Why would the number of posts matter? I don't care if it was 200 or 200 billion. Nothing in my original comment changes. Same for number of users. These are private platforms, not public spaces. They are not open. They are not free. They use the lie that they have anything to do with free speech as a marketing tool. Stop falling for it.
Why would the Biden Admin have a right to lean on FB to censor true and important information?
"We need you to censor this false [read: true] information from your 3 billion users, because reasons" - not a very defensible position.
By the way, I've advocated for tearing Meta apart and putting it in global public ownership for years, partly because of their acceptance of over-censorship. There's such a thing as public responsibility, and Meta has repeatedly failed. I said so here, just yesterday.
I'm 100% fine with Meta and others censoring some things: drug sales, scams (I wish they would!), and worse.
But censoring scientists trying to say true things of a devastating pandemic, or minimize the harms from terrible policy? Censoring discussion of stories that politicians find embarrassing? Censoring the word "Zionist"??!! That's indefensible.
Again, there's a basic responsibility there; whether enshrined in law or not, and whether the law is enforced or not. Allowing a platform used by nearly half all people on Earth to warp our collective understanding of issues up to and including war, plague, genocide and famine is unacceptable, whether by government "request" or not.
People on HN know scale matters for $$$$. Scale doesn't matter for rights. Again, these companies are using your outrage as a marketing tool. They are not, never have been and never will be open. It's not just Meta. Twitter/X is the same. They are all the same.
Correct. There's no such amendment like "slavery is okay, up until 11 people then it's bad"
If slavery is allowed then it is. If it's a million or 1 it doesn't matter, it's equally allowed. If we give someone the right to freedom that means ALL get the right to freedom.
> Ten people being denied their rights is no different from hundreds of millions?
Do I really have to explain this? We cannot permit even one person denied their rights. It isn't acceptable in small quantities and then suddenly become a problem when it's 200 million.
But as I have clearly stated and has been obvious for years, you don't have a right to use privately owned web sites. The attempt to paint it as such is only a marketing ploy by those very same sites in order to paint themselves as essential to our lives. They are not. Delete your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. they are garbage.
> Under the principles of free speech, it’s more ambiguous.
I don't think it is. The First Amendment gives companies control of what gets posted to the sites they own. And it gives you that control for the sites you own, too.
> First Amendment gives companies control of what gets posted to the sites they own
No, it does not. It prohibits the government from abridging the freedom of speech.
The First Amendment is a particular expression of the broader principle of freedom of speech/expression [1]. If you are in my home and you express a view I dislike, it is completely within my legal rights to ask you to stop speaking or else be asked to leave. I could not at the same time, however, say I stand for free speech.
> that does not give companies and individuals the ability to choose what they host on their sites?
No, it does not. The First Amendment is silent on e.g. ISPs or payment processors blocking a particular site based on its content. Until 1897, it was unestablished whether it restricted the states in any form [1].
Scale does not matter. Where in the constitution does it say “scale”?You have freedom to censor your small online forum as you see fit, you are welcome to censor your mega-super Facebook platform as you see fit. There is no distinction here. Those people who get kicked off a platform are free to set up their own forums (or go to telegram or whatever)and yell into the cloud about the wrongs done to them and set up their propaganda bot; no law says you have to host them.
It should matter. In fact, this is why antitrust law exists. If ideas are a marketplace, then Facebook has pricing power in that market. Facebook is big enough that it's actions alone dictate the opinion of a large portion of America. Twitter used to be the same way.
The answer to all this censorship is simple: break up Facebook. If we absolutely, positively can't, then make them a common carrier, regulate them like a utility, and strip out all the profit incentive to keep bad actors on the system. The funny thing is that Facebook's crimes are not merely censoring what they believe to be disinformation, but also amplifying people who break their own rules. Facebook and Twitter had world leaders policies intended to justify keeping politicians who break their rules on platform, specifically so they could amplify them, because it made the company money.
In other words, everyone angry that Twitter banned Trump in 2021 should also be angry that Twitter didn't ban him in 2017.
