And the willfully ignorant morons flocking to that site still somehow manage to delude themselves that it's not going to become an alt-right breeding ground. Even though that's true for, oh, I don't know, literally all of Meta's other products.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
That’s true of educated bigots and what have you, but there’s a sizeable part of the population that’s ignorant and genuinely believes the crap they spew.
Not a fan of that argument. Twitter/Threads/Facebook/Reddit/etc are big enough to be considered a public forum, even if they’re being controlled by a private entity rather than a government.
And it is well-established that quasi-public spaces don’t enjoy the full protections on private spaces. They do fall under the restrictions on government actions in some ways, including how they’re able to restrict free speech.
If there is one good thing from Elon buying Twitter it’s him releasing the Twitter files showing that social media was doing things at the behest of the government in the aims to censor people.
Just a note about the injunction, it will not survive on appeal. The judge in this case stretched things pretty thin in his argument for the emergency injunction pending trial in this case. Lumping together government agencies reporting TOS violations with other elected officials threatening section 230 into one was just silly. Episode 771 of the Opening Arguments podcast does a better job of explaining the injunction and ongoing case than I ever could.
Ironically, it does apply to corporations - just not in the way that you think.
Corporations have the right to freedom of speech - meaning they can choose to allow whatever the speech they like. Consequently, they can also choose to disallow whatever speech they don’t like.
What other established constitutional rights would you support large institutions not respecting as long as they aren’t directly run by the state?
We’re literally talking about Meta here. The claim that their actions are those of an independent private company are about as credible as if Lockheed Martin were forcibly quartering soldiers (err… private military contractors) in people’s homes and claiming that wasn’t a violation of the 3rd amendment.
That wouldn't be a violation of the 3rd amendment. That would be breaking and entering, burglary, it would likely involve some kidnapping and assault, it would break all kinds of laws but it wouldn't violate the 3rd amendment because the 3rd amendment limits what the government can do and Lockheed Martin is not the government.
Yes, that is how it works. Lockheed Martin isn't a governmental body within the United States and is not bound by our Constitution in any way.
Regardless of our opinions on the matter, those are both private companies with their own rights that are not bound like a government under our current laws. People forget that because "corporations are people" they also get Constitutional protections. Our rights end where their rights start and vice versa.
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