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by ajamesm 3229 days ago
No, that doesn't constitute implicit moral approval. We all understand that platforms and providers can't police each individual user. That's a concern about logistics, not moral consistency.

That said -- there are products that Shopify does (and would) kick a user for selling. Shopify isn't neutral, in fact, they're saying Breitbart is acceptable.
1 comments
shkkmo 3229 days ago
Do you not see the inherent difference between prohibiting the sale of whole classes of goods and services, and prohibiting certain types of political speech by your users?
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throwawayjava 3229 days ago
> Do you not see the inherent difference...

No. Things that get banned almost always have significant political content.

Homosexual content (not necc. porn) comes to mind as a perfect example of "whole classes of goods and services" that are also very much political speech. "obscene speech" (see The Howl trial) is another famous example of an attempt to re-brand "political speech" as an apolitical "whole class of goods and services".

Taking some class of controversial goods and services and branding it as "not political" is just begging the question. It's saying "this thing is so obviously bad that discussion of its acceptability is beyond the scope of our current politics." IMO saying something is "beyond politics" is the ultimate political judgement.

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shkkmo 3229 days ago
> No. Things that get banned almost always have significant political content.

If you look at list of banned goods and services, most of them are not politically related, but are related to liability, abuse potential and (probably) payment processor restrictions.

I'm not saying that banning whole classes of goods doesn't have an impact on free speech.

Yet there is still a fundamental difference between having a list of prohibited goods / services and removing a member selling allowed goods and services because you don't like their politics.

The first one is banning the sale of pornographic products on your platform, the second is banning the sale of (otherwise permissible) t-shirts by pornography companies on your platform.

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