However, people are completely entitled to decide to shun someone or not do business with them based on mere suspicion or some arbitrary subjective standards (with certain narrow exceptions e.g. discrimination of protected classes) - "freedom of association" is the default condition and a key freedom, people and companies are free to choose with whom they want to (not) associate.

Freedom of association is not absolute, some limitations can be justified (the discrimination laws are a good example) but there does need to be a solid justification and specific serious harm prevented if you want to argue that someone or some organization needs to be denied that freedom of association.

I do feel most of this whole issue could be sidestepped with some long overdue antitrust enforcement.

Yes this is the reason. They will continue to stifle speech so its more palatable for corporations to run ads on their platform. Censoring art and dissent is working well for the people you agree with right now. 60 years ago the current culture would have been unfathomable. In 60 years it may be unfathomable to you again, but now you've taken the stand that it's right and just that they stifle dissent. Hope that never bites you.

For a platform like Twitch, this is fine. They have a brand. They’re akin to a modern television channel, and television has always been this ruthless. There are lots of other streaming sites.

I think this is what's happening, it's just that the users of Twitch want something different than what you want. You might think they're the vocal minority or something, but Twitch is almost certainly making a data driven decision here.

I don't mind folks coming in and saying, "Hey, this is a change that I dislike." But a lot of the discourse here today is just outrage and finger pointing and yelling about free speech absolutism.

I think that HN's downvoting system actually makes it harder to have a reasoned discourse about topics like this, because if I disagree with the prevailing opinion in this community that Twitch is doing a bad thing, it's likely my comment gets strongly downvoted, rather than opening a line of discussion.

I don't know how to solve this. Maybe separate "I disagree" vs "Off-topic/poor quality comment" downvotes?

There's a reasonable discussion to be had about the decision Twitch made. I happen to think it's a good decision, and I'd love to be able to have that discourse in a calm way, but I don't know how to have it in something like HN where comments get swept up in voting and yelling and hostile replies.

I understand that there are UX challenges to adding different kinds of votes, but I totally agree that the UI affordances we have right now make conversation harder instead of easier.

I wonder if separating "quality" (vote + or -) from "reports" ("excessively rude", "inappropriate", "off-topic") would be useful. I do think that people can be excessively rude and useful at the same time. Edit: So, this would change from "-3 points" -> "-3 points [rude: 3, off-topic: 5]".

As someone who does not operate a streaming platform, I don't care whether they have a brand or not - I care about the pragmatic benefits of living in a society where principles like innocent-until-proven-guilty are available and practiced in a way that benefits average people like me. I think the number of people who would consider "they have a brand" to be a good justification can't be higher than the number who own major brands.

It all makes sense when you look at it from a money angle rather than an ethical angle.

For example: if Twitch hosts a well-known sexual abuser and groomer who's known for taking advantage of vulnorable fans, then people will be rightfully upset with Twitch for giving them an audience.

This is why Ryan Haywood got permanently banned from Twitch. Some of his victims and many of his former fans reached out to Twitch and said "hey, this guy is an abusive and manipulative piece of shit who will take advantage of vulnerable fans if he gets the chance. Please don't provide him with a megaphone and a potential audience."

It's no different to the owners of M:TG banning people for serious misconduct, for example.

We lock people up pre-trial, sometimes for months if they cannot pay. People lose jobs and have trouble caring for children and so much more while this happens.

You can lose a job if you get arrested. This happens before trial. We (Americans) don't really regulate the folks that do criminal background checks, so that arrest can cost you later too.

Civil forfeiture is legal. Though some places have reined it in, not everywhere requires a guilty verdict in a criminal trial to take your stuff. And as a "bonus", the standards for proof are lower in civil proceedings than they are for criminal ones.

In many areas, you can get fired for any reason, so all it takes is a boss that suspects you of something. Even if they cannot prove it, they can site loss of trust.

I'm fully aware there's good reason for organizations and companies to limit free speech, but it often (lately) has gone way too far, dabbling in political witch hunting.

I can think of few things less inline with classical American Constitutional ideals than to cheer on organizations that hunt down individuals and silence them for thoughts expressed on other platforms.

It would be a violation of the 1st Amendment to require Twitch to host objectionable content against their will. Freedom of association and freedom not to speak is part of the 1st Amendment. I am very doubtful a proposal that mandated that Twitch had to host certain streamers would survive a court challenge. This is like looking at declining church membership and arguing that the only way to preserve Freedom of Religion is to mandate that everyone needs to go to church.

And there are ways to attack censorship that don't require throwing out the Constitution. Ways like antitrust, like expanding Internet access and building infrastructure to make self-hosting easier, like providing government-run alternatives to certain services like financial payment networks -- services that would be subject to the 1st Amendment. We could revise copyright so it's easier to build content mirroring sites and migrate people off of social media/streaming sites into other services. We could revise the CFAA so that it's easier to build migration tools without getting sued by Facebook. We could start putting even a tiny bit of effort into not allowing Amazon/Apple/Google to look at new markets that are attractive and just buy the entire space.

I don't think you're mad that Twitch is moderating, Twitch has to moderate to some degree. You're mad that there are realistically only 2-3 usable streaming services and that our Internet infrastructure and Internet laws are set up in such a way as to encourage that kind of consolidation, to allow companies like Amazon to buy anyone who competes with them, and to sue anyone who builds compatible wrappers and services in a way that might make it easier to migrate off of Twitch.

