by notepad0x90 | 2026-03-06 05:56:11+00:00
Certainly they have the legal right as you pointed out. Freedom of speech is a legal right not a moral prerogative or entitlement.

HN bans users that violate its rules for example. If I were to insult you severely, HN mods have every right to protect you from my speech and censor me by deleting my message and banning me. The threats posed by these malicious sites are far worse than insults on a forum.

Companies like Google are expected by the public and governments alike to protect their users. they would even be entitled to requiring every site a user visits requires an EV cert and age verification enabled if they want. it isn't just their legal right, everyone, not just corporations, has the right to pursue what they feel is the correct way of doing things. Their responsiblity is to their investors first, users second, governmental regimes third and everyone else after that. Your presumed entitlement here is as everyone else.

For #2, I don't recall claiming a solution being difficult (unless you thought banning companies from protecting their users, was somehow a thing I was saying should be done). Matter of fact, I am near incensed that HN users are utterly and shamefully ignorant on harm users suffer. You should be ashamed of your ignorance. Not only this but I've had long debates on HN on similar lines when it came to topics like the play store require developer authentication. It almost makes me wish your freedom of speech was entirely taken away from you so you can have some understanding of the suffering people undergo, and what such measures are trying to prevent. Freedom of speech has never been a right obtained at the expense of harm to others. The moment someone is harmed, you lose your freedom of speech, that is the case in a public arena where such laws exist, but even more so under private platforms. But i did say almost! I think you're just used to problems being of a technical nature, where as in this case it is a human threat (crime) problem.

Furthermore, I am constantly disappointed at the sheer dereliction of duty exhibited by HNers when it comes to security. Your product must protect your users by default, there is absolutely no acceptable amount of harm users should experience for the sake of non-users. Site owners have no entitlements to browsers, they only have privileges. Browsers can and do absolutely play gatekeepers to websites.

As far as #1, I have argued tortious interference about Google's practices myself before. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if this qualifies or not, but can I also claim tortious interference if HN bans me, if I miss out on HN job posts or exposure to the startup scene? can I claim defamation for being banned on HN wrongfully? is HN abusing it's market power because of the sheer number of silicon valley types that aggregate on this site? And I suspect you're not a lawyer either, because jurisdiction is a concept that applies to a judicial body (hence: juris), Google is not a judicial body, and they're not handing out a judicial sentence.

I wonder, are you aware of the CA/B forum? hmm..

The fact is, a browser is a software used to access network resources. Part of that feature set, as advertised explicitly to users, is that it will make attempts to keep their access to the network safe and secure. In other words, all of your claims of entitlement are nullified by the simple fact that the "censorship" is an advertised feature, one that not only most browser users use, but it is an opt-out-able optional feature. Not only that, there is always an option to click through the safebrowsing warning and visit the site anyways.

Both from a moral and legal perspective, I challenge you to make yourself liable to all damages people suffer as a result of not having safebrowsing enabled. Insure them free of charge. Next thing I know you'll be claiming enterprise networks shouldn't "censor" either, or better yet, they can but people who can't afford multi-million-dollar firewalls shouldn't be protected for the sake of access you feel entitled to.

As far as libel, simply being incorrect doesn't make it libel, it needs to be intentional. so long as they can back up the reasonable cause of your site making it on their list, it isn't libel. Just same as your IP can land on their lists and gmail will refuse to accept email from you (just same as every public email provider).

Freedom of speech is not freedom of access, both morally and legally. You dilute actual freedoms when you try to abuse them to gain advantages like this. It is important to understand when being able to do something is a right versus a privilege. It is also important to solve the root cause of problems, even though I disagree with you on this topic, Google's monopoly is a big problem, as is Microsoft's and other companies, but your solution being "there shouldn't be a solution" is (I'd dare say) morally objectionable and abhorrent considering the types of harm people suffer as a result. Perhaps appeals to block lists could have a more legally regulated process? But there are more pressing issues like payment processors banning merchants and users alike all the same (worse than browsers than site in terms of impact?), and not a single government would dare claim that is out of line, let along regulate it. The right of companies to do business how they want is highly protected in free market economies, and something like Chrome isn't even a paid product or service to where you can have a commercial or contractual claim over it.

Since this is a long comment, I'll add this finally to it: If you seriously think Google cant' block arbitrary sites on its free software and service, then by that logic users should also have entitlements for bans on sites like HN, and even on things like your open source project, you can't just not accept pull requests or ignore them, if it is affecting a user and they're relying on it, your features preventing them from doing things is tortious interference. claiming negative things about pull requests is libel.