I’m so tired of this argument. Who cares if it’s the government, private business, or other citizens who do the censorship? The result is the same: censorship. Next you’re gonna tell me to go build my own university/social media platform/payment processor/ISP/etc. if I don’t like it.
If the alternative is to force someone else to host and reproduce your views who doesn’t want to, then I’d say that’s acceptable. I’d you want a large platform on which to spout your views, you should secure that yourself. Your 1st amendment right is to stand on a soapbox in the town square and yell as loud as you want, and that’s all.
That that is a very limited view of the concept / principle of free speech,
While it may be technically correct in the context of US Constitutional law, people that make this claim expose their opposition to the wider concept of free expression and likely would be the first ones to support an amendment to weaken the 1st amendment
I simply stated that no one should be forced to reproduce your speech, and you came back stating that's a limited view (why? no evidence or reasoning) and then made an ad-hominem attack on me, insinuating I'm someone who secretly has some agenda to destroy free expression. Maybe you're the one with the agenda here, and I'm just stating my simple opinions and views?
I'm not going to engage further with someone who acts like that.
It's not limited and it's not merely "technically correct". The only thing that has been exposed here is your lack of understanding of how all this works.
No, it limits the concept of free expression to be governmental only. It is closely adjacent to the idea that government grants our rights and with out government we have no rights
it is rejection of the idea of Natural Rights for which the US was founded on, this rejection of natural rights is growing in the population is is very dangerous to those very rights
Believing that only governments can censor is a rejection of the principle of free expression which is "I may disagree with you but I support your right to say it"
Society should not embrace the idea that businesses, employers, etc should choose who they transact with based on peoples opinions and views. Society that embraces these kinds of virtue tests have no liberty, and have no free expression
Especially considering recently it was brought to light that during discovery when Alex Berenson sued Twitter it was revealed that Twitter was pressured by the White House to deplatform him.
This becomes de facto censorship hidden within the corporate works and was only brought to light because he complained enough and was granted discovery by a judge. IANAL Being advised to censor someone by the government vs the government doing it directly is legally a distinction without a difference.
Did you read what the actual ruling held? This wasn't a 1st Amendment case.
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In American constitutional law, this case established two important rules:
* under the California Constitution, individuals may peacefully exercise their right to free speech in parts of private shopping centers regularly held open to the public, subject to reasonable regulations adopted by the shopping centers
* under the U.S. Constitution, states can provide their citizens with broader rights in their constitutions than under the federal Constitution, so long as those rights do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights
This holding was possible because California's constitution contains an affirmative right of free speech which has been liberally construed by the Supreme Court of California, while the federal constitution's First Amendment contains only a negative command to Congress to not abridge the freedom of speech. This distinction was significant because the U.S. Supreme Court had already held that under the federal First Amendment, there was no implied right of free speech within a private shopping center.
Sure, but the impact is negligible because I’m just some guy on the internet, not a platform with billions of users and almost monopolistic control on information sharing colluding with all the other similar platforms to censor certain kinds of speech and amplify others.
I don’t know what the best solution is for dealing with these platforms, and I understand it is a complicated issue, but saying “it’s not censorship because they’re not the government” is simply disingenuous.
The government/private line is useful because it's a very bright, clearly defined line, and also ideologically consistent. It seems to me that saying that to protect free speech, some private entities must be forced to carry speech is a contradiction that actually degrades free speech, rather than protects it. It also moves the question to "Which private individuals must be forced to carry speech?"
You've made an argument that you're too small and insignificant, but that seems to be a matter of opinion to me. How small is too small? Consider a forum for you and your friends. How many friends are allowed on your forum before you are forced to carry any and all content that others wish to post there, and who makes that decision? Will you be forced to let Nazis on your forum? Ads? Porn? Will you be able to moderate anything at all?
Keeping the line at government/private protects Twitter, but it also protects you.
This is a slippery slope argument. Yes, the line becomes harder to define, but we can agree that there is a huge difference between the internet's public square and my small private forum.
If many of the functions that a government fulfills are now implemented by private entities, I want these private entities to inherit the limitations of power we place on governments. Is that ideologically inconsistent?
Maybe under perfect competitive capitalism, this wouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately this is not the world that we live in. I could cite many examples of free speech oriented social media apps that were shut down by their hosting provider, their payment processors, the two app stores, cloudflare, etc. Is it that different from a government shutting down a newspaper or preventing a group of citizens from assembling?
I would much prefer a technological solution rather than more government intervention (perhaps a move towards decentralized censorship-resistant hosting of content), but the first step towards a solution is to recognize that we have a censorship problem, even if the government is not directly censoring anything.
