Social media companies are usually positioned as the arbiters of “free speech” online.
However, my thinking has always been that they are private corporations that can do whatever they want. They can ban users based on any criteria they want and “curate” their platforms however they please. They are beholden to no governments, outside of their obligations to local laws and taxes.
Anyone, literally anyone, can make a website (for free!) and do as much “free speech” online as they want.
So, why do we (and govs) continually defer to these social media companies as if they somehow “own” and “control” all “free speech” online? They don’t.
Many mastodon servers, for example, curate very specific communities. There’s no reason the big companies couldn’t do something similar. They currently cater to neo-nazis, but they could as easily ban them. And it has nothing to do with “free speech”.
Not being able to use FB is not a violation of your rights. Go make your own damn website.
@jsq A big movement in many conservative circles is, more or less, that if you can choose not to hear me, or can react in a negative way to what I said, (forget repercussions!!) you have violated my 1A rights. Which is such an extreme perversion of the entire concept it’s hard to even respond.
Long story short: seniors shouldn't need to learn html to be heard online.
Everything you say is true. Facebook is a private website, running on hardware and bandwidth they pay for and they should well be free to what they please with it.
But it has been a de-facto public utility for almost a decade. First your school mates were there, then your local library, then companies and finally the government itself.
It's no longer a little private road, it's Main Street.
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