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by ng12 2125 days ago
There's the first amendment and there's the concept of free speech. This absolutely violates free speech but does not violate the first amendment.

The only current framework to protect freedom of speech from private companies is to designate them as common carriers, e.g. phone companies legally cannot police what is said over their wires.
1 comments
bccdee 2125 days ago
I don't think it's necessarily anti-free-speech. The idea of free speech is that everyone should be able to express their opinions without being prosecuted for it, not that everyone is entitled to a platform for those opinions. You should be able to write an article about absolutely anything, but you're not entitled to put it in my newspaper.

I of course agree that the mastodon ban is a bad move because it sets a double standard where browsers can access arbitrary web content but other apps can't, and because it grossly limits the things that the average user can do with their device. However, these are consumer rights issues, not free speech issues.

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sfkdjf9j3j 2125 days ago
I think what a lot commenters are saying is that within their conception of the bigger idea of free speech they do consider themselves entitled to have their thoughts distributed by established platforms. Or put more mildly, platforms like Google ought not ban people for their content because it's the right thing to do. But I don't see many people advocating for government intervention, not with specifics anyway.
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bccdee 2124 days ago
I think that's kind of a strange take. Like, if you are entitled to put an article in my newspaper no matter what the article says, doesn't that unduly restrict my speech by forcing me to endorse your ideas by using my platform to distribute them?

If Google doesn't want to distribute your ideas, I think it's odd to say that that's wrong of them. I do think that it's a problem that they get to act as a gatekeeper like that in the first place. I think the solution is to break up larger platforms and create a diverse ecosystem of smaller options, not to forbid platforms from ever moderating their content.

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