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Comment by wolco | Hacker News Reader

In fairness they ban gun related content like gun ads and the leaders of the giants have personally come out in favor of liberal ideals.

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I think there's a pretty clear distinction between advertising and organic speech, and also a pretty clear distinction between wanting to restrict how other people use your platform and simply having views of your own.

Advertising is a form of speech.

Restricting the platform is their right. But the issue is people believing they are being censored and by banning certain ads they reenforce that viewpoint.

Choosing who to associate with is also a form of speech.

Somewhat unrelated. Advertisers dont want their to be a clear distinction anymore. Hell pretty soon the most effective marketing strategy wont be shameless plugs but offhanded ones. Ones that sneak in like oh hey yeah I was using x the other day and it helped me with y. Once gun manufactuers catch up it might look something like: popular social media user offhandedly mentions purchase of lgun, posts some pictures firing gun, learning gun safety, talks about how much fun they had. Itll be hard to censor and I wouldnt be shocked.

This is already similar to how a lot of gun culture videos on YouTube operate. Go watch Hickhock45. Guy just shoots and chats about guns in a casual, mostly non-political manner. He’s really popular and the whole shebang is one big (indirect) advertisment for various firearms.

They ban gay content too.

The leaders of Home Depot have come out in favor of conservative ideas. Does that mean Home Depot censors liberal things?

Does Home Depot operate a media platform?

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