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> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here w

> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are with the modern equivalent. Is it really the modern equivalent? People are not getting banned here over what they say in Twitter DMs. They are getting banned over what they publish on their timelines. You have a right to free speech, not a right to free publication. If you want to publish your opinions you will have to pay for that yourself if you can't find anyone willing to pay the costs for you. I will defend your right to say what you want, but I won't buy you a printing press.

callamdelaney 6y ago
As I understand, they were paying their bills.
- nucleardog 6y ago
  This is probably a case where the amount charged didn’t represent the true cost to Amazon, however. There may not be an obvious monetary cost to the negative publicity, legal and other costs Parler was and would incur for Amazon, but they're costs nonetheless. It's much simpler to just not do business with them than it is to try and develop a pricing model that accounts for those things.
  - ecmascript 6y ago
    The problem with your statement is that it is subjective. Amazon removing Parler hurt them from my subjective view a lot more than hosting them. I will never host anything on AWS since I know I could get removed at any time because of political reasons. I am sure Amazon hosts a lot of sites that I don't agree with but that doesn't mean I will hold them accountable. It is simply stupid. If you think Parler did something wrong, which I don't think they did (at least if you compare equal shitty places like Twitter), hold Parler accountable and not Amazon for hosting them. Don't be part of the angry mob. Be smarter.
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      >I will never host anything on AWS since I know I could get removed at any time because of political reasons. >If you think Parler did something wrong, which I don't think they did Political reasons?! They didn't do anything wrong?! Parler was knowingly and willingly hosting content that was glorifying and inciting actual physical, deadly violence. Calls to skin politicians and their families are okay with you?! Nowhere that I know of protected that kind of thing as free expression. It's not political speech. It left the realm of political speech a long time ago.
    - nucleardog 6y ago
      I said zero of the things you seem to be ascribing to me or assuming of me. Let me rephrase: "Parler paid its bills" is missing several variables in the equation. Do not read into it any further than that.
      - ecmascript 6y ago
        Actually, you did. > There may not be an obvious monetary cost to the negative publicity, legal and other costs Parler was and would incur for Amazon, but they're costs nonetheless. What negative publicity do you mean if not political ones from one specific point of view? For me, parler did nothing other than offer an alternative to twitter which is equal shitty. Amazon didn't have any publicity regarding this matter until they decided, together with a lot of other megacorps to remove everything associated with parler. Now they have had a lot of publicity, which is in my view very negative since now everyone knows that if you want to host anything that support any other viewpoint than those held by american megacorps you can be removed. I have a hard time understanding how anyone can think this is good publicity.
        nucleardog 6y ago
        > Don't be part of the angry mob. Be smarter. At no point did I express agreement with any of these things. That is what you seem to be finding in my speech that's not there. I thought explicitly clarifying might help. Trying to read into more than what's written and using that as a basis to tell me to "be smarter" is unnecessarily rude. My mistake for opening up a vaguely political thread on HN, I'm out.
- fest 6y ago
  Amazon could probably argue that reputation damage offset their bills.
  - callamdelaney 6y ago
    The reputation damage came from removing a platform, not from hosting it
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      My opinion of Amazon went up ever so slightly by removing Parler. It should have done it a while ago (violent rhetoric didn't just pop up on there last week), but better late than never.
    - majewsky 6y ago
      Both, depending on which side of the aisle you're asking.
  - dmatech 6y ago
    Risks of reputation damage cannot be allowed to override contract law. Instead, they should be able to just point to the contract and tell the deplatforming mob that they have to abide by it. Otherwise, no contract will be worth the paper it is written on if a mob can just scream on Twitter and get a perfectly legal site taken down on very short notice. I'd be very hesitant to sign a contract with any company that doesn't include extremely high termination fees that would be sufficient to find a new host.
- starfallg 6y ago
  That's completely irrelevant to what the issue here is though. AWS, as a private enterprise, is under no duty to sell its services to anybody. AWS works on a consumption model, but for the sake of argument, let's say that the customer also have reservations with AWS for resources covering at least the next few months. Whether AWS can terminate the supply of services depend entirely on the service agreement. IIRC, AWS has a number of options of terminating a user's services in its service agreement, such as abuse of service, which hosting content inciting seditious violence most likely falls under.
  - iguy 6y ago
