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So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? We aren't talking pro

by tw04 6y ago

So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means. That's called a free market. Will they be restored if they're proven innocent? Maybe. Maybe not. Again, that's called a free market.

BitwiseFool 6y ago
I'm getting to the point where yes, I want to force these "private" companies to uphold civil liberties and principles such as innocent until proven guilty. I care way more about citizen freedom and expression than the concept of a "free market" which is a platonic ideal that has never existed and never will.
- tw04 6y ago
  Sure it exists, but you need collective bargaining for it to be a level playing field. Content creators want to fight back against Twitch? Form a union.
  - morelisp 6y ago
    This is the correct, and only viable, solution. https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ The labor of digital creatives and innovators, sutured as it is to a technical apparatus fashioned from dead labor and meant for producing commodities for profit, is therefore already socialized. While some of this socialization is apparent in peer production, much of it is mystified through the real abstraction of commodity fetishism, which masks socialization under wage relations and contracts. Rather than further rely on these contracts to better benefit digital artisans, a Marxist politics of digital culture would begin from the fact of socialization, and as Radhika Desai (2011) argues, take seriously Marx’s call for “a general organization of labour in society” via political organizations such as unions and labor parties. Creative workers could align with others in the production chain as a class of laborers rather than as an assortment of individual producers, and form the kinds of organizations, such as unions, that have been the vehicles of class politics, with the aim of controlling society’s means of production, not simply one’s “own” tools or products. These would be bonds of solidarity, not bonds of market transactions. Then the apparatus of digital cultural production might be controlled democratically, rather than by the despotism of markets and private profit.
- anthonypasq 6y ago
  companies have speech rights that you would be infringing on by doing this
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    But why is a company's right to speech more important than a real person's civil rights? A company is a mere legal fiction and it's rights should not be given equal weight to those of actual human beings, especially for a corporation as large as Amazon. Edit: I know the issue becomes murkier for things like mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships, but I am willing to make distinctions based on scale.
    - ctdonath 6y ago
      Because a company is a group of real people making decisions together. There is no “legal fiction” deciding to not associate with certain others.
      - BitwiseFool 6y ago
        I still fail to see how that coordinated group of people motivated by profit takes precedence over the civil rights of an individual.
        Goronmon 6y ago
        I fail to see how an individual loses their civil rights just because they joined a "coordinated group of people".
        BitwiseFool 6y ago
        The individual who joined the "coordinated group of people" (the corporation) still have their individual civil rights, but the legal entity they constitute should not have it's rights valued on the same level as individual human beings. If the corporation is being seen as a single entity then you should not consider it's employees' individual rights as the same thing. Or even combine them together to give more weight to the corporation's rights.
fishe 6y ago
Where are the calls for government intervention in the comment you're responding to?
standardUser 6y ago
You just described a big part of why people do not like free markets. Corporations are allowed to accumulate an enormous amount of power and then use that power to abuse whoever they want (aside from a sliver of circumstances covered as protected classes). I think want most people want is a reasonable middle ground, not unchecked corporate power.
AzzieElbab 6y ago
no such thing as free market under natural monopolies enforced by network effects.
Alupis 6y ago
At a certain point, these platforms have such enormous, unprecedented influence and control over public discourse, that they aught to be thought of differently than, say a restaurant refusing service to a guy without a shirt or shoes on. We're clearly in uncharted territory, when it comes to the control and release of information. Just using Twitter and Facebook for example - they've silenced the second-most voted for President in American history, because he isn't their brand of politics. Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no? How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?
- wvenable 6y ago
  > Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no? So he aught to be able to grab a soap box and stand on your lawn every day and preach? He is a former US president so you are proposing he can go onto private property and say whatever he wants at any time. > How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies? Because you misunderstand free speech. Is the government going to arrest you for posting on twitter? No. However no one is required, not even the government, to provide you with a platform to speak on. You want free beer speech. Speech without paying for it. Speech without restriction of any kind by anyone at any time. Why should we care about that?
