[charlesism]

    > we are taking the power to limit speech (which the
    > founders felt was too important to be wielded by the 
    > government) 

Someone spray-paints a swastika on your car. Do you think the founders would mind if you painted it over?

[mundo]

My point was that American free speech is not based on the belief that all speech is good or that no speech is bad. It's based on the idea that there's no one we trust to distinguish the good speech from the bad speech. Pointing out examples of obviously-bad speech doesn't disprove this, because it's not the existence of bad speech that's in question, it's the exact location of the borderline separating good from bad.

[manfredo]

It'd more like Ford trying to ban people from putting Hilary or Trump bumper stickers on their cars. In your scenario, an individual had their property vandalized. That is not comparable to platforms censoring certain views.

[charlesism]

    > That is not comparable to platforms 
    > censoring certain views.

Historically, it has been. If someone had sent a letter to The Pennsylvania Chronicle, containing a recipe for baking a turd pie, I don't think Ben Franklin would have felt the need to print it.

Facebook, Twitter, Google... they're the ones footing the bill to host their users' content.

[manfredo]

The Pennsylvania Chronicle isn't a platform. It's a publisher. Readers' letters getting published is the exception, not the norm.

The ideas discussed here would be more like a telecoms provider specifically refusing to do business with someone because they disagree with their politics.

[mundo]

What's the difference? AFAICT the idea that when a website gets big enough it becomes de facto infrastructure and gets governed by different rules is pure imagination.

[basch]

There are rules that treat telecoms differently precisely because there is opportunity for market failure.

The argument is, that some software companies have crossed into becoming a telecom like entity. A market failure exists, where consumers may need protecting.

Obviously, current laws dont treat facebook, google, or microsoft that way.

Do we feel the same way about gmail/outlook starting to censor emails that google/microsoft dont approve of?

[forgottenpass]

Do you think they would mind if robots owned and operated by Ford patrolled the city at night and painted over swastikas on neo-Nazi's cars?