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Comment by crankylinuxuser | Hacker News Reader

What's the usual refrain we hear? (paraphrased) "You have no right to talk on another companies' platform." Of course, silencing, restrictions, bans, hellbans, and more are the answer by these profiteering owners.

You have have a right of speech (with very limited curtailments) in the USA... However given high density of people on limited technologies, if you're on the out, you have no effective right to speech.

And since political candidates are on there, you even lose the forum to talk with them. (AOC, Trump, other national politicians, local city councils, county councils). When the soapbox IS twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat - just how much power should the corps yield to decide who talks and who doesn't?

(I'm making an argument for a review on user density relating to a monopoly and thus significant oversight and access, esp when relating to politicians and their constituents.)

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(I am an attorney, but this is not legal advice.)

I think most courts would conclude that freedom of speech is the right for you to speak in a public place or to publish using your own means. It is not necessarily the right to be heard by the particular audience you desire to reach, nor the right to publish using someone else's equipment. The internet is still an open place, and there are plenty of venues other than Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube where you can express your thoughts and opinions. You can also build your own website or blog and seek attention to it by reaching out to others for links.

Oh, no. I'm certainly not seeking legal advice :) Consider it more of 'thinking out loud'. But given the karma on my posts, maybe my idea isn't being conveyed.

I was thinking more akin to the lawsuit that happened against Trump 1.5 years ago, when he was blocking citizens on Twitter. And he was overruled in court. I think the legal confusion was "what is a private social media site when politicians are making political speech?"

I know we also had a snafu here in Bloomington, IN over the same. A politician was using a local FB group for campaigning. They were also a mod as well of the group, and were restricting speech on said group. It was resolved in an unrelated way when they were caught in some questionably illegal things, and they stepped down. But left the 'private social media, with politicians and political speech' unanswered.

>The internet is still an open place, and there are plenty of venues

You are absolutely right that putting all the eggs in one basket is a textbook mistake, and one should diversify communication channels & sources of income.

>nor the right to publish using someone else's equipment

Two legal cases come to mind:

the recent decision that POTUS twitter feed is a public space (https://theconversation.com/federal-judge-rules-trumps-twitt...)

and the 1980 decision in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins where, based on Californian law, private property of the shoping mall was deemed open to political speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...).

It's perfectly fine for FB, Twitter, Google & friends to declare themselves editorial organizations rather than open platforms. However it's worth noting Section 230 protections hinge on being a platform.

> the recent decision that POTUS twitter feed is a public space (https://theconversation.com/federal-judge-rules-trumps-twitt...)

Interestingly, the opinion did _not_ conclude that Twitter itself is a public forum and therefore must allow all speakers to use it and viewpoints to be presented. Instead, it concluded that the _President's Twitter account_ is a public forum for the purpose of answering the question whether the President can block others' accounts from responding to it.

As for _Pruneyard_, that case is about freedom of speech under the California Constitution, and has narrowed by subsequent law, but it remains an open question as to whether "open to the public means all content must be permitted" under CA law in the social media context.

>And since political candidates are on there, you even lose the forum to talk with them. (AOC, Trump, other national politicians, local city councils, county councils). When the soapbox IS twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat - just how much power should the corps yield to decide who talks and who doesn't?

Honestly, breaking up the companies will come with the added blessing that public discourse can take place on platforms that are not, structurally speaking, race-to-the-bottom garbage.

To be frank, I don't see the US having any sort of wherewithal about splitting these megacompanies up. The last major company they did so was Ma Bell.. And look at how they've coalesced.

And exactly what rubric could we split them? I can set up my own instance of Mastodon, which is a FB/Twitter like clone. I can set up federated Jabber chat. Is the monopoly FB sales? Or is it FB groups? Well, it's obviously the sheer number of people that's pulling the oxygen out of the room - but that's not a monopolistic attribute... yet.

Monopoly isn't the right word here. I don't think we have a right term yet, to describe being deplatformed from society by private entities on a massive scale. But, it feels gravely wrong without due process. And it feels wrong as well to be deprived from access to my political representatives, even if it is a proprietary and private platform.

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