- tw04 6y ago
  >How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies? Quite easily. Freedom of speech is freedom from government suppression of that speech - it's quite clear in the constitution. Freedom of speech doesn't mean I or anyone else has to give you a platform to speak from.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    And antitrust laws are designed precisely to prevent corporations from monopolizing and abusing market position. Freedom of speech means I have the right to hear from people I choose to assemble with. Monopolies dominating the market for speech and then dictating the terms of speech is an antitrust situation. Not least of which because by the same mechanisms they can use to silence political opponents they can use to silence and squeeze out competition or mentions of competitors. This isn't crazy or unprecedented. We don't give unlimited contractual rights to landlords. You'd end up with a virtual serfdom otherwise. So we grant tenant rights exclusive of any contractual terms. Past time to do the same for social media participants.
ctrlp 6y ago
Would you be ok with businesses refusing to serve accused/convicted criminals? How about illegal immigrants? If the standard is law-breaking does it meet the definition of non-discriminatory?
- gentleman11 6y ago
  Do people really deserve an entire lifetime of exclusion even after doing their time? Even the Catholic Church in medieval times was more forgiving in many cases
recursivedoubts 6y ago
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
centimeter 6y ago
Do you support the right of businesses to refuse business to homosexuals, for example, on religious grounds? If you come back with “homosexuals are legally a protected class”, that’s evading the question and functionally equivalent to “no I don’t actually support freedom of association”. I ask because in my experience most people on HN only support freedom of association when it’s politically expedient for them.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
To mirror fishe's comment: > So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? redm made no such suggestion. They lamented what they perceive to be a problem. They offered no comment on remedies.
throwaway894345 6y ago
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? The parent clearly didn’t say any such thing. One can criticize a company without demanding simplistic, heavy-handed government intervention.
simion314 6y ago
>That's called a free market. Does for example a few giants that dominate social media ,mobile platforms, consoles,media, ISPs actually/really/100% meet the criteria of a free market ? I am no economist so my naive interpretation is that you need many smaller agents actually competing no 2-3 giants sharing a market and abusing their share by killing any small competitor that appears.
MR4D 6y ago
Twitch makes their streams public - no account needed, and no login needed to view them. It's arguable whether this is truly private - I'm not taking a position here, just that this is contested law [0]. Twitch would have a much stronger position if you had to be logged in to view the content. One analogy to this is the regulating power that the government has over broadcast TV vs cable TV - the restrictions tend to be quite different. [0] - https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650/1 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650/1 - - - - - - EDIT: Added reference [0], which is from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service
ttt0 6y ago
Yes, and I don't care about free market. We're already doing this, we're forcing private companies to do business with people they don't want to do business with right now. I don't even care so much about social media, but banks and services that provide basic infrastructure to keep your own web services afloat shouldn't be allowed to discriminate people based on their politics.
- smt88 6y ago
  > discriminate people based on their politics It usually seems to be based on people's bigotry or sexual misconduct. I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban. Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be. If your political view is fascist, why should you have the same protections as someone who is born a minority? One thing can be changed and can be thought of as evil; the other can't.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    > I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban. Wouldn't Trump himself count? > Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be. I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better. I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it.
    - smt88 6y ago
