Comment by urbandw311er
8 hours ago
Do we though? It’s an important question about liberty - at what point does a business become so large that it’s not allowed to decide who gets to use it?
There was a famous case here in the UK of a cake shop that banned a customer for wanting a cake made for a gay wedding because it was contra the owners’ religious beliefs. That was taken all the way up to the Supreme Court IIRC.
> at what point does a business become so large that it’s not allowed to decide who gets to use it?
It's not about size, it's about justification to fight the ban. You should be able to check if the business has violated your legal rights, or if they even broke their own rules, because failure happens.
> There was a famous case here in the UK of a cake shop that banned a customer for wanting a cake made for a gay wedding because it was contra the owners’ religious beliefs. That was taken all the way up to the Supreme Court IIRC.
I guess it was this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_v_Ashers_Baking_Company_Lt...
There was a similar case in USA too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
I don't think the parent comment was about banning bans based on business size or any other measure, for that's obviously a non-starter. I think it was more about getting rid of unexplained bans.
To that end: I think the parent comment was suggesting that when a person is banned from using a thing, then that person deserves to know the reason for the ban -- at the very least, for their own health and sanity.
It may still be an absolute and unappealable ban, but unexplained bans don't allow a person learn, adjust, and/or form a cromulent and rational path forward.
It is more than that, as there is cold comfort in having an explanation that is arbitrary and capricious, irrational, contrary to the stated rules, or based on falsehoods, if there is no effective means of appeal - especially if there are few or no viable alternatives to the entity imposing the ban.
For me the liberty question you raised there isn't so much about whether the business has become large, as whether it's become "infrastructure". Being denied service by a cake shop may very well be distressing and hurtful, but being suddenly denied service by your bank, your mobile phone provider, or even (especially?) by gmail can turn your entire life upside down.
Yes I’d tend to agree with you there. But being able to define that tipping point where something becomes “infrastructure” even if it’s still privately owned and isn’t a monopoly, is a difficult problem to solve.
While I still object to them having a say in that matter (next thing is; we don’t serve darkies) - that is different. There are hundreds of shops to get that cake from.
But Anthropic and “Open”AI especially are firing on all bullshit cylinders to convince the world that they are responsible, trustable, but also that they alone can do frontier-level AI, and they don’t like sharing anything.
You don’t get to both insert yourself as an indispensable base-layer tool for knowledge-work AND to arbitrarily deny access based on your beliefs (or that of the mentally crippled administration of your host country).
You can try, but this is having your cake and eating it too territory, it will backfire.
The Catholic Church has been doing this for hundreds of years. I'm sure it'll eventually backfire on them, but I doubt any of us will still be alive for that.
Atheism has never been more popular. It has backfired.
The Catholic Church has been doing what exactly for hundreds of years? Can’t wait to hear it.
You missed the 2nd part "and we won't even tell you actual reason for it".
The cake shop said why. FB, Google, Anthropic don't say why, so you don't even know what exactly you need to sue for. That is kafkaesque
Yes, it is not too much to require that that if you offer something to someone that the receiving party is able to have a conversation with you. You can still reject them in the end, but being able to ask the people involved questions is a reasonable expectation — but many of these big tech companies have made it effectively impossible.
If you want to live life as a hermit, good on ya, but then maybe accept that life and don't offer other people stuff?
Most countries have laws about a minimum level of customer support for things you pay for.
That case was in the US.
Both countries had gay cakes.