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I’d like to posit this scenario to everyone, and hear your responses: A privately-held telecom provider (i.e. utility) disagrees with my political views. As a
by DrFunke 10y ago
I’d like to posit this scenario to everyone, and hear your responses:
A privately-held telecom provider (i.e. utility) disagrees with my political views. As a result my internet service is terminated.
Let's agree the definition of a public utility is "Furnishes an everyday necessity to the public at large".
Has the provider restricted my First Amendment right?
At what point (if ever) would you consider Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter public utilities?
- smt88 10y agoIt doesn't make sense as an analogy to this situation. Public utilities are usually public (at least in the US) because they need to be monopolies. You can't have 10 companies running competing power lines throughout a city, so you have one. Because you only have one, it gets heavily regulated to ensure fairness. The same is true of broadcast frequencies.
- DrFunke 10y agoPublic utilities more commonly exist as oligopolies–not dissimilar to the social media market, in which the number of (major, national) firms can be counted on one hand.
- croon 10y agoThe difference is that where you live you can't choose another utility provider, so they are in a way localized monopolies. On the internet you can choose whatever service you like.
- croon 10y agoIn your scenario: Yes. Is Twitter or any other application layer non-government service on the internet a utility? No. So is this what happened? No. They didn't ban him for his political views, nor are they a utility.
- mieses 10y agoThey did ban him for his political views. But it's clever how you snuck in that one subjective statement into an otherwise objective line of reasoning.
- st3v3r 10y agoThey did not ban him for his political views. They banned him for impersonating tweets of another user, and for leading a harassment campaign against other users. Nothing to do with his political views.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> They did ban him for his political views. No, they banned him for soliciting harassment, not for the views which motivated the solicitation of the harassment.
- mieses 10y agoThat policy is used to silence dissenting opinion. Don't spread this PR. It's equivalent to police claiming they detained you for a broken tail light. Dorsey and his Saudi owners are on a purge.
- NotSammyHagar 10y agoYou have it backwards. I believe you are referring to twitter being used to silence a dissenting opinion when you said "that policy", in reference to Nero. I actually think it's the other way, the bullying sent toward the SNL actresses' way, the sexist and homophobic comments, those were actually meant to silence a dissenting view, someone those people did not like. Stopping bullying is a good thing. No good comes from bullying someone you don't like.
- mieses 10y agoNero's alt-right followers "actually meant" to ridicule her. Twitter actually silenced him.
- st3v3r 10y agoI would like to change your scenario to one that more closely mirrors the situation at hand: You are using their service to harass other users. Your targeted harassment of these other users causes them to cancel the service. Or, lets go for something simpler: Spam. You're using the telcom provider to send out spam. They cut you off for it.