      > Wouldn't Trump himself count? No. He was tolerated despite his politics until he (arguably) incited a seditious attack on Congress and his own vice president. > I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better. The problem is that "political views" is not a defined term. What if I employ 50% Irish employees and have someone who says, "I hate the Irish and wish they'd never ruined this country"? It harms my business to have that person around. It is bad for my brand, it's bad for my other employees, and maybe I just don't want to hear those comments myself. Why should the government be able to force me to pay that person? Or, in the case of social networks, why should the government force my employees to publish that content, maintain it, and keep it backed up for millions of people to see? > I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it. These kinds of comments are protected by the First Amendment. You can publish them, and you can shout them on the street. But you can't force people to like you or employ you if you say them. These ideas won't die out because of social pressure. Also, thousands of websites (including Parler) already ban one or both of the statements you included. It's just that no one really cares because they're small sites. So at what point do you say that a company is too big to be allowed to decide what they publish? Is it 100M users? Or 500M? If MSNBC or Fox News had 2 billion viewers, should they also be forced to air videos produced by any group?
caturopath 6y ago
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? I don't think OP actually said this. But yes, like most people, I want this to happen sometimes. For example, I want a hotel to have to lodge Indian people, whether they actually want to or not. In other cases, I don't want this to be legally required, but still will complain if I see something that indicates a lack of character. Not everything I think is shitty should be illegal.
- smt88 6y ago
  It's incredible stupid to say that protecting an ethnicity (something that can't be changed) is tantamount of protecting ideology (something you are not born with and something that sometimes includes advocating for violence). Also, no one is illegalizing anything by banning it from Twitch.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    Is being alterable really the important distinction here though? If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok?
    - smt88 6y ago
      > Is being alterable really the important distinction here though? Yes. This is literally the entire argument against racism: judging someone for physical traits that have no bearing on their character. > If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok? No, for many obvious reasons. 1. Looking Indian (or not) still has no bearing on that person's behavior or character. 2. It would cost money and be an identity change, so not everyone could/would do it. I can't believe anyone is seriously asking questions like this in 2021. Read a book.
      - concordDance 6y ago
ellyagg 6y ago
The "private" companies live in a heavily-scrutinized regulaory environment, where politians also routinely demand that they take action. These are no longer private companies anymore.
gentleman11 6y ago
Why does everyone talk about the government forcing companies to do things whenever somebody criticizes a company policy? A company can be criticized without the speaker implying that there needs to be legislation.
- ben509 6y ago
  Especially when such critique is how we're supposed to resolve most disputes in a free society.
- Goronmon 6y ago
  Why does everyone talk about the government forcing companies to do things whenever somebody criticizes a company policy? Because there are plenty of people claiming companies are being unconstitutional and/or that there should be laws that prevent companies from taking actions like banning people from platforms/etc.
SllX 6y ago
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? OP didn’t make that argument, and I’m not going to make that argument. That said, with or without government coercion on the counter party, innocent until proven guilty is a fairly good standard to apply. It’s more important when it concerns the use of government force, but that doesn’t mean it is unimportant when dealing with private parties and it is fair to judge Twitch for not applying innocent until proven guilty as a standard when it comes to Twitch-streamers. It’s easy to get someone arrested, and it is easy for a cop to make an arrest. An arrest is not a presumption of guilt and shouldn’t be used as a signal of guilt.
SkyBelow 6y ago
>We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means. These are discriminatory means, they just aren't ones we have universally decided are wrong to deny services based upon. What happens when we start denying services to those arrested regardless of conviction? Won't this have disparate impact on certain protected classes?
pgsimp 6y ago
People invest massive amounts of time to build a following and create content on those platforms. It seems reasonable to ask that it can't be taken away from them at a whim. However, in theory, they should have read the contract before entering it. If they accept those terms, perhaps they should have to live with it. An analogy would perhaps be a musician signing a contract with a record label? I think they expect some reciprocity, like if they owe three albums to the label, the label also owes them marketing for those albums.
rdiddly 6y ago
