> If society has decided that your political campaign is so toxic that no one wants to do business with you, should private entities be forced to deal with you if you are not a protected class?

I think this is the issue though, right. Elections represent what society wants. If 5 corporations get to decide you’re toxic and that prevents you from campaigning, what regulation will help insure this authority isn’t abused or misused?

I think it’s also worth noting the irony that many of the people complaining that bakers should be forced to bake a cake are supporting stripe being able to refuse service.

> I think it’s also worth noting the irony that many of the people complaining that bakers should be forced to bake a cake are supporting stripe being able to refuse service.

It's only ironic if you choose to ignore the fact that one of those cases involves discrimination against a protected class and the other does not. If you don't ignore that fact then the irony is only applicable from those who were espousing the "free market, free speech" position in the previous case.

Actually neither involves protected classes. At the time of the case, sexual orientation wasn’t protected. Fortunately, it was added as a protected class.

But even if it was a protected class at the time of the suite, I think the opinion was that religious rights (another protected class) come into play.

For me, this seems to expose that some people aren’t arguing from first principles but kind of change their position based on a pre-conceived notion.

So just like people now bringing up that looting isn’t so bad after the capital riot/insurrection were against rioting in situations over the summer.

It seems odd to me, or at least irrational, that someone could be against rioting for BLM purposes but for rioting for conspiracy theories. Or that someone could be against a baker’s ability to not serve a gay couple, but for a hosting company not serving an asshole megaphone company.

So just as people, rightly I think, were arguing that discrimination against sexual orientation should be a protected class and thus illegal; people now are arguing that net neutrality/free speech should have regulation, change in rights.

It’s not “ironic” in either sense.

Society hasn't decided anything unless you think a self selected group of people now represents the whole society. The Democratic party and its business lackeys decided to remove political in business opposition/competition with impunity and the Republican party being mostly indifferent about it.

>The Democratic party and its business lackeys

See this is part of the problem.

You are lumping together two different organizations that are nothing alike as somehow part of the same cabal.

Many different people from many different groups and organizations are reaching the same conclusion about Trump and the rise of violent right wing extremism.

Different parts of society are agreeing, and then in each of these parts there are individuals making decisions.

I'm not the one lumping them together, they lumped themselves together the same way unions and the Democratic party did a long time ago. Revolving doors, clientelism, business opportunities, power struggle,...

What? People who agree and have a common interests are not immediately part of a group who move as one.

> People who agree and have a common interests...

> Revolving doors, clientelism, business opportunities, power struggle,...

Add activism, donations, candidate support and cooperating with them on a local and global level.

Seems like a text book definition of a political party.

Or all that is normal and complex human interactions of people with similar interests.

And we call that a political party. What point are you trying to make?

> Republican party being mostly indifferent about it.

Well it's hard to argue against it when the people being cut out are trying to pipe-bomb your headquarters as well as the Democrats :/.

Who is society? The coastal rich liberal tech owners?

Many people make up these companies. It's not like there is a secret cabal of left-leaning tech owners that get together and make decisions like this.

In the case of Facebook and Google, their founders have voting majority shares and literally control the companies. It’s not a secret cabal of left-leaning owners, it is a publicly known set of left-leaning tech owners.

I’m not saying they act evilly, but Facebook is literally controlled by one person who cannot be outvoted by every other owner. And Google is controlled by two as well [0].

[0] https://fortune.com/2019/12/05/page-and-brin-google-control/

Ok, that doesn't mean there is a cabal of party operatives and big tech working together...

That's not what the parent poster suggested nor the one you initially replied to. What's being discussed is big tech acting as one given their homogenous political inclinations, and user Jochim thinking this is representative of "society" at large as a way to normalize and whitewash this chain of political censorship.

Right, but other people in "society" besides big tech, support this decision.

Nobody is thinking society is just big tech people. There are a lot of people who agree with tech's decision to cut off coup enablers.

I agree, that’s why I said “ It’s not a secret cabal of left-leaning owners, it is a publicly known set of left-leaning tech owners.”

Of course the key characteristic of secret cabals is that they are secret.

While I know of no evidence for secret cabals of big tech people, having individual capable of making unaccountable decisions is a different bad thing than secret cabals.

