You're describing the status quo, and even that falls apart a little. There are already exemptions, like businesses being forbidden to discriminate based on "protected class", utility companies cannot refuse service to customers they do not like (as long as those customers pay), emergency rooms cannot refuse service to people they do not like, and so on.

What we have here is a small group of companies exerting quasi-monopoly power; Apple and Google controlling "apps" or Twitter and Facebook controlling "social media". Sure, they have some smaller competitors technically, just like East Germany had some smaller political parties technically.

If it was up to me, I'd change the status quo: Let FAAGT decide if they want to be publishers, no limited liability, or open platforms, limited liability but at the same time they have to agree to Freedom of Speech for all, unless it's criminal speech like incitement to violence, or some narrow additional predefined exemptions such as the option to not allow pornography or nudity or gore.

And then, if Parler fails to moderate their content again and leaves up criminal stuff, it's the job of law enforcement and courts to not only sanction the people who abused Parler to commit these crimes, but also the state to sanction Parler.

What is "FAAGT"?

I dropped the Netflix N in FAANG and added a T. Netflix is out of scope because they are an editorialized publishing platform without liability shield already. And added Twitter, which usually isn't big enough for FAANG, but in this context, by reach and influence, they deserve to be in the list. Could have been less lazy and just spelled it out. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm guessing "Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter"

You've been drinking the Kool-Aid liability is no-cure all solution, these platforms will merely cease to exist. I agree that they have quasi-monopoly powers, there are other platforms that have this though, they are now basically modern forms of Press & Media. Editorial decisions whether to publish or not and whether to self or government regulate are issues the world has experience with. The difference is in the scale and the speed at which these platforms can disseminate information. There is no clear cut solution (you'll see this if you look into press & media regulation) and society needs to decide how to move forward.

I’m not here to argue or anything, but I vaguely recall from reading from the federalist papers way back in high school that free expression without fear of reprisal was what we were going for. Is that not the goal? I feel like some really distorted arguments have flooded the internet recently, and I’m doubting my own recollection now.

In practice, the American revolution did not come about through open debate:

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/on-the-rudeness-of-mobs-pogue

'On October 25, the freemen of Essex County, New Jersey, proclaimed that anyone who adhered to the Stamp Act should be cast out of polite society, that decent people should have “no Communication with any such Person, nor speak with them on any Occasion unless it be to inform them of their Vileness.” This was not an isolated view. One writer to a Pennsylvania paper suggested, in language typical of the time, that a man paying stamp duties should be “branded with eternal infamy and reproach,” and cast out. “Let him be alone in the world—let him wish to associate with the wild beasts of some dark loathsome cave.”'

Very interesting. I think this whole debate may finally pierce many people's delusion's of grandeur.

> I vaguely recall from reading from the federalist papers way back in high school that free expression without fear of reprisal

... from government.

I will add that even with regards to the government, there are limits to free speech — falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is the archetypal example.

Some people seem to think that freedom of speech is something that can be broadly forced upon private organizations, and that’s simply not true.

If folks don’t like companies that, in their opinion, unreasonably restrict speech, then I suggest they vote with their dollars, their attention, and maybe their work (e.g., via competitors).

> If folks don’t like companies that, in their opinion, unreasonably restrict speech, then I suggest they vote with their dollars, their attention, and maybe their work (via competitors).

Like Gab and Parler! Oh wait...

I generally agree private businesses shouldn’t be forced to do business with anyone they don’t want to, but we’re talking about near monopolies that in many ways wield more power than governments.

Apple and Google each have a monopoly on app distribution on their platforms. Facebook and Twitter combined effectively have a monopoly on social networks.

Well, wait and see. The free market doesn't move in 24 hours. There is moderation that is clearly a good idea, moderation that is sketchy and moderation that is overdone. I may be behind the times, but I really don't think an app in the app store is that important. They still have a web site. The AWS ban is more concerning but if they have to they can move to foreign hosting - maybe this will be the push to finally get the Europeans to build up some tech companies.

