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> It should be impossible to remove someone from banking, PayPal, Shopify, social media, etc. One of the freedoms enshrined by the first amendment is the right

> It should be impossible to remove someone from banking, PayPal, Shopify, social media, etc. One of the freedoms enshrined by the first amendment is the right to choose who you associate with. This also applies to businesses. It’s absurd to suggest that every company should be forced to do business with every person. As a freelancer I can choose my clients. I would hate to live in a world where a bad client could force me to continue to work with them unless they broke the law.

scotty79 2y ago
> This also applies to businesses. That's a very bad idea. Because then you have to create a myriad of laws that forbids discrimination on ever growing number of things. It turns ensuring everybody's basic economic freedom into a game of lagging whack-a-mole. If a business advertises a product or a service to the public with a price they shouldn't be allowed to refuse the product or a service to anybody willing to pay the price.
foolswisdom 2y ago
That's true until you become big enough that common carrier regulations apply to you. Besides, how does the first amendment enshrine that?
- foolswisdom 2y ago
  To frame it differently, if you want people and businesses to do whatever they want, you need to make sure that the businesses they depend don't become platforms without meaningful competition. But of course the dream of every company is to be so big that they essentially own the market / space.
  - linksnapzz 2y ago
    Quite literally the Rockefeller/Buffett/Gates playbook. "Competition is a sin!"
- semiquaver 2y ago
  > how does the first amendment enshrine [the right of association] Courts have interpreted “assembly” to include this right. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALDE_00013139/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALD...
echelon 2y ago
> This also applies to businesses. It’s absurd to suggest that every company should be forced to do business with every person. That's fine when we're talking about mom-and-pop baptist bakers that don't want to bake your gay wedding cake, or little mastodon instances that don't want Nazis coming in. (An example from both the social left and social right to choose whom they associate with - but that's not what we're debating.) But when you're dealing with 100M MAUs or daily transaction volumes in the billions, you're no longer a person - you're infrastructure. A public square. And moreover these giant companies are few and they all move in lockstep with one another, which means you have no avenue to turn to when you get removed.
- undersuit 2y ago
  Nah, even the wedding cake was an issue. The city of Lakewood set aside that area of the market for commercial business. The citizens of Lakewood financially support the government. The government grants them access and ensures that the cakes are safe for everyone to eat not just straight people. Make all the cakes you want for a limited clientele out of your house.
Miraste 2y ago
There is a qualitative difference between you as a freelancer, and a company like Visa that controls all consumer commerce in America. When the First Amendment was written, the idea of Visa was impossible. Protections from entities like that could be enshrined into law without harming free speech.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  > When the First Amendment was written, the idea of Visa was impossible. [Citation Needed]. Straight up, a singular company having control over something was well established at the time of the First Amendment. 1. "Monopoly" is a greek word which was used to describe a company that had a monopoly in Greece. This long pre-dates the first amendment. 2. Kings routinely gave out exclusivity of a product to a company, this is the whole backstory on the Tea Act [1]. 3. Being denied access to something isn't a new concept. They could've written the first 10 amendments to address private citizens and choose not to. It's not like private citizens didn't try to surpress speech. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act
  - Miraste 2y ago
    A single company controlling all consumer transactions was unthinkable and technologically impossible in 1789, yes. The US didn't even have standardized currency at the time. Control of tea is not analogous.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      A single company controlled countries _plural_ in those days. Times are not new. Technology is new. Every problem is old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
  - psadauskas 2y ago
    Corporations didn't exist at the time of the revolution, and the revolution was as much an overthrow of corporations like the Massachusetts Bay Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the British East India Company as it was the British Empire. The few hundred corporations that existed by 1800 were chartered by individual states, couldn't do business outside that state, weren't allowed to participate in the political process, and couldn't buy stock in other corporations. During and after the civil war is when "modern" corporations started to show. They made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges and even presidents. They lobbied and bribed their way to more relaxed laws that allowed them to accrue even more money and political power, leading to the first Gilded Age. Then in 1886, the Supreme Court decided that Corporations are People, too[1], and it went downhill from there (except for a brief blip in the 1930s). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern....
