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Comment by zie | Hacker News Reader

When Tito asks their cell phone provider to not allow calls from Tootie, it just blocks the known endpoint of Tootie's from being able to call Tito, but it doesn't make any assumptions that Tootie is bad, or that Tito's version of reality is correct. It also doesn't make Tootie unable to communicate with anyone else.

That is a far cry from a telephone company deciding(rightly or wrongly) that Tootie is harassing Tito or that it rises to a legal level of harassment and just blocking Tootie from the platform entirely. They are not in the judgement game here, they are in the make it easy for Tito to decide for himself if Tootie should be able to reach him via $TelephoneCompany.

As for SS7 signalling, that's clearly breaking laws, that's a totally different thing.

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Absolutely correct. The point many are missing is that phone companies do not ban people from having a telephone based on their conduct.

If I use my phone to say terrible things or even to commit felony fraud the police will investigate me, arrest me, I'll be tried and convicted and so on.

But at no point will the phone company cancel my telephone service. Fraudsters can get phone service. Murders can get phone service.

The court will place limits on the person, but it's unheard of for the phone company to restrict access because of conduct.

The problem we're facing is that modern communications platforms (including social media) have very different norms. Some of those norms are imposed because of direct governmental regulatory influence. We're dragging various social media companies to testify before congress and openly pressuring them to censor with overt threats to their business. This destroys the notion that these companies are somehow engaging in censorship entirely of their own volition.

This 5th circuit court ruling isn't framed right, but the underlying issue here does need to be addressed.

>But at no point will the phone company cancel my telephone service

This isn't correct. I work for a tier 2 telco and both CLECs and ILECs regularly cancel accounts known for fraudulent traffic. At first they'll block the originating traffic from routing across their switch, but after review and positive confirmation they will terminate the subscribers account.

There is a constant arms race to detect and prevent fraudulent traffic. The idea the LECs would knowingly continue to provide service to these accounts is nonsense.

I'm distinguishing between the content of the message (wire fraud) and defrauding the telecom itself by exploiting the system itself.

I am confident you have absolutely no examples of cancelling a customer because of the voice data they transmitted inside of a call, to another person.

I'm sure there are outliers, but I suspect you're right from a default policy perspective. I was too dismissive in my earlier comment.

> As for SS7 signalling, that's clearly breaking laws, that's a totally different thing.

Hate speech is illegal in many jurisdictions too. So are specific uses of phones for other purposes, aka "wire fraud."

Of course, "you can only moderate speech that's illegal" is different from "you can moderate anything you want" but it's also incompatible with the ruling

But the phone company won't cancel your phone if you commit fraud. Even a convicted fraudster can still have home telephone service.

The courts are responsible for determining the correct course of action, post-conviction. A court may rule that a convict can't use a phone as a condition of parole, but a phone company will never refuse service.

No one is complaining about the courts pursuing crimes. The issue is extra-judicial punishments enacted by corporations often under pressure from the government.

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