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Comment by chroem- | Hacker News Reader

That's irrelevant, because a private company can't be compelled to support someone else's speech against their will. If you don't like it, then take political action.

Edit: For those unaware, this is the devil's advocate take. HN has been remarkably pro-corporate censorship lately, and only a matter of weeks later its coming back to bite pro-censorship advocates.

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I'm mostly tired of this take, especially by technologists.

First off: you're right. You can't compel a private company to support speech. But the entirety of political discourse happens online now. There's a clear and prevailing interest that free speech can happen online, at scale.

Honestly, the market will take care of it: who's comfortable hosting their content on the platform any more? They've alienated the right and the left.

At the end of the day/century, FB is just a random internet site/app. Discourse is online, yes, but the zeitgeist left FB years ago. Zuck's fate will catch up with him fast, now that their network effect has broken, or is close to doing so.

It's already over. FB/IG/WhatsApp are all clearly dead, in the Grahamian sense.

Sure, but you're also missing the downstream consequences/chilling effects. Maybe you're right insofar as it should motivate people to create new platforms, but with even the cloud operators willing to deep-six a business... well I don't know about you but I can't afford to host a social media site with hundreds of thousands of users in my basement anymore – not to mention the credit cards, banks, and payment services now willing to kickban anyone they don't like...

That's why Facebook must become a public entity.

That's quite a leap.

Newspapers, journals, radio and other publishers have to maintain some basic decency, even if they are public.

Exactly. This was what Facebook wanted, for whatever reasons. Unless they say otherwise.

You're assuming, rather uncharitably, that people in favor of "private entities cannot be compelled to host the speech of others" only support that point of view because it serves other political stances they hold, rather than as a general principle.

A site is free to ban all left-wing groups, all right-wing groups, all centrist groups, all groups with an 'e' in their names, all hate groups, or all of the above. Others are free to react to those bans accordingly, and choose whether to associate/support/host the site or not.

That argument falls flat when a huge majority of speech goes through the platforms of 2 or 3 companies. "Big" tech doesn't even begin to convey the scale we're talking about here.

So if executives of Google, FB and twitter all make a deal with oil companies to ban anyone advocating clinate action, thats fine?

Well, in a capitalistic society with government oversight, you can expect the strong arm of government to lay the ban hammer on them. Participate in our society and be governed by the rules of our nation. As a capitalist fanboy I cant wait for the sanctioning to happen.

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