Big tech have basically declared that 30% of America is unwelcome on their platform. That is overbearing moderation that is likely to provoke a market response. I'd give it 6-12 months to see if they can hold on to a monopoly even leaving that massive slice of the market in play.

AWS isn’t anywhere close to a monopoly and has one of the most lax AUPs in the game. These services can also self-host like the olden days.

As for Apple, yes. They do have a monopoly over their app platforms. Either a more robust PWA support framework or side loading needs to be a priority on iOS. I wouldn’t consider Google as having a monopoly over app distribution as you can sideload apps on Android and Android has (from what I’ve heard) well-rounded PWA support.

Gab and Parler are free to run their own datacenters. It has nothing to do with “monopolies”, which come and go.

Then those datacentres would be deplatformed from the Internet.

At this point, their only option to survive would be to build their own new internet. And that would need power/spectrum/land or other things that could be taken away from them by determined enough activism.

Maybe they could survive for a while by moving to a decentralised P2P/blockchain system of some kind. But that could potentially be blocked at an ISP level.

> Then those datacentres would be deplatformed from the Internet.

A few years ago I heard some people say we needed net neutrality. Republicans were against it.

I didn’t mention AWS.

I think to some degree Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter being as successful they are in their verticals and also being fairly progressive is not a coincidence. They have to attract the best talent in the world, which will not only be people that come from different races, but also sexual orientations, religions, genders, and more. You take the beliefs generally being espoused on Parler and some of that is fundamentally antithetical to the progressive ideologies that even allow these companies to be leading players in their fields. Describing these companies as monopolies is unfair because most of them are simply doing work miles ahead of competitors (Apple for example). Choosing to be tolerant isn't an arbitrary choice. It's probably at the core of their success. So even if a conservative ecosystem pops up to support Parler I believe the reason it doesn't exist already is because of the lack of talent. Same reason why so many smart Jewish scientists left Nazi Germany—intolerance leaves a lot of value and talent on the table, which is what you will need to outcompete others.

> I will add that even with regards to the government, there are limits to free speech — falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is the archetypal example.

Note that when this phrase was originally used, it was to justify imprisoning people who distributed flyers opposing the draft in WW1, and the supreme court later partially overturned it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

> Some people seem to think that freedom of speech is something that can be broadly forced upon private organizations, and that’s simply not true.

Why not? Private companies must respect your rights, like your right not to be discriminated against, so why can‘t they be forced to respect your right to free speech? Just because the status quo of the legal ecosystem is not ready to handle this edge-cases doesn‘t mean it can‘t be made to do it with some adjustments.

Because your rights do not override my rights, and if I run an Internet forum, chat service, etc you can’t force me to publish or distribute material I don’t want to. We are all autonomous citizens, including people who own or run communications services.

You can’t sell food without compelled speech (nutrition labels). You can’t sell medicine without compelled speech (side effect warnings).

There’s plenty of existing examples of compelled speech. We could simply say, “you cannot run a public/large forum without allowing mostly free speech”.

Who gets to define “mostly”? Every public Internet forum censors, whether they say they do or not. Even the *chan sites filter out and delete spam, griefing, child porn, etc. They have to or they would be overwhelmed and useless. The spammers have been advocating for maximalist free speech forever.

I think the compelled speech argument is extremely weak, we have very narrowly defined and specific cases in strictly defined circumstances. This would make it the default for vast swathes of common communications and as I pointed out introduce huge problems with noise, spam and griefing.

There's a difference between you running "a" forum and controlling 99% of the internet. It's good to break up huge monopolies.

Amazon Web Services does not control 99% of the internet.

They control ~32% of cloud services (https://www.parkmycloud.com/blog/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-clou...), and I assume if Parler moved to GCP they would be also blocked. Question what would MS Azure do?

That mostly leaves Alibaba Cloud (I have no idea if it is available outside China) and "Others" - so a 43%. Not much to choose from considering that the big players have the best prices.

