I've been on the Internet since before it had pictures. Hosts have always had this power. It's not new. It's not free speech. You pay for a service, you adhere to their rules. You break their rules, you get booted.
This argument is a dog whistle defense of terrorism.
Maybe, for a moment, consider that if a lot of smart people are disagreeing with you, and you see the situation as trivially obvious and those disagreeing as having hidden, evil motives, perhaps you should reconsider your perspective.
If anything is considered obvious on HN, it’s that Parler’s AWS problem is a bigger deal than what led to it, that “cancel culture” is worse than racism, and that the “mainstream media” should be replaced with “critical thinking”.
The internet becomes more and more important each year. Before the internet had pictures it didn't matter if you got kicked off.
The main problem imo is that you simply can not get a website on the internet without using someone elses service, there are always more layer down that you can get kicked from until you reach the point where ISPs, and domain registers are blocking you.
The US needs to restore net neutrality to prevent these kinds of abuses from ISPs.
When they decide it's in their best interest to do so.
Perhaps lead a vocal protest against Facebook, spread it far enough, and if it gains enough traction maybe Facebook themselves will do it. They could do it at any point and be well within their rights. Same with Apple.
I think that the overarching issue that many are missing is that our corporations are acting as our representative bodies -- we're speaking with our money as consumers -- because our political bodies are corrupt and no longer representing us directly.
This argument is a dog whistle defense of terrorism.