And sometimes I bring up antitrust and decentralization and people accuse me of not being realistic, but honestly, does anyone really believe that antitrust is harder than passing a Constitutional amendment? Because it's not, antitrust doesn't require 38 states to ratify it. I genuinely do not understand the point of view that looks at mass media consolidation and says that revising the 1st Amendment is a preferable alternative to breaking up Amazon.

There are already communication companies that are basically forced to host content that they object to right?

Those are called common carrier laws, and they apply to things like the phone company, which are communication companies.

You would be hard pressed to get the Supreme Court to rule that the same standards could be applied to a media company. The fairness doctrine met similar objections, and that was never applied to companies using cable, just public broadcasts. In this particular instance, we're talking about Twitch ending partner relationships. It's a hard sell to say that Net Neutrality or rationing limited airwaves is the same as forcing Twitch to pay a streamer money or to put them in a privileged position above other streamers.

And if your plan is to create the same kind of restrictions that you see around, say, Net Neutrality, then that still isn't going to create the environment that you want, because Net Neutrality also protects stuff like harassment, disturbing/gross content, and pornography -- it isn't narrowly applied to a privileged sub-category of speech. In other words, common carrier laws protect your political speech, but they're not specifically designed to protect your political speech. They also protect a lot of stuff that people don't want to see on their Facebook feed.

Even more broadly though, when we talk about revising the Constitution, we're talking about free speech ideals, not just legislation. And while the legislative conversation is worth having, it's also worth acknowledging that community moderation is a free speech ideal. The entire marketplace of ideas is based on the philosophy that some ideas win and lose, and that some ideas become unpopular over time. The entire point of Freedom of Association is that people can form communities and have productive conversations on diverse topics without getting constantly shouted down or harassed. Community moderation and subgroups and forums with strict rules are part of how we encourage a diversity of opinions online; they're why we can have this conversation on Hackernews without someone jumping in and trying to sell penis enlargement pills or telling us all to kill ourselves.

So on one hand if we're having a conversation about laws, it is going to be very difficult to get the Supreme Court to go along with most of the "neutral platform" proposals I've heard[0]. On the other hand if we're having a conversation about ideals, Freedom of Association is something we should care about in and of itself, and we should want to preserve that as much as possible -- we should only be looking at getting rid of Freedom of Association in places where we literally have no other choice. Compelled speech is extremely dangerous, it shouldn't be the first thing we try.

And luckily, we have a lot of precedent on alternative ways to get speech to flourish online. When people refer back to the "good old days" when the Internet cared about speech, there was plenty of moderation back then. There were just also a bunch of independent IRC rooms, independent websites, more freedom to be pseudononymous, and everyone's entire life wasn't tied to a single Google account that could be shut down at any time. So the first thing we try should be to increase platform diversity, because we already have compelling evidence that platform diversity increases speech.

[0]: Particularly a Conservative Supreme Court with people like Barrett, who are probably not inclined to say that 1st Amendment protections shouldn't apply to companies that directly interact with consumers. With the exception of people like Thomas, I do not see much eagerness from Conservative justices to strip free speech protections from companies.

The moderation team of twitch is pretty much universally hated by the internet. I don't think anybody is cheering them on.

We should talk about those things in public - and not everyone will agree. That's how it's supposed to be.

It's brand new, however, to wield the power to literally cut off your political enemies from more than half of the population with a single click of the mouse.

Also this article states that Twitch that the misconduct is this:

"It said examples of this “severe misconduct” include terrorist activities, child sexual exploitation, violent extremism, credible threats of mass violence, carrying out or deliberately acting as an accomplice to sexual assault and threatening Twitch or its staff."

Which one of these are just political opinions?

And a private school "banning" a book isn't an actual ban. You could still purchase and read the book if you desired.

But Twitch can't?

Was it wrong for a private school to "ban" a book? I think so... do you?

Do you think it's wrong for twitch to ban people for: "terrorist activities, child sexual exploitation, violent extremism, credible threats of mass violence, carrying out or deliberately acting as an accomplice to sexual assault and threatening Twitch or its staff."?

Banning a book isn't even in the same ball park. I think it's pathetic of the school.

There was an Atari 2600 game that involved rape which was banned in some community on Long Island. That's the only one i can think of.

Indeed. The remedy here is to enforce anti-trust laws.

They're opening the door to threaten influencers making money using their platform that support the "wrong" political party. If they say the wrong thing on Twitter, they will be banned on twitch/fb/google/etc. Incredible times we live in.

That concept has been going on for a while.

Women who were sexually harassed or assaulted were ignored for so long, we over corrected and we became cautious of just being accused. And now you get stories of male investors not engaging with female founders or execs who won’t meet with women without the presence of a trusted woman in the room.

Cancel culture is more of the same. Let’s dig up tweets people made years ago and call them out. As though people don’t learn or absorb new ideas as they age and change their behaviour accordingly.

We’re more interested in making sure we catch everyone that is guilty and some innocent people are acceptable casualties. In fact, let’s widen the net slightly for more by-catch. Then we know for sure we got everything.

