By the definition of "punish" that you are implicitly using, private businesses in America used to be able to punish people for anything ("we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody"). Now there are certain things they cannot punish people for (e.g. being black). Are you suggesting that the time has come to mandate that companies may not discriminate against customers for other reasons as well?
> Now there are certain things they cannot punish people for (e.g. being black). Are you suggesting that the time has come to mandate that companies may not discriminate against customers for other reasons as well?
We should pick one or the other. Either it's fine to discriminate for any reason, or some businesses have a public service obligation and must serve anyone.
I think many (maybe even a majority of?) Americans consider individual freedom to be a deontological moral good. This includes freedoms of those running private businesses. The "Protected Class" rules were created because many (including some overlap with the first set of) Americans didn't like specific consequences of enforcing that moral good.
Policy in a well-functioning, pluralistic, society will necessarily have (occasionally self-contradictory) compromises because we are trying to satisfy groups of people with sometimes conflicting needs and values.
It seems to be going the other way in the US. Recently, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, it was found that discrimination against customers who "violate your values", in that case by being gay, was fine.
I’m not sure that case is relevant to the YouTube example, as YouTube isn’t refusing to or being compelled to create new works on behalf of Brand, or whatever the closest analogy here would be. Refusing service based on protected attributes tends to be far more explicitly addressed, in the US and likely many other countries.
I'd rather we sorted out what 'the commons' means in an online context, but failing that? Yes. Because we're essentially privatizing all discourse and those companies can do pretty much whatever they want - as long as they don't piss off other companies too badly (eg, Twitter being demonetized because of Nazis).
We've lost the idea of broadcasting in the public interest decades ago, and there's no PBS for the internet (Just PBS on the Internet)
