, maybe you are the problem?