This may be slightly off topic... are hosting providers subject to Sec. 230 protections? That is, if they don’t make a good-faith effort to remove illegal content (i.e. incitement of violence, bonus points for elected officials) they can be legally held responsible?

I see what you mean with giving equal weight to all rights, but there are implementation differences. To not discriminate, you’re restricting an action that might be taken. That does not incur cost or new effort. To facilitate speech, you’re compelling an action to happen that someone may not want to do, especially one that doesn’t provide any benefit to them and may incur additional costs.

The right of free expression is guaranteed by the first amendment by restricting the government from infringing upon your right. It doesn’t say the government or anyone else has to give you a microphone.

What about compelling a company to respect a citizen‘s rights? Do you find that fair? Companies are already compelled to do all sorts of things for the government or customers.

In order to ban me from a platform you have to take (negative) action towards me. My content is already on that network. Compelling to respect my rights means compelling a company to not negatively act against me.

They are not compelled to do anything for general citizens. They are in some cases compelled to treat certain classes of people the same way they treat other classes. That doesn’t compel them to do something they never would do, it compels them to do the things they already do for some, for all.

Those businesses are also free to close up shop if they can’t handle it. If they are dumb enough to explicitly say they don’t want to do something for a certain legally protected class of individual solely due to their belonging to that class, then IMO they deserve to lose their shirt.

>Why not?

That would amount to involuntary servitude, which is not permitted by the 13th Amendment.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

>I will add that even with regards to the government, there are limits to free speech — falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is the archetypal example.

Also see the Supreme Court case Brandenburg v Ohio (1969), which excluded from protection speech "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"

The whole "if you don't like it, vote with your dollars" angle doesn't really work when a handful of companies own, control and host 99.999% of social media. The power that these private companies wield is greater than the power of any government. They're not democratic. They are driven by the unending pursuit of growth. They have no moral compass, so their rules are in their own private interest. They dodge taxes, support populist movements to virtue signal, and they quietly collude with governments that wish to spy on their journalists and citizens so they can "disappear" them for wrongthink. Their rules are "whatever is best for us".

I don't know what the answer is, but having seen these large private companies censor rational discussion of scientific fact, this scares me.

> The whole "if you don't like it, vote with your dollars" angle doesn't really work when a handful of companies own, control and host 99.999% of social media.

"Voting with your dollars" means taking your dollars and giving them to the 0.001% that agree with you. Then this will strengthen them a little so they may become 0.0011% or whatever.

Any large social movement should be able to support a share of the economy commensurate to its size, complete with their own journalists, printing presses, leaflet distributors, radio stations, TV shows, phone factories, app stores and social media apps, or whatever communication infrastructure they want to use.

Of course that requires lots of work, but if that work is divided by the number of people involved, it becomes manageable again (after all, the whole rest of society manages just fine).

If people want to skip that work and instead rely on others to provide them with everything, they shouldn't be surprised if they don't get exactly what they want.

Well, but remember what happened when they voted with their "dollars", Parler was blocked.

This looks like a internet version of witch hunt.

Voting for Parler is not enough if you don't also vote for an app store that will offer Parler for download and a hosting provider that will allow them to use their infrastructure etc.

To use an analogy closer to the founding of the United States: if you want to publish a radical new newspaper, you need to be prepared to buy your own printing press and build up your own network of stores, because the existing printers and sellers may not want to support you.

Analogy with printing press would have been: There are just 3 printing presses and all of them are controlled by people that are democrats.

You are a republican, how do you publish your political pieces?

You have to create a 4th printing press from ground up (because people that have printing press parts are refusing to work with you).

Distribution is a more appropriate in this case.

One could argue this is not reprisal and more of "no shoes no shirt no service." These people aren't providing Parlor services for free. They are doing it as part of a mutual partnership to profit, and if they choose to no longer benfit/profit off of the business shouldn't they have the right? I mean, Apple supports many progressive initiatives like equal rights campaigns, and that is part of the brand. Shouldn't Apple be allowed to maintain that brand image? Supporting a company that is antithetical to that brand image may be a move that ultimately increases their shareholder value for all one knows.

