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The problematic part of your example is your phone company spying on your private conversations, not them choosing not to do business with you. It's wildly dif

The problematic part of your example is your phone company spying on your private conversations, not them choosing not to do business with you. It's wildly different from a website company running their public business on another companies infrastructure.

gfodor 6y ago
OK, so what about if you are hosting public conference calls they can join about how much their company sucks, and they cut your phone service? Analogies are a stupid form of argument, but I'm trying to surface the problem here somehow. (In this analogy they're not the conference call provider, they're just the phone service provider which enables you to use the conferencing service over their lines, if that wasn't obvious. They're a pipe.)
stale2002 6y ago
> not them choosing not to do business with you. Alright, so then you'd be OK with some phone company, that has a monopoly on a certain geographic area or town, banning anyone who has made a public social media posts that is critical of the company? Do you see any problems with this position?
- baumandm 6y ago
  I wasn't advocating any particular position in my previous comment. But to answer your question, no, I would not be OK with that. Utility companies (in the United States at least) are typically contracted by cities to provide service, and regulated by a public utility commission as well as various laws. I assume denial of service over social media would violate a number of regulations or contractual obligations. And I agree with that. Now if you're really asking whether or not various service providers should be regulated as utilities and obligated to provide service to everyone, that's a much more difficult (and vague) question that I don't have a easy answer for.
  - gfodor 6y ago
    The point is regulating them is very specifically society stating "your property rights do not overrule the factors that led to this regulation." Which is the argument being made as worthy of consideration. Regulation that makes such coercion possible starts out as an argument like the one here. Saying these companies ought not to be able to censor people in a certain context despite their property rights isn't saying they should be arrested or something, it's saying we ought to regulate them.

gfodor 6y ago

OK, so what about if you are hosting public conference calls they can join about how much their company sucks, and they cut your phone service? Analogies are a stupid form of argument, but I'm trying to surface the problem here somehow. (In this analogy they're not the conference call provider, they're just the phone service provider which enables you to use the conferencing service over their lines, if that wasn't obvious. They're a pipe.)

stale2002 6y ago

> not them choosing not to do business with you. Alright, so then you'd be OK with some phone company, that has a monopoly on a certain geographic area or town, banning anyone who has made a public social media posts that is critical of the company? Do you see any problems with this position?

baumandm 6y ago
I wasn't advocating any particular position in my previous comment. But to answer your question, no, I would not be OK with that. Utility companies (in the United States at least) are typically contracted by cities to provide service, and regulated by a public utility commission as well as various laws. I assume denial of service over social media would violate a number of regulations or contractual obligations. And I agree with that. Now if you're really asking whether or not various service providers should be regulated as utilities and obligated to provide service to everyone, that's a much more difficult (and vague) question that I don't have a easy answer for.
- gfodor 6y ago
  The point is regulating them is very specifically society stating "your property rights do not overrule the factors that led to this regulation." Which is the argument being made as worthy of consideration. Regulation that makes such coercion possible starts out as an argument like the one here. Saying these companies ought not to be able to censor people in a certain context despite their property rights isn't saying they should be arrested or something, it's saying we ought to regulate them.