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by sdwa
1988 days ago
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I understand and broadly sympathise with the sort of ~absolute freedom of speech outlined in the US constitution, but I am completely baffled by this recent push seen here on Hacker News and elsewhere that this freedom should be extended to in effect compel others to publish your speech. This is not in the US constitution, and is in fact completely unconstitutional (1st amendment protects against compelled speech). This almost seems like a push for speech without consequences, that no matter what you say everyone should be forced to provide you with services and support. This would be both unprecedented and also extremely unhealthy for society. It wouldn't even be conservative ideology, as at no point in US history has anything like this been the law, legalising compelled speech would be truly radical and unconservative politics. |
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I am also not advocating for compelled speech.
Very soon, it will be impossible to buy webscale hosting from anywhere but a half-dozen providers. Should those providers be the sole and exclusive authority of what is or is not allowed on the web?
Airlines aren't permitted the authority to decide who flies and who doesn't. Why is AWS?
This isn't a constitutional issue, or even an American one. It's one about the place that censorship has in our civilization.
A tiny number of infrastructure providers should not have a unilateral ability to veto unpopular speech, especially considering, as we just witnessed, the definition of unpopular can change on a dime with the wind.
Today, it's Parler and Stormfront. What will become the target of censorship in five years? Ten?
Increasingly services are linked to our identities, and bans are lifetime. Will creating new accounts after political wind direction changes endanger one's data storage, email, contact lists, or hosting/publishing ability one day? How many individual people or organizations are really provider-independent and could survive losing all of their data at a host because they once belonged to the wrong faction?
Don't underestimate this risk.