4 ms·

> I’m trying to figure out how do you know the basis on which some private enterprise decided to refuse to provide their service to someone. If you’re trying t

> I’m trying to figure out how do you know the basis on which some private enterprise decided to refuse to provide their service to someone. If you’re trying to understand the basis by which courts figure this stuff out, what we’re talking about here is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is civil law, and the evidentiary standard that applies is “preponderance of evidence”. The businesses’ stated reason is certainly one piece of evidence that courts weigh, but it’s far from the only one. If you refuse me business based on what I’m wearing, but I can show you regular do business with people wearing the same thing, or I can demonstrate a preponderance of evidence that you knew I was homosexual and had made statements to the effect that you would refuse to serve homosexuals, courts aren’t going to just take you at your word.

andrenth 6y ago
It seems to me someone blocked on Twitter for alleged right- wing hate speech could easily demonstrate instances of left- wing hate speech which didn’t result in blocking on the same platform. That would be analogous to the clothes example, right?
- msbarnett 6y ago
  Your political beliefs aren’t a protected class wrt interactions with private entities under the Civil Rights Act, and there’s no other relevant right to not be blocked by a private individual or business if they don’t wish to hear or disseminate your speech, so yes, there’s nothing legally actionable there.
  - andrenth 6y ago
    That’s not what I meant though. If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason. It seems to me that the situation with Twitter is the same, if it can be shown that they justify banning some people based on hate speech, while refusing to ban other people performing the same kind of speech.
    - true_religion 6y ago
      They will only get in trouble if first they ban people of a protected class, and secondly it can be shown that their stated reason for banning was a lie covering their desire to actually ban people of a protected class or represents a bias against those members merely via statistical fact. Merely being arbitrary in enforcement or inconsistent isn’t enough to automatically trigger government protection. If you say that this isn’t fair, then I agree. However the class protections are pragmatic and serve to reduce social disruption. Like it or not, people are a lot less worked up over being discriminated against due to being democrats, than they are for being Catholics.
    - msbarnett 6y ago
      > If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason. Ah, no, I didn’t quite spell that out. They can get in trouble if their stated reason for refusing service doesn’t line up with the way they treat other people who behave the same way, IF that disparity in behaviour can help build an argument that the preponderance of evidence suggests that their real reason for refusing service was related to your membership in a protected class. They’re free to behave inconsistently in general.[1] So if Twitter says they banned 17k QAnon accounts for coordinated misinformation campaigns but for whatever reason you could show that a bunch of other misinfo networks they knew about weren’t banned, and all the QAnon accounts were also known to twitter to be Unitarians, and this was part of a pattern of behaviour towards Unitarian accounts, that might be legally actionable. But if there’s no underlying, unifying element to these 17k accounts that’s protected, Twitter is free to ban them from their service even if they’re not very consistent about enforcing their TOS. [1] Which isn’t to say that behaving inconsistently is smart, precisely because it can open you up to these kinds of arguments if your inconsistency starts to look like a pattern of behaviour towards a protected class.
      - andrenth 6y ago
        I’ve found this link [1] though I have no idea if what they say is accurate. But they seem to claim companies actually do have to behave consistently in this regard: [...] you can refuse to serve someone even if they’re in a protected group, but the refusal can’t be arbitrary and you can’t apply it to just one group of people. To avoid being arbitrary, there must be a reason for refusing service and you must be consistent. [...] you must apply your policy to everyone. For example, you can’t turn away a black person who’s not wearing a tie and then let in a tieless white man. You also can’t have a policy that sounds like it applies to everyone but really just excludes one particular group of people. So, for example, a policy against wearing headscarves in a restaurant would probably be discriminatory against Muslims. [1] https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-service-can-a-business-refuse-service-to-someone-because-of-appearance https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-servi... Edit: formatting

andrenth 6y ago

It seems to me someone blocked on Twitter for alleged right- wing hate speech could easily demonstrate instances of left- wing hate speech which didn’t result in blocking on the same platform. That would be analogous to the clothes example, right?

msbarnett 6y ago
Your political beliefs aren’t a protected class wrt interactions with private entities under the Civil Rights Act, and there’s no other relevant right to not be blocked by a private individual or business if they don’t wish to hear or disseminate your speech, so yes, there’s nothing legally actionable there.
- andrenth 6y ago
  That’s not what I meant though. If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason. It seems to me that the situation with Twitter is the same, if it can be shown that they justify banning some people based on hate speech, while refusing to ban other people performing the same kind of speech.
  - true_religion 6y ago
    They will only get in trouble if first they ban people of a protected class, and secondly it can be shown that their stated reason for banning was a lie covering their desire to actually ban people of a protected class or represents a bias against those members merely via statistical fact. Merely being arbitrary in enforcement or inconsistent isn’t enough to automatically trigger government protection. If you say that this isn’t fair, then I agree. However the class protections are pragmatic and serve to reduce social disruption. Like it or not, people are a lot less worked up over being discriminated against due to being democrats, than they are for being Catholics.
  - msbarnett 6y ago
    > If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason. Ah, no, I didn’t quite spell that out. They can get in trouble if their stated reason for refusing service doesn’t line up with the way they treat other people who behave the same way, IF that disparity in behaviour can help build an argument that the preponderance of evidence suggests that their real reason for refusing service was related to your membership in a protected class. They’re free to behave inconsistently in general.[1] So if Twitter says they banned 17k QAnon accounts for coordinated misinformation campaigns but for whatever reason you could show that a bunch of other misinfo networks they knew about weren’t banned, and all the QAnon accounts were also known to twitter to be Unitarians, and this was part of a pattern of behaviour towards Unitarian accounts, that might be legally actionable. But if there’s no underlying, unifying element to these 17k accounts that’s protected, Twitter is free to ban them from their service even if they’re not very consistent about enforcing their TOS. [1] Which isn’t to say that behaving inconsistently is smart, precisely because it can open you up to these kinds of arguments if your inconsistency starts to look like a pattern of behaviour towards a protected class.
    - andrenth 6y ago
      I’ve found this link [1] though I have no idea if what they say is accurate. But they seem to claim companies actually do have to behave consistently in this regard: [...] you can refuse to serve someone even if they’re in a protected group, but the refusal can’t be arbitrary and you can’t apply it to just one group of people. To avoid being arbitrary, there must be a reason for refusing service and you must be consistent. [...] you must apply your policy to everyone. For example, you can’t turn away a black person who’s not wearing a tie and then let in a tieless white man. You also can’t have a policy that sounds like it applies to everyone but really just excludes one particular group of people. So, for example, a policy against wearing headscarves in a restaurant would probably be discriminatory against Muslims. [1] https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-service-can-a-business-refuse-service-to-someone-because-of-appearance https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-servi... Edit: formatting