[cherryturnover]

If the government allows companies to buy all the avenues to free speech, do you really have free speech? For reference, North Korea has rights to freedom of speech and assembly. But it definitely does not mean they actually have that right.

So arguing that the façade of a private company being allowed to shut you down is somehow rational is nothing beyond absurd. If you cannot express your speech anywhere because a mob disapproves, you don't have freedom of speech. Freedom of Speech is not "Freedom to only listen to the things I want to hear." Otherwise there is no free speech, just what is culturally acceptable.

[not2b]

The solution to things like that (and we are nowhere near that) is antitrust law. But we are nowhere near that state today; the far right dominates talk radio and owns tons of local radio stations, and has Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN to get their message out, as well as lots of content on Facebook and Youtube even if those platforms ban some things.

[cratermoon]

Oh, I'm not saying it's rational. I'm pointing out that it's the current state of the neoliberal economic consensus. Companies can determine and who and what to amplify or block because Free Market fundamentalism outweighs human rights concerns, globally.

> the façade of a private company being allowed to shut you down is somehow rational is nothing beyond absurd

Indeed, it is, but that's where we are.

> a mob disapproves

In this case, it's not a mob. It's a handful of people who care more about making money than upholding rights.

> there is no free speech, just what is culturally acceptable.

"Yet if all cannot be of one mind—as who looks they should be?—this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate" - John Milton, "Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England", 1644 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/608/608-h/608-h.htm

Free speech has always been constrained by what is culturally acceptable.

[Splognosticus]

You can't seriously be drawing parallels between Facebook and North Korea of all things. What could Facebook possibly do to prevent you from exercising your right to free speech and free assembly? If they have that power why aren't they using it to stamp out all of the various competing platforms that serve people banned from their own? This line of reasoning just doesn't make a lick of sense.