When I was very young I remember a story of a high school student who horribly tortured a cat and drove around with its mangled but still living body. The high school baseball coach kicked that student off the team even though the student wasn’t arrested. This wasn’t considered cancel culture then and it didn’t bother me then either.

However, the “right to free speech” does NOT imply a right to be heard. Internet entities can and will do stupid things that interfere with individual expression, but they don’t trample upon individual rights. If literally nobody wants to hear a message, that doesn’t preclude one from expressing it to one’s self.

Now that access to large broadcast mediums is the norm, it's absolutely a blow to free speech to selectively censor some of it. Maybe we choose to make tradeoffs, but let's do so with our eyes open.

If you think broadcast media gets it wrong, push back. But if you call it cancel culture, it’s easy to show what we see today is much less harmful than what came before.

Somewhat ironically, whatever you're proposing would almost certainly require weakening the first amendment. Personally, I'd prefer a strong first amendment (which is concrete and actually means something) to the nebulous "spirit of the 1A".

I assume you're referring to the 1A rights of the corporation, e.g. Twitter's right to decline to publish content it disagrees with. I agree with you there. It's a complex problem. My complaint is more with the argument that only the government can restrict free speech. It's a lazy argument because the reality is far more nuanced than that. For example, consider the fact that AT&T doesn't have the right to drop your phone calls when you start talking about Verizon to the person on the other end of the line.

It's totally fair to talk about the "spirit" of the constitution -- that's why we have the Supreme Court in the first place, to interpret the constitution when its words are not clear. I would also note that the Declaration of Independence doesn't mention any self-evident truth about corporations, but it does describe the rights of the people, and government's role in preserving them. If corporations appear to interfere with those inalienable rights, it's not unreasonable for the government to step in to preserve them.

Sometimes platforms ban people I think they shouldn't. We agree on that much. I hope user pressure pushes them into more fair and transparent processes. But I strongly believe they should have the right to publish or not publish whatever they want. And on ideological grounds, I strongly oppose any weakening of the First Amendment.

Do you require a detailed solution before you will even admit there is a problem?

The extreme social media dynamics somehow holds these corporations accountable for any wrongdoings someone might post on their platforms which is impossible to prevent or moderate in a timely fashion. They respond with more sophisticated and sweeping algorithms that lead to self-censorship by content creators and unexpected actions like shutting down the demoscene event a few days ago.

Further, Twitch is not the entire industry, the same way that Microsoft is not the industry.

The suggestion that it is immoral for a different standard being applied to a private clubhouse is not something that was supported by the influential thinkers who gave us the former idea.

Twitch is hardly in that category, though.

Twitch is not the legal system, but it is passing judgement and renders punishment that can be harsher than the justice system in some cases (losing your main income compared to a small fine). Therefore, it needs presumption of innocence as much as the justice system. I rest my case.

Whether it should be allowed or not by law can be a different discussion, but we don't have to pretend that this is new

Oh awesome. I am sure Twitch streamers are looking forward to guaranteed minimum wage, paid time-off, health insurance, etc.

It doesn't matter to me how you categorize that relationship, my point is valid. "Basically employees" was a plenty fine layman's categorization, though. We aren't lawyers here.

A company firing an employee for getting arrested is a very close situation to Twitch "firing" a streamer for getting arrested.

If I say come drink from my waterhose. At some point I dislike you and I say you can't drink here. You can't fire them.

If google disables your email you didn't get fired you were kicked off the platform.

And it's not quite like that. It's if someone comes up to you and says "Hey I can get a bunch of people to come and drink from your water hose. If I get enough can you pay me?" And then they get arrested for murder and you think maybe they should stop.

Here we are talking about... the inability to show yourself playing video games to others.

Twitch streamers are just another form of celebrity and subject to the same dynamics.

For some people this is their livelihood and they will hopefully take that into account.

You want a prediction for the future re this subject that is a certainty? The big tech companies will require (and will deploy) military style protection and will have to wall off their campuses in the not very distant future. No other outcome is possible given where things are heading, the cultural tension will keep rising until it explodes.

Translation: We're going to ban whoever the ADL and SPLC point the finger at.

We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means.

That's called a free market.

Will they be restored if they're proven innocent? Maybe. Maybe not. Again, that's called a free market.

Just using Twitter and Facebook for example - they've silenced the second-most voted for President in American history, because he isn't their brand of politics. Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?

How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?

Their TOS have specific "Glorification of Violence policy", which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate.

Further, the claim that Twitter "Silenced" the President of the United States, a man who literally has a press room in his house, and could have a room full of reporters convened at any hour of the day to speak to. He could issue any statement from official whitehouse channels and it would instantly be disseminated across every news outlet around the world.

He chose not do those things, because he is a coward. The quintessential Keyboard Warrior/troll who likes to rile up people safe from any counter argument.

I don't have a horse in that race, but it is disgusting how people defend this blatant and obvious bias as perfectly normal thing.

Let's not forget how it was Trump's DHS that was mistreating folks on the border back in the day. Is it still Trump calling the shots on the border? Is it still Trump wanting to bring manufacturing to the US instead of China? No, Biden is now implementing the same policies as Trump, except in blue flavor instead of red.

Get over yourself thinking your political party salute has meaning. They're all the same assholes. Twitter and Facebook are not against violence or hate, they're against whoever doesn't agree with them.

