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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

The differences are: (1) with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government; (2) Facebook at least tells you when a message can't be sent but WeChat fails silently.

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> it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that

That's certainly not a universally agreed upon perspective. Just because you're a private company doesn't mean you can do anything you want (eg. discrimination), hence the existence of regulations.

Also many of us argue about the principle of free speech, not the literal text of the First Amendment.

I think one major issue with FB's stance is they say they are not a publisher but rather a platform.. of course, they do tend to use whatever is convenient to them sometimes.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...

It must be rather nice to feel so assured that this alleged separation of state and industry exists; as though the line between state and society, particularly industry, is all that clear.

Tencent is a Chinese company so there's no First Amendment issue there either

The Chinese constitution actually guarantees freedom of speech, but the Chinese government (meaning party) does not adhere to constitution legal supremacy so it isn’t very meaningful.

A private company with a massive user base and global presence I should add. Which fights for complete market dominance in every way it can, buying every Platform they can, that has large adoption. It’s not only bound by the American constitution. It’s like saying Windows is not an almost de facto monopoly because “people have choices”.

"First Amendment" means nothing outside the US and certainly has nothing to do with WeChat. Why are people using esoteric and convoluted American terms for things that have universal equivalents?

> with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that

Whether the company is private or not is immaterial. What matters is its scale, and how much you can actually avoid it.

Facebook is not easily avoided. I personally went under significant social pressure to get an account and actually use it. Getting out had a measurable cost (not being aware of events that mattered to me). That's not too bad, but even then I'm cheating: my SO has an account, and I regularly profit from that.

Same for YouTube: they have a near monopoly on most western audiences. If they block something, that's near censorship. Next to it, most alternatives might as well not exist at all.

Mark Zuckerberg getting hauled in front of Congress could be viewed as not-so-subtle pressure. Even without explicitly requiring censorship, the government can pressure companies to enact it. At what point does that become a First Amendment issue?

Really? Facebook started censoring completely of their own volition? Not because Western governments started to apply pressure on them?

Facebook's handling of filtered out messages is honestly not an improvement over WeChat worth celebrating.

it has been proven time and time again that companies and politicians have engaged in quid pro quo. this "oh, but companies are private in the u.s." is a bunch of bull. that's exactly what they want you to think, meanwhile, there are lot of shenanigans and lobbying that goes on in the background.

>with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government;

Why does this not apply to other situations such as who I hire?

Also, is not Facebook used by parts of the US government? If Facebook prevents me from sending that link to any government representative then does that not constitute the government (by choosing to use Facebook as a communication channel) censoring my speech? It would be similar to the case of Trump blocking individuals on Twitter. Imagine if government offices swapped to some religious based chat forum as their official means of communication where messages from all people not of a certain religion (as determined by the sight) are filtered.

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