
Amazon and other platforms allowing payments to far-right groups - vanusa
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/amazon-online-platforms-far-right-splc
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dmitrygr
Would you rather they act as judge and jury about whom to allow payments to
and whom not to? Before you answer, remember that somewhere there is someone
who finds YOU objectionable!

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trianglem
Yes and they are fully within their rights to do so as a private company.

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383uhdjdjd
I see this rebuttal all the time on HN and I'm not clear on if people realize
it's a weak rebuttal or if they just don't care. So what if they're within
their rights? Does that remove the public's ability to object or invalidate
their criticisms? We'be lived long enough to see the role of social media in
the arab spring, the #metoo movent, and #blacklivesmatter. It's no longer a
defense for companies, especially the Megacorps, to be legally within their
rights. If people feel like private corporations are undermining the spirit of
freedom of speech principles then they should be encouraged to organize and
voice their feelings in the same way that we encourage any other group to. If
the internet were invented fifty years earlier would it have been ethically
acceptable if them to censor civil rights activists for associating with a
movement which was frequently accused of inciting violence and causing maybe?
Would it have been ethically defensible when they silenced the LGBT movement
for advocating against'family values'? I constantly see criticism of companies
who cooperate with the intelligence community here, even though that too is
something within their rights by definition, and yet when the the freedom of
expression crowd comes around they get tested like they also must be secret
racists and bigots because for some reason no other explanation makes
acceptable sense.

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trianglem
I don’t care. I trust a corporation to make the right decisions when it comes
to hate speech (currently) over the general public consensus because they are
driven by profit over bigotry. Even if they don’t make the right decisions, I
still trust them over the general public.

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Dahoon
Nazi books...

>"An Amazon spokesperson said in an email: “As a bookseller, we believe that
providing access to the written word is important. That includes books that
some may find objectionable, though we have policies governing which books can
be listed for sale."

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syntheticcorp
Mein Kampf is also currently for sale on Amazon. I worry when groups like SPLC
consider themselves the final arbiter on what is a “hate group”, as you get
quotes like “There is absolutely no excuse for a company to service, and make
money from, any group identified by SPLC as a hate group,” .

