|| If you, dear HN reader, can't see the threat to your freedom in this then you are blind.

Forcing a private corporation to provide a platform for someone else is also a form of tyrrany.

|| Oh, and to call that invasion of the capitol an attempted coup is a real stretch. What were they ever going to do other than get arrested??

They were going to kill our representatives in government. That was their intent, and it's a bit odd that you're making excuses for them.

> Forcing a private corporation to provide a platform for someone else is also a form of tyrrany.

I appreciate that. I am not sure where I stand on this anymore. I agree that they are private corporations with rights. But they are also unprecedented in history in terms of scale, wealth and power. And they just silenced a president and shutdown a competitor. Those are some implications that need to be considered carefully.

> And they just silenced a president

The President is perfectly capable of getting a message out without the use of twitter. There's even a room in his house specifically for giving press briefings. To pretend that this is "silencing" him is ridiculous.

> But they are also unprecedented in history in terms of scale, wealth and power. And they just silenced a president and shutdown a competitor. Those are some implications that need to be considered carefully.

Then break them up, they absolutely deserve to be, I just don't think this particular situation is an example of why they should be broken up.

I would like to point out that Parler claimed to be using AWS as a regular hosting provider, so this isn't an area where the market is anywhere near as consolidated, there are thousands of other hosting providers out there who probably don't want to deal with them either.

> The President is perfectly capable of getting a message out without the use of twitter. There's even a room in his house specifically for giving press briefings. To pretend that this is "silencing" him is ridiculous.

Debating, especially on the internet, requires a little generosity when interpreting your opponent's words. Be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you emit. I know that the President wasn't literally silenced. Jeff Bezos didn't send goons to the whitehouse to gag and bag him.

We both know that firing off a tweet to millions instantly is a lot easier than calling a press conference.

> They were going to kill our representatives in government. That was their intent, and it's a bit odd that you're making excuses for them.

Maybe so. But that's still not a coup. It's a heinous, despicable act, but not a coup.

It was an attempted coup. Words have meanings.

Here's a thing every activist knows, from the most benign to the most toxic (by anyone's estimation):

If you wait for the government to provide you every good thing in life, it'll never come.

Governments like to look around at what people are already doing in several locales or regions and either stop them or give it to everybody. The courts get involved and decide whether that's allowed. If the Federal government doesn't like what the courts say, they can use more strongly worded laws so the courts have to agree. We make the last bit difficult so that we don't do it frivolously. It cuts down on overreach, but it also means bad actors tend to get to play a bit longer at the expense of everybody else.

If individuals or corporations are the last word in reasonable political discourse, we will have failed. Not so spectacularly as if we never do anything until Congress says so, but failed nonetheless.

To be clear, I'm not saying this should be the end of this. But someone has to get the wheels of government rolling, and this is fairly typical, if not ideal.

>Oh, and to call that invasion of the capitol an attempted coup is a real stretch. What were they ever going to do other than get arrested??

This reminds me of far-leftists refusing to admit that Islamist terrorism should be counted as terrorism, because, after all, what was killing a few people in an LGBT nightclub going to accomplish for ISIS?

My problem is with the description of that action as a "coup". I'm not defending those people. I'm not informed well enough to do that. But a coup? I don't think so.

Coups generally rely on military support, or some sort of established basis for taking and holding political power. This was not a coup. Or it was the shittest one ever.

If you consider that their aim was to overturn an election by force, then yes, it was a coup attempt. I think they were counting on the military and law enforcement rank-and-file (which overwhelmingly support Trump) to join them.