https://thebaffler.com/salvos/on-the-rudeness-of-mobs-pogue
'On October 25, the freemen of Essex County, New Jersey, proclaimed that anyone who adhered to the Stamp Act should be cast out of polite society, that decent people should have “no Communication with any such Person, nor speak with them on any Occasion unless it be to inform them of their Vileness.” This was not an isolated view. One writer to a Pennsylvania paper suggested, in language typical of the time, that a man paying stamp duties should be “branded with eternal infamy and reproach,” and cast out. “Let him be alone in the world—let him wish to associate with the wild beasts of some dark loathsome cave.”'
... from government.
I will add that even with regards to the government, there are limits to free speech — falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is the archetypal example.
Some people seem to think that freedom of speech is something that can be broadly forced upon private organizations, and that’s simply not true.
If folks don’t like companies that, in their opinion, unreasonably restrict speech, then I suggest they vote with their dollars, their attention, and maybe their work (e.g., via competitors).
Like Gab and Parler! Oh wait...
I generally agree private businesses shouldn’t be forced to do business with anyone they don’t want to, but we’re talking about near monopolies that in many ways wield more power than governments.
Apple and Google each have a monopoly on app distribution on their platforms. Facebook and Twitter combined effectively have a monopoly on social networks.
At this point, their only option to survive would be to build their own new internet. And that would need power/spectrum/land or other things that could be taken away from them by determined enough activism.
Maybe they could survive for a while by moving to a decentralised P2P/blockchain system of some kind. But that could potentially be blocked at an ISP level.
A few years ago I heard some people say we needed net neutrality. Republicans were against it.
As for Apple, yes. They do have a monopoly over their app platforms. Either a more robust PWA support framework or side loading needs to be a priority on iOS. I wouldn’t consider Google as having a monopoly over app distribution as you can sideload apps on Android and Android has (from what I’ve heard) well-rounded PWA support.
Big tech have basically declared that 30% of America is unwelcome on their platform. That is overbearing moderation that is likely to provoke a market response. I'd give it 6-12 months to see if they can hold on to a monopoly even leaving that massive slice of the market in play.
Why not? Private companies must respect your rights, like your right not to be discriminated against, so why can‘t they be forced to respect your right to free speech? Just because the status quo of the legal ecosystem is not ready to handle this edge-cases doesn‘t mean it can‘t be made to do it with some adjustments.
That mostly leaves Alibaba Cloud (I have no idea if it is available outside China) and "Others" - so a 43%. Not much to choose from considering that the big players have the best prices.
There’s plenty of existing examples of compelled speech. We could simply say, “you cannot run a public/large forum without allowing mostly free speech”.
I think the compelled speech argument is extremely weak, we have very narrowly defined and specific cases in strictly defined circumstances. This would make it the default for vast swathes of common communications and as I pointed out introduce huge problems with noise, spam and griefing.
The right of free expression is guaranteed by the first amendment by restricting the government from infringing upon your right. It doesn’t say the government or anyone else has to give you a microphone.
In order to ban me from a platform you have to take (negative) action towards me. My content is already on that network. Compelling to respect my rights means compelling a company to not negatively act against me.
Those businesses are also free to close up shop if they can’t handle it. If they are dumb enough to explicitly say they don’t want to do something for a certain legally protected class of individual solely due to their belonging to that class, then IMO they deserve to lose their shirt.
That would amount to involuntary servitude, which is not permitted by the 13th Amendment.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation
I don't know what the answer is, but having seen these large private companies censor rational discussion of scientific fact, this scares me.
"Voting with your dollars" means taking your dollars and giving them to the 0.001% that agree with you. Then this will strengthen them a little so they may become 0.0011% or whatever.
Any large social movement should be able to support a share of the economy commensurate to its size, complete with their own journalists, printing presses, leaflet distributors, radio stations, TV shows, phone factories, app stores and social media apps, or whatever communication infrastructure they want to use.
Of course that requires lots of work, but if that work is divided by the number of people involved, it becomes manageable again (after all, the whole rest of society manages just fine).
If people want to skip that work and instead rely on others to provide them with everything, they shouldn't be surprised if they don't get exactly what they want.
This looks like a internet version of witch hunt.
To use an analogy closer to the founding of the United States: if you want to publish a radical new newspaper, you need to be prepared to buy your own printing press and build up your own network of stores, because the existing printers and sellers may not want to support you.
You are a republican, how do you publish your political pieces?
You have to create a 4th printing press from ground up (because people that have printing press parts are refusing to work with you).
Distribution is a more appropriate in this case.
Also see the Supreme Court case Brandenburg v Ohio (1969), which excluded from protection speech "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"
Note that when this phrase was originally used, it was to justify imprisoning people who distributed flyers opposing the draft in WW1, and the supreme court later partially overturned it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Take Fox News as an example. They're not going to allow their platform to be used for liberal propaganda, and most likely also vet any advertisers. They aren't expected to just allow any content to be broadcast.
I guess a devil's advocate viewpoint could be that some of these services are platforms, but then again the reasons given for some of these bans aren't necessarily strictly political.
It just doesn’t feel like the right thing for our republic. It feels like foul play, and I guess my recourse is at the ballot box.
I guess I think the points raised here and elsewhere about what businesses can do are specious. We still try to keep things fair.