Silicon Valley Billionaires Censoring Speech On-Line

The Democratic party is pushing for outright political censorship. Former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland:



Nuland was one of the architects of the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014.

Internet Censorship & Left Dissenting Journalism



“The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down,” said Ed Markey, Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. “The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.”

https://www.boston.com/news/politic...-facebook-respond-donald-trump-election-posts

Dictatorships do this.

 

All I saw Zuckerberg say was that if anyone declared victory before all the results were in Facebook would append something saying that and that all posts inciting violence would be removed, as they always had been.

Where is the dictatorship?

 

Facebook is a private company and has every right to have rules for what content they will allow on their site. For example, if I start posting porn pictures here, I won't be on here for very long, even if I have freedom of speech.

 

Liberals defending monopolies censoring the left at the behest of the state.

 

If I run a discussion board on a site called "A Child Not A Choice" should I be forced to host extensive posts contradicting my views from the site "A Wart Not A Fetus"? Internet sites are private property, should I be allowed to post Biden/Harris signs next to the Trump MAGA billboard in your personal front yard?

 

Give it a try

 

Apples and oranges there, comparing porn to news items. Desperate is as desperate does.

If FB and Twitter have nothing to hide, why do they hide so much?

 

This is about monopolies censoring speech at the behest of Washington Democrats. Why are you ok with corporate tyranny? Because it benefits your team. You wouldn't be saying this if it was being done to corporate Democrats.

 

This is about private property. Conservatives are big on that, I've been told but it seems they have little respect for it if it's owned by someone who disagrees with them. Then they become more socialist than Marx. He, at least, didn't say that people should be compelled to use their businesses to spread lies they disagree with.

 

IMO Facebook should eschew politics completely. I look forward to the day when it goes back to pictures of your lunch and spirited debates as to whether the Hulk or Thor was more powerful. Zuckerberg still made several billion back then and I'll bet he found it a LOT less trouble.

 

There can't be any dictatorship. Private sector businesses have the right to censor anything they like. It is government that has a problem with censorship.

 

The core of Marxism is a critique of the employer-employee relationship. Socialism is about democratizing it. And you're still arguing that corporate monopolies should be allowed to influence our elections through censorship. You're to the right of most libertarians who believe in antitrust laws. Monopolies are supposed to be broken up.

 

The big tech companies are doing it on behalf of politicians and their corporate donors.

 

Plenty of room on the internet for anyone to start their own, if it flies fine, if not that's the way the market works.

 

I agree a private company should be able to censor on its platform.

...as long as it isn't being protected from liability as a public commons, which FB and Twitter ARE.

 

Why are they monopolies in your opinion? There are many companies offering the same services as tech companies like Facebook and Google. There are almost no barriers to entry since tech is based on innovation and everyone of these companies were base on a small group of people working hard with new ideas. You can code a new search engine or create a social media site. There are new ones being created all the time.

 

^^
This.

 

Ironically, the Democrats are using big tech's monopoly status as leverage to get them to censor more:

 

They can do it on behalf of anyone they like. This is still a free country.

 

Big Tech monopolies are being pressured by the government to clamp down on speech and you're saying this is evidence of a free society.

 

The problem is if they exercise their right to censor they ought to be liable for libel. That is currenty not the case.

 

I would normally agree with you, but there is a caveat not often considered when thinking about the separation of public and private interests. I would agree that the private sector has the qualified right to censor that within the confines of their business, but when they sell a product or service which becomes essentially a platform for public discourse, then I would suggest, the 1st Amendment protections apply. For instance, consider the question, do any of the private sector manufacturers of technology of telephones, microphones/speakers, or any technology used for communication, have the right to selectively suppress/censor content if their products or services are used? Would anyone be an advocate for any of the phone service companies restrict the content of phone conversations?
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, discussion forums might be private services, but I would suggest, when they become public platforms for speech & publication they no longer have the right to control content of public discourse, encroaching on the civil liberty protections of the Constitution.
The bill of rights was designed to limit the concentration of tyrannical power in government, but what of that of private organizations.
The argument by some CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, etc., that people have choices, initially sounds logical, but it’s not when you consider their platforms become the broad public foundation speech and the exchange of ideas.
While many might suggest the application of the Constitution’s protections are restrictions that apply only to the government and have not been tested by the SCOTUS regarding the private sector, I’d suggest, there is precedent. To some extent, anti trust laws were developed to mitigate the potential of private organizations to concentrate power to dominate the economy and potentially, the government.
So, on the surface, it might appear the private sector has broad latitude, but that latitude may change when their products/services begin to impact public discourse and exchange of ideas.
Aside from the private/public side of this debate, I see intent danger to liberty in another aspect of technology, which is a threat to individual privacy and Liberty. Strangely, the EU has recognized this threat, if you examine the suits they have launched against Google and other big tech companies. Much of the EU have high levels of restrictions against encroachment of individual privacy (particularly Germany) that have far greater restrictive laws protecting privacy than even the US. This is I suspect, in part a reaction to the domestic surveillance practices practiced in East Germany during the Cold War where the accumulation of private data became a tool for coercive control.
In the US, while the domestic surveillance practices of the NSA have been largely criticized by many, and may have been more extensive than is publicly acknowledged or known, the rampant collection of personal data with the accompanying rapid commodity market for buying and selling personal data is largely going unseen as a threat to democracy, yet, unchallenged by the US government’s lawmakers, it may be an even greater threat than what the NSA was engaged in. Pair the issue of big tech arguing the their right to manage public communication content with the growing hoards of personal data, that latter providing the potential for abuse, and IMO, we ignore a massive looming threat at the cusp of becoming uncontrollable.

 

The same legislation that allows them to "censor" without also being subject to libel suits is also the very thing which has allowed the internet to become what it is today. Without section 230, it would be a case of all or nothing - sites having to choose between editing nothing at all, resulting in every obscenity imaginable, or remaining tiny enough to have the capacity to check the entirety of their content.

In other words, without Section 230 there would be no Twitter, Facebook, et al, to complain about because neither of these options would have allowed them to become what they are today.

Who would want a Twitter filled with graphic obscenity, or a Facebook with twenty members?

Having the right to control content in the manner and to the extent they see fit has allowed them to develop popular products (because that's what they are), and grow accordingly.

If someone doesn't like their how they control and develop their products, they can stop using them. And if enough people feel the same way, those alternate products will steal their customers. Chances are, though, their standards make it unlikely. How's Parler doing, I wonder...

 

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