[anticonformist]

The public square is owned by private companies and they're enforcing anti-first amendment principles. One can't even argue that these banned people can move to another platform if they're all coordinating.

Leftist extremists are effecting public banishment of their rightist extremist opponents.

It wouldn't be as bad if leftist extremists were getting banned at the same time. The problem is that leftist extremists have bullied the mainstream left into extreme action.

[kstrauser]

Today, Reddit banned the Chapo Trap House left extremist group. From someone not involved in either extreme, it appears to me like they're being consistent and banning people for behavior and not politics. I've not heard anyone calling for George Will to be deplatformed, for instance.

[0xy]

Just checking, but you know the standard for "consistent" is not "at least one far left extremist group was banned" right?

That is absolutely not the definition of consistent, so I have no idea why you've tried to square this circle. Consistent means proportional enforcement without political bias, which has clearly never been a priority for reddit.

After all, reddit has repeatedly targeted right-leaning subs with shadow bans and stealth editing including directly from the CEO. Which left-leaning subs have received CEO stealth editing treatment?

[kstrauser]

I don’t know. Which left-leaning subs, specifically, have violated the Reddit ToS in the same way that the_donald and the various “clown world” subs did and were not treated the same?

[0xy]

ChapoTrapHouse regularly called for violence and was never deranked, shadowbanned or had comments stealth edited by the CEO, for example.

There are dozens of affiliated subreddits just there.

[JoshTriplett]

People get regularly banned for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and many other kinds of hate, whether their profiles say 'D' or 'R' or something else. If many of their profiles tend to say 'R' or otherwise have similar political views, that's not an indication of bias on the part of platforms.

[castlecrasher2]

/r/politics not being banned completely invalidates your point

[tathougies]

All people regularly get shot by the police for committing crime and other kinds of violence. Whether they're black white or something else. If many of them happen to be black, that's not an indication of bias on the part of the police.

Just a simple substitution, and now we see that this is just bad thinking.

[0xy]

Absolutely false. It means more of them have been banned, not more of them are participating in that. You're assuming equal enforcement of the rules, with absolutely no evidence to support that.

Reddit after all developed moderation tools like shadow banning and deranking and used them exclusively against right-leaning subs, including stealth editing from the CEO.

[darth_avocado]

First amendment only protects you against the suppression of free speech from the government. It definitely does not give you the right to say whatever you want, wherever you want. Private companies have complete authority over which speech is acceptable on platforms run by them.

[nojito]

What part of the first amendment covers private companies?

[mempko]

but isn't the world of "private property" what the right wants? This kind of world, where there are no longer any public squares, but everything held in private is the world the right asks for. This is the kind of world we end up with. The irony should not be lost on them right?

[chipotle_coyote]

It's not right-wing as much as a particular kind of very free-market-focused libertarianism. But, yes, I've thought about this discrepancy, too.

In practice, big services like YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, et. al., are going to get heat from all sides of the political spectrum. Right-wingers are positive Twitter is suppressing them, yet left-wingers frequently complain Jack Dorsey is a cryptofascist. Both of them are pushing these theories on... Twitter. And they get thousands of retweets. You would think that irony would not be lost on them, but you would be oh so wrong.

[_fq4v]

Not quite though. The right -- including libertarians -- often advocate for regulation, just less. You would be hardpressed to find a lot of libertarians disagreeing on whether or not people should be able to protest in privately owned public spaces. For example, sidewalks are privately owned in the United States, but you are allowed to hold a protest on one.