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Did Parler break the law? Or just their users? In either case, is Amazon acting on legitimate orders from law enforcement, or are they taking the law into thei

Did Parler break the law? Or just their users? In either case, is Amazon acting on legitimate orders from law enforcement, or are they taking the law into their own hands? Other than your comment, I've yet to hear anyone imply this is a legal, rather than a moral, matter. Edit: I see this is the Stripe thread, not the AWS/Parler thread. I agree Trump has broken the law, though it is true that even criminals have regular bank accounts that don't get cancelled as soon as they're accused. Same thing applies, Stripe was not acting on a law enforcement request. It's vigilante justice, even if it's on the right side of history. I don't like the precedent.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I think that it’s likely that Trump crossed the incitement line, and that he’s also vanishingly unlikely to be prosecuted for it. If he gets prosecuted, they’ll probably stick to easier to prove charges. That being said, setting the line at illegal behavior being the thing that can get you banned might feel correct, it creates all kinds of weird problems. First, the law is not designed to be the description of all that is worthy of condemnation. The law is designed as a back stop; it’s the state saying “this behavior is so bad that we need to curtail your freedoms”. The founding fathers explicitly believed that the marketplace of ideas should take care of things, and being ostracized is absolutely part of that. If companies can cut contacts only for law breaking, then there will be all kinds of pressure to legislate every single aspect of human behavior. I doubt you’d like that, I know I wouldn’t. Second, there are all kinds of unpleasant behavior that is and always will be legal. Selling guns is legal, as is pornography. Walking around and calmly saying racial slurs to everyone is also legal. Would you deny Starbucks the right to exclude patrons that call everyone a racial slur? Would you attempt to make that illegal? Someone would. Would you obligate every social platform to allow pornography and make eBay sell guns? After all, it’s legal to sell guns. Third, if the only way you can get kicked off a platform is by breaking the law, this makes companies the social deciders of illegality. While they won’t turn into courts, in the public eye a lot of people will assume that being kicked off means that a law was broken. You do not want the ability for Amazon to accuse people of crimes, trust me. If you fear that Amazon or whoever has too much power here, then the appropriate legal tool is anti-monopoly laws, not to create some new burdensome system with all kinds of bad side effects. > In either case, is Amazon acting on legitimate orders from law enforcement, or are they taking the law into their own hands? The irony is that in attempting to defend freedom, you’ve expressed a shockingly authoritarian sentiment. Law enforcement does not get to tell companies who they can and cannot do business with, and giving them that ability is horrifying.

ashtonkem 6y ago

I think that it’s likely that Trump crossed the incitement line, and that he’s also vanishingly unlikely to be prosecuted for it. If he gets prosecuted, they’ll probably stick to easier to prove charges. That being said, setting the line at illegal behavior being the thing that can get you banned might feel correct, it creates all kinds of weird problems. First, the law is not designed to be the description of all that is worthy of condemnation. The law is designed as a back stop; it’s the state saying “this behavior is so bad that we need to curtail your freedoms”. The founding fathers explicitly believed that the marketplace of ideas should take care of things, and being ostracized is absolutely part of that. If companies can cut contacts only for law breaking, then there will be all kinds of pressure to legislate every single aspect of human behavior. I doubt you’d like that, I know I wouldn’t. Second, there are all kinds of unpleasant behavior that is and always will be legal. Selling guns is legal, as is pornography. Walking around and calmly saying racial slurs to everyone is also legal. Would you deny Starbucks the right to exclude patrons that call everyone a racial slur? Would you attempt to make that illegal? Someone would. Would you obligate every social platform to allow pornography and make eBay sell guns? After all, it’s legal to sell guns. Third, if the only way you can get kicked off a platform is by breaking the law, this makes companies the social deciders of illegality. While they won’t turn into courts, in the public eye a lot of people will assume that being kicked off means that a law was broken. You do not want the ability for Amazon to accuse people of crimes, trust me. If you fear that Amazon or whoever has too much power here, then the appropriate legal tool is anti-monopoly laws, not to create some new burdensome system with all kinds of bad side effects. > In either case, is Amazon acting on legitimate orders from law enforcement, or are they taking the law into their own hands? The irony is that in attempting to defend freedom, you’ve expressed a shockingly authoritarian sentiment. Law enforcement does not get to tell companies who they can and cannot do business with, and giving them that ability is horrifying.