It seems to me excluding even convicted criminals, is discriminatory. Let's pretend we're talking about an "ordinary" crime like armed robbery, instead of one of the ones the news media like to obsess about (which would be terrorism, hate crimes, child porn, and mass shootings - and back in the day that list would've included the Mob). Once the ordinary armed robber has been convicted and served their sentence, they come out of prison and face enormous barriers and discrimination, and that's not exactly fair. It's not clear from the article what Twitch will do in those cases though; all they do is define a list of exotic "misconduct" activities, most of which are crimes (and by the way, ctrl-F "crim" yields zero results in the page). I don't see a link to the original announcement they're reporting on, and I have to admit that I don't actually care enough to go hunt it down from the horse's mouth, but that is usually better. Anyway on to the "free market." I have yet to see one in action. There is always meddling by unfairly-advantaged players and competition is never perfect. But more to the point, a free market is not magic or a god or even intelligent, and doesn't necessarily make good decisions on behalf of humans. It knows nothing of what's good or what's right. The one thing it does well is allocate finite or scarce resources. But humanity is not a resource, and even at their core task, markets make mistakes all the time.
indymike 6y ago
> we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means. The phone company can't cut you off because they don't like your behavior or who your associate with. Why should Twitch be able to? Twitch is a communication platform, too.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? Yes. > We aren't talking protected class here That's besides the point. There are many limitations on private companies picking and choosing who to do business with that apply beyond protected classes, including common carrier regulations[1], regulation of (some) private property as a public square[2], and requiring broadcasters to run political ads[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama [3]: https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2012/01/articles/why-broadcasters-have-to-air-political-attack-ads-even-if-they-dont-want-to/ https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2012/01/articles/why-broadc...
LudwigNagasena 6y ago
> We aren't talking protected class here We do. All the people should be protected. That was the point of the French Revolution, no special rights to anyone, everyone is equal under the law.
nitwit005 6y ago
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? We do have a set of reasons you can't refuse service to people for (race, religion, etc), and if you get classified as a utility you generally have to serve everyone, so it's not exactly an exotic idea. Some of these services are entering a more ambiguous state. Twitter and Facebook have official government communications flowing through them. Banning people may eventually have more serious consequences closer to the "having your water cut off" situation.
- smt88 6y ago
  > Banning people may eventually have more serious consequences closer to the "having your water cut off" situation. This can be resolved by improving interop and competition among social media, not by forcing moderation decisions on private companies.
mdoms 6y ago
Where did GP say anything about the government?
commandlinefan 6y ago
> So you want the government to force Not OP, but I don't want the government to force private companies to do anything - I want everybody to wake up and stand up against corporate censorship and abandoned Twitch en masse in protest. That's probably as likely as government enforcement, but a man can dream.
AbrahamParangi 6y ago
You said it yourself though, the market isn't completely free, and this is widely believed to be a good thing. You cannot discriminate against me because you don't like where I come from. You cannot discriminate against me because of my race. Some people believe these protections should generally be extended to beliefs or political tribes or other forms of identification.
scarmig 6y ago
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? How deep does your commitment to private corporate power go? For instance, suppose Comcast decided it doesn't want to provide cable or internet service to a particular cancellee. Does this bother you, or no? Does it matter if it's a monopoly setting? If it does, suppose we're in a duopoly market, and both companies refuse service to the cancellee. Does this worry you?
Thorentis 6y ago
Every decision is discriminatory. The "protected classes" we have chosen are arbitrary selections based on our societies current opinions about minorities. Every time a business chooses to not do business with somebody, they have discriminated against them for a particular reason. Not enough qualifications, not enough money, didn't like their personality, didn't get a good vibe, didn't like their attitude. Whatever. You can find multiple other people to fit into those same categories.
mpalczewski 6y ago
> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? I didn't see him mention the government at all. Just because you think something is wrong to do, doesn't automatically mean the government has to get involved.
john_moscow 6y ago
I want the government to force private companies to charge the end users for their services, and to start enforcing anti-monopoly laws. This will very quickly introduce competition to the market and will align the corporate behavior with the interests of the users.