jslanbd 2y ago
Like the guy who was forced to bake a cake?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  The one that won their case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
throwway120385 2y ago
This was exactly what a large and vocal contingent was arguing for when they were complaining about Twitter bans and stuff. It cuts both ways though. Big companies cause the same problems big governments do.
gedpeck 2y ago
This also applies to businesses. I’m free to refuse to do business with a company for racial reasons but a company is not feee to refuse to do business with me due to my race. EDIT: I’m pointing out one of the ways that “free association” for corporations is different than for people.
trhway 2y ago
>the right to choose who you associate with how can the customer have a right to choose when there is only one option due to [de-facto] monopoly? Or say there are only 2 options and each has deplatformed the customer/user. How the right to choose would work for that customer/user? Monopoly's right to choose their customers destroys the last remnants of the customers' right to choose (which gets already severly damaged when the monopoly forms).
linksnapzz 2y ago
Quite right. <s> Of course, I'd like to only rent hotel rooms to the sort of people that I'd like to have as my clients & guests. However, this has been illegal for me to do since 1965. </s>
ilovetux 2y ago
This is the argument against allowing private ownership of utilities. Utilities lend themselves to monopoly well. The economy of scale allows one company to efficiently become the only source of that utility for an region. Meanwhile, the customers of the utility are subject to the dark side of monopoly. Unjustified rate increases or cutting off service for any reason whatsoever. It makes no sense. This setup only works well for Power companies, airlines, water, waste, etc. when there are robust regulation around them. Could you imagine if the power company could cut you off because of your political leanings? or the water company? It is no different for monopolies on the internet.
- pjlegato 2y ago
  Private utilities are very common. There are many listed on the stock exchange. Everything they do is heavily regulated. They cannot do things like cut off service for any reason whatsoever, or raise rates without justification.
jnwatson 2y ago
Do you think the electric company should be able to shut off your electricity if you say something they don't like? The problem is that, due to lack of anti-trust enforcement, we have quasi-utility companies that run commerce. If they have the market position of a utility, they need to be regulated as such.
- semiquaver 2y ago
  Utility companies and common carriers have special obligations in exchange for their government granted or natural monopolies. Certain large internet companies might eventually be considered utilities or common carriers, but I think that this would be a bad thing because it would tend to favor monopolization. At any rate, no one has or should have a state-enforced right to an account on a particular social media site. It’s silly how fast people jump to comparing Facebook to the electric company.
tomohawk 2y ago
During the civil rights movement, racist businesses and other associations hid behind this excuse. Some restaurants famously refused to serve people who were black, Italian, or Jewish. But it is now pretty much settled law that people cannot weaponize their freedom of association to discriminate on these grounds. If you offer a service, you have to provide the service to the classes of people that you could be reasonably expected to serve.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  The "settled law" is very specific to nine characteristics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States You can have a "no brunettes" or "no people named Chris" rule and be entirely fine.
dfxm12 2y ago
TikTok is one thing, but it's hard for me to understand how anyone can justify a company like shopify unilaterally shutting down someone's existing store "unless they're actively breaking federal law. And even then, there should be a legal process in place to reclaim your [property]." The article mentions disabled company accounts. I'm sure they froze some funds too, which Harr will probably never get back. This is the problem. Capital has all the power & we have no (legal) recourse. Imagine you get to decide to stop working for a bad client, on whatever terms you want, without warning, and you still keep payment. ETA: It looks like the shopify account was restored.
undersuit 2y ago
As a freelancer you are not a government backed legal entity. Companies shouldn't have as much freedom as you do.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Banks are obligated by a bunch of laws to do business with people they might not want to do business with. They agree on this in exchange of getting FDIC insurance for the "money" in the accounts of their customers.
Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
Just because its legal doesn't make it right. Mega-companies, by virtue of their immense power, should - actually I'll upgrade that to 'must' - have safeguards to prevent them from abusing that power on regular people. If those laws don't currently exist, they should be. Also, the whole idea that companies are 'people' and therefore are protected under these constitutional rights is a bullshit concept. It was never the intent of the founders, it was act of corruption of the legal system.

