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Comment by nscalf | Hacker News Reader

Why does there have to be an alternative? They can give speeches, send letters and emails, go on television, post to other social media platforms, yell in a park, release an album, etc. You have the right to freedom of speech, not the right to freedom of mediums of speech.

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They're also free to blog, set up their own Mastodon, etc

If this is your opinion, then why not go even further?

If you don't support lowering Walmart's taxes, along with all other grocery stores, then why shouldn't they be allowed to permanently ban you for all places to buy food from, forever?

Can't they?

They can't discriminate based on protected traits, but political opinions aren't really protected on a federal level.

It might not be a good business idea, but I think it's legal (correct me if I'm off base on my legal positions).

> Can't they?

For every single grocery store in the world to starve the population of people who do not vote for decreasing their taxes?

No, I am pretty sure that society would do something about that, if this happened.

I’m not sure I follow this line of thought. If all the grocery stores did this, then I agree society would certainly take action: build better, more open grocery stores. surely the same principle applies here, A business like Twitter can choose to block a group of ideologies. If there is enough want in the part of people to propagate those ideologies, they’ll build a better forum and if those ideas are successful, that forum will be. Competitive, capitalistic behavior handles this.

> build better, more open grocery stores.

Not necessarily, no. Many grocery stores have a bit of a monopoly in certain areas. It may not be possible for competitors to replace them instantly.

And a lot of people would starve before perfect competition, which doesn't exist, comes around to eventually replacing them.

One of these is clearly not like the other, in multiple ways. You're at the very least misrepresenting why these people are being banned.

Tax policy is not anywhere close the tweets at issue which often amount to terroristic threatening. If you started verbally abusing other customers in a grocery store, perhaps even implying you'll murder them, then yes, you'll be banned.

To the rest of your comment, are you seriously comparing tweets to food? You have a fundamental right to food, not to have your opinions transmitted by others.

> You have a fundamental right to food, not to have your opinions transmitted by others

At least in the US, it is the opposite.

There isn't a constitutional amendment protecting your rights regarding food. But there is a constitutional right related to your rights regarding speech.

Many people think that these rights regarding speech are pretty darn important. Possibly even the most important rights that a person can have.

So I would absolutely say that they are comparable, and that people's right regarding transmitting speech are possibly even more important than any other rights out there.

You can have a right to speech but not have a right for a private party to carry your speech this isn't contradictory.

It's a known issue that unrestricted commerce or indeed unrestricted ANYTHING is unacceptable because its trivial to imagine situations wherein an actor or actors can misuse the situation.

We cannot and shouldn't contemplate a solution to any and all possible feasible problems because time is finite and a solution that in theory results in the best outcome for a..z wherein h..z are hypothetical and a..h are actual may actually be a worse solution for a..g

The analogy is ridiculous on its face. It will never be actual. In such a situation we would trivially resolve it by passing a law that food stores can't blacklist groups of people while retaining the right to blacklist individuals for actual misbehavior. This would be somewhat limiting on the freedom of small shopkeepers to say throw out nazis but it would break the back of the "big food for lower taxes" coalition. Since none such exists this solution is as described above worse for the set of problems we actually have to solve a problem that is only hypothetical.

It would be more productive to discuss the ACTUAL issue by addressing it directly instead of trying to reason by analogy. It's not like its a topic people on this site have trouble understanding. Going off into the weeds like this just wasted time.

First off, how would Walmart and every single grocery store know my voting record? Beyond that though, a monopolistic collusion to manipulate voting would likely be investigated as anti-trust actions.

Finally, as far as I'm concerned, they are welcome to ban me for my voting pattern. Within a couple weeks I would open up a new grocery store, marketed as not caring what your political beliefs are. The thing is, in a free market (or pseudo-free market like we have) you only succeed with buy in. Once you alienate your customers, you fail.

> Walmart and every single grocery store know my voting record

Well, they could just look up your social media accounts to see if you've made any comments they don't like.

Sure, that would catch everyone, but it would certainly find some, and cause a chilling effect.

> anti-trust actions.

Ahh, no it wouldn't though! Anti trust is about competition. It would not be a violation to collude for non price related non competition reasons.

> I would open up a new grocery store

Even if you happen to be a multi millionaire capable of doing so, most people aren't capable of doing this. Many people might also starve before you get around to doing this.

Also, there are many towns where such competition is not really possible, because there are only a few stores in the area.

> you fail.

You are misunderstanding how long it can take for the market to react. Market power is real, and established entities cannot be overthrown overnight.

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