by tw04 6y ago

BitwiseFool 6y ago

I'm getting to the point where yes, I want to force these "private" companies to uphold civil liberties and principles such as innocent until proven guilty. I care way more about citizen freedom and expression than the concept of a "free market" which is a platonic ideal that has never existed and never will.

tw04 6y ago
Sure it exists, but you need collective bargaining for it to be a level playing field. Content creators want to fight back against Twitch? Form a union.
- morelisp 6y ago
  This is the correct, and only viable, solution. https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ The labor of digital creatives and innovators, sutured as it is to a technical apparatus fashioned from dead labor and meant for producing commodities for profit, is therefore already socialized. While some of this socialization is apparent in peer production, much of it is mystified through the real abstraction of commodity fetishism, which masks socialization under wage relations and contracts. Rather than further rely on these contracts to better benefit digital artisans, a Marxist politics of digital culture would begin from the fact of socialization, and as Radhika Desai (2011) argues, take seriously Marx’s call for “a general organization of labour in society” via political organizations such as unions and labor parties. Creative workers could align with others in the production chain as a class of laborers rather than as an assortment of individual producers, and form the kinds of organizations, such as unions, that have been the vehicles of class politics, with the aim of controlling society’s means of production, not simply one’s “own” tools or products. These would be bonds of solidarity, not bonds of market transactions. Then the apparatus of digital cultural production might be controlled democratically, rather than by the despotism of markets and private profit.
anthonypasq 6y ago
companies have speech rights that you would be infringing on by doing this
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  But why is a company's right to speech more important than a real person's civil rights? A company is a mere legal fiction and it's rights should not be given equal weight to those of actual human beings, especially for a corporation as large as Amazon. Edit: I know the issue becomes murkier for things like mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships, but I am willing to make distinctions based on scale.
  - ctdonath 6y ago
    Because a company is a group of real people making decisions together. There is no “legal fiction” deciding to not associate with certain others.
    - BitwiseFool 6y ago
      I still fail to see how that coordinated group of people motivated by profit takes precedence over the civil rights of an individual.
      - Goronmon 6y ago
        I fail to see how an individual loses their civil rights just because they joined a "coordinated group of people".
        BitwiseFool 6y ago
        The individual who joined the "coordinated group of people" (the corporation) still have their individual civil rights, but the legal entity they constitute should not have it's rights valued on the same level as individual human beings. If the corporation is being seen as a single entity then you should not consider it's employees' individual rights as the same thing. Or even combine them together to give more weight to the corporation's rights.

fishe 6y ago

Where are the calls for government intervention in the comment you're responding to?

standardUser 6y ago

You just described a big part of why people do not like free markets. Corporations are allowed to accumulate an enormous amount of power and then use that power to abuse whoever they want (aside from a sliver of circumstances covered as protected classes). I think want most people want is a reasonable middle ground, not unchecked corporate power.

AzzieElbab 6y ago

no such thing as free market under natural monopolies enforced by network effects.

Alupis 6y ago

At a certain point, these platforms have such enormous, unprecedented influence and control over public discourse, that they aught to be thought of differently than, say a restaurant refusing service to a guy without a shirt or shoes on. We're clearly in uncharted territory, when it comes to the control and release of information. Just using Twitter and Facebook for example - they've silenced the second-most voted for President in American history, because he isn't their brand of politics. Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no? How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies?

wvenable 6y ago
> Regardless what you think or feel about the guy, he is a former US President - we aught to know what he thinks, even if we disagree or think it's outlandish - no? So he aught to be able to grab a soap box and stand on your lawn every day and preach? He is a former US president so you are proposing he can go onto private property and say whatever he wants at any time. > How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies? Because you misunderstand free speech. Is the government going to arrest you for posting on twitter? No. However no one is required, not even the government, to provide you with a platform to speak on. You want free beer speech. Speech without paying for it. Speech without restriction of any kind by anyone at any time. Why should we care about that?
tw04 6y ago
>How can we, as a society, claim to value free speech, yet allow social discourse platforms to censor and silence political enemies? Quite easily. Freedom of speech is freedom from government suppression of that speech - it's quite clear in the constitution. Freedom of speech doesn't mean I or anyone else has to give you a platform to speak from.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  And antitrust laws are designed precisely to prevent corporations from monopolizing and abusing market position. Freedom of speech means I have the right to hear from people I choose to assemble with. Monopolies dominating the market for speech and then dictating the terms of speech is an antitrust situation. Not least of which because by the same mechanisms they can use to silence political opponents they can use to silence and squeeze out competition or mentions of competitors. This isn't crazy or unprecedented. We don't give unlimited contractual rights to landlords. You'd end up with a virtual serfdom otherwise. So we grant tenant rights exclusive of any contractual terms. Past time to do the same for social media participants.

