4 ms·
Censorship! It's the American way!
by pravda 9y ago
Censorship! It's the American way!
- dragonwriter 9y agoThat's literally true; private censorship is exactly what the freedom of speech and press in the first amendment protect: that every private party is generally free to choose what speech it will relay.
- thrill 9y agoSo ... no "bake that cake" for you?
- flunhat 9y agoWe've been through this debate before - businesses can't discriminate against anyone who is in a protected class. Otherwise, they can pick and choose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
- thrill 9y agoSo these guys are claiming their (hateful) message is about their race. Are they justified in claiming their protected class is not being recognized in this business decision by Godaddy, et alia.
- flunhat 9y agoGoogle isn't discriminating on the basis of race. It's not saying "These people cannot host their domain with our service because of their skin color". That would be illegal, but that's not what they're doing, obviously.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Are they justified in claiming their protected class is not being recognized in this business decision by Godaddy, et alia. They are certainly free to lay out their evidence that it is race and not advocacy of violence that motivated the actions, either to make that case in the court of public opinion or one of law (race-based discrimination in public accommodation is generally illegal). From the publicly available evidence, that explanation doesn't seem the most likely one, though.
- dragonwriter 9y agoPublic accommodation anti-discrimination laws are a thorny area where they address things which can be viewed as expressive/speech acts for exactly this reason, sure. But, the appropriateness of such laws and how they interact with First Amendment freedoms is somewhat irrelevant to this case, in the absence of a statute that would be applicable.
- cperciva 9y agoevery private party is generally free to choose what speech it will relay This is generally true, but not always; in particular, companies with monopolistic power forfeit some of their autonomy. I'm sure that wouldn't apply in this case, but it might kick in if Google banned this website from its search results, for example.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]