[stale2002]

You have once again not contracted anything that I said. What I said was that we have laws that force businesses to do certain things, and very few people would say that these businesses are having their rights infringed on.

> So what does the proposed law then look like?

Well, what we could do, is take existing laws and extend them to social media companies. Such as the existing common carrier laws, or anti-discrimination laws.

> if I give away free lemonade, I'm under no obligations to give it away to any specific persons.

If you had a lemonade store, in a mall, and you were giving away free lemonade, but you refused to give away lemonade to black people, then you absolutely would get in trouble with the law.

Like c'mon. How did you not think of that immediately? I even referenced this in a previous comment.

> Facebook is obligated to host your content next to the "Facebook" logo? Does the logo have to be there?

Well, just take every single question that you asked, and apply them to if a store wanted to treat black people differently, and then you have your answer.

So whatever hypothetical you have, imagine if it was about a company being forced to follow certain laws, that prevent them from discriminating against black people.

And the answer to these hypothetical, is that if a company attempted to do these things to black people, then it would likely be disallowed.

And very few people would say that there is some large infringement on these companies rights in that situation.

[XorNot]

So again: if I have a comment section on my personal blog - can I remove abusive comments? Ban abusive users? Can HackerNews ban or downvote comments so they're not seen? Can TalkBack radio screen which callers it puts on the air?

You can write a law to do whatever you want, but the reason rights like freedom of association are enumerated is because things will go very, very wrong quickly when you undermine them. Freedom of speech is protection from government sanction for voicing your ideas, but freedom of association is protection of your being compelled to act due to the arbitrary desires of others.

> If you had a lemonade store, in a mall, and you were giving away free lemonade, but you refused to give away lemonade to black people, then you absolutely would get in trouble with the law.

No you wouldn't. You'd be in trouble if you ejected people from the premises on the basis of race, but there is no case-law which requires you to give away goods and services to anyone. But this comparison is completely irrelevant because "your opinions" are not a protected class, nor would they ever be.