ctrlp 6y ago

Would you be ok with businesses refusing to serve accused/convicted criminals? How about illegal immigrants? If the standard is law-breaking does it meet the definition of non-discriminatory?

gentleman11 6y ago
Do people really deserve an entire lifetime of exclusion even after doing their time? Even the Catholic Church in medieval times was more forgiving in many cases

recursivedoubts 6y ago

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

centimeter 6y ago

Do you support the right of businesses to refuse business to homosexuals, for example, on religious grounds? If you come back with “homosexuals are legally a protected class”, that’s evading the question and functionally equivalent to “no I don’t actually support freedom of association”. I ask because in my experience most people on HN only support freedom of association when it’s politically expedient for them.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

To mirror fishe's comment: > So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? redm made no such suggestion. They lamented what they perceive to be a problem. They offered no comment on remedies.

throwaway894345 6y ago

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? The parent clearly didn’t say any such thing. One can criticize a company without demanding simplistic, heavy-handed government intervention.

simion314 6y ago

>That's called a free market. Does for example a few giants that dominate social media ,mobile platforms, consoles,media, ISPs actually/really/100% meet the criteria of a free market ? I am no economist so my naive interpretation is that you need many smaller agents actually competing no 2-3 giants sharing a market and abusing their share by killing any small competitor that appears.

MR4D 6y ago

Twitch makes their streams public - no account needed, and no login needed to view them. It's arguable whether this is truly private - I'm not taking a position here, just that this is contested law [0]. Twitch would have a much stronger position if you had to be logged in to view the content. One analogy to this is the regulating power that the government has over broadcast TV vs cable TV - the restrictions tend to be quite different. [0] - https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650/1 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45650/1 - - - - - - EDIT: Added reference [0], which is from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service

ttt0 6y ago

Yes, and I don't care about free market. We're already doing this, we're forcing private companies to do business with people they don't want to do business with right now. I don't even care so much about social media, but banks and services that provide basic infrastructure to keep your own web services afloat shouldn't be allowed to discriminate people based on their politics.

smt88 6y ago
> discriminate people based on their politics It usually seems to be based on people's bigotry or sexual misconduct. I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban. Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be. If your political view is fascist, why should you have the same protections as someone who is born a minority? One thing can be changed and can be thought of as evil; the other can't.
- concordDance 6y ago
  > I haven't yet seen a politics-based ban. Wouldn't Trump himself count? > Regardless, politics is not a protected class, nor should it be. I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better. I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it.
  - smt88 6y ago
    > Wouldn't Trump himself count? No. He was tolerated despite his politics until he (arguably) incited a seditious attack on Congress and his own vice president. > I think it should be, because attempting to ban political views gets in the way of finding out which political views are better. The problem is that "political views" is not a defined term. What if I employ 50% Irish employees and have someone who says, "I hate the Irish and wish they'd never ruined this country"? It harms my business to have that person around. It is bad for my brand, it's bad for my other employees, and maybe I just don't want to hear those comments myself. Why should the government be able to force me to pay that person? Or, in the case of social networks, why should the government force my employees to publish that content, maintain it, and keep it backed up for millions of people to see? > I don't know what "fascist" is, but I can definitely imagine political views like "Communism is a good way to run the country" or "Capitalism results in the best outcomes for everyone" being banned and I really don't like it. These kinds of comments are protected by the First Amendment. You can publish them, and you can shout them on the street. But you can't force people to like you or employ you if you say them. These ideas won't die out because of social pressure. Also, thousands of websites (including Parler) already ban one or both of the statements you included. It's just that no one really cares because they're small sites. So at what point do you say that a company is too big to be allowed to decide what they publish? Is it 100M users? Or 500M? If MSNBC or Fox News had 2 billion viewers, should they also be forced to air videos produced by any group?

