[xoa]

>Shouldn’t there be an outcry against the suppression of free speech?

Only if someone was one of the many people who don't understand what Free Speech is or incorrectly think of rights only in terms of themselves and people they like, not for those who they don't. In this case, Amazon is exercising their own Free Speech rights. Free speech necessarily (and as a matter of law) means the freedom to not speak and to not associate with other people. If I want to lend my support to a specific candidate with a sign in my field, I necessarily must have the right to refuse signs by everyone else. If the government puts a gun to my head and forces me to let every single candidate put a sign in my field, then the effect is no special endorsement for anyone and a flagrant violation of my free speech rights.

Someone denying another person the use of their own private property because of disapproval over their behavior doesn't generally mean any free speech issues, quite the contrary. As always there are certainly very rare edge cases, but none of them apply to a situation like this. Amazon refusing business to someone due to their race or gender or the like would be a problem, but "spies working with authoritarians" is not a Protected Class.

>What jurisdiction’s laws were broken by this company?

Why would that matter? Amazon isn't the government. They aren't threatening with force/arresting/jailing/killing the NSO Group, just refusing to continue their business relationship. So they aren't restricted to caring about only illegal behavior. In fact a core part of the whole point of free speech is to move consequences into the realms of social and economic, rather then force, not to eliminate all consequences entirely. There are a few limited legal instances they can't discriminate over. Otherwise they can deal with whomever the hell they want.

[Quanttek]

This is not even a free speech problem in the first place. We are talking about actions. To draw up an analogy: If I own a gun store and I sell you a rifle and ammunition because you want to hunt deer and I learn that you started shooting at journalists instead, I can decide to stop selling (an act) you further goods because of your actions.

As pointed out elsewhere, this is a business relationship.

In any case, the grave human rights violations that are the result of the use of Pegasus - including loss of life and liberty - weigh much more than an abstract notion of a corporation's freedom to act and impose their will on other corporations.

[Spooky23]

I don't understand the line where lots of people are seemingly outraged about people using online platforms to disseminate propaganda and extremist materials. (ie. most recently Google Drive)

NSO group seems to be a not-so-nice company. But why does what they do justify blackballing, while similar companies (say BlueCoat or any of a dozen companies that provide solutions to hack on behalf of the police) are ok?

[xoa]

>I don't understand the line where lots of people

You're going to have to be more specific than a handwave-y "lots of people" to have good online discussions. You also need to be specific in your terminology. You need to actually address the specific people and their arguments, or else do a much better job of phrasing an inquiry into theoretical tradeoffs. Ie., from your other reply:

>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?

So I do in fact think Google and Facebook at 100% "justified" to shut them down, and I think Amazon is too. I do have lines where I think morally, if not legally, a service can start to drift into quasi-governmental (or perhaps should be that way) territory. An example for me would be core physical infrastructure companies, not just at Tier 3 but also at Tiers 2 and 1. I think those should operate as common carriers. But I don't think social media fits. Not using it at all (as I don't) may have "costs" in terms of social opportunities but alternatives are trivial.

So for me there isn't any dissonance here, I generally support "Big Tech" (and everyone down the ladder) associating as they see fit when it comes to ongoing online service relationships within existing jurisprudence. The initial legal tweaks I'd like would be aimed at things like expanding user power in a purely additive way (like giving people the option to access root hardware/software key stores), or internalizing costs some companies are shifting onto the public, rather then beating down what some people don't like.

Hacker News (and every other forum) aren't hive mind and it's silly and tiresome to have them treated that way. What you did in your first post here was essentially throw up a big silly strawman.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "In this case, Amazon is exercising their own Free Speech rights."

Corporations aren't humans; they don't have free speech rights.

[xoa]

>Corporations aren't humans; they don't have free speech rights.

