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Comment by the_lonely_road | Hacker News Reader

I require guests in my house to take their shoes off. They don’t have to do it, they can just leave. But if they want to stay in my house they need to take their shoes off.

No one is holding a gun to YouTube’s head and telling them they have to serve video content to Germans. They want to be in Germany serving video content, so it’s only fair and just that they should listen to the Germans and do what they say or leave.

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A country isn’t really like your house though, is it?

Germany could probably tell Google not to host any videos from the opposition political party under penalty of fine or expulsion. Hopefully we agree that that would be bad?

But Germany can't do that because it would be against Germany's constitution.

s/can't/probably wouldn't/

It is entirely possible for countries to do things which are against their constitution.

It's a hypothetical. A Constitution can be amended or ignored, can't it? My point is that a country is not your house. And citizens are not visitors. It's the wrong analogy and leads to bad conclusions.

You know that Germany does actually outlaw promotion of certain political parties, right? Hopefully you agree German law is bad or you're disagreeing with yourself.

Germany could also force all food establishments to add a little bit of poison to the dishes. Would that be an argument against government regulating food preparation standards?

We can agree that bad things are bad, but that doesn’t really gives us much insight.

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