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That doesn't answer the question. Why are the principles different between banning blacks from your restaurant and banning people for political speech from websites? I'm asking you to explain the difference. Pointing out that they can be the same doesn't explain the difference.
As far as I can tell, your argument for banning people from private websites is "it's private, so they should be able to ban whoever they want". As a principle, that implies that since the restaurant is private, the restaurant should be able to ban whoever they want too. Why don't you agree with what seem to be the implications of your principle?
personal principles aren't the same thing as constitutionality and aren't the same thing as legality. and again, IANAL.
As I described, you can't ban people because of their race at a private establishment of "public accommodation" because it's made illegal. Is it constitutional to ban people because of their race? I actually think maybe, though I don't think anyone would want to work through the entire court system to just say that. I think the justices would pull some logic somewhere else to make that unconstitutional (maybe the Preamble? something about "domestic tranquility" perhaps). If somebody is running a racist restaurant, they can make it plenty uncomfortable to be the wrong color, but as long as they fulfill the terms of the commercial contract (I suppose this would be something like "you pay, i serve food".), it's not illegal nor unconstitutional. On a personal level, do I think private places should be able to ban people because of their race? No, and I would go into the streets to protest and advocate, and so on, if I think that such laws will be overturned. And if the laws are overturned, I'll damn sure to start finding legislators that makes a case for a constitutional amendment that would change that.
banning people for their political speech from your private establishment is legal because nothing made it illegal, and it's constitutional because your act of banning them is political speech and is therefore protected. Now on a personal level do I endorse banning people for their political speech in private places, no, I do think there should be more "integration"/"desegregation" so that a diverse polity as the US can continue to function and thrive. That's why I'm here after all, in a space that many of my friends would sneer and close the tab after scrolling for maybe 30 seconds. But do I think it's allowed for people to ban others for their political speech. Yes. if the mods decide to ban me based on my political speech, I wouldn't consider it illegal nor unconstitutional. If the mods decide to ban me based on race, then I would certainly think it's illegal.
Now let's get to your question of what's the difference between race and political speech. I think it's simple enough to answer: race, as of the current common modern understanding, can't really be changed, while political speech can. I can't change that I am Asian, but I can certainly change my political view. No one can influence or persuade or talk me into being not-Asian by biological or cultural heritage (I suppose one can self-delude to think of oneself as not-Asian), other people can certainly influence or persuade or talk me into a different political view. Politics is about trying to live near each other and not simultaneously trying to punch each other, then I think a simple enough grounding principle is to avoid conflicts on things people can't change about themselves.
Now to go back to the original theme of the thread, my argument is that there are plenty of equivalents in real life that maps to online. I'm not saying that the real life stuff is superior to the online stuff, I'm saying that the online stuff will just increasingly map to real life things as regulations and case laws catch up and that's why this is an online people problem and not a problem generally. Online people can go down to the dark web and make truly free discussion boards if they want to preserve that, and real life people can also just go out to the open sea and make racist restaurants that ban people by their skin color if they want to, just both groups of such people shouldn't be surprised that there won't be a lot of traffic.
That's dodging the question. I'm not asking about laws here, I'm asking about why you think one is wrong and the other isn't.
Religion can be changed and I doubt you think it's okay for restaurant owners to kick people out based on religion. (And if you say "people can't just choose what to believe", that of course applies to politics too.)
For that matter, openly expressing a lot of things can be changed. I doubt you would accept that someone can ban Jews from their restaurant as long as they behave in a way that lets the owner distinguish them from gentiles. Behavior can be changed, after all! Or banning gay people from their restaurant for kissing their partner (you can certainly change whether you kiss someone of the same sex in the restaurant).
What are you talking about? That parallelism compares the wrong things. The comparison to online people (the targets of discrimination) going to the dark web and making their own forums would be black customers (the targets of discrimination) opening their own restaurants on the open sea, not the restaurant owners who want to discriminate doing so.
I'm sure you were writing your reply as you read along the way because as you've noticed, I've tackled your question head on.
