> Still, the internet hivemind is raving that "it's not censorship if a private company is doing it", "they are a private company so they have a right to boot anyone off".
This is pretty disingenuous. Most of these arguments are about whether or not you can have a Twitter account, tying it to you losing a gmail account is to twist other people’s arguments around.
Because the consequences of losing access to Twitter and your personal email are different, and we should treat them differently?
Email is much closer to a phone than say, Twitter or FB. Losing the ability to post on Twitter is annoying, but losing your email can have devastating consequences that OP delineated.
Indeed, losing email would be worse, but the usual arguments to let Twitter ban whoever they want don't rely on the premise that getting banned from Twitter isn't that bad.
They absolutely do depend on the premise that getting banned from Twitter isn’t that bad. I’ve made this exact argument here many times before; Twitter doesn’t rise to the level of ubiquity and necessity for us to consider classifying it as a common carrier. Meanwhile I absolutely can see some argument for email getting such a classification.
Any time that we discuss whether or not the government should step in and curtail the actions of a private party, we are explicitly or implicitly balancing the harm of government interference against the harm that such a private action might cause.
Nowhere, but I wasn’t actually saying that you were talking about Twitter. Rather I’m saying that you’re taking an argument usually relevant to social media companies like Twitter, and using them in a new context in a way that’s closer to a straw man than anything else.
> Looks like you just spotted a right list of "trigger keywords" and launched a counterattack.
No, I saw an argument I normally make being represented in an unfair way, and wanted to express my disagreement. Your use of the pejorative “hive mind” did not help my perception. Nor, frankly, has this response.
This is pretty disingenuous. Most of these arguments are about whether or not you can have a Twitter account, tying it to you losing a gmail account is to twist other people’s arguments around.