caturopath 6y ago

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? I don't think OP actually said this. But yes, like most people, I want this to happen sometimes. For example, I want a hotel to have to lodge Indian people, whether they actually want to or not. In other cases, I don't want this to be legally required, but still will complain if I see something that indicates a lack of character. Not everything I think is shitty should be illegal.

smt88 6y ago
It's incredible stupid to say that protecting an ethnicity (something that can't be changed) is tantamount of protecting ideology (something you are not born with and something that sometimes includes advocating for violence). Also, no one is illegalizing anything by banning it from Twitch.
- concordDance 6y ago
  Is being alterable really the important distinction here though? If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok?
  - smt88 6y ago
    > Is being alterable really the important distinction here though? Yes. This is literally the entire argument against racism: judging someone for physical traits that have no bearing on their character. > If I invented a machine that could change physical features between the various ethnicities of the world, would banning Indians from your hotel suddenly be ok? No, for many obvious reasons. 1. Looking Indian (or not) still has no bearing on that person's behavior or character. 2. It would cost money and be an identity change, so not everyone could/would do it. I can't believe anyone is seriously asking questions like this in 2021. Read a book.
    - concordDance 6y ago

ellyagg 6y ago

The "private" companies live in a heavily-scrutinized regulaory environment, where politians also routinely demand that they take action. These are no longer private companies anymore.

gentleman11 6y ago

Why does everyone talk about the government forcing companies to do things whenever somebody criticizes a company policy? A company can be criticized without the speaker implying that there needs to be legislation.

ben509 6y ago
Especially when such critique is how we're supposed to resolve most disputes in a free society.
Goronmon 6y ago
Why does everyone talk about the government forcing companies to do things whenever somebody criticizes a company policy? Because there are plenty of people claiming companies are being unconstitutional and/or that there should be laws that prevent companies from taking actions like banning people from platforms/etc.

SllX 6y ago

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? OP didn’t make that argument, and I’m not going to make that argument. That said, with or without government coercion on the counter party, innocent until proven guilty is a fairly good standard to apply. It’s more important when it concerns the use of government force, but that doesn’t mean it is unimportant when dealing with private parties and it is fair to judge Twitch for not applying innocent until proven guilty as a standard when it comes to Twitch-streamers. It’s easy to get someone arrested, and it is easy for a cop to make an arrest. An arrest is not a presumption of guilt and shouldn’t be used as a signal of guilt.

SkyBelow 6y ago

>We aren't talking protected class here, we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means. These are discriminatory means, they just aren't ones we have universally decided are wrong to deny services based upon. What happens when we start denying services to those arrested regardless of conviction? Won't this have disparate impact on certain protected classes?

pgsimp 6y ago

People invest massive amounts of time to build a following and create content on those platforms. It seems reasonable to ask that it can't be taken away from them at a whim. However, in theory, they should have read the contract before entering it. If they accept those terms, perhaps they should have to live with it. An analogy would perhaps be a musician signing a contract with a record label? I think they expect some reciprocity, like if they owe three albums to the label, the label also owes them marketing for those albums.

