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Comment by hbosch | Hacker News Reader

It's OK to be inconsistent, because tech companies aren't governments and their rules aren't laws. They are allowed to control their platform however they want.

Everyone is welcome to create their own "free-er" Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit.

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We all know tech companies can do what they want, they've been doing it from day one. But consistency is a desirable trait for a lot of reasons, not just for fairness or equality but also because it allows one to make predictions about what content will or will not be allowed.

Twitter may be their own company but we all know how large of an influence they are for public discourse, including important public and private conversations such as that between politicians and the citizens of their country, so suggesting that there cannot be an issue because there are no laws being violated is shotrt-sighted. As a thought experiment, imagine if Twitter decided to post fake tweets with any content they want from any Twitter account they wanted to. Is that 'okay'? After all, it's Twitter's platform, they can do whatever they want. I would argue it is not. You could easily construct much worse versions of this thought experiment if this one wasn't sufficient.

Although it's nice that with a free economy one is allowed to create alternative platforms, in practice this has been shown to be much more difficult than in theory, with many attempts being denied service at every level of their operations (banned from their cdn, domain proivder, payment provider, banks, all social media paltforms, etc). A lot of people hate Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Google, etc, but there are many reasons why these companies are still in complete control.

The problem with this approach is it inevitably results in one of two broad possibilities:

1) Someone creates a "truly free" social media platform, and it is invaded by people who wish to mold it to reduce freedom for "toxicity"

2) Someone creates a "truly free" social media platform, and the only people to use it are those disallowed from using the mainstream platforms, creating a feedback cycle that eventually results in the free platform either shutting down or being branded "toxic" in and of itself, at which point they'll just go after the company that hosts the platform.

We're becoming so worried about "offending" people that we're literally giving away all our freedom of speech in the process. And yet, if we create such a restricted environment, and political sensibilities change dramatically, suddenly those in control become authoritarian dictators.

There's also the argument of "perhaps it's not a good idea to drive these people underground, where they can ultimately do far more long-term damage, than leaving their content available for all to mock"

I'm curious what you think about the cake shop denying service to a gay couple? Is that ok since they are free to create their own non-bigoted cake shop?

Discrimination is fine and dandy for any business as long as it isn't part of a protected class (Whether it makes business sense to do so is another argument). The cake shop argument is whether LGBT people fall under a protected class, and the courts have continued to sidestep that issue.

I firmly believe LGBT people should be a protected class like race, and sex, but ultimately we need to have a ruling on that.

LGBT being a protected class or not was not at issue in the cake shop decision, since they were not denied service in general (they had been regular customers of that shop, and were always served). The issue was whether designing a custom cake for their wedding was considered artistic expression, and as such he had a right to refuse under the 1st amendment since you cannot compel speech.

Whoa, I definitely think you’re over-rotating on this. No, I don’t think the cake shop was right to discriminate. This example is more like: Do I think it’s okay for a cake shop to refuse baking a cake for someone who comes into the shop every day and call the owners jewish pedophile lizard people?

Yes, I believe it’s okay for any business to refuse service to people who desire to damage that business.

I simply cannot agree with this logic. I'd compare this to saying, if you don't like TV censorship create your own channel. Don't like censorship in Hollywood? Simply open a major studio. I've been extremely critical of industry censorship elsewhere, so at least there's consistency. I don't like the MPAA telling me that female pleasure and homosexuality is worse than brutal gore and murder.

I'm glad to see Alex John's go, but I'm shocked by the lack of concern many people have on this issue. More and more communication relies on social media, and I'm terrified by the implications of ceding public discorse to any large organization. Yes there technically are other options, but we're talking about mainstream channels with sizeable audiences, which tend towards oligarchies. People are just happy that speach they find deplorable will be censored; conservatives were happy to have homosexuality censored. Obviously, in this case Twitter is being much more reasonable.

Alex Jones, every day, talks about how he wants to personally kill and mutilate the elite global cabal of Jewish child-raping Democrat subhumans. Alex Jones is a violent, abhorrent, slanderous racist and peddler of distorted, hurtful propaganda.

Censorship, in small doses, can be good for society. You act like banning Alex Jones from Twitter is going to bring in Fahrenheit 451.

Like I said above: Alex Jones is bad for Twitters business. Bottom line. If you owned a business, and man routinely came into that business, every day, and shouted through his megaphone that he has video evidence that Michelle Obama is a transvestite hooker, would you not ban him from your property as well?

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