As a matter of law in the United States you are objectively wrong. This has been settled in a series of SCOTUS decisions starting with Buckley v. Valeo (1976). Corporations are legal persons, and further the individual humans that make them up do not somehow lose the free speech rights just because they decide to take collective action.

And in turn: as a matter of morality, common sense and the point of free speech you're also wrong. It's important that people be able to speak to power, and a core part of that for humanity is socializing, being able to form groups to support each other and pool ideas, skills and resources to have a greater effect than what any individual alone could accomplish. Seriously, you say "corporations don't have free speech rights"? Exactly what form of combined effort do you imagine most, say, NEWSPAPERS are organized under? So what, you think individuals should be able to investigate something all by themselves, but the government should be free to put the boot down on newspapers because they're corporations? You think that jives with free speech?

Oh maybe you only meant "the bad ones". That makes it very easy, but no reason to limit it to corps in this case, just stop "the bad humans" too and everything is great. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan, since everyone agrees who "the bad ones" are.....

[hesk]

> It's important that people be able to speak to power, and a core part of that for humanity is socializing, being able to form groups to support each other and pool ideas, skills and resources to have a greater effect than what any individual alone could accomplish. Seriously, you say "corporations don't have free speech rights"?

The people in many corporations in fact lose their free speech rights and have to follow the company line. Granted, they agreed to that in their employment contract but this is in many cases a coercive relationship.

> Exactly what form of combined effort do you imagine most, say, NEWSPAPERS are organized under? So what, you think individuals should be able to investigate something all by themselves, but the government should be free to put the boot down on newspapers because they're corporations?

Well, the individual reporters could still be free to exercise their free speech rights without conferring any right on the newspaper itself.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "As a matter of law in the United States you are objectively wrong."

You are quite correct, of course. I meant to write "shouldn't" instead of "don't".

> "So what, you think individuals should be able to investigate something all by themselves, but the government should be free to put the boot down on newspapers because they're corporations?"

I'll point out that there's an entirely separate and intentional carve-out for freedom of the press that is distinct from freedom of speech, so that's not a good justification for corporations to get freedom of speech as a right directly.

[xoa]

:\

>I'll point out that there's an entirely separate and intentional carve-out for freedom of the press that is distinct from freedom of speech

Not really as a matter of law we're talking about here. "The press" isn't some special legal entity, there's no licensing for it or anything. Absolutely critical press victories like NYT v. Sullivan were based on freedom of speech protections.

But whatever, so you don't want Mozilla Corporation to be able to advocate for Firefox if the government doesn't want it to because Google managed to lobby successfully? No company can come out in favor gay rights or Pride Day if the government doesn't want them to? You're fine with with the government being able to punish companies for arguing against encryption backdoors? And what about the individuals at those companies, if the CEO speaks about those things is that the company speaking and punishable or is it ok if he says "this is my opinion" first every time? What about employees?

Like, we can go through a million examples here if you want but I don't think it's that hard to see how maybe government might abuse that just a little bit.

[perl4ever]

>"The press" isn't some special legal entity, there's no licensing for it or anything

This is one of those things that's plausible and common enough to read on the internet that it makes me worry about alternate universes intersecting.

If you type "credentialed members of the media" into Google, do you see any results, or is it just me?

Another key phrase I find is "reporter's privilege" relating to state laws to shield the press, which, as you might imagine, requires defining what a reporter is.

"Some privilege schemes are narrow and apply only to full-time employees of professional news outlets, while others are broad and extend to bloggers, filmmakers, freelancers, book authors, and student journalists. In other words, some are inclusive and others are exclusive."

https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/journalists_privil...

[nova22033]

they absolutely do have free speech rights in the United States. Also, if NSO was hosting malware on AWS resources, it's almost certainly against their terms of service..

[NmAmDa]

In this discussion context. NSO is a company which does not have a freedom of speech right. It has a business relationship with Amazon.

[maccolgan]

To me this looks exceedingly similar to Marsh vs. Alabama but in a virtual world