scotty79 2y ago

> This also applies to businesses. That's a very bad idea. Because then you have to create a myriad of laws that forbids discrimination on ever growing number of things. It turns ensuring everybody's basic economic freedom into a game of lagging whack-a-mole. If a business advertises a product or a service to the public with a price they shouldn't be allowed to refuse the product or a service to anybody willing to pay the price.

foolswisdom 2y ago

That's true until you become big enough that common carrier regulations apply to you. Besides, how does the first amendment enshrine that?

foolswisdom 2y ago
To frame it differently, if you want people and businesses to do whatever they want, you need to make sure that the businesses they depend don't become platforms without meaningful competition. But of course the dream of every company is to be so big that they essentially own the market / space.
- linksnapzz 2y ago
  Quite literally the Rockefeller/Buffett/Gates playbook. "Competition is a sin!"
semiquaver 2y ago
> how does the first amendment enshrine [the right of association] Courts have interpreted “assembly” to include this right. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALDE_00013139/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALD...

echelon 2y ago

> This also applies to businesses. It’s absurd to suggest that every company should be forced to do business with every person. That's fine when we're talking about mom-and-pop baptist bakers that don't want to bake your gay wedding cake, or little mastodon instances that don't want Nazis coming in. (An example from both the social left and social right to choose whom they associate with - but that's not what we're debating.) But when you're dealing with 100M MAUs or daily transaction volumes in the billions, you're no longer a person - you're infrastructure. A public square. And moreover these giant companies are few and they all move in lockstep with one another, which means you have no avenue to turn to when you get removed.

undersuit 2y ago
Nah, even the wedding cake was an issue. The city of Lakewood set aside that area of the market for commercial business. The citizens of Lakewood financially support the government. The government grants them access and ensures that the cakes are safe for everyone to eat not just straight people. Make all the cakes you want for a limited clientele out of your house.

Miraste 2y ago

There is a qualitative difference between you as a freelancer, and a company like Visa that controls all consumer commerce in America. When the First Amendment was written, the idea of Visa was impossible. Protections from entities like that could be enshrined into law without harming free speech.

lesuorac 2y ago
> When the First Amendment was written, the idea of Visa was impossible. [Citation Needed]. Straight up, a singular company having control over something was well established at the time of the First Amendment. 1. "Monopoly" is a greek word which was used to describe a company that had a monopoly in Greece. This long pre-dates the first amendment. 2. Kings routinely gave out exclusivity of a product to a company, this is the whole backstory on the Tea Act [1]. 3. Being denied access to something isn't a new concept. They could've written the first 10 amendments to address private citizens and choose not to. It's not like private citizens didn't try to surpress speech. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act
- Miraste 2y ago
  A single company controlling all consumer transactions was unthinkable and technologically impossible in 1789, yes. The US didn't even have standardized currency at the time. Control of tea is not analogous.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    A single company controlled countries _plural_ in those days. Times are not new. Technology is new. Every problem is old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
- psadauskas 2y ago
  Corporations didn't exist at the time of the revolution, and the revolution was as much an overthrow of corporations like the Massachusetts Bay Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the British East India Company as it was the British Empire. The few hundred corporations that existed by 1800 were chartered by individual states, couldn't do business outside that state, weren't allowed to participate in the political process, and couldn't buy stock in other corporations. During and after the civil war is when "modern" corporations started to show. They made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges and even presidents. They lobbied and bribed their way to more relaxed laws that allowed them to accrue even more money and political power, leading to the first Gilded Age. Then in 1886, the Supreme Court decided that Corporations are People, too[1], and it went downhill from there (except for a brief blip in the 1930s). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern....

jslanbd 2y ago

Like the guy who was forced to bake a cake?