0: https://redd.it/jpuxrv (warning: politicalcompassmemes humor)

1: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...

https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1117508460407447552

Twitter was in the news every day. They profited massively, but now that his presidency is over there is no interest anymore.

Twitter, same as every other corporate entity, benefited from Trump's tax cuts. They went years without silencing him, despite cries that his posts were dangerous. They -wanted- to keep him on their platform; he kept millions engaged with it. They even created 'world leader' exceptions -just so they wouldn't have to apply their own terms of service against him-.

It is disgusting how people act like this is bias against Trump/the GOP, when it's so obvious that the bias flows the other way, and it took an actual armed invasion of the US Capitol for these companies to finally step up and do something.

It is unfortunate how personal biases stop you from understanding the danger to society from unchecked 'private companies'. Trump haters are ok with it so long as Twitter and Facebook silence him but too shallow to imagine that one day they'll silence the politician they support.

The 4rth was shot in the chest by secret service, and the 5th was the police officer that later died of injuries.

He has been effectively silenced. (And at least in the case of Twitter, it was definitely not for glorification of violence given the two tweets they cited in their blogpost)

We'll ignore for a second that just because he can't post on twitter doesn't mean that you can't find things he's saying on twitter - so that would be the first place. 30 seconds of searching and they've got 4 posts about trump in the last 48 hours.

https://twitter.com/oann

Fox News? OANN? Newsmax? He's on almost daily and not exactly difficult to track down if you want to.

Sure you don't get his diarrhea of the mouth for 18 hours a day, but that's a far cry from being silenced.

I've been mislead too many times by filtered stories to have any trust in them.

After the 2016 election, the left ginned up enough hatred that some bloke attempted to gun down a Republican representative [1]. It passed with comment but not any particular shock. This is a good example of the routine (happened in 2011 against a Democrat) level of violence in US politics. The US famously resorts to action when passions are high. Trump simply wasn't inciting anything violent, especially against that high baseline.

Twitter's actions are unjustified, and it is highly likely that all the big tech companies are thinking like this, they are known to be left-leaning. This is a wake up call to the right that these companies are threats. Any right wing government anywhere in the world that ignores the tech companies is at risk of them becoming powerful and effective politically opponents - that is a much bigger thing than people have cottoned on to. This move was big.

[0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin...

Quite easily. Freedom of speech is freedom from government suppression of that speech - it's quite clear in the constitution. Freedom of speech doesn't mean I or anyone else has to give you a platform to speak from.

This isn't crazy or unprecedented. We don't give unlimited contractual rights to landlords. You'd end up with a virtual serfdom otherwise. So we grant tenant rights exclusive of any contractual terms. Past time to do the same for social media participants.

Freedom of speech and freedom of association mean that Twitter has the right to put or not put whatever it wants on its website.

"Over 43% of the internet is consumed by Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple"

Not only that but some of these companies collude to limit access both from competition and political opposition.

It seems that breaking up monopolies as in the past is not viable with tech empires like Twitter / FB, therefore some type of regulation in this area is where the focus needs to be, and I say this as someone who usually takes the libertarian position.

Facebook doesn't control whether you pick up the phone and call your friend to voice your opinion. Twitter can't prevent you from driving to your local bar and telling your drinking buddies what you think of the president. Then again, the bar owner can kick you out of his establishment if he disagrees with your thoughts and gets sick of listening to you.

Because again, your freedom of speech doesn't mean a business has to host you.

We are truly in uncharted waters at this point: historically, your newspaper comparison would have made sense, but it simply isn't applicable anymore.

At what point do we need to acknowledge that these platforms are the public square? When they control 99+% of online speech? When there is a worldwide quarantine meaning that people head to the internet to speak to each other, and meeting up isn't even an option? When being banned from one implies being banned from all of them?

Increasingly, there are difficult questions that we need to answer around this: Does this argument imply that even if all speech was transmitted through Facebook's servers, that wouldn't change the calculus around what "freedom of speech" means? How does this interface with laws worldwide? How does this interface with morals worldwide (the morality of the coastal US is not as universal as many people would like)? Is it morally acceptable for all businesses of a particular kind to collude wrt refusing to serve a particular person? Would it be morally acceptable for every business of every kind to collude wrt refusing to serve a particular person, whatever the reason?

Arguing from this place of finality by appealing to the way things currently work means that people get to ignore these questions. Not to mention that failing to look at changing circumstances is usually a bad idea: omnis conventio intelligitur rebus sic stantibus. This sort of argument generally reads a bit like rules lawyering to me: even if this is how the law works in letter today, it seems to be against the spirit of the law and broadly self-interested ('as long as the people getting banned are people I think deserve it, I'm all for letting the social media companies decide').

How about this example instead: Do phones have to serve you? Phone companies are user communication companies, after all. Seems like an appropriate analogy. Whereas a newpaper is more of a publishing company.

Yes, but there is the other side of that coin: a newspaper (as in the company) can get sued for libel or other such things, precisely because they have editorial control.

It's seems that social media companies would like to have their cake and eat it too. They are explicitly protected from their users content (thanks to section 230), and yet they seem to flex this immunity by arbitrarily blocking users, often without recourse. IIRC they have even occasionally flipped between being publisher or a platform depending on the question.