Well that's a different thing though no? You've only asked me about race (and I suppose color) so far so I've only thought about race (and i suppose color) so far. Now that you ask about religion, I will think about it. The same thing applies, it's illegal, but maybe it's constitutional, to ban people based on their religion. I'm not religious, so it's hard for me to understand them, but from what I can sympathize with this large contingent of people, holding a religious belief is who they are, they just can't change that about themselves. You might have already seen the joke about "Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" and maybe even laughed at the fatal end. But that's because enjoy-ers of the joke are not religious and are laughing at the absurdity of perceived overreaction on small differences. I think I'll have the same answer like race/color with a caveat: On a personal level, do I think private places of public accommodation should be able to ban people because of their religion? No, and I would go into the streets to protest and advocate, and so on, if I think that such laws will be overturned. And if the laws are overturned, I'll damn sure to start finding legislators that makes a case for a constitutional amendment that would change that. However, if there is a sufficient common understanding that god is not real and there is no higher power but just ourselves stumbling through an uncaring universe, then yeah, we should shun and ban the religious people privately however we like. But since the human condition seems to have us always believe in some higher power then uhhhh religion is gonna stay and I'll fight for people's right to practice religion.
Again, IANAL, but looks like we're getting into the weeds here.
Can one really change openly expressing their religious-based behavior? Based on their beliefs, something bad is going to happen to them spiritually when change their behavior! I don't have enough evidence if there is a kingdom in heaven or not really, and well I don't want to invoke more sectarian wars as well. I actually don't know enough about Jews physical tells but there's something about beard right? I actually think it's ok that restaurants can ban people with beards, something about cleanliness perhaps? but they certainly can't ban people because they're Jewish practicing.
As for your other example, I'm gonna take the example of a person who want to kiss the man they're on a date with, but they're a biological man. They're are happy being a man and can't really change themselves into a biological woman even if they want to (though I don't know maybe that would change in the future! and if that happens I'll revisit my thoughts on this). Banning that person because they want to kiss their man-date is banning them because of their biological gender/sex, something they can't change. Now banning all kisses at the restaurant, sure, everyone can comply with changing that behavior together.
The original question I wanted to answer is: "Why is [the closure of the internet] both not news and unknown?" I was talking about how the same laws and regulations in real life is just being moved online, it's expected as online is not like a different dimension or something, it's just....part of "life". That's why it's not really news and why it's only affecting online people. We got into an argument about banning different defined sections of society because I think you think that I advocate different things online than what I advocate for offline. But that's not my point. My point has always been that online stuff will just increasingly become like the meat-space/offline stuff too. And that parallels of what you want to see offline can be find online, and vice versa.
And I'd say the same is true for politics. I can't by force of will come to believe some political belief different than I actually believe.
This is gerrymandering the definition of "thing they can't change". They are being banned for kissing in the restaurant. They can change whether they kiss in the restaurant. It's true that their desire to do the banned thing is something they can't change, but they can change the behavior itself.
But in the context of real life, we don't accept that people can be banned for any reason. Furthermore, in real life, I'd say that one of the issues with banning black people from restaurants is that not wanting black people in restaurants was common enough that even though the decision to ban them was made by individual restaurant owners, they were in effect being banned by a large portion of an industry, which is much worse than just not being able to get a meal in a particular restaurant. This is also true for banning people from the Internet; if you express right-wing beliefs, the biggest places are all closed off to you even if you can still use some niche forum like themotte.
Yeah maybe you can't, but the common understanding is that people do change their political beliefs. What you would need to do is convince enough people that political belief is like religious belief, that it's more like something someone is and not something someone can change, and then get a constitutional amendment on that. And yeah, I will fight you along the way because I don't have the same "truth" of the world as you do.
Well yeah, that's why i said a restaurant can ban kissing behavior, when you say "can't kiss a man if you're a man", that's not banning based on behavior, that's banning based on who they are.
In meat-space, we decided that if you express political beliefs people don't like, they can ban you from their private stuff. Sounds to me like it's logical that in the online world, we can also decide that if you express political beliefs people don't like, they can ban you from their private stuff. In meat space, we decided that you cannot ban people from your private stuff because of their race. Sounds to me like it's logical that in the online world, we can also decide that you cannot ban people from your private stuff because of their race.
I would be much more amenable to smarter arguments of what is a private place of "public accommodations". It's easy in meat-space to know that a restaurant in the middle of town is a private place of "public accommodations". And it's easy then to make the parallel that social media platforms are also private place of "public accommodation". Anyone can "walk" into these sites and sign up for an account and presumably agree to terms of use and agreements. Anyone can "make use" of the features provided by such a space. And because social media platforms are also private place of "public accommodation", therefore social media platforms also get the rights of a restaurant. Now if you can somehow argue that social media platforms are government-funded or government-backed or government-actors, or so on, then you can legitimately say that social media platforms cannot ban people for their political beliefs.
