"About six months after opening, PayPal -- our payment processor at the time -- demanded that we censor some of our users' content (mostly involving people talking about sex, usually fictionally, in explicit terms) that was legal and protected speech but that they felt violated their terms for using PayPal."
That argument becomes weaker as responsibilities and power are transferred from the government to the private sector. How many of the rules that we follow are currently dictated by a corporation, rather than a government? Do we not want checks and balances on all rule-makers?
Then why shift such responsibilities to the private sector in the first place? If they must be regulated as stringently as the public sector (especially in terms of things like free speech) then they should be public goods.
I think it's much more viable to translate some of these privately owned aspects of the internet to publicly owned institutions. Then you obtain the free-speech allowances you desire without burdening a private company with further regulation and restrictions.
This isn't the only solution of course though. But just claiming that these goods are so important doesn't necessarily mean they should be treated like government entities. They're not - that's not how the laws here work.
I don't believe that government is seriously hindered by free speech, but rather by it's lack of profit-incentive and by the perverse incentives of our current implementation of democracy. We should expand the free speech rights, and other basic human rights, to cover all people in all situations.
Actually, that profit incentive thing is debatable, I take that back. A for-profit government could be quite horrifying.
So tired of this argument. The fact that Constitution does not prohibit them from doing it does not mean what they are doing is a good thing. "It's not unconstitutional" is a very low bar to clear, and clearing it doesn't mean you are doing everything right - it only means you are not directly violating the law, which you should be doing anyway. Nobody should get any praise for just not violating the law. And paranoid panicky reaction to literature that mentions sexual relationships is idiotic on the paypal side, is just wrong. I can see how dealing with certain kinds of shady sites in adult industry may be a burden, but dreamwidth is clearly not one of them, and it can be seen very easily if somebody at paypal was willing to spend 10 seconds on it. They just don't care.
> They can choose who to partner with by whatever metrics they want.
And, of course, this is not true for a long time - there's a number of non-discrimination and social-engineering regulations that substantially limit by which metrics you can choose your customers.
> Nobody should get any praise for just not violating the law
That's not people's point. Sorry but you're taking the wrong idea from the argument. The point is that there are no laws in the United States that demand private forums have any semblance of "free speech". It's not that it's "not illegal". It's just simply not a concept that has any laws backing it up.
People bring this up because if you have any background in constitutional law, you know that free speech is something that took a long time to define (and most people don't even know what it is...). It's a legal concept, not a societal one. So when you complain that Paypal isn't respecting your free speech, anyone with a background in law goes "???"
Free speech is a legal term. When you say "Free Speech" you're referring to a very specific set of laws and rules that apply to public entities in the U.S. - not private ones. If you're actually talking about a sociological concept, then preface it as such. And if you feel that the laws don't match up in the United States to our perceived values, then say that as well.
But as is, Paypal has nothing to do with free speech. If you want to talk about some other idea, that's not the legal concept of free speech, but how you want Internet companies to operate in the U.S. you need to preface your statement as such.
Otherwise it just comes across as if you don't know what free speech is, so people respond with the tried and true "Paypal isn't the government". They're not trying to shut down any possibility of Paypal being regulated in a way that matches our current definition of free speech, just correcting your improper use of the term (is it pompous? I would say it could be framed better.) In other words, ya'll are arguing circles around each other.
> The point is that there are no laws in the United States that demand private forums have any semblance of "free speech".
Since when the only requirement from people to behave decently is that they are forced to do it by the threat of violence from the government? Can't we ask people not to be jerks without threatening them with jail?
> It's a legal concept, not a societal one
Nope, it is a societal one. Legal one follows from that. Laws are created by society, they are not some independent reality that exists by itself. Laws about free speech exist because society values free speech, if it didn't, such laws won't exist - and indeed, societies that do not value such concepts don't have such laws.
> Free speech is a legal term.
Nope again. There is a legal term "free speech", but claiming that's all there is is switching the cause and effect. We value free speech not because we are forced by the laws, given us by Gods. We create laws valuing free speech because we think free speech is a good idea, required for well-functioning society.
> But as is, Paypal has nothing to do with free speech
They have tons to do with free speech - they try to use their power as a major payment provider in order to limit it and suppress people that speak in ways they do not approve of. Of course, their power is not absolute and is no match for the vast powers of the government - but that does not make such use of their power, whatever they have, any less despicable. Maybe less dangerous, yes, but there's no rule that we should only address the very largest threat and completely ignore the lesser ones.
> Otherwise it just comes across as if you don't know what free speech is
No, I know what "free speech" is. That's exactly why I am tired of reducing the concept to bare legalese. It never was that, it is not that, and it will never be that.
> just correcting your improper use of the term
By that revealing that they do not understand the term and have faulty understanding of why we have all these laws at all.
We can always ask people to not be jerks. Free speech is indeed a societal concept. In the context of This conversation on this subject however, it is a legal one. We are asking what Paypal should do. Paypal is a corporation. They should do whatever benefits them and their shareholders the most. They are currently doing that. Even if you don't agree morally, that is what they are doing. Therefore, our societal definition of free speech does not match with our legal one.
Thus we must change our legal one. Therefore, I claim that our conversation is implicitly and inherently about the legal definition of free speech and what that should be. Paypal has no obligation, no requirement to do anything unless the law is changed accordingly. Otherwise they will continue to operate in the way that benefits them and their shareholders the most.
