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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

Well, wait, the question is whether or not internet service is considered a utility, and whether or not that utility is allowed to take a "side" as a result.

I think that 8chan is terrible and I would rather it not exist, but at the same time, I would be pretty against denying its owners water or something, since we've decided that utilities don't get to take sides.

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Wouldn't that be more like public roads? You couldn't decide that Fords are not allowed on a road, just because of the brand, but Ford is perfectly within their rights to not sell a car to somebody, just as Cloudflare and Voxility have decided to sell their hosting services to 8chan.

Well, that's the question.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, evidently; the line in which we draw "utility" is a discussion that I really don't know that I have a good viewpoint. Are you entitled to having a soapbox to shout off of? I'm genuinely not sure.

Yeah, I agree. Up until the internet, getting information out there required resources and/or a platform to speak from, be it the pulpit, a newspaper, etc. If you had something to say, you had to go through such great effort to say it.

What do we even do, besides sit and watch? I've totally shifted the way I browse the web to reduce my exposure to toxic information, and I think that the whole corporate banning of Alex Jones was a net positive, but what happens when a voice I agree with gets shunned in the same way?

What a messy problem

Most 'internet as utility' arguments though don't extend to hosting or other services though, only the physical infrastructure that exists as a near monopoly (and at best is usually a duopoly of one cable and one DSL provider) in most locations. The argument is they shouldn't get to play favorites because the ability for competitors to come in and provide competition to limit bad behavior is extremely limited.

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