To be fair, there is no winning for large social media companies, either they preform this filtering and everyone hates on them, or they don't and everyone hates on them. I do not believe there is a perfect way to block only people who everyone agrees should be blocked, as every method has both false positives and false negatives.

So yeah, it made sense at the time, since government was the big player historically, but we're looking at a different situation now.

I'm quite certain that's not true. Papers in the 1700s had just as much dominance in speech as social media does today.

https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/themes-of...

I think HN has a gross overestimation of twitter's influence. There are 7.9 Billion people on the planet, and 185 million daily active twitter users. I can't say I've ever once gotten my news from twitter and don't plan on ever starting. In my social circle I've got exactly 2 people who use twitter daily.

The important difference is that less than a billionth of what people communicate was through those newspapers. Nowadays? Maybe half is the the internet and most of that is through the big players (e.g. Facebook).

That's quite different to having a handful of internet giants, who seem to act similarly.

It's also different to having a huge Murdoch controlled network of media a firms.

Twitter is a US platform first and foremost. It doesn't make sense to compare the total number of Twitter users against the number of people on the entire planet. According to Statista:

> Social network Twitter is particularly popular in the United States, where as of January 2021, the microblogging service had audience reach of 69.3 million users

https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-...

That is about a quarter of the US population. Your 185/7900 figure is off by an order of magnitude.

...nevermind, I just realized that US is a union of States where a repossession man just casually walk into front yards and tow away a Camry from debtors.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

Which freedom of speech are you referring to? Because if you're thinking of the first amendment, then the people who decided that are the ones who wrote it, and it's pretty clear in the text.

I think that is disingenuous. Twitter said "specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter" [0]. It wasn't his brand of politics it was how his supporters were interpreting him and incitement of violence like what was seen when his supporters stormed the Capitol.

[0]: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

How about we get rid of these 'white privilege' theories, because people are interpreting it as if every single white person is somehow inherently racist and evil?

Ya know, that mob that followed the beck and call of a man who still refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy and results of democratic election?

Yeah I think that was the one...

Of course not, just like the Jan 6 incident wasn’t. An insurrection involves intent to overthrow government, not merely protest.

I think both of those platforms should have editorial discretion.

Honest question: Why? It is a bit my outside perspective that the US has too big of person cult thing going. Not just in politics and independent of brand.

We can tolerate the existence of nazis, but there's no obligation to give them a platform.

And what's the recourse when the same forces collude to shut someone or some group out of the hosting platform for wrongthink? Build your own server farm? Build your own cloudflare? Build your own DNS? How far do we go in allowing tyranny by a loud and powerful minority? If we can regulate corporations to prevent corporate monopolies, perhaps it's appropriate to implement loose regulations against social monopoly. Collusion to silence an entire set of viewpoints by unilaterally associating them with a minority of extremists is quite literally oppression.

I don't believe that "violent overthrow of the democratic process" specifically is a valid political position. I am comfortable discriminating against it. I am also comfortable with private parties exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of expression.

> Build your own server farm? Build your own cloudflare? Build your own DNS?

Yes, or find someone else to do business with. Or... change your behavior so it is less objectionable to those companies.

I consider a free society to be a competitive marketplace for ideas. Some ideas thrive and grow, others wither and die. The first amendment is a mandate for minimal governmental regulation so the forces of competition can evaluate ideas.

> How far do we go in allowing tyranny by a loud and powerful minority?

We don't allow it at all, that's why these companies are able to set these policies and issue bans. Exercising first amendment rights is not tyranny.

> If we can regulate corporations to prevent corporate monopolies, perhaps it's appropriate to implement loose regulations against social monopoly.

It's not and whatever the concept of "social monopoly" is can only make sense if there is one party controlling all social expression, which is obviously not the case. You could also call this "social discrimination" and reuse the ideas of protected classes. But political views are not (and IMHO should not) be protected. This would be the equivalent of picking winners in the free market of ideas.

Regulating social consensus and private beliefs is itself tyranny. The constitution is clearly designed to prevent exactly that outcome.

> Collusion to silence an entire set of viewpoints by unilaterally associating them with a minority of extremists is quite literally oppression.

This is not "literally oppression". There is no evidence that there was any collusion, only that violent overthrow of democratic processes is widely objectionable to many corporations and individuals. That many independent organizations came to the same conclusion is evidence that the system is working and that the idea itself has failed in the marketplace of ideas.

Trump did not advocate for a violent overthrow as far as I know.

> I consider a free society to be a competitive marketplace for ideas

That requires those ideas to be heard. If everyone segregates into their own political bubbles there will be no competition of ideas, just endless echo chambers.

> It's not and whatever the concept of "social monopoly" is can only make sense if there is one party controlling all social expression, which is obviously not the case

Eh?

The people controlling the big corporations that control most communication in the English speaking online world are of very particular political leanings. They might not control all expression but they certainly control most of it.

> But political views are not (and IMHO should not) be protected. This would be the equivalent of picking winners in the free market of ideas.

I don't see how preventing the silencing of some ideas is equivalent to picking winners.

I'm not necessarily saying political views should be protected, just disputing the validity of your logic here.

> That many independent organizations came to the same conclusion is evidence that the system is working and that the idea itself has failed in the marketplace of ideas.