My point was simply that you're not explictly asking to change the law when you should be. As the law is currently written Paypal is doing everything right. If that is still wrong for a moral and societal perspective, how do we change the laws to match? Specifically, how do you change the laws in a way that upholds our previous decisions and court cases because these have served as bedrock principles.
I wasn't attacking you mate, my bad - just trying to get you to be more specific.
That's what is being asked from paypal now. And the response is "they are not the government, so by law they can be jerks". Well, duh. That's not the point!
> In the context of This conversation on this subject however, it is a legal one.
Nope, it isn't. It only is because some misguided people want to make it one. That's exactly what I am tired of - of trying to reduce each discussion about norms into "it's legal therefore it's ok". Nope, nope and nope.
> Thus we must change our legal one.
Terrible idea. Enforcing decency by legislation has always backfired, and trying to reduce societal norms to bare "would you get in jail for this?" never worked well. There are more to society than jails, and there is more to improving society than governmental violence.
> My point was simply that you're not explictly asking to change the law when you should be
And my point you are approaching it wrong, and the law is the least of the issues here. That's the whole point. Regulating such things by the law is the worst idea ever. It would backfire and hurt the very people it purports to protect, and all around them too.
> As the law is currently written Paypal is doing everything right.
Paypal is going everything legal, but not right. These are different things, and they always will be. The law only defines what is so egregiously wrong that you deserve to be hurt if you are doing that. It will never define what is right. Its our job, as a society. We can't just put it on a bunch of lawyers and be done with it.
The issue is that large corporations like these don't care about norms or morals. They only care about the law because as a collective they can shift any moral responsibility into ambiguity.
No duder at paypal thinks they're morally responsible for this decision. My point is that because Paypal is a company whose only goal is to make money, lecturing them on morals is pointless. If you want to impose your morals on them, the only way to do so is legislation (impose is a strong word here sorry).
In other words, you're wasting your breath because Paypal doesn't care about morality or norms. We must restrict them via legislation that matches our societal values.
> Enforcing decency by legislation has always backfired
Murder? Rape? These are crimes whose very existence is to enforce decency via legislation. The social norms come first I agree, but you need the law to help prevent morally reprehensible behavior. That's kind of one of its main purposes.
I agree we must have a conversation of morals first and legality later, but the legal conversation needs to actually happen. And until it does, no large corporate entity will care.
> The issue is that large corporations like these don't care about norms or morals
Literally every PR message of every large corporation lately says the opposite. Even if they were all liars, why would they all lie about the same things if not because it is aligned with norms and morals?
> lecturing them on morals is pointless
This is not true, companies are regularly lectured on morality, and often successfully. E.g. just recently several providers were induced to sever ties with a nazi website, for moral reasons. There are numerous other cases, of course, and people are getting fired for moral reasons all the time.
> Murder? Rape?
Murder and rape are way beyond just decency. Those are exactly the things that "if you do them, you deserve to be hurt, badly". The government is good at enforcing those. It is not good at enforcing things that needs to be handled in more complicated ways, like finding proper society norms of behavior and enforcing them. As you probably understand, "at least he doesn't murder or rape anyone" is not really a definition of a good person, there's a bit more to it than that.
> The social norms come first I agree, but you need the law to help prevent morally reprehensible behavior
Do you? So, if you leave a small tip or don't smile back when somebody greets you, or don't hold the door for somebody when they walk behind you, you should go to jail? I think even North Korea doesn't go that far. With this approach, your ideal world would out-totalitarian the most totalitarian regimes known to humanity.
> And until it does, no large corporate entity will care.
As I said, this is demonstrably false. Moreover, there exist many successful organizations that has been and continue to demonstrate it being false every day.
Yeah I meant in terms of what the forum can regulate on behalf of its members - not in terms of the forum's collective ability to speak. I worded that badly I'll admit.
Right, I was leveraging the imprecise wording to segue into an explanation that not only is there no law restricting forum operators from regulating content, but actually a fundamental law protecting their right to do so.
I'm sorry, of course he didn't use those words exactly you're correct. There's no need to be so pedantic though, clearly that's the concept the people he is responding to are talking about.
A says that this should be considered "free speech" (not in words but in intention)
B says that Paypal isn't a government entity.
C says that shouldn't matter.
I'm responding to C, so I say "When you say Free Speech" as a rhetorical technique to recenter our argument on the thing actually being discussed. I apologize if there was confusion or it seemed I was being clever or something.
While I agree with this reasoning, I wish it was used consistently; on other issues, people here frequently bring up things like redlining or (hypothetical) refusal of services in rural areas as examples of why companies shouldn't be allowed to choose their customers.
This is true, but people still took issue with it because (as far as I can tell) they believe anything that happens to end up effectively along racial lines is racist regardless of intent. This is also orthogonal to the question, which is whether businesses should be allowed to choose their customers.
Not completely; they couldn't decide to use 'whiteness of yoru skin' as a metric for decision. I think there should absolutely be limits to what you can use to determine if you do business with someone, but where exactly the line is is not an easy question to answer.
IF skin color did correlate to higher fraud rate or expenses for PayPal, then requiring them to service people of all colors equally would be unfair to the company. In this case PayPal is refusing service apparently because processing payments for the adult industry is inherently risky and correlates with higher rates of fraud or illegal activity or chargebacks, etc. Since the same issue doesn't exist for skin color, you can't really draw that as a parallel.
Seems reasonable to me.