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Comment by Buge | Hacker News Reader

With the government you have free speech rights, so you can sue them if they close your account. With private companies you have no free speech rights and they can close your account whenever they want.

So account closure seems like a positive point of government-controlled login.

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Look up the secrecy and lack of oversight over the so-called "terrorist" watchlist and the calls for scope creep, and see if you are so confident about those first amendment rights. I'm sure failure to log in would not be considered a first amendment right.

I agree that the government should be a far more dependable provider than any private sector organization. But the recent (last 20 years) enthusiasm for scope creep has not been encouraging.

Does the government deny passports or driver licenses/IDs to people on those lists? Because that would be the equivalent here.

I'm not saying the government wouldn't do it. I'm saying you would have constitutional basis to sue, which you don't have for companies.

Some lawsuits against the no fly list have been successful. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/victory-no-fly-l...

I'm not sure that it would be seen as equivalent here given the overall push away from net neutrality over the last decade. I could see many government officials making the (out-dated) argument that the internet is a non-essential service and you online profiles are not as critical as physical government-issues IDs.

Edit: Forgot this post was a couple days old, working through my HN backlog haha

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