Yes I am. If Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door I am perfectly within my rights to tell them to go away. I don't have to go to church if I don't want to. I'm perfectly allowed not to associate with racists and homophobes.
Businesses are not allowed to discriminate against protected classes, true, but being an asshole is not a protected class, and every bar and restaurant still has a sign saying they can refuse service to anyone.
>Not saying sites can't have a TOS, but an ISP should have a really good business reason for blocking you(illegal activity, spam).
I'd be willing to agree if I didn't remember the last few months of vociferous support for repealing Section 230, having the government take over social media platforms and make TOS's and most forms of moderation illegal. Even make "algorithms" illegal.
On the one hand, I get the free speech argument, but on the other hand, there is a right-wing accelerationist agenda using that argument to push the Overton window of acceptable regulations far enough that it becomes illegal, de facto or de jure, for any site to engage in any form of moderation. I don't believe for a second that people are going to be satisfied with simply regulating ISPs, even if I'm far more sympathetic to the argument that they should be considered infrastructure than websites themselves.
For the time being, the market seems to be working. Conservative and right-wing alternatives are rising to take advantage of sites being pushed out of the mainstream, and I think that's acceptable.
> Businesses are not allowed to discriminate against protected classes, true, but being an asshole is not a protected class, and every bar and restaurant still has a sign saying they can refuse service to anyone.
Clearly I'm not talking about interpersonal association. We're talking about your freedom when conducting business, which is normal to regulate in the U.S in this way.
> I'd be willing to agree if I didn't remember the last few months of vociferous support for repealing Section 230, having the government take over social media platforms and make TOS's and most forms of moderation illegal. Even make "algorithms" illegal.
Do you think I support repealing section 230 when I said "Not saying sites can't have a TOS"?
> On the one hand, I get the free speech argument
Nothing I said has anything to do with free speech. As stated above, I think it's fine for sites to moderate themselves in a partisan manner.
> but on the other hand, there is a right-wing accelerationist agenda using that argument to push the Overton window of acceptable regulations far enough that it becomes illegal, de facto or de jure, for any site to engage in any form of moderation. I don't believe for a second that people are going to be satisfied with simply regulating ISPs, even if I'm far more sympathetic to the argument that they should be considered infrastructure than websites themselves.
There are other threats besides right wing extremism, like the centralization of power. Even if the power is wielded by some collective consciousness, I have interests that are not shared by the collective, so I don't want them having the ability to dictate my life. I think many people would also share this concern, so the government is a good way to solve that.
> For the time being, the market seems to be working. Conservative and right-wing alternatives are rising to take advantage of sites being pushed out of the mainstream, and I think that's acceptable.
That seems to be the exact opposite of what you want, doesn't it?Extremism is very popular and profitable.
I'm not? There are certain exceptions, such as certain police interactions, or a court order, or protected classes when I'm doing business stuff, but I don't think that's correct in general.
Can they ban someone for being black or gay? Do you think they should have this right, since they are private corporations?
Political belief does not, and absolutely should not, constitute a protected class.
The deciding factor is if your business revolves around facilitating speech. The law has some way to go to catch up with the current state of affairs, but right now the government is enjoying the power of censoring that speech so it may not be an easy path.
But the authorities and the justice system seem unwilling to do so, and - in the face of their refusal to act - you can't expect people to just give up and not defend themselves, not when they can exert other forms of pressure.
To me sounds like a conspiracy theory. If their crimes are so unquestionable and clear, it should be pretty easy and straightforward to prove it in a court of law. The other alternative being, of course, that there is no crime happening here, at least under the US law, and their actions, as tasteless and despicable as they might be, are covered under the american law and KF opponents are using corporations to censor legally protected speech.
I would like you to pay attention to the word "seem", which describe how their action - or lack thereof - appear to a third party, especially one which has been subject - and continues to be subject - to said "tasteless and despicable" actions, and to avoid jumping to conclusions.
> The other alternative being, of course, that there is no crime happening here [...]
That hardly sounds like the only other alternative. Even without assuming the malice of some hypothetical "conspiracy", it might be the case that
(1) the crime isn't happening here, on US soil, and thus the relevant authorities lack the power to pursue it (see also: spam call centers located in foreign countries);
(2) whoever is tasked with pursuing said crime has other, higher-priority crimes to deal with, and decided that the potential pay-off was not worth the cost of prosecution (see also: the whole US justice system);
(3) the prosecution is waiting to build a stronger case;
(4) it is not clear who should prosecute who (see also: diffusion of responsibility);
(5) the file was lost;
(6) the file got eaten by a grue;
(7) any other reason for why a large and complex machine might turn out to not be effective in dealing, in a timely manner, with a loose group of people who gather on servers hosted on foreign soil, which are not "KF opponents [...] using corporations to censor legally protected [sic] speech";
There even was a thread on that forum where the admin asked for advice about alternate hosting locations and could not find any.
The USA is the only country with speech laws permissive enough and data privacy laws weak enough for that site to be legal there.
In fact, the reason the First Amendment limits the government, exclusively, is that the ability to abridge free speech (to choose which forms of speech you support, spread, or disassociate from) is implicitly a part of individual liberty, held by the people. Free speech has never guaranteed anyone a platform.
That's not a bug, it's a feature.