    > AWS, as a private enterprise, is under no duty to sell its services to anybody. This may well be the legal position, but I think people are wondering whether it should be this way. The first electricity providers were (I think, mostly) likewise completely private & free to sell or not as they pleased. But as they grew, and our dependence on their product grew, the rules changed. They are now regulated differently, and have to sell to all who pay their bills. And nobody thinks it a stain on ConEd's reputation when they are found to have been selling power to porn-studios or gun-makers (i.e. legal activities some find distasteful), nor to weed-growers or mafia-run warehouses (illegal activities, but we don't expect ConEd to hire deeply investigate every connection). Is AWS selling something like water & electricity, a basic neutral service needed for many businesses? Or something more like a cable TV service, where they bear some responsibility for what's communicated in the channels being provided?
    - pyetya 6y ago
      But they sell the service and then stop providing it.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      This. It is always good to recall history. The origin of antitrust laws lies in the late 19th century, when a lot of railroad companies consolidated into a few mammoths. Back then, there were basically no regulations around the use of railroads, which were built by private capital. Nevertheless, railroads became an important infrastructure of the nation, and the convergence of power towards just a few hands meant that the situation became untenable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Securities_Co._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Securities_Co._v._Uni... I can see the parallels to the digital giants of today fairly well.
- gary_0 6y ago
  In terms of the printing press analogy, they were renting printing presses that Amazon owned (because setting up printing presses is expensive). And Amazon said "you're printing too many 'kill all the redheads' flyers, so we're not renting to you anymore". (The printing analogy does break down if Parler also ends up being denied renting physical space in a datacenter.)
  - aldarisbm 6y ago
    I appreciate the eli5, but Amazon said: "We have a clause in your contract that says you shouldnt print 'kill all the x' and you're letting just about anyone print those. We can still rent you servers if you put a content-filtering team into effect" But Parler didn't.
GrumpyNl 6y ago
A phone call is one on one, this one to many.
- long_warmup 6y ago
  > A phone call is one on one, this one to many. If nobody wanted to listen then there would be `one to nobody`. But it seems many wanted to listen, even if another many wanted him to shut up..
chr1 6y ago
90 mln people following Trump and watching twitter adds were paying for his free speech. Parler paying to aws was paying for its users free speech. The question is not about paying costs, but about people trying to use business as a weapon in their ideological war.
throwaway4good 6y ago
They could have terminated with 30 days notice (or similar) but instead they went for max damage.
- vincentpants 6y ago
  They, along with trump and the rest of dissidents, deserve much much much worse. You can’t stage a coup and not expect repercussions.
  - long_warmup 6y ago
    If coup is what he really have done then he should sit on his trial, right? This is very heavy offense, judges should decide and if they rule him guilty he should go to jail. It's judges who should decide if he is guilty or not, not AWS or Twitter. As I understand those who were involved in any crime are going to be chased and put in front of the judge.
    - dmode 6y ago
      AWS can decide whether they want to do business with fascists just like bakeries can decide whether they can sell cakes to gay folks. What’s so hard about this ? May be they should not attempted coup if they wanted to set up their Dynamo DB
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - long_warmup 6y ago
        In country where I live it is prohibited by law to promote fascism. So I think you are not right by saying company can do business with fascists (i.e. to promote fascism) if they like so. Such company would be dragged to court and owners would probably go to jail.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
maeln 6y ago
You can get ban over what you say in Twitter DM. Using your DM to harass someone is a bannable offence for example, and it should. I think it is perfectly normal that community want to have a certain quality and moderate for this reason. Are we going to complain that HN ban trolls because it impede on their "free-speech" ? Or spammer ? The case of Amazon is different though. If you have a contract with a company and the company terminate the contract with no valid reason, you should sue. It is their right to break the contract because they don't want to deal with you, but then they have to pay a fine because they were engaged in a contract with you and they broke it.
- mattjoyce 6y ago
  > It is their right to break the contract because they don't want to deal with you, but then they have to pay a fine because they were engaged in a contract with you and they broke it. That would depend on the terms.
  - maeln 6y ago
    Yes absolutely. The catch being that most company include a catch-all termination condition where they can terminate the contract whenever they want. It is then the justice who has to step in and say if those condition are valid or not. If my memory is correct, those kind of catch-all terms where deemed non-applicable in the EU, but it doesn't prevent company from still putting them in the hope that you won't sue them afterward.
- armada651 6y ago
  > You can get ban over what you say in Twitter DM. Using your DM to harass someone is a bannable offence for example, and it should. Getting banned over harassment in a DM is not the same as getting banned over expressing your opinion in a DM.
