> If Google or any other platform doesn't want you on their platform, nobody can force them to have you.

That's just not true.

Up till now, no government has (to my knowledge) tried to dictate to a major American platform owner that they may not ban certain users or classes of users, but that doesn't mean that they can't.

It's really not the same thing as the issue of forcing an employer to rehire an illegally-fired employee—where the employee then remains there under a cloud, because they have to continually interact with the people who wanted them gone. In 99.999% of cases, when a platform removes a user, there's zero relationship between that user and the people involved in making that decision.

If Congress made a law tomorrow (laughable in the current environment, I know) that said that any public video platform provider with over X users couldn't ban anyone except for specific reasons, then YouTube would, indeed, have to keep such people on their platform.

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epolanski 3 days ago | parent [-]

> That's just not true.

Prove me the contrary: find me a single law that forces any business to have business with any other, regardless of them wanting to or not.

I'm 100% sure nobody can force me to do business with people I don't want and if you're a professional I can't force you either to do business with me. Why would you think this would be a good law to have? Only discrimination would be a valid reason.

If Google (business) doesn't want to platform a creator (another business), that's their right.

Of course we can question the morale or ethics, but that's about it.

> If Congress made a law tomorrow (laughable in the current environment, I know) that said that any public video platform provider with over X users couldn't ban anyone except for specific reasons, then YouTube would, indeed, have to keep such people on their platform.

But such laws do not exist in pretty much any part of the world: you can't force a business (Youtube) to do business with another one (a creator).

The reason why this is obviously different is because Youtube is a de facto monopoly on large parts of internet content.

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danaris 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Prove me the contrary: find me a single law that forces any business to have business with any other, regardless of them wanting to or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-discrimination_la...

Sorry, but either you've phrased yourself poorly for what you actually want to say, or you're genuinely unaware of the many anti-discrimination laws in the US, a substantial number of which explicitly prohibit businesses from refusing service to people in protected categories.

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epolanski 3 days ago | parent [-]

Addressed already in my original post:

> unless you can prove discrimination, it's their house, it's their business, they can and should do what they want

None of the links you posted, I skimmed quickly, says anything about my point: that you cannot refuse business if you don't want to (unless you can prove the reason you don't want to is illegal).

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danaris 3 days ago | parent [-]

Ah, so as long as you're allowed to ignore any laws that actually prohibit the thing you're talking about (because you have to actually prove that they were broken!), you can say that no laws prohibit the thing you're talking about!

Yeah, I don't think that's a particularly strong statement anymore.

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epolanski 2 days ago | parent [-]

I can discriminate you because it's you. I don't like you and I don't want to do business with you. End of story.

It's your problem to prove that it was racially or religiously motivated or something.

It's not a strong statement it's a fact.

You cannot force anybody to do business with you. Not me, can't force my brother, can't force my mother's laundry to have you as client.

Guess what? I can't force other companies to do business with me too! I can't force a lawyer to have me as a client, nor I can force a bank, nor an insurance.

Do you know how many countless "no"s companies I worked in got?

API companies unwilling to have us as clients because too small. Wanting to open the wallet? Not enough if we can't prove we can't ramp it up fast.

What could we do? Nothing.

Stripe or other payment processors can notoriously deny you services without owning you any explanation.

You just can't. Business is about trading and I can't be forced to trade with those I don't want to, nor they can be if they don't want me, for whatever reason (unless discrimination can be proven).

The only businesses that most laws force to offer a service are public utilities and even then, I can guarantee you 100%, that even banks if they don't want you as a client, even if they are among the few businesses that have, they still won't have you and rather drag this through courts and then maliciously comply to the point of effectively being unbanked.

	▲	danaris 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It seems like you're trying to disprove my point by stating something that's only tangentially related. Yes, there are situations where a business can refuse to do business with me and there's nothing I can do about it. There are also situations where a business might refuse to do business with me and I can take them to court and force them to do so—if the reason they refused to transact with me was because I fall into a protected class. Because of this, it is also true that, if they chose to, legislatures could write new laws that require businesses to do business with everyone with a "g" in their name, or everyone with hazel eyes. Or they could require businesses in certain classes to allow absolutely anyone to transact. This is especially true with monopolies and other types of market-dominant companies, which very frequently have to operate under more restrictive conditions than other businesses. Google isn't an all-powerful entity that no laws can touch, as much as they might like to be. Any time you start thinking "nobody can force a business to" something-or-other, remember that laws and regulations exist, and do very much force businesses to do things they otherwise would not choose to do.