Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by klaudius 1988 days ago
You could look at countries as being part of a market. If one country decides to ban your speech, you just move to another one, right? But that's not how it works because switching countries is very difficult. We demand free speech from a government even if we theoretically have the option to move.

If you have a colluding oligopoly in something crucial to do business such as payments or communication, where it's difficult to switch due to network effects, being banned by them is like being banned by government.

1 comments

Switching online payment providers isn't like moving to a new country, even a little bit.
Payment networks are where the network effects and scale are. Visa and Mastercard have been known to ban people for political reasons.

Payment providers are just a front end for their networks, so it's easy to switch providers like Stripe, but you can still be banned by underlying network like Mastercard and your business will suffer.

Then perhaps there's a market opportunity for a credit card and online payment company that caters to white supremacists?
::Announcer Voice:: "Banned from Master Card? Try Master Racecard. Disclaimer: proof of aryan ancestry required; octoroons need not apply.
I would honestly and sincerely rather do a year in prison then get permabanned by all of big tech.
If case you havent noticed once VISA bans you nobody wants to do business with you anymore.