> They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes ...
That is a complete non sequitur. You say it's not about freedom of speech. Someone responds that, in fact, blatant censorship is occurring. You don't even attempt to refute this point, instead falling back to pointing out that the censorship isn't illegal!
Censorship reduces freedom to speak. That statement remains true whether or not the speech happens to be legally protected, and regardless of how wide spread the censorship might be.
Removing spam could be considered a form of censorship. It is removing the speech of others.
Generally anti-spam measures facilitate rather than inhibit freedom of speech. A sufficiently popular internet forum without spam controls would quickly become mostly unusable.
In this case, doesn't censorship enable freedom to speak?
These aren't singular global quantities. Such censorship reduces spammers' freedom to speak in order to preserve that of the other participants. Spamming closely resembles a tragedy of the commons (overuse of the system to solicit sales) and anti-spam an associated regulatory action.
The problem with such an analogy is that spam is inherently off topic - approximately none of the other participants actually want to see it. That's fundamentally different from this case. Whether you deem it misinformation or political speech, many of the participants clearly do want to see it. In fact, they want to see it so much that such information is consistently selected by the automated algorithms that are designed specifically to maximize engagement metrics.
We should be careful not to conflate wanting to see something with clicks. By that metric, spam about free bitcoins has more interested participants than much of the political speech in question.
It's not a non sequitur. Freedom of speech is not the same thing as a (nonexistent) right to post whatever you want on a private platform regardless of the consequences for others or for the platform itself.
I never said it's not censorship. You can post links on a number of competing services (or start your own), therefore statements like
“A group of unknown people at a technology corporation should be the ultimate authority on what I’m allowed to say, read, or share with my friends.”
> Freedom of speech is not the same thing as a (nonexistent) right to post whatever you want on a private platform
Again with a non sequitur - I never claimed that it was. I said:
> > Censorship reduces freedom to speak. That statement remains true whether or not the speech happens to be legally protected
It's really hard to have a good faith discussion about the pros and cons of a nuanced issue when one of the parties repeatedly fails to make good faith interpretations of claims which appear to challenge their worldview.
Don't worry, you're free to speak your mind so long as you don't actually try to communicate with anyone. Please take care not to express your opinions outside of the officially designated free speech zones!
Don't be ridiculous. There are thousands of competing communications providers. If you want to share content that harms society or harms the platforms themselves then you might just have to do it outside of Facebook or Twitter.
That is a complete non sequitur. You say it's not about freedom of speech. Someone responds that, in fact, blatant censorship is occurring. You don't even attempt to refute this point, instead falling back to pointing out that the censorship isn't illegal!
Censorship reduces freedom to speak. That statement remains true whether or not the speech happens to be legally protected, and regardless of how wide spread the censorship might be.