[4werfaw34r]

IMHO

> I tried sharing on facebook but it got banned

You still have free speech.

> So I hosted it on my own website but then Cloudflare and AWS dropped me

You still have free speech

> So then I hosted it on my own physical box in my house but then Comcast disconnected my service

Now you don't. Is that legal? If it is, we should consider regulating ISPs in the manner we do phone companies. Someone call Ajit pai.

[umvi]

I don't see why it wouldn't be legal, it's Comcast's infrastructure, right? If the public says "Hey Comcast, why are you letting extremists use your network to connect themselves to the world and transmit dangerous ideas?" I don't see why Comcast wouldn't be allowed to decide to cave under the pressure and disconnect me.

[livueta]

I think an interesting lens to view this issue through is that of Marsh vs Alabama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

Money quote:

> The State attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.

Another phrase I've heard recently is along the lines of "a company's ability to refuse to do business with you should be proportional to your ability to refuse to do business with them".

It's not too much of a stretch to liken some of the big platforms and service providers we have today to company towns. While, strictly speaking, one doesn't have to (live in a company town)|(subscribe to Comcast), for some large segments of the population who (live in economically disadvantaged regions where the only jobs are available via the Company)|(are forced to choose between dealing with Comcast and cutting themselves off from social and economic activity), that's not much of a choice in practice.

For the moment, I think that line of "inescapable enough to warrant restriction of property rights" falls to include infra providers (think cartel ISPs, some PAAS, DNS, maybe CloudFlare if you squint) but not platforms like YT/FB. That's probably down to my bias towards technical solutions over regulatory intervention - there's at least a reasonable hope of displacing YT/FB with decentralized platforms, but short of mesh radio you're SOL if your only ISP that offers >56k doesn't want you.

[mbesto]

> it's Comcast's infrastructure, right?

Which was subsidized, made scarce, and then sold to Comcast by the government. There's a reason people are calling for broadband providers to be considered common carriers, because the market isn't "free" (as in competitive).