  - maeln 6y ago
    Sure, and I don't believe anybody got banned from expressing their opinion over DMs. But if your DMs include threat, pushing for insurrection, pushing for violent action, etc, you will still be in violation of most website TOS.
proc0 6y ago
Like their intention is to really moderate things honestly lol. They know exactly how manipulative they are being, they want to control thought, hence the urgency of not questioning it.
syshum 6y ago
>>Is it really the modern equivalent? yes, lets look at it from a legal stand point. Utilities like the phone company are granted special privileges under the law, in exchange for society granting them those special privileges they must service all persons in their service area provided they pay the bill (and in some cases even if they do not) Now lets look at social media and other platform, we as a society have granted them special provisions under the law, the most well known today is Section 230 but there are others. I do not believe it is unreasonable then to demand these platform be require to allow all persons to speak provided their speech is legal speech. This is standard would be massively more open than the current moderation standards of the platforms today Now each one of the platforms are free to fore go those special legal provisions, and be treated as publishers, like say a NYTimes, or a DailyWire publication. Under those rules then they have full and complete editorial control over everything on their site but they also assume more legal liability. What the platforms today want is a little bit of A, and a little bit of B, I think that is not what we as a society should allow They need to choose, are they platforms or publishers
- npunt 6y ago
  I regret to inform you that you have been terribly misled about section 230 and you should read this https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
  - syshum 6y ago
    Yes I have read that many times, and I regret to inform you that you have been terribly misled about section 230 further in no way does your link refute my position at all. Not only is TechDirt take factually incorrect on the history of Section 230, I am talking about REFORMS to Section 230 to make it CLEAR what the section should mean, which IMO should be legal speech, not simply allow the platforms to set their own moderation standards The Ninth Circuit has as stated the intent of Section 230 was "Congress wanted to encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet, and to promote the development of e-commerce" The clear purpose of section 230 is promote not impede free speech. TechDirt on the whole has taken very pro-censorship stances provided it is "mah private companies" doing the censorship This is not inline with the actual facts of law, nor it is inline with how we as a society should be progressing I know it may come as a shock but people can have differing opinions from TechDirt....
high_density 6y ago
it's not "freedom of speech vs publication". If it was about distribution-rights on small vs big, it would be "freedom to whisper", not "speech" which implies speaking publicly. Another concern: by your logic, net neutrality should be moot. Let ISPs choose and throttle online service by their whim. Anyway,"freedom of speech" is actually intended to prevent any dictatorial entity from hiding the other side from the public. imho, If the 'democrats' are actually 'democratic', they should have solved this with a much more elegant solution - eg. inviting people to a common, shared platform and refuting them there. Current FB/twitter/aws solutions are rather 'easy but dictatorial and may backfire', which is somewhat 'republican' in taste... (* by backfire: pro-trumps can think: "The other side is trying to snuff us. What are they hiding? Are they more evil than imaginable? We should do something to guard USA from them" imho, the root of the whole fiasco is actually the press preventing the broadcast of Trump after the election. (the 'snuffing') Better solution would be having open discussions to refute the pro-trump people. Another thing is that by-standers will note about how 'undemocratic' the whole solution is, and whether they'll also be treated if they end up being the 'other' side of other issues
- armada651 6y ago
  I never said publication wasn't protected under free speech. If the government pressures twitter to ban your account, that's censorship and a violation of freedom of speech. My argument was that your right to freedom of speech does not compel others to publish your speech. If you send me an e-mail with your opinion and the instruction to forward it to all my contacts, then I am not violating your freedom of speech by refusing to do so. And yes, freedom of speech does not protect net neutrality. That's why we need the FCC to set those rules and enforce them. What some people are arguing for is a sort of "opinion neutrality" for social media companies that forces them to treat all opinions equally without moderation. You can certainly debate the pros and cons of such a rule, but it's not a consequence of your right to freedom of speech.
  - high_density 6y ago
    once again, same here: to maintain democracy, no political entity should be able to snuff the other side. By your logic, it's OK for Bill Gates to buy all the press influence to completely silence the politically-other-side. And my mention of net neutrality is to show how flawed your whole logic process is. > What some people are arguing for is a sort of "opinion neutrality" for social media companies that forces them to treat all opinions equally without moderation. hm I actually find this scary. Maybe you're from China, where deviant opinions/minorities must be snuffed down for "harmonious society"?

