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Comment by bqe | Hacker News Reader

> I get the whole "companies can choose not to host whatever they want" argument, but in order to do anything on the internet, you have to interact with companies.

If I switch what you said around a little bit:

"I get the whole 'people can choose to interact with whoever they want' argument, but in order to do anything, you have to interact with people."

So you're saying I have to interact with Nazis? I have no choice? Hardly.

People run these companies, and they're free to do business with whom they choose. Some ideologies are beyond the pale, and refusing to tolerate them is a perfectly reasonable choice.

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A few business decide not to provide goods and services to black people -- not great but there are other options.

Every business decides to stop doing business with black people we have a real problem.

The way I look at it is, assuming you don't hold a monopoly on a particular service, you can choose not to do business with certain people, for whatever (legal) reason.

However, it cuts both ways: your other customers also have the option to boycott you and encourage other people to do the same.

And if every business decides to stop doing business with certain people, then either a) those people really need to rethink what they want to do, because maybe everyone else thinks they're reprehensible, or b) we actually do have a case of a civil rights violation in a new way that we haven't considered making a law for.

Every business deciding not to serve black people would be a case of (b) (though retrograde, as we already have laws around that), and refusing to provide service to hate groups is, IMO, clearly (a).

If you think Nazism, a racist, hateful ideology opposed to the existence of many groups of people, is equivalent to being black in America, we have nothing to discuss.

To add to this, race is a protected class [1]. We carefully and conservatively enumerate the classes a business holding itself out to the public may not discriminate based on. Political ideology is not a protected class almost anywhere in America.

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

Of course, but you're ignoring that protected class status is usually granted when discrimination be so pervasive that it is a burden its recipients.

If it becomes commonplace to discriminate against people based on their political ideology then we may very well see the 'political party' protection broadened.

There are two discussions encapsulated in your comment. One, should political ideology be a protected class? And two, if so, how would you delineate protected "political ideology," something inherently more difficult to observe than ethnicity or sex, from unprotected views?

> How would you delineate 'protected ideology'?

The same way we deal with sexuality as a protected class, which is to say poorly but better than nothing.

> Should political ideology be a protected class?

I think it should, I wouldn't have said it was necessary in years past but it really seems like we're heading down a road where people are going to have to signal the 'right' political values in order to get hired.

I don't. I'm trying to explain that there are limits to 'private businesses can choose not to do businesses with anyone' with a historical example.

In small doses businesses can refuse service to classes of people, but when the discrimination is so commonplace that it becomes a burden to those being discriminated against then you may see the creation of a new protected class (or realistically the broadening of an existing one) to make sure they aren't starved or unable to find employment.

> So you're saying I have to interact with Nazis? I have no choice? Hardly.

That depends. Who are you? Is there a code of ethics that would compel you to interact with someone? Is it damaging to society if there isn't?

What code of ethics doesn't have an exception for Nazis?

Most of the more serious ones, I'd imagine. A hospital can't refuse someone because of their political beliefs. A public school can't refuse to teach their children.

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