Let's take an example that you run a restaurant and the government send you a letter pointing out that the government is concerned about certain people, that these people are "dangerous". You think the government is being bullshit and suppressing these people from enjoying the succulent meals you would make for them based on political belief. You fear that the government will retaliate you and you can lay out the details of how the government already or would do that. Guess what you can do? You can do exactly what various different social platforms do: most lay down and take it, some find workarounds/delay tactics, a few fight.
First of all, I don't believe that race/color is similar to political beliefs so I don't even agree or share your understanding of the parallel. Second of all, what right wing beliefs get you banned from a large portion of the internet? Let's pin down on some particular examples so that our discussion can be more focused instead of me guessing at what you're meaning.
People change their political beliefs based on evidence, not based on them being threatened. The threat may change which belief they express, but it can't change their belief.
That's banning based on behavior. You could decide not to do it. Just the fact that only some people are able to do the behavior doesn't make it innate.
I basically said it: if the "private decision" is such that you're banned from a large portion of the available venues, we should cease treating it as a private decision. (For nitpickers, it also has to be significant in scale; being banned from the only store that sells orange-flavored boba doesn't count.)
Normally this happens because of a combination of oligopolies and of widespread prejudice. If there's one person running every restaurant in the town, banning you means banning you from all restaurants. If there are twenty restaurants in the town and they all independently think the same thing about you because of widespread prejudice and want to ban you, that's still banning you from all restaurants.
Ok, so people's political belief can change based on evidence, so at least we agree that political belief can change.
I'll explain my view of the example as follows:
Do you get what I'm saying? That from my perspective, "kissing" is a genderless behavior on its own. Hell, on some days my male neutered cat kisses me more than my wife kisses me. And yeah, you can totally ban the behavior "kissing". But once you bring in "can't kiss men", "men can't kiss men", then to me, it's clearly bringing gender into the equation and attempting to discriminate based on gender.
First of all, sounds to me like the greater problem is oligarchy/monopoly/cartel power and the people and its government can just solve that first.
Second of all, since it's political speech and not something the person can't change about themselves, well maybe they should think about why they garnered the ban of all the restaurants. It's not binary, there is always a spectrum; there will be owners who truly dislike that political belief, there will be some that would have not banned that person if it wasn't for persuasion, there will be some that would have not banned that person if it wasn't for coercion.
Third, from my right to free expression and assembly, it's implied that I have freedom of expressive association, which means I can associate with who I want, and not associate with people I don't want, and most importantly, political speech is not a protected class so I can discriminate based on political speech if I want to.
Fourth, is your argument that the government should uses its state monopoly of violence to force private places of "public accommodation" to cater and give service to people that they disagree with politically? Are you sure? Let's say there is a privately run dog owners forum, let's even assume somehow there is only one dog owner forum in the US (truly impossible situation in a place like the US btw), and there is this group of people who advocates for the eating of dog meat and proliferation of dog meat consumption in the US, are you saying the forum must accommodate them and can't ban them? Isn't, in a way, it's the government forcing a political belief upon the owners of the dog owners forum? I really don't think you've thought all this through and at least so far I'm not convinced.
Fifth, I saw this article on how the owner of Madison Square Garden and the Sphere and so on bans thousands of lawyers and I just want to link it here even though it doesn't really jives with what we are talking about which is "banning people based on their political belief".
I refuse to believe that if there were two restaurants in a town and they refused to serve blacks, your response will be "oh, the greater problem is that two restaurants form an oligopoly" rather than "it's wrong to make it impossible for black people to go to restaurants".
It's something they can change in the same way that kissing a member of the same sex is something you can change. You can avoid the action, but ultimately the action is based on something you can't change.
And if they think, and they conclude "they garnered the ban of all the restaurants because there is an oligopoly of a few restaurant owners and the restaurant owners really don't like people with different political opinions"? You're framing it as if they must have done something wrong for the restaurant owners to ban them. The restaurant owners may have banned them because of prejudice, rather than because they did anything wrong.
I repeat, I am asking you about your standards, not about the law. Protected class is a legal category.
And you would never claim that your right to associate with people means that it is okay for your restaurant (or your social media franchise for that matter) to exclude blacks. It is wrong to use your "right to associate" to prevent a large group of people from being able to live normally, especially with commercial transactions.
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