You say "independant", but there are strongly dominant cultures in those organizations and the people admitted to them are from a specific subset of the population. They might be somewhat independant in that Facebook doesn't decide what Twitter does (though I expect there's cross-polination of people moving back and forth between them), but they're both drawing from mostly the same pool of people and ideas.

I expect that Trump supporters, for example, have little influence in Facebook the company.

If Trump really wants to get his thoughts out to the world, he can host his own website and publish them there. He can write letters to the editors of news sites and see if they’ll publish them. He can do TV interviews - any network would kill for those ratings right now.

Or he can stand outside and yell.

No one is entitled to a privately owned platform publishing their demonstrably violent rhetoric, even if they’re famous. Media platforms have always been allowed to be gatekeepers of whatever content they choose; the internet age didn’t change that.

The population of the USA is continuously rising. This is not an achievement. All it takes is an unusual voter turnout and a somewhat close election.

> because he isn't their brand of politics.

No. They banned him because at that time they determined that his violence encouraging speech was a real danger to society.

> he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no?

Also no. Traditionally, former presidents live a more private life to pave the way for a new generation of politics. And even if you think he should be able to continue to influence the day-to-day political news, he has the ability to release press statements and contact any media outlet he wants.

Trump literally is an example that being banned from social media does NOT limit his public speech. Anything he puts out is discussed in mainstream media. Just a few days ago we were informed of his utterly stupid idea of using cancel culture to protest cancel culture.

1. The second - and third, for that matter - most voted for President is Obama (69.5 and 65.9M votes). Trump is the fourth (62.9M votes)[1].

2. He was not banned because he wasn’t ‘their brand of politics’, he was banned for inciting violence against the terms of those platforms. You can certainly argue Twitter and Facebook had - and have - a very inconsistent enforcement approach for those policies. But that’s not what you are saying.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

Your other point is based on your own personal political biases, which just furthers my point about these platforms controlling the release of information (or disinformation) to the general public.

Just imagine if Twitter was a Right-Wing organization, and decided to silence the current President. How would that change this discussion?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

For that to happen, though, the current president would have to do something that was at least colorable as a violation of terms and services. I haven't heard even right-wingers claim that this is so, so far. (But maybe I just haven't heard, not being one who listens to those circles.)

Biden has not, to the best of my knowledge, said anything that could sanely be considered incitement to violence. Banning him would not be in the same category as banning Trump. It would be much more blatantly political, because the excuse would be much more transparent.

Are we to just ban politics from these platforms wholesale?

Is lying against Twitter's TOS? If so, then you have a sensible point. But I kind of doubt that it is...

    You may not use our Products to do or share anything:
        * That is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent.

Joe Biden's rhetoric regarding the Georgia State voting laws is clearly 2-3 of those. Why has he not been banned yet?

And the incitement of violence thing has been debunked pretty clearly. If one guy at Twitter can decide something was inciteful just because that's their opinion - despite all evidence presented during Congressional Hearings, then we're far more lost than previously assumed.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms/plain_text_terms

[2] https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/false_news

So he aught to be able to grab a soap box and stand on your lawn every day and preach? He is a former US president so you are proposing he can go onto private property and say whatever he wants at any time.

> How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?

Because you misunderstand free speech. Is the government going to arrest you for posting on twitter? No. However no one is required, not even the government, to provide you with a platform to speak on.

You want free beer speech. Speech without paying for it. Speech without restriction of any kind by anyone at any time. Why should we care about that?

Edit: I know the issue becomes murkier for things like mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships, but I am willing to make distinctions based on scale.

No it doesn't. The mom, the pop, and the sole proprietor are people; they have rights, which certain curtailments of their business might interfere with. The businesses themselves do not.

If the corporation is being seen as a single entity then you should not consider it's employees' individual rights as the same thing. Or even combine them together to give more weight to the corporation's rights.

https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/

The labor of digital creatives and innovators, sutured as it is to a technical apparatus fashioned from dead labor and meant for producing commodities for profit, is therefore already socialized. While some of this socialization is apparent in peer production, much of it is mystified through the real abstraction of commodity fetishism, which masks socialization under wage relations and contracts. Rather than further rely on these contracts to better benefit digital artisans, a Marxist politics of digital culture would begin from the fact of socialization, and as Radhika Desai (2011) argues, take seriously Marx’s call for “a general organization of labour in society” via political organizations such as unions and labor parties. Creative workers could align with others in the production chain as a class of laborers rather than as an assortment of individual producers, and form the kinds of organizations, such as unions, that have been the vehicles of class politics, with the aim of controlling society’s means of production, not simply one’s “own” tools or products. These would be bonds of solidarity, not bonds of market transactions. Then the apparatus of digital cultural production might be controlled democratically, rather than by the despotism of markets and private profit.

I don't even care so much about social media, but banks and services that provide basic infrastructure to keep your own web services afloat shouldn't be allowed to discriminate people based on their politics.

It usually seems to be based on people's bigotry or sexual misconduct. I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban.

Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be. If your political view is fascist, why should you have the same protections as someone who is born a minority? One thing can be changed and can be thought of as evil; the other can't.

You should have protections so the corporations and bankers don't have too much power over politics.