And I responding to someone saying these were big organizations with lots of decision makers. And that’s false for Facebook and google, since they have power concentrated.

It's not an explicit conspiracy but there are incredibly strong political bubbles in the US.

Yes, of course, that's how humans work. But these bubbles are often considered as a singular group moving as one, when in reality they are separate organizations and individuals who agree with each other.

Sure. But my point is that it's not correct to go from "multiple independent organizations think this way" to "basically everyone must think this way", as if those multiple organizations represent a random sample of the population.

Doesn't seem like any other groups are interested in supporting them either or else they wouldn't have any issue paying to self host/finding a willing provider.

So the same dynamics that has happened through history when one group is qualified as "untouchable" and any association with them, even if purely commercial, will bring retaliation.

We have to distinguish between those who are untouchable because of circumstances beyond their control (lineage, birthplace, disabilities) and those who are pariahs because of their behavior (criminals, militant anarchists, that mean old guy who sits on his porch with a shotgun).

I have sympathy for the former, but not the latter. While it would be kind to reach out to the latter group and help them mesh with society, there's no requirement anyone has to nor a guarantee the pariahs would want to mesh.

> We have to distinguish between...

No, we dont have to distinguish that. Your weak premise would justify the discrimination of atheists, anarchists, monarchists, pentecostals,marxists, epicureans... among thousands of other groups.

I dont really understand why it is so complicated.

At individual and private level I can decide who will I spend my time with, who I will invite to my place, go to the beach etc, with no coercion and I expect everybody else to have that right too.

At public level I have the expectation to serve all the people the same (ceteris paribus) unless I am forced by current legislation to not do so (like selling alcohol to a minor).

I would not extend that prohibition to a person who can request my services legally , if the person is going to pay and if he is going to behave like any other customer.

If I manage a 7/11 I would not create an ideological purity test to figure out if I will sell you gas or a soda and I think society will be way better if everybody does that too.

There are thousands of bakeries out there, but only a handful of payment processors.

If they manage to piss all of them off there's always bank transfer/postal cheque.

There is a clear difference between people clearly going to the same bakery over and over to harass and old guy, and being unable to actually do politics because of the technocrats and their cronies don’t be dishonest and don’t assume things for which you do not have proof. Not only that but if society decides that the Earth is flat would you agree with any decisions stemming from that, assuming there is a thing such as “society deciding” of course. I will note the irony about people saying that we should respect society “decisions” when they didn’t respect Trump becoming president since day one . Come on pal drop the dishonesty.

They're enforcing Civil right violations via lawsuit. It's no different then trying to rent from a racist landlord

Speaking of landlords who discriminate, Trump has never done anything to deserve a shred of respect. Long before day one. If anything they're saving gullible people from sending money to a conman

> There is a clear difference between people clearly going to the same bakery over and over to harass and old guy,There is a clear difference between people clearly going to the same bakery over and over to harass and old guy.

Look back a few decades and this is exactly the same argument that segregationists were using. You've basically just said: "That shopowner has a right not to deal with blacks, why do they keep harassing that poor man by trying to buy his goods?".

> I will note the irony about people saying that we should respect society “decisions” when they didn’t respect Trump becoming president since day one . Come on pal drop the dishonesty.

Those people didn't leave pipe-bombs at both party headquarters, call for their own Vice President to be hanged, or storm the Capitol building though. It's both transparent and dishonest to try to equate the two. Especially when you consider that Trump was one of the people peddling the birther nonsense about Obama and that pretty much everyone involved with the trump campaign was actually found guilty of some form of corruption. Trump himself has only escaped charges by virtue of being the President.

Except he was not denying them service just not engaging artistically lol stop being dishonest and trying to compare him to racists that denied service when he only denied artistic expression. From your comments it is quite obvious that you actually know a lot about the case. However you keep conveniently just leaving things out to fit your framing, please just drop the charade and the dishonesty.

The man offered a service where he would produce a cake for your wedding. The man refused to provide that service exclusively to LGBT couples. There's no charade or dishonesty to that at all and it's just as abhorrent as the people that made the same weak argument about potential black customers during segregation. You can try to pretend it's about "artistic expression" but in the end it's about wanting the ability to discriminate against a protected class that you don't like.