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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Hey, you know, Facebook isn't obligated to publish anything. It's a 'free' service. If you want to publish something run your own httpd. There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone with $20 from buying their own domain, setting up DNS on it and running a webserver through a bulk hosting company. Oh wait, that's too hard for you? I can hear the world's smallest violin playing.

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Remember you said this if they ever decide to censor someone you agree with.

Oh I'm very much aware of it. Anyone's relationship with Facebook is governed by their TOS, nothing more. Because it's a 'free' service, you're not owed anything by it. In fact, you're the product. Facebook wants to be the world's largest walled garden and their entire revenue model is based on keeping everyone trapped inside it, for the purpose of selling advertising. I would never encourage anyone to rely solely on Facebook to publish anything they care about, no matter where it is on the political spectrum.

You can use it as a tool to reach more people but don't become utterly dependent upon it, that's just foolish.

Expect and plan for anything that you pay $0.00 for to disappear at any time, for any random reason.

> "Hey, you know, Facebook isn't obligated to publish anything."

Who is claiming otherwise?

I see this form of argument pop up whenever a corporation censors somebody, but I rarely see anybody actually claiming some sort of obligation exists.

Criticizing a corporation for doing something that they are legally allowed to do is... not exactly unprecedented.

If you're not paying money to publish content on somebody else's httpd, and have no contractual relationship with them for services, you have very little recourse if the publishing platform suddenly disappears for any reason. Business failure, server failure, corporate censorship/policies, whatever.

> "If you're not paying money to publish content on somebody else's httpd, and have no contractual relationship with them for services, you have very little recourse if the publishing platform suddenly disappears for any reason."

Again, I don't see anybody claiming otherwise.

Am I the only one here who thinks facebook's content is pure garbage? Really, what is the point of the world's biggest social networking platform worried about misc. BS posts? Right, no offense, it's pure garbage to begin with, imho.

I don't disagree with you, but I also don't see what your comment has to do with mine.

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