This is like saying that words don't mean anything, so we should stop trying to use them. No one agrees on a hard line between fascist and not-fascist, but that doesn't mean it's entirely an artificial distinction.

Is the ACLU fascist? What about Ron Paul? Obviously "no" to both of those.

And what about neo-Nazis who describe themselves as fascists?

> Trump was labeled a racist and it's as stupid as calling Biden communist.

Someone should tell that to Richard Nixon's Justice Department, who successfully sued Donald Trump for being racist in 1973[1]. Or you should tell the white supremacists who celebrated Trump's victory[2]. If you're going to fish for weak "both sides are the same" examples, you're going to have to find an example that isn't so easy to counter-argue.

> You should have protections so the corporations and bankers don't have too much power over politics.

Unfortunately the First Amendment gives corporations and bankers an enormous amount of power over what they choose to say and publish, which means they have political power. You can't do anything about that except scrap the First Amendment.

1. https://www.npr.org/2016/09/29/495955920/donald-trump-plague...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/us/politics/white-nationa...

> Unfortunately the First Amendment gives corporations and bankers an enormous amount of power over what they choose to say and publish, which means they have political power. You can't do anything about that except scrap the First Amendment.

As you pointed out yourself, Trump was sued for refusing service to blacks. And yet, the 1A is still here.

> Or you should tell the white supremacists who celebrated Trump's victory[2]. If you're going to fish for weak "both sides are the same" examples, you're going to have to find an example that isn't so easy to counter-argue.

It's funny that you're posting Richard Spencer, because in this elections he was against Trump and he was celebrating Biden's victory.

He was supported by libertarians, nationalists, plain old conservatives or some liberals even. You can't be everything at the same time and this is a very stupid argument to make. Same goes for Biden.

Wouldn't Trump himself count?

> Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be.

I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better. I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it.

No. He was tolerated despite his politics until he (arguably) incited a seditious attack on Congress and his own vice president.

> I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better.

The problem is that "political views" is not a defined term. What if I employ 50% Irish employees and have someone who says, "I hate the Irish and wish they'd never ruined this country"?

It harms my business to have that person around. It is bad for my brand, it's bad for my other employees, and maybe I just don't want to hear those comments myself. Why should the government be able to force me to pay that person?

Or, in the case of social networks, why should the government force my employees to publish that content, maintain it, and keep it backed up for millions of people to see?

> I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it.

These kinds of comments are protected by the First Amendment. You can publish them, and you can shout them on the street. But you can't force people to like you or employ you if you say them. These ideas won't die out because of social pressure.

Also, thousands of websites (including Parler) already ban one or both of the statements you included. It's just that no one really cares because they're small sites.

So at what point do you say that a company is too big to be allowed to decide what they publish? Is it 100M users? Or 500M? If MSNBC or Fox News had 2 billion viewers, should they also be forced to air videos produced by any group?

I don't think OP actually said this.

But yes, like most people, I want this to happen sometimes. For example, I want a hotel to have to lodge Indian people, whether they actually want to or not.

In other cases, I don't want this to be legally required, but still will complain if I see something that indicates a lack of character. Not everything I think is shitty should be illegal.

Also, no one is illegalizing anything by banning it from Twitch.

If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok?

Yes. This is literally the entire argument against racism: judging someone for physical traits that have no bearing on their character.

> If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok?

No, for many obvious reasons.

1. Looking Indian (or not) still has no bearing on that person's behavior or character.

2. It would cost money and be an identity change, so not everyone could/would do it.

I can't believe anyone is seriously asking questions like this in 2021. Read a book.

Isn't it the "no bearing on character" thing that's the issue? Rather than the "physical" bit?

> 2. It would cost money and be an identity change, so not everyone could/would do it.

This would also hold for political ideas.

> I can't believe anyone is seriously asking questions like this in 2021. Read a book.

Please consider whether what you are saying is more than empty posturing. If you actually did want to educate people you wouldn't say "read a book", you'd mention a particular book.

I think want most people want is a reasonable middle ground, not unchecked corporate power.

How deep does your commitment to private corporate power go? For instance, suppose Comcast decided it doesn't want to provide cable or internet service to a particular cancellee. Does this bother you, or no? Does it matter if it's a monopoly setting? If it does, suppose we're in a duopoly market, and both companies refuse service to the cancellee. Does this worry you?

Because there are plenty of people claiming companies are being unconstitutional and/or that there should be laws that prevent companies from taking actions like banning people from platforms/etc.

Yes.

> We aren't talking protected class here

That's besides the point. There are many limitations on private companies picking and choosing who to do business with that apply beyond protected classes, including common carrier regulations[1], regulation of (some) private property as a public square[2], and requiring broadcasters to run political ads[3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

[3]: https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2012/01/articles/why-broadc...

OP didn’t make that argument, and I’m not going to make that argument.

That said, with or without government coercion on the counter party, innocent until proven guilty is a fairly good standard to apply. It’s more important when it concerns the use of government force, but that doesn’t mean it is unimportant when dealing with private parties and it is fair to judge Twitch for not applying innocent until proven guilty as a standard when it comes to Twitch-streamers.

It’s easy to get someone arrested, and it is easy for a cop to make an arrest. An arrest is not a presumption of guilt and shouldn’t be used as a signal of guilt.

