Thank you, this is something I've said for ages now. If a company has an almost defacto monopoly and stops people from talking about something, it's effectively the same as a government doing it. And when about 98% of internet communities are hosted by and controlled by large corporations, the whole 'go elsewhere and start up your own service' thing feels kinda clueless, as if it's deliberately ignoring how powerful network effects are.
It's also clueless because it's extremely difficult to run a business or service online if your views/product/service is despised by a large enough percentage of the population, due to every single layer of the stack being controlled by someone that can and will shut down anyone they disagree with. ISPs, web hosts, anti DDOS providers, software providers, domain name registrars, payment processors... all of them think of themselves as the internet moral police, and will boot customers/clients if enough people scream at them to do so (or in the case of things like porn or gambling, because it's 'convenient').
So running an alternative gets more and more costly and impractical the more controversy you bring, to the point you're probably required to run your own datacentre and networking links if people hate you enough.
That's not true of a real life business or organisation, which gets services provided by utilities and where (assuming they own the building), only the government could boot them out.
>it's extremely difficult to run a business or service online if your views/product/service is despised by a large enough percentage of the population
Well wait a second, is that really censorship? "Censorship" implies to me a small group of powerful and unaccountable people tinkering with the information flow, quite probably in secret. That's not the same thing at all as being hounded out of town because everyone thinks you're a piece of shit.
The definition of censorship certainly doesn't entail a small group of powerful and unaccountable people. Below are a couple of definitions I have found online.
I think people may be more outraged by censorship if it is done by a small group of powerful and unaccountable people. But censorship that is approved of by the majority is still censorship. And it can still be wrong, for the majority is not always right.
Cambridge Dictionary: a system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to express and prevents books, films, works of art, documents, or other kinds of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because they include or support certain ideas: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/censorsh...
It's not about what others in general believe, it's the fact the payment processors, ISPs, data centres, etc have an outsized effect on what you can practically do/talk about.
The electric, water and gas companies can't just decide to cut off everything they don't like because they dislike their political views/actions, why should the tech equivalents be allowed to?
Should a persons worldview dictate whether or not they perform a service? For example making a wedding cake for a same sex marriage? Perhaps this more nuanced.
I'm having trouble discerning your point. Can humans collectively believe harmful things? Of course. But it's a fundamentally different problem than censorship, except insofar as censorship can influence people's beliefs. It's not something you can really legislate against.
You juxtaposed the censorship with rational actors that are collectively taking action to protect themselves. I'm juxtaposing with irrational actors that are collectively taking action due to superstition and fear. My point therefore is, why do you think this censorship case is the former and not the latter?
> If a company has an almost defacto monopoly and stops people from talking about something, it's effectively the same as a government doing it.
I would take it a step further and say that since the US Government has special relationships with many companies, they effectively become an extension of the government apparatus. In those cases, rather than letting government outsource themselves out from beneath regulation, we extend regulation as it pertains to government work to the companies doing business with the government.
> You can find a way to get around the establishment.
The Canadian government froze the bank accounts of protesters early this year. How are you meant to "get around the establishment" when you can't even afford to pay your bills and have been essentially made penniless?
Worth noting that the same Canadian government is cheering on equivalent protests against covid restrictions in China.
It crossed the line into soft terrorism for anyone living in the city. Breaking the law has consequences, even in democracies. I don’t remember any praise from right wingers when a Baltimore Mayor gave some protesters “space to destroy”. Civil disobedience has a place, but the law must also be enforced. If you believe in your cause strongly enough, going to jail is part of the point.
It's also clueless because it's extremely difficult to run a business or service online if your views/product/service is despised by a large enough percentage of the population, due to every single layer of the stack being controlled by someone that can and will shut down anyone they disagree with. ISPs, web hosts, anti DDOS providers, software providers, domain name registrars, payment processors... all of them think of themselves as the internet moral police, and will boot customers/clients if enough people scream at them to do so (or in the case of things like porn or gambling, because it's 'convenient').
So running an alternative gets more and more costly and impractical the more controversy you bring, to the point you're probably required to run your own datacentre and networking links if people hate you enough.
That's not true of a real life business or organisation, which gets services provided by utilities and where (assuming they own the building), only the government could boot them out.