Quote:
Originally Posted by Slighted
there is no conversation to be had about free speech and any private companies.
This is the thing- there absolutely is, and it's a conversation the left was (correctly) *all over* and almost completely united against corporate censorship. Very recently. Remember that whole net neutrality thing and how it intentionally prevented private-company censorship? I member.
It's not ok for the government to censor speech. It's not ok for the USPS to refuse mail service based on speech. It's not ok for private phone companies to refuse phone service based on speech. It's not ok for ISPs to refuse to transmit packets based on speech. But it's totally 100% ok for private companies whose function is communication among users and who have much bigger space-monopolies than any phone company or ISP to censor speech because they happen to be mostly censoring your opponents more right now (but an absolute abomination when speech you like gets censored the same way elsewhere). GMAFB. It's nakedly transparent resulting.
It's obvious to anybody trying to design a reasonable system that any major mode of communication should function as a common carrier like the phone company. It's also obvious that people should have the tools to avoid things/people they want to avoid. The simple solution is third-party OPT-IN blocking. If I dont want to see anti-vax nonsense, I subscribe to their list that filters anti-vax content before it ever gets to me.
Garbage speech is effectively shadowbanned outside its echo chamber, but it's not done by any centralized force-it's done by people who've collectively decided that they arent worth listening to anymore, and nothing is stopping people who want to interact with it from interacting, so it's not actually banned. This is how it should be IMO.
Common carrier without blocking technology would be a total disaster, but the combination is far better than corporate censorship.