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What about phone companies then? Should a phone company be able to disconnect service of customers because of perfectly legal political speech? The phone compan

What about phone companies then? Should a phone company be able to disconnect service of customers because of perfectly legal political speech? The phone companies are "free" to associate right? What everyone fails to seem to realize is that once you are a public pipe (phone, internet, etc.) for millions of Americans to communicate over there should be laws that stops you from being able to be a gatekeeper for speech just because you own the hardware. In order to be allowed to remain in operation you should be required to certify that you do not censor.

wpietri 6y ago
It's not clear that the speech in question is perfectly legal. Parler is being cut off because of an inability to prevent the organization of crimes on their platform. But no, it's not clear to me that there should be laws like that. Why should a phone company be obliged to do business with the American Nazi Party? A law like that might have made sense back when a) phone companies were monopolies, and b) the telephone network was the only way for people to get in touch. But neither is true now. There are plenty of competitors to AWS. Why should the government take away the freedom of association of hosting businesses?
- WClayFerguson 6y ago
  Well I decided yesterday to convert my own social media platform (quanta.wiki) to fully decentralized where each user runs the full system, like a blockchains. Then people can communicate as long as the internet is kept running. People like you aren't going to admit there's a problem until your own phone, power, or banking account is cut off. People on the left are happily giving up their rights and freedoms because they think the government won't come after them too some day, but if you understand history, human nature, and power, you should realize that's quite an ignorant stance.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    You're the one advocating taking away rights, bub. I'm the one saying that as a general rule, both people and their businesses have the right to free speech and free association. If you're all that concerned about government power, then why are you advocating to increase government power?
    - WClayFerguson 6y ago
      I think stopping AT&T (or Twitter, which is merely the more modern form of telecommunications) from censoring the public provides greater freedoms to the society at large without taking rights away from anyone. The hypocrisy on the left is truly stunning because you know if BigTech was mainly republicans censoring democrats, the dems would suddenly be able to recognize the "freedom" issue quite easily.
      - wpietri 6y ago
        Twitter, etc, right now has freedom of association and you'd like to take that away. At least be honest. And it's ludicrous to say that Twitter is the modern AT&T, which had a national monopoly on real-time person-to-person communication. I can't take responsibility for "the left", but what I'd be doing is looking toward alternatives. Which I expect would work just fine for the left, which has always tended toward decentralization.
        WClayFerguson 6y ago
        Even if we can't agree on whether monopolies should be allowed to censor [legal] public speech, we can probably agree that decentralization and federation (like some kind of social media blockchain) is the best solution. ...because there's no way any gov't can ever determine if some company is shadow-banning and manipulating feeds of the people they don't like, and if I can even get you to admit bigger government is almost always the worst solution to any problem then I've even made progress on that front as well.
        wpietri 6y ago
        Twitter is not a monopoly. You are the person advocating increased government intervention in social media, not me. And I definitely don't agree that adding blockchain snake oil is the best solution to any problem.
        WClayFerguson 6y ago

wpietri 6y ago

It's not clear that the speech in question is perfectly legal. Parler is being cut off because of an inability to prevent the organization of crimes on their platform. But no, it's not clear to me that there should be laws like that. Why should a phone company be obliged to do business with the American Nazi Party? A law like that might have made sense back when a) phone companies were monopolies, and b) the telephone network was the only way for people to get in touch. But neither is true now. There are plenty of competitors to AWS. Why should the government take away the freedom of association of hosting businesses?

WClayFerguson 6y ago
Well I decided yesterday to convert my own social media platform (quanta.wiki) to fully decentralized where each user runs the full system, like a blockchains. Then people can communicate as long as the internet is kept running. People like you aren't going to admit there's a problem until your own phone, power, or banking account is cut off. People on the left are happily giving up their rights and freedoms because they think the government won't come after them too some day, but if you understand history, human nature, and power, you should realize that's quite an ignorant stance.
- wpietri 6y ago
  You're the one advocating taking away rights, bub. I'm the one saying that as a general rule, both people and their businesses have the right to free speech and free association. If you're all that concerned about government power, then why are you advocating to increase government power?
  - WClayFerguson 6y ago
    I think stopping AT&T (or Twitter, which is merely the more modern form of telecommunications) from censoring the public provides greater freedoms to the society at large without taking rights away from anyone. The hypocrisy on the left is truly stunning because you know if BigTech was mainly republicans censoring democrats, the dems would suddenly be able to recognize the "freedom" issue quite easily.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      Twitter, etc, right now has freedom of association and you'd like to take that away. At least be honest. And it's ludicrous to say that Twitter is the modern AT&T, which had a national monopoly on real-time person-to-person communication. I can't take responsibility for "the left", but what I'd be doing is looking toward alternatives. Which I expect would work just fine for the left, which has always tended toward decentralization.
      - WClayFerguson 6y ago
        Even if we can't agree on whether monopolies should be allowed to censor [legal] public speech, we can probably agree that decentralization and federation (like some kind of social media blockchain) is the best solution. ...because there's no way any gov't can ever determine if some company is shadow-banning and manipulating feeds of the people they don't like, and if I can even get you to admit bigger government is almost always the worst solution to any problem then I've even made progress on that front as well.
        wpietri 6y ago
        Twitter is not a monopoly. You are the person advocating increased government intervention in social media, not me. And I definitely don't agree that adding blockchain snake oil is the best solution to any problem.
        WClayFerguson 6y ago