Take Fox News as an example. They're not going to allow their platform to be used for liberal propaganda, and most likely also vet any advertisers. They aren't expected to just allow any content to be broadcast.

I guess a devil's advocate viewpoint could be that some of these services are platforms, but then again the reasons given for some of these bans aren't necessarily strictly political.

I would argue that there's no point appealing to authority since what we are going for changes with the times, but there's a fundamental difference between reprisal and aid. Say you wanted to host a website that was explaining the evils of cloud hosting, and you did this on EC2 (AWS). Amazon has every right to have in their terms clauses that disallow such content which they do not agree with. If they do host it they are doing damage to themselves, and if they do not host it they are simply not supporting an attack on cloud hosting. The act of choosing not to engage in business is not an attack in itself.

I guess, I mean that’s the tails-you-lose of it. It does feel as though somebody’s bought up all the printing presses, and in the face of scrutiny for doing so is disrupting swaths of the opposition party’s press apparatus as the incoming party takes over. I mean Amazon isn’t any ol’ business, but one with great reach facing historic threats of regulation.

It just doesn’t feel like the right thing for our republic. It feels like foul play, and I guess my recourse is at the ballot box.

I guess I think the points raised here and elsewhere about what businesses can do are specious. We still try to keep things fair.

In a few days, Parler is going to find a new hosting provider, and the networks (also private companies) will refuse to route to that hosting provider and the banks (also private companies) will close their accounts, unless they fall in line and ban Parler as well.

> and the networks (also private companies) will refuse to route to that hosting provider

There was once something called "Net Neutrality". As I recall conservatives were strongly against it.

Perhaps in theory, but in practice (in the US) freedom of speech is limited to government intrusion only, as defined by the constitution’s first amendment. There is no legal application, to private entities, of free speech.

When freedom of speech was codified as a value in the constitution, it made sense because the government is realistically the only entity that could engage in mass censorship. Nobody predicted a private company would get to that point, which is why those laws don't exist.

We must decide if that needs to change.

That's certainly untrue, at that time access to any sort of mass communication was even more controlled by a few private actors. There were not all that many major printing presses out there and a limited number of publishers would have truly controlled your only access to dissemiating information to a significant number of people besides actual in-person speech. And they certainly did choose what they were willing to publish.

>Nobody predicted a private company would get to that point

Not quite, the East India Company is a counter example.

The example of the EIC was used as an argument against the British Crown by proponents of American independence. Source: Dalrymple's The Anarchy.

The East India Company was processing (and reading) the mail of hundreds of millions of people, and freely choosing who is allowed to continue sending mail?

I’m sorry but that just isn’t true. The framing generation was worried about the tyranny of the masses, global corporations, religious authorities, and many more threats to self-governance.

That line of thinking has no historical basis in the US. In past times mass publishers, large newspapers, had every bit as much influence.

Influence yes, but they weren't able to censor communication between two private citizens. Social media is the new telephone.

I wonder what fraction of the crackpots and conspiracy theorists on twitter would have had the wherewithall to start their own newspapers, though. The barrier to mass communication is so much lower than it was in the 18th century.

Actually your portrayal is not that far off from history.

The Boston Massacre was greatly exaggerated, really only five rioters were killed and arguably the British shot them after violent provocation. Paul Revere's engraving was fiction and portrayed them as murdering the colonists in cold blood, which planted the seeds of the American Revolution.

As far as the barrier to mass communication being lower, perhaps, but mass communication was more prominent in the 18th century than you might think. Pamphlets were fairly inexpensive easily duplicated short-form propaganda, and were read aloud in taverns and churches. Communication wasn't "instant" but it was possible, and the social aspects would have made it more like Twitter and Facebook than I think we'd like to admit.

Yes, I'm aware of that. There was plenty of nonsense and propaganda printed, but I don't think it's possible to deny that twitter gives more people a bigger platform than pamphlets ever did. Otherwise why are people even using twitter instead of printing pamphlets?

> We must decide if that needs to change.

