As much as I agree with the free-market/private company angle. I also have to say that we are all in a "culture" war, or a war for mindshare in the general public. You have to understand that the right is losing. Sanity and nuance and reasonable thought are losing too, let's be frank about that. Just look at the crazy discussions about any heated topic like race, gender, and now the war in Ukraine to see that.

That is why they hold these two seemingly-opposing viewpoints.

We certainly are in an era of hyper polarization. I blame the social media algorithms. It maximizes engagement.

That being said I don’t think this line of thinking applies to Kiwi Farms. There are loads of conservative mags and podcasts and blogs online that argue against e.g. aspects of the trans movement. They do not get kicked off their ISPs because they do not doxx and cyberbully people to the point of suicide.

The "support private businesses' rights unless I don't like their decision" is kind of universal, isn't it (okay, minus some libertarians)? Custom cakes for gay weddings was a case where probably everyone who now says "private businesses have no duty to serve you" said the opposite.

i never said/implied anything generic re: private ISPs serving KF

what i implied was specific and concrete: KF should not be served by anyone

you're the one marketing a generic and abstract “no duty to serve”, because you can't defend the specific and concrete actions taken by KF

edit: i'll also happily make the concrete argument that cake shops shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against gays/lesbians/etc, while at the same time saying no-one should be allowed to serve KF

these two points of view are perfectly consistent with one another -- confusion only arises if you try to think of abstract nonsense that must apply to both situations

that is a strawman of your own creation

Dunno if the OP edited, but their post reads "KF should not be served by anyone"

Not 'allowed'. Anyone with an ounce of decency should realize they shouldn't have anything to do with KF

If you had read the whole post, you would know it does say "allowed".

As for the rest: yes, great, people who do [thing I don't like] are scoundrels. A slow clap for you.

Thanks for the slow clap!

I hadn't replied to anything you said, but to api's statement:

> The right supports the right of private businesses to decide who to serve unless they are kicking out right wingers in which case we need government intervention to guarantee a platform.

i know you didn't, but you were speaking generically and about abstract principles/guidelines/etc

i usually caution folks to speak of concrete things, so that you're not led astray and forget what you're defending

I've grown up on Kant, and while I don't follow him to the absolutist ends, I do agree that principles are unconditional, or they're worthless intellectual fake jewelry we pretend to have because it looks good.

But in this specific case: I mentioned that "it's a crime if done to me, but totally fine if done to thee" is pretty much universal, and you'll find it in most large ideological groups. Going "the other side does that (but not mine, we're better than that)" is cheap tribalism that is based only in wishful thinking.

Well, it's easy to make your opponents sound bad when you strawman their entire ideology for them.

Unless you have some videos of right-wing politicians calling for the executives at Cloudflare to go to prison, I think that the right-wing position has always been the fairly consistent "you can choose to not provide services to whomever you want, but it's a pretty dick move to do so."