I didn't see him mention the government at all. Just because you think something is wrong to do, doesn't automatically mean the government has to get involved.

We do have a set of reasons you can't refuse service to people for (race, religion, etc), and if you get classified as a utility you generally have to serve everyone, so it's not exactly an exotic idea.

Some of these services are entering a more ambiguous state. Twitter and Facebook have official government communications flowing through them. Banning people may eventually have more serious consequences closer to the "having your water cut off" situation.

This can be resolved by improving interop and competition among social media, not by forcing moderation decisions on private companies.

Does for example a few giants that dominate social media ,mobile platforms, consoles,media, ISPs actually/really/100% meet the criteria of a free market ? I am no economist so my naive interpretation is that you need many smaller agents actually competing no 2-3 giants sharing a market and abusing their share by killing any small competitor that appears.

You cannot discriminate against me because you don't like where I come from. You cannot discriminate against me because of my race.

Some people believe these protections should generally be extended to beliefs or political tribes or other forms of identification.

Not OP, but I don't want the government to force private companies to do anything - I want everybody to wake up and stand up against corporate censorship and abandoned Twitch en masse in protest. That's probably as likely as government enforcement, but a man can dream.

An analogy would perhaps be a musician signing a contract with a record label? I think they expect some reciprocity, like if they owe three albums to the label, the label also owes them marketing for those albums.

We do. All the people should be protected. That was the point of the French Revolution, no special rights to anyone, everyone is equal under the law.

These are discriminatory means, they just aren't ones we have universally decided are wrong to deny services based upon. What happens when we start denying services to those arrested regardless of conviction? Won't this have disparate impact on certain protected classes?

The parent clearly didn’t say any such thing. One can criticize a company without demanding simplistic, heavy-handed government intervention.

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to?

redm made no such suggestion. They lamented what they perceive to be a problem. They offered no comment on remedies.

It's arguable whether this is truly private - I'm not taking a position here, just that this is contested law [0].

Twitch would have a much stronger position if you had to be logged in to view the content.

One analogy to this is the regulating power that the government has over broadcast TV vs cable TV - the restrictions tend to be quite different.

[0] - https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650/1

- - - - - -

EDIT: Added reference [0], which is from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service

These are no longer private companies anymore.

Anyway on to the "free market." I have yet to see one in action. There is always meddling by unfairly-advantaged players and competition is never perfect. But more to the point, a free market is not magic or a god or even intelligent, and doesn't necessarily make good decisions on behalf of humans. It knows nothing of what's good or what's right. The one thing it does well is allocate finite or scarce resources. But humanity is not a resource, and even at their core task, markets make mistakes all the time.

The phone company can't cut you off because they don't like your behavior or who your associate with. Why should Twitch be able to? Twitch is a communication platform, too.

I ask because in my experience most people on HN only support freedom of association when it’s politically expedient for them.

I say this as a left leaning person.

I understand why you have to exaggerate, though.

Certainly I join in your healthy fears of some misguided actions which have been attributed to "cancel culture". And I also concede that there have been quite a few such actions.

However, I'd also ask that you recognize that many of the reactions and consequences attributed to "cancel culture" have been entirely justified, and appropriate, and have resulted in overall good outcomes to society.

It's not possible to apologize in these cases as if you admit any culpability it WILL be used against you to do as much additional damage as can be done. You can't backtrack, you must simply weather the storm and hope your employer who's known you much longer than a pack of wild woke-mobbers will give you the benefit of the doubt rather than assume that you eat minority children for breakfast.

> Former President Barack Obama derided "call-out culture" in a speech at the Obama Foundation summit on Tuesday, saying achieving real change was more complex than being "as judgmental as possible."

> "That is not activism," he concluded. "That is not bringing about change. If all you're doing is casting stones, you are probably not going to get that far."

Regardless, it's destructive to reasoned discourse to treat people like enemies ("cognitive dissonance" is being used as an insult here) when the only thing you know is that they disagreed with you.

Edit: It appears I may have misinterpreted the initial comments sarcasm as a "if McCarthy could do it then it's fair game" rather than a criticism of modern outrage mob tactics.

You are correct that they are in fact not saying that; the hypocrisy is in then turning around and saying that cancel culture is right and endorsing their tactics.

Societies have always shut down behavior and media they collectively find inappropriate. There's no need to track this as anything other than a continuation in a long history of collective groups of humans doing what they do.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OceijOEVqU

That's fair and accurate as far as it goes, but it doesn't really negate the need to oppose this particular continuation of said history, any more than it negated the need to oppose eg Prohibition or the Spanish Inquision when those were happening.

0: except in a "huh, the canary just died" kind of way.

1: or whoever happens to be popular at the time.

Yes, that's (a significant part of) what I'm referring to.

> rather than "cancel culture"

Actually, I generally call it "social justice".

So no, it isn't a way to describe people behing held accountable. It is a thing that is going on, by a small group to get rid of people that they don't like. It is abhorrent, and it is very toxic. It is most definitely not how society is supposed to work. I may not like what you have to say, but I will fight for your right to say it, and "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is how society is supposed to work.

You can say you disagree with "cancel culture" being used pejoratively, but it absolutely exists in the minds of many.

We need to stop throwing 'cancel culture' at everything. If you're known to be an advocate of violence or a lunatic they don't let you on public television or radio either.