rdiddly 6y ago

It seems to me excluding even convicted criminals, is discriminatory. Let's pretend we're talking about an "ordinary" crime like armed robbery, instead of one of the ones the news media like to obsess about (which would be terrorism, hate crimes, child porn, and mass shootings - and back in the day that list would've included the Mob). Once the ordinary armed robber has been convicted and served their sentence, they come out of prison and face enormous barriers and discrimination, and that's not exactly fair. It's not clear from the article what Twitch will do in those cases though; all they do is define a list of exotic "misconduct" activities, most of which are crimes (and by the way, ctrl-F "crim" yields zero results in the page). I don't see a link to the original announcement they're reporting on, and I have to admit that I don't actually care enough to go hunt it down from the horse's mouth, but that is usually better. Anyway on to the "free market." I have yet to see one in action. There is always meddling by unfairly-advantaged players and competition is never perfect. But more to the point, a free market is not magic or a god or even intelligent, and doesn't necessarily make good decisions on behalf of humans. It knows nothing of what's good or what's right. The one thing it does well is allocate finite or scarce resources. But humanity is not a resource, and even at their core task, markets make mistakes all the time.

indymike 6y ago

> we're talking private companies picking and choosing who to do business with via non-discriminatory means. The phone company can't cut you off because they don't like your behavior or who your associate with. Why should Twitch be able to? Twitch is a communication platform, too.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? Yes. > We aren't talking protected class here That's besides the point. There are many limitations on private companies picking and choosing who to do business with that apply beyond protected classes, including common carrier regulations[1], regulation of (some) private property as a public square[2], and requiring broadcasters to run political ads[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama [3]: https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2012/01/articles/why-broadcasters-have-to-air-political-attack-ads-even-if-they-dont-want-to/ https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2012/01/articles/why-broadc...

LudwigNagasena 6y ago

> We aren't talking protected class here We do. All the people should be protected. That was the point of the French Revolution, no special rights to anyone, everyone is equal under the law.

nitwit005 6y ago

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? We do have a set of reasons you can't refuse service to people for (race, religion, etc), and if you get classified as a utility you generally have to serve everyone, so it's not exactly an exotic idea. Some of these services are entering a more ambiguous state. Twitter and Facebook have official government communications flowing through them. Banning people may eventually have more serious consequences closer to the "having your water cut off" situation.

smt88 6y ago
> Banning people may eventually have more serious consequences closer to the "having your water cut off" situation. This can be resolved by improving interop and competition among social media, not by forcing moderation decisions on private companies.

mdoms 6y ago

Where did GP say anything about the government?

commandlinefan 6y ago

> So you want the government to force Not OP, but I don't want the government to force private companies to do anything - I want everybody to wake up and stand up against corporate censorship and abandoned Twitch en masse in protest. That's probably as likely as government enforcement, but a man can dream.

AbrahamParangi 6y ago

You said it yourself though, the market isn't completely free, and this is widely believed to be a good thing. You cannot discriminate against me because you don't like where I come from. You cannot discriminate against me because of my race. Some people believe these protections should generally be extended to beliefs or political tribes or other forms of identification.

scarmig 6y ago

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? How deep does your commitment to private corporate power go? For instance, suppose Comcast decided it doesn't want to provide cable or internet service to a particular cancellee. Does this bother you, or no? Does it matter if it's a monopoly setting? If it does, suppose we're in a duopoly market, and both companies refuse service to the cancellee. Does this worry you?

Thorentis 6y ago

Every decision is discriminatory. The "protected classes" we have chosen are arbitrary selections based on our societies current opinions about minorities. Every time a business chooses to not do business with somebody, they have discriminated against them for a particular reason. Not enough qualifications, not enough money, didn't like their personality, didn't get a good vibe, didn't like their attitude. Whatever. You can find multiple other people to fit into those same categories.

mpalczewski 6y ago

> So you want the government to force private companies to continue doing business with someone they no longer wish to provide services to? I didn't see him mention the government at all. Just because you think something is wrong to do, doesn't automatically mean the government has to get involved.

john_moscow 6y ago

I want the government to force private companies to charge the end users for their services, and to start enforcing anti-monopoly laws. This will very quickly introduce competition to the market and will align the corporate behavior with the interests of the users.