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Comment by patrickaljord | Hacker News Reader

Vimeo recently banned Project Veritas (which is still up on youtube), Alex Jones and plenty of other channels. Not sure it's a less censuring alternative.

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I think every platform has the right to censor and also the duty to do so. Like gore or cp etc. This shapes a profile for a platform. In vimeo's case they distanced themselves from some conspiracy theory fanatics which is fine with me. Meaning I endorse that profile as a visitor and who doesn't just needs another platform.

And one reason why those outlets (like Alex Jones & Co.) often aren't accepted around for long is because they attract rather garbled minds with some tendency towards toxic social interaction.

does church in your opinion has the right to ban certain types of books too?

regardless of answer, please elaborate.

do you see the slipperness of that slope?

Churches aren't businesses, they have different legal rights. Still, if you walk into a Baptist Christian church reciting versues from the Quran you will find yourself quickly banned and the church is within its rights to do so, even if muslims wouldn't like that. Fortunately, a mosque has the same freedom.

Do platforms have the right to collude with each other to deny service to a particular individual? Even if you think Alex Jones is a crazy person (and he is), you should still condemn Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube for attempting to remove him from public discourse. If anything, it only made his crazy conspiracy theories seem more credible.

They have the right. I don't think censorship is a smart answer to "alternative truths" or debatable content, though. They could just downrank it. The solution must be free and public education enabling a majority of society to make up their own mind in an informed and rational fashion.

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