undefined | Better HN

0 pointsxoa4y ago0 comments

>Sure, and it "seems like" the extremist propaganda that Big Tech shut down was violating all sorts of other laws like incitement.

Most of it actually wasn't FWIW, hateful extremist content is generally perfectly legal free speech. "Incitement" gets used way, way too often on the internet, almost nothing that gets posted online is legal incitement. But neither "Big Tech" (such a dumb term) nor Hacker News nor a random forum on birds needs any violation of law or anything else to moderate what gets posted on their sites. It doesn't have to be "negative" or whatever at all even. There is nothing illegal or objectionable about someone who likes discussing trains for example. But if you post lots just about trains on a birder forum they may delete all your posts and ask you to stop because they want to focus on birds, and if you continue to do so they can delete everything and ban you. Why would there be anything wrong with that?

Private society looking at extremist content and saying "we're not going to shoot you over it but we do strongly object and we're going to socially ostracize you and deny you business and our support in any way we can" is free speech working as intended.

>Is "seems like" enough of a reason now for private companies to choose not to contract with other private companies?

Uh, yeah? People can refuse to do business with each other for nearly any reason at all, and definitely for anything other people merely say or do (at least, within the bounds defined by any existing contracts, but Amazon has covered its bases pretty well there to put it mildly).

0 comments

ThrowawayR24y ago

> "Private society looking at extremist content and saying "we're not going to shoot you over it but we do strongly object and we're going to socially ostracize you and deny you business and our support in any way we can" is free speech working as intended."

Given that such logic was once used to attempt to deny service to and harass PoCs, religious, LGBTQ and other formerly "undesirable" classes, society clearly doesn't buy that logic and made them into protected classes and required businesses to serve them on an equal footing. It's not a valid argument unless you're arguing to roll back protected classes too, which I hope you're not.

(Note that I'm not defending NSO or Amazon here. I concur with others that NSO isn't engaging in speech, so while there may be a contract law issue between them and Amazon, there is no freedom of speech issue here.)

xoaOP4y ago

>Given that such logic was once used to attempt to deny service to and harass PoCs, religious, LGBTQ and other formerly "undesirable" classes, society clearly doesn't buy that logic and made them into protected classes and required businesses to serve them on an equal footing.

No, that was not the logic, businesses were not discriminating based purely on speech and choices of content. That's the point. I mentioned Protected Classes, but those are about entire classes of people and things that are innate to their personhood. Skin color and sex/gender being obvious ones, but disabilities either at birth or acquired later in life still are innate aspects. We've decided that public businesses as part of the privileges they have may not discriminate and rightly so.

But none of that has anything to do with actions and expression, and indeed a core part of the point is that all protected classes are in no way "inferior" or less capable of reason, argumentation, responsibility, social activities and so on! No one is born with some political alignment, as humans we all have to develop that ourselves.

>* It's not a valid argument unless you're arguing to roll back protected classes too*

No, because the worldview you've come to about given issues, morals and so on have nothing to do with protected classes.

ThrowawayR24y ago

> "innate to their personhood"

Religion is not innate, nationality is not innate (cf. the discriminatory "Help Wanted. No Irish Need Apply" signs of the 19th century), and while sexual preference may be innate, expression of it can be consciously restrained as demonstrated by all those people who suffered from being "being in the closet". Does not being innate mean these protected classes should not exist? Clearly not, so appealing to innateness does not rescue your argument.

geofft4y ago

To be clear, I'm personally all in favor of Amazon choosing who they want or don't want to contract to. But the comment I was replying to was saying it's only okay (as in, good for society, I guess) for Amazon to kick off NSO because Amazon thought they were violating the law. I agree most extremist content is legal free speech, but not all of it is, which should be enough reason, by that rule, to kick off extremist content.

I'm simply agreeing with the comment at the top of the thread - all the outcry we usually hear about private companies being too powerful should apply here too. (My opinion is there should be no outcry about either.)

Spooky234y ago

Thank you… you made the point better than I.

Spooky234y ago

> Most of it actually wasn't FWIW, hateful extremist content is generally perfectly legal free speech. "Incitement" gets used way, way too often on the internet, almost nothing that gets posted online is legal incitement. But neither "Big Tech" (such a dumb term) nor Hacker News nor a random forum on birds needs any violation of law or anything else to moderate what gets posted on their sites. It doesn't have to be "negative" or whatever at all even. There is nothing illegal or objectionable about someone who likes discussing trains for example. But if you post lots just about trains on a birder forum they may delete all your posts and ask you to stop because they want to focus on birds, and if you continue to do so they can delete everything and ban you. Why would there be anything wrong with that?

I don't think anything is wrong with that.

What I don't understand is why AWS is justified to shut them down; but Google or Facebook is not justified in preventing their platforms from being propaganda distribution channels?

Specifically here on HN, people were outraged about Google's actions, but at the time I posted my original comment, nobody seemed to be upset about AWS's actions against NSO, at all.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

ThrowawayR24y ago

xoaOP4y ago

>* It's not a valid argument unless you're arguing to roll back protected classes too*

No, because the worldview you've come to about given issues, morals and so on have nothing to do with protected classes.

ThrowawayR24y ago

> "innate to their personhood"

geofft4y ago

Spooky234y ago

Thank you… you made the point better than I.

Spooky234y ago

I don't think anything is wrong with that.

What I don't understand is why AWS is justified to shut them down; but Google or Facebook is not justified in preventing their platforms from being propaganda distribution channels?

Specifically here on HN, people were outraged about Google's actions, but at the time I posted my original comment, nobody seemed to be upset about AWS's actions against NSO, at all.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse