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.