This will require either amending the constitution to strip companies of their 1A rights, OR the supreme court ruling that companies are not people and have no 1A rights. Both are tall orders in my view, with far-reaching direct and 2nd-order effects.

Not necessarily. The phone company can't cut you off for what you said on the phone.

> supreme court ruling that companies are not people

Wait, in the US companies are considered people?

I was channeling Mitt Romney ("Corporations are people, my friend"[1]). But companies, trusts, PACs, SuperPACs, country clubs, HOA's, etc are legal persons. The supreme court ruled all persons (birthed or incorporated) have free speech rights, and additionally, money is free speech[2].

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-says-cor...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo

No, but they are collections of people and as such have certain rights.

Banning someone from twitter is still not mass censorship though. The ideas can still be passed around just fine over snail mail

This is true with regards to the Constitution and the 1st amendment. That said, the US has a strong ethos around freedom of speech that goes beyond just gov't intrusion.

Is big tech within their right to censor how they see fit? Yes.

Is it antithetical to the American ethos? Probably.

One would expect american companies upholding values of its country which enabled them to prosper. None of them would exist today if free speech was not possible when they started.

I think that private entities being able to limit the speech that is performed on their property is an expression of their own free speech, and should be protected by the right that protects that speech from intrusion by the government.

I also think that us being forced to rely on private platforms for public discourse is a grave threat to democracy. There must be public forums that are strong enough to be viable and legitimate places for the majority of public political discourse to take place without relying on private institutions.

It's an "expression of their own free speech" that - thanks to Section 230 - comes without any of the restrictions or liability that would apply if it was actually their own speech. They're very much getting to have their cake and eat it here.

Then they have a baseless false expectation.

Speech in the US has always had limits, the idea that America has pushed for completely unlimited free speech is not true, and incitement and false statements of fact are some of the cornerstone cases in which speech loses its protection under the 1st Amendment[0].

Speech has never been, and will never be, completely protected without exceptions in the US.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

You are comparing the choices of an individual to those of the app distribution mechanisms which are nearly-universal.

It's true that you _can_ find Parler out of those app stores, but a significant fraction of people would not be able to do so; nor would people encounter Parler as a popular app they might consider installing.

(The web hosting is a different issue since there are a bunch of hosting options.)

>free-market-participant

We're talking about the situation in the United States, not a free market. If there were viable alternatives, nobody would care about being blocked from Twitter or Google or Facebook. The fact that these monopolies collude in their censorship campaign makes the impact that much more severe. The situation with these monopolies colluding to block an aspiring competitor is clearly an anti-trust issue.

The greatest delusion free-market proponents seem to have is that there will always be a "viable alternative" in a free market. And that there will be no monopolies.

There's literally no reason for a "viable alternative" to not appear. I mean, Parler is a "viable alternative" to Twitter, isn't it? It got kicked off AWS? Go ahead, and create your own viable alternative, there's literally nothing stopping you, just like in a "free market".

You don’t need to create your own alternative to AWS. There are a large number of cloud infrastructure and hosting providers around the world. And multiple competitors to AWS in the US alone.

Yeah, there are three large ones in US: AWS, Azure and GCP.

And considering that Google banned the app GCP is also out of the question.

BTW. You know that the largest cloud provides in the world are also the ones I mentioned above? There is only Alibaba Cloud that is outside US and all the rest are just small businesses (that might just resell what the big three is providing).

And what would be next? Let's block the "new Parler" on the DNS or routing level - build yourself a new internet?

I hate far right wing and also hate far left wing, but I will protect both right to speak.

You don't need a cloud provider to host a website, and there are cloud providers outside of AWS, Azure and GCP. Oracle, IBM, and probably still hundreds of shared hosting providers. At the end of the day you can also setup bare metal servers with your own fiber connection. It might be a little extra work/cost but to describe AWS, Azure, and GCP as the only ways to host a website is disingenuous.

1) Oracle also provides Cloud infrastructure. And Larry Ellison has hosted fundraisers for Donald Trump. Perhaps Parler should talk to Oracle.