callamdelaney 6y ago

As I understand, they were paying their bills.

nucleardog 6y ago
This is probably a case where the amount charged didn’t represent the true cost to Amazon, however. There may not be an obvious monetary cost to the negative publicity, legal and other costs Parler was and would incur for Amazon, but they're costs nonetheless. It's much simpler to just not do business with them than it is to try and develop a pricing model that accounts for those things.
- ecmascript 6y ago
  The problem with your statement is that it is subjective. Amazon removing Parler hurt them from my subjective view a lot more than hosting them. I will never host anything on AWS since I know I could get removed at any time because of political reasons. I am sure Amazon hosts a lot of sites that I don't agree with but that doesn't mean I will hold them accountable. It is simply stupid. If you think Parler did something wrong, which I don't think they did (at least if you compare equal shitty places like Twitter), hold Parler accountable and not Amazon for hosting them. Don't be part of the angry mob. Be smarter.
  - M2Ys4U 6y ago
    >I will never host anything on AWS since I know I could get removed at any time because of political reasons. >If you think Parler did something wrong, which I don't think they did Political reasons?! They didn't do anything wrong?! Parler was knowingly and willingly hosting content that was glorifying and inciting actual physical, deadly violence. Calls to skin politicians and their families are okay with you?! Nowhere that I know of protected that kind of thing as free expression. It's not political speech. It left the realm of political speech a long time ago.
  - nucleardog 6y ago
    I said zero of the things you seem to be ascribing to me or assuming of me. Let me rephrase: "Parler paid its bills" is missing several variables in the equation. Do not read into it any further than that.
    - ecmascript 6y ago
      Actually, you did. > There may not be an obvious monetary cost to the negative publicity, legal and other costs Parler was and would incur for Amazon, but they're costs nonetheless. What negative publicity do you mean if not political ones from one specific point of view? For me, parler did nothing other than offer an alternative to twitter which is equal shitty. Amazon didn't have any publicity regarding this matter until they decided, together with a lot of other megacorps to remove everything associated with parler. Now they have had a lot of publicity, which is in my view very negative since now everyone knows that if you want to host anything that support any other viewpoint than those held by american megacorps you can be removed. I have a hard time understanding how anyone can think this is good publicity.
      - nucleardog 6y ago
        > Don't be part of the angry mob. Be smarter. At no point did I express agreement with any of these things. That is what you seem to be finding in my speech that's not there. I thought explicitly clarifying might help. Trying to read into more than what's written and using that as a basis to tell me to "be smarter" is unnecessarily rude. My mistake for opening up a vaguely political thread on HN, I'm out.
fest 6y ago
Amazon could probably argue that reputation damage offset their bills.
- callamdelaney 6y ago
  The reputation damage came from removing a platform, not from hosting it
  - M2Ys4U 6y ago
    My opinion of Amazon went up ever so slightly by removing Parler. It should have done it a while ago (violent rhetoric didn't just pop up on there last week), but better late than never.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    Both, depending on which side of the aisle you're asking.
- dmatech 6y ago
  Risks of reputation damage cannot be allowed to override contract law. Instead, they should be able to just point to the contract and tell the deplatforming mob that they have to abide by it. Otherwise, no contract will be worth the paper it is written on if a mob can just scream on Twitter and get a perfectly legal site taken down on very short notice. I'd be very hesitant to sign a contract with any company that doesn't include extremely high termination fees that would be sufficient to find a new host.
starfallg 6y ago
That's completely irrelevant to what the issue here is though. AWS, as a private enterprise, is under no duty to sell its services to anybody. AWS works on a consumption model, but for the sake of argument, let's say that the customer also have reservations with AWS for resources covering at least the next few months. Whether AWS can terminate the supply of services depend entirely on the service agreement. IIRC, AWS has a number of options of terminating a user's services in its service agreement, such as abuse of service, which hosting content inciting seditious violence most likely falls under.
- iguy 6y ago
  > AWS, as a private enterprise, is under no duty to sell its services to anybody. This may well be the legal position, but I think people are wondering whether it should be this way. The first electricity providers were (I think, mostly) likewise completely private & free to sell or not as they pleased. But as they grew, and our dependence on their product grew, the rules changed. They are now regulated differently, and have to sell to all who pay their bills. And nobody thinks it a stain on ConEd's reputation when they are found to have been selling power to porn-studios or gun-makers (i.e. legal activities some find distasteful), nor to weed-growers or mafia-run warehouses (illegal activities, but we don't expect ConEd to hire deeply investigate every connection). Is AWS selling something like water & electricity, a basic neutral service needed for many businesses? Or something more like a cable TV service, where they bear some responsibility for what's communicated in the channels being provided?
  - pyetya 6y ago
    But they sell the service and then stop providing it.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    This. It is always good to recall history. The origin of antitrust laws lies in the late 19th century, when a lot of railroad companies consolidated into a few mammoths. Back then, there were basically no regulations around the use of railroads, which were built by private capital. Nevertheless, railroads became an important infrastructure of the nation, and the convergence of power towards just a few hands meant that the situation became untenable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Securities_Co._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Securities_Co._v._Uni... I can see the parallels to the digital giants of today fairly well.
gary_0 6y ago
In terms of the printing press analogy, they were renting printing presses that Amazon owned (because setting up printing presses is expensive). And Amazon said "you're printing too many 'kill all the redheads' flyers, so we're not renting to you anymore". (The printing analogy does break down if Parler also ends up being denied renting physical space in a datacenter.)
- aldarisbm 6y ago
  I appreciate the eli5, but Amazon said: "We have a clause in your contract that says you shouldnt print 'kill all the x' and you're letting just about anyone print those. We can still rent you servers if you put a content-filtering team into effect" But Parler didn't.

