medigoth, 2 months ago

Look, you either believe the concepts of #free #speech and #censorship apply to #corporate platforms, or you don’t.

You can say the #First #Amendment only applies to the #government, not #private entities—which is undeniably true—and therefore #social #media sites have no obligation to provide a platform for speech the owners of the site don’t like. This is a reasonable and defensible position.

Or you can say social media sites are the new #town #squares, and therefore the owners have a moral if not legal obligation to allow anyone to say practically anything using their platforms. You can even point out that the government charters corporations, and is responsible for a lot of #telecom #infrastructure, so by allowing censorship in that particular environment, the government is at least complicit in interfering with free speech rights. This is also a reasonable and defensible position.

Maybe you can even try to find some kind of well-articulated middle ground between these positions, although I have to say I don’t remember ever seeing anyone do so. I think most people do hold opinions somewhere between the two, but they don’t tend to spell it out.

What they do instead is argue either side as it’s convenient, which is irritating as hell. And yes, this is a rare bit of “both sides” on my part. I see a whole lot of leftish folks, who are generally not big fans of corporate power, deploying the first position against right-wing types—while complaining about the arbitrary and often clearly biased way #Facebook et al. censor left-wing statements.

The complaints are justified. Hypocrisy is not.

Just pick a position, be honest with yourself about what that position is, and stick to it. No matter where you fall on this spectrum, you have to be aware that the mechanisms of speech, and by extension the press, have changed dramatically over the last thirty years and will continue to do so. Knowing where you stand is important.