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Freedom is not something natural.

In 100% freedom your stronger neighbour would have freedom to restrict your freedom and you would have freedom to resist, fail, and be sad about it.

So your freedom is dependant of how much the strongest entity around is willing to limit freedom of your neighbors of restricting your freedom.

US government showing restraint when major players on the market use their position to restrict freedom of smaller entity is reducing freedom not increasing it.



That's why the US government also sets limits on what private companies and their customers can do to restrict each other's freedoms. Under these democratically deliberated laws, Parler has as much freedom to use Twitter & Facebook as you have freedom to do use my lawn. The principle still holds even if every neighbor in your neighborhood hates you and denies you access to their lawn; The scope & scale of their lawn restriction is irrelevant because American society finds their freedom over their property to be more important than your freedom to use it.

There are things that the US government deems too important to restrict, but Facebook & Twitter is well outside that category. That's where American society has drawn the line, and it's a line that I agree with as well.


The thing I wrote about freedom has nothing to do with US or Parler or Facebook.

It's a general observation that restraint of locally strongest entity doesn't necessarily give you more freedom. It can (and often does) give you less.

And when it comes to Parler my concern was Amazon, not Twitter and Facebook. Why should hosting provider be able to choose whom he provides basic infrastructure? Was Parler illegal content they had to remove by law? Should they cut their electricity and water supply to the creator of Parler too because they don't like their content?


The US government does draw the line at what it classifies to be utilities like electricity and water. AWS isn't considered a utility but I think it's far closer to one than the other companies. I'm personally skeptical that it should be because AWS encompasses a whole range of products, many of which have decent competition and aren't really "basic".

The ability to host stuff yourself on the internet is, however, a freedom I consider to be basic and necessary, so I do support net neutrality and related legislation that classify ISPs as utilities.




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