2 ms·

Why do you think public vs private spaces should get different treatment here? Is the government a special, extraordinary group of people?

• ineedasername 5y ago
  >Is the government a special, extraordinary group of people? The people that work there? No. As an organization? Absolutely: In any democracy it is essentially an organization that is owned by everyone. It cannot (well, should not) make laws that are exclusionary to anyone because everyone owns a piece of it, and everyone contributes in some small way to making the rules. With private property/companies the group of owners is much smaller, but once again they make the rules. If owners of private property don't get to make their own rules (within the constraints of the law) then it's really now private property. If I owned a large building and turned it into a conference center and invited people to come discuss things then it seems obvious that I should have the right to decide to kick someone out if they are making trouble, turning meetings into shouting matches, and generally making it harder for my building to fill the purpose I want it to fill. This seems to map pretty cleanly onto internet forums owned, operated, and paid for by a private group. They're paying for things, they have their own goals for doing so, and people that disrupt those goals have no right to make the owners waste their resources on something being ruined by disruptions under the odd claim that anyone from the public has the privilege of doing whatever they want there. Preventing a private organization from removing disruptions to its purpose is inimicable to the idea of private property itself.