2) Smaller providers like Digital Ocean are in fact not reselling the larger services, but you’re right that folks like Heroku are based on AWS.

3) They all have the right to speak. But private enterprises also have the right to decide for themselves if they want to do business with them. That too is a freedom of expression. It’s unclear to me why you think the far left or far rights freedom should supersede the moderates freedoms.

I think the next argument that you’re going to make is well these tech companies are monopolies and therefore the government needs to regulate them in a way that ensures they are platforms for even the extreme left and right to speak.

But they aren’t monopolies. AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, Digital Ocean.

Sure, there are only a handful of news networks in the US, just like there are only a handful of cloud infrastructure providers. But the first amendment doesn’t guarantee that everyone gets their own hour on the nightly news, and it doesn’t force private corporations in general to do business with all comers.

I don’t have to invite QAnon into my house, and I certainly don’t need to bake QAnon a wedding cake. And neither do AWS, Azure or Digital Ocean.

> I don’t have to invite QAnon into my house, and I certainly don’t need to bake QAnon a wedding cake. And neither do AWS, Azure or Digital Ocean.

OK, but first you don't know if it is QAnon and second, are you also allowed not to bake wedding cake for a black couple, or maybe for Jewish one?

It is your freedom, right? So where is the line you can't cross? For me it is: if you open business you have to deal with everyone, sorry. If you don't like it, don't open a business.

You just need to follow the law, if courts say that "you can't sell wedding cakes to QAnon" you follow that, but until there is such law...

It's all the way up to the banks though, Visa and Mastercard are deplatforming people too.

Only if there is collusion opposed to simultaneous independent consideration.

> The fact that these monopolies collude in their censorship campaign

Can you explain what you mean here? I wasn’t aware that tech companies worked with one another when choosing who or what to ban.

Not OP. I don't think they "collude" in the traditional sense.

But every time one of the entities takes some decision or step or action, whether censorship or otherwise, it makes it a little bit more excusable and easier for others to do it and justify it.

E.g. (hypothetical)

1. Reddit bans /r/ABC for "TOS violations".

2. It's news and many reporters report on it across various articles. Some say it's due to "repeated" "alleged" "hate speech" violations, whether true or not. Probably 50% true, who knows.

3. ABC makes its own website and has a mailing list from some mail newsletter provider X because that's just what you do when you have a site and need to keep in touch with visitors/members.

4. Activists on Twitter notice. Outrage mob starts. "@X mail provider hosting known hate-speech movement" "@X mail provider...did you know you're hosting known white supremacists?" "Everybody, please stop using @X, they're supporting white supremacists!" "@AWS please look into what @X is using your infrastructure for!" ...all citing some selective articles as legitimacy.

5. Articles get written about a "movement" to have X drop service for controversial and "alleged" hate-speech website ABC.

6. X mail provider gets pressured and eventually drops service to ABC.

At this point, X mail provider probably won't get many "legitimate", "official" and "mainstream" criticisms for effectively dropping customers (even if all the mail sent by those customers on X's platform is 100% legal and innocent). Nor can their shareholders complain about losing profit because "we can't be seen supporting racists".

The problem is that each time this sort of thing happens, it adds "partial proof" of the accusations without an actual "court-like" process that decides if it's really true or not. After a certain point, it's just accepted and then carries an aura of truth/legitimacy.

Edit. Formatting.

I’ll give you a concrete example. I used to enjoy a popular anti-Obesity subreddit. People in it were impolite, but it was never worse than old-fashioned “your momma is so fat” type of humor.

It was banned from Reddit for being “hate speech” and in fact you can no longer suggest that obesity is something to be ashamed of —- on nearly any platform! Including GitHub. (but you are allowed to mock mock cigarette smokers or meth tweakers).

Which subreddit are you referring to? Based on your description, it surely can't be /r/fatpeoplehate.

He's being purposefully disingenuous. It was banned for good reason, alongside racist subs like "CoonTown".

It literally had hate in the name.