GrumpyNl 6y ago

A phone call is one on one, this one to many.

long_warmup 6y ago
> A phone call is one on one, this one to many. If nobody wanted to listen then there would be `one to nobody`. But it seems many wanted to listen, even if another many wanted him to shut up..

chr1 6y ago

90 mln people following Trump and watching twitter adds were paying for his free speech. Parler paying to aws was paying for its users free speech. The question is not about paying costs, but about people trying to use business as a weapon in their ideological war.

throwaway4good 6y ago

They could have terminated with 30 days notice (or similar) but instead they went for max damage.

vincentpants 6y ago
They, along with trump and the rest of dissidents, deserve much much much worse. You can’t stage a coup and not expect repercussions.
- long_warmup 6y ago
  If coup is what he really have done then he should sit on his trial, right? This is very heavy offense, judges should decide and if they rule him guilty he should go to jail. It's judges who should decide if he is guilty or not, not AWS or Twitter. As I understand those who were involved in any crime are going to be chased and put in front of the judge.
  - dmode 6y ago
    AWS can decide whether they want to do business with fascists just like bakeries can decide whether they can sell cakes to gay folks. What’s so hard about this ? May be they should not attempted coup if they wanted to set up their Dynamo DB
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - long_warmup 6y ago
      In country where I live it is prohibited by law to promote fascism. So I think you are not right by saying company can do business with fascists (i.e. to promote fascism) if they like so. Such company would be dragged to court and owners would probably go to jail.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

maeln 6y ago

You can get ban over what you say in Twitter DM. Using your DM to harass someone is a bannable offence for example, and it should. I think it is perfectly normal that community want to have a certain quality and moderate for this reason. Are we going to complain that HN ban trolls because it impede on their "free-speech" ? Or spammer ? The case of Amazon is different though. If you have a contract with a company and the company terminate the contract with no valid reason, you should sue. It is their right to break the contract because they don't want to deal with you, but then they have to pay a fine because they were engaged in a contract with you and they broke it.

mattjoyce 6y ago
> It is their right to break the contract because they don't want to deal with you, but then they have to pay a fine because they were engaged in a contract with you and they broke it. That would depend on the terms.
- maeln 6y ago
  Yes absolutely. The catch being that most company include a catch-all termination condition where they can terminate the contract whenever they want. It is then the justice who has to step in and say if those condition are valid or not. If my memory is correct, those kind of catch-all terms where deemed non-applicable in the EU, but it doesn't prevent company from still putting them in the hope that you won't sue them afterward.
armada651 6y ago
> You can get ban over what you say in Twitter DM. Using your DM to harass someone is a bannable offence for example, and it should. Getting banned over harassment in a DM is not the same as getting banned over expressing your opinion in a DM.
- maeln 6y ago
  Sure, and I don't believe anybody got banned from expressing their opinion over DMs. But if your DMs include threat, pushing for insurrection, pushing for violent action, etc, you will still be in violation of most website TOS.