ceejayoz 2y ago
The one that won their case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

throwway120385 2y ago

This was exactly what a large and vocal contingent was arguing for when they were complaining about Twitter bans and stuff. It cuts both ways though. Big companies cause the same problems big governments do.

gedpeck 2y ago

This also applies to businesses. I’m free to refuse to do business with a company for racial reasons but a company is not feee to refuse to do business with me due to my race. EDIT: I’m pointing out one of the ways that “free association” for corporations is different than for people.

trhway 2y ago

>the right to choose who you associate with how can the customer have a right to choose when there is only one option due to [de-facto] monopoly? Or say there are only 2 options and each has deplatformed the customer/user. How the right to choose would work for that customer/user? Monopoly's right to choose their customers destroys the last remnants of the customers' right to choose (which gets already severly damaged when the monopoly forms).

linksnapzz 2y ago

Quite right. <s> Of course, I'd like to only rent hotel rooms to the sort of people that I'd like to have as my clients & guests. However, this has been illegal for me to do since 1965. </s>

ilovetux 2y ago

This is the argument against allowing private ownership of utilities. Utilities lend themselves to monopoly well. The economy of scale allows one company to efficiently become the only source of that utility for an region. Meanwhile, the customers of the utility are subject to the dark side of monopoly. Unjustified rate increases or cutting off service for any reason whatsoever. It makes no sense. This setup only works well for Power companies, airlines, water, waste, etc. when there are robust regulation around them. Could you imagine if the power company could cut you off because of your political leanings? or the water company? It is no different for monopolies on the internet.

pjlegato 2y ago
Private utilities are very common. There are many listed on the stock exchange. Everything they do is heavily regulated. They cannot do things like cut off service for any reason whatsoever, or raise rates without justification.

jnwatson 2y ago

Do you think the electric company should be able to shut off your electricity if you say something they don't like? The problem is that, due to lack of anti-trust enforcement, we have quasi-utility companies that run commerce. If they have the market position of a utility, they need to be regulated as such.

semiquaver 2y ago
Utility companies and common carriers have special obligations in exchange for their government granted or natural monopolies. Certain large internet companies might eventually be considered utilities or common carriers, but I think that this would be a bad thing because it would tend to favor monopolization. At any rate, no one has or should have a state-enforced right to an account on a particular social media site. It’s silly how fast people jump to comparing Facebook to the electric company.

tomohawk 2y ago

During the civil rights movement, racist businesses and other associations hid behind this excuse. Some restaurants famously refused to serve people who were black, Italian, or Jewish. But it is now pretty much settled law that people cannot weaponize their freedom of association to discriminate on these grounds. If you offer a service, you have to provide the service to the classes of people that you could be reasonably expected to serve.

ceejayoz 2y ago
The "settled law" is very specific to nine characteristics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States You can have a "no brunettes" or "no people named Chris" rule and be entirely fine.

dfxm12 2y ago

TikTok is one thing, but it's hard for me to understand how anyone can justify a company like shopify unilaterally shutting down someone's existing store "unless they're actively breaking federal law. And even then, there should be a legal process in place to reclaim your [property]." The article mentions disabled company accounts. I'm sure they froze some funds too, which Harr will probably never get back. This is the problem. Capital has all the power & we have no (legal) recourse. Imagine you get to decide to stop working for a bad client, on whatever terms you want, without warning, and you still keep payment. ETA: It looks like the shopify account was restored.

undersuit 2y ago

As a freelancer you are not a government backed legal entity. Companies shouldn't have as much freedom as you do.

carlosjobim 2y ago

Banks are obligated by a bunch of laws to do business with people they might not want to do business with. They agree on this in exchange of getting FDIC insurance for the "money" in the accounts of their customers.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago

Just because its legal doesn't make it right. Mega-companies, by virtue of their immense power, should - actually I'll upgrade that to 'must' - have safeguards to prevent them from abusing that power on regular people. If those laws don't currently exist, they should be. Also, the whole idea that companies are 'people' and therefore are protected under these constitutional rights is a bullshit concept. It was never the intent of the founders, it was act of corruption of the legal system.