
Ask HN: Is censorship by tech companies okay? - dollers
We live in a different world than when the constitution was first written. Now corporations are much more powerful and the truth is there is often only one option. You&#x27;re not going to create a facebook alternative, for example.<p>But these tech companies are now heavily censoring the services we use to make sense of our world.<p>Do you think it&#x27;s okay for tech companies to censor what you can say or what you can see?
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justusw
In one recent interesting case of PragerU v YouTube[1], it was ruled in
California that YouTube is not a public forum and the First Amendment does not
apply. It's not unthinkable that other platforms such as Facebook will or
already have benefited from similar rulings.

In the case of PragerU being censored, of course I can't deny that I am
personally happy that YouTube is doing something about their inflammatory hate
speech, but that is just my opinion. Perhaps next time they decide that
something that I personally agree with should be banned from the platform. How
will I react then?

The major difference between Youtube and taking it to the streets is that the
latter is protected by the law and provides a clear legal recourse if your
right to express your opinion is denied. If private corporations now change
how we take our opinion "to the streets", then the inevitable consequence will
be that we're going to be censored one way or another. So to change all of
this, perhaps we could

1) turn platforms such as YouTube owned by private corporations into public
forums, 2) embrace a more federalized/decentralized web (web 1.0 self-host-
style), where we put out our opinions on our own domains that we can call our
own, 3) go out on the streets (difficult because covid-19)

The fact that people tend to flock around opinions and communities will never
change, but what we might consider changing is how these communities
(Facebook, YouTube, etc.) are organized.

[1]
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51658341](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51658341)

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holler
> You're not going to create a facebook alternative

Bullshit. People need to stop treating facebook and others as if they’re
impossible to compete against. Dream big and build it.

Will it be hard? You bet. Impossible? Nope. And I certainly agree with you,
censorship is the new norm. That also creates opportunities for others.

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rasengan
No it’s absolutely not ok. It’s abusive and removes power from the people.

They aren’t just a business - those that censor are absolutely the enemy of
the people.