proc0 6y ago

Like their intention is to really moderate things honestly lol. They know exactly how manipulative they are being, they want to control thought, hence the urgency of not questioning it.

syshum 6y ago

>>Is it really the modern equivalent? yes, lets look at it from a legal stand point. Utilities like the phone company are granted special privileges under the law, in exchange for society granting them those special privileges they must service all persons in their service area provided they pay the bill (and in some cases even if they do not) Now lets look at social media and other platform, we as a society have granted them special provisions under the law, the most well known today is Section 230 but there are others. I do not believe it is unreasonable then to demand these platform be require to allow all persons to speak provided their speech is legal speech. This is standard would be massively more open than the current moderation standards of the platforms today Now each one of the platforms are free to fore go those special legal provisions, and be treated as publishers, like say a NYTimes, or a DailyWire publication. Under those rules then they have full and complete editorial control over everything on their site but they also assume more legal liability. What the platforms today want is a little bit of A, and a little bit of B, I think that is not what we as a society should allow They need to choose, are they platforms or publishers

npunt 6y ago
I regret to inform you that you have been terribly misled about section 230 and you should read this https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
- syshum 6y ago
  Yes I have read that many times, and I regret to inform you that you have been terribly misled about section 230 further in no way does your link refute my position at all. Not only is TechDirt take factually incorrect on the history of Section 230, I am talking about REFORMS to Section 230 to make it CLEAR what the section should mean, which IMO should be legal speech, not simply allow the platforms to set their own moderation standards The Ninth Circuit has as stated the intent of Section 230 was "Congress wanted to encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet, and to promote the development of e-commerce" The clear purpose of section 230 is promote not impede free speech. TechDirt on the whole has taken very pro-censorship stances provided it is "mah private companies" doing the censorship This is not inline with the actual facts of law, nor it is inline with how we as a society should be progressing I know it may come as a shock but people can have differing opinions from TechDirt....

high_density 6y ago

it's not "freedom of speech vs publication". If it was about distribution-rights on small vs big, it would be "freedom to whisper", not "speech" which implies speaking publicly. Another concern: by your logic, net neutrality should be moot. Let ISPs choose and throttle online service by their whim. Anyway,"freedom of speech" is actually intended to prevent any dictatorial entity from hiding the other side from the public. imho, If the 'democrats' are actually 'democratic', they should have solved this with a much more elegant solution - eg. inviting people to a common, shared platform and refuting them there. Current FB/twitter/aws solutions are rather 'easy but dictatorial and may backfire', which is somewhat 'republican' in taste... (* by backfire: pro-trumps can think: "The other side is trying to snuff us. What are they hiding? Are they more evil than imaginable? We should do something to guard USA from them" imho, the root of the whole fiasco is actually the press preventing the broadcast of Trump after the election. (the 'snuffing') Better solution would be having open discussions to refute the pro-trump people. Another thing is that by-standers will note about how 'undemocratic' the whole solution is, and whether they'll also be treated if they end up being the 'other' side of other issues

armada651 6y ago
I never said publication wasn't protected under free speech. If the government pressures twitter to ban your account, that's censorship and a violation of freedom of speech. My argument was that your right to freedom of speech does not compel others to publish your speech. If you send me an e-mail with your opinion and the instruction to forward it to all my contacts, then I am not violating your freedom of speech by refusing to do so. And yes, freedom of speech does not protect net neutrality. That's why we need the FCC to set those rules and enforce them. What some people are arguing for is a sort of "opinion neutrality" for social media companies that forces them to treat all opinions equally without moderation. You can certainly debate the pros and cons of such a rule, but it's not a consequence of your right to freedom of speech.
- high_density 6y ago
  once again, same here: to maintain democracy, no political entity should be able to snuff the other side. By your logic, it's OK for Bill Gates to buy all the press influence to completely silence the politically-other-side. And my mention of net neutrality is to show how flawed your whole logic process is. > What some people are arguing for is a sort of "opinion neutrality" for social media companies that forces them to treat all opinions equally without moderation. hm I actually find this scary. Maybe you're from China, where deviant opinions/minorities must be snuffed down for "harmonious society"?