[AnimalMuppet]

OK, but imagine some rich guy becoming president. Imagine that he owns some companies. Imagine that one of those is a media company. Imagine, for instance, Zuckerberg as president. He ran as part of party X. Now imagine that Facebook (not government, but a private company) suddenly starts deleting content that supports party Y. Is that a problem?

We just had a president with significant business assets, but he owned hotels. The next one may own media companies.

[fullstop]

There's some misunderstanding here. I'm not suggesting that there is no problem. I am saying that it is not violating anyone's first amendment rights and I am absolutely correct on that matter.

[BitwiseFool]

I concede that you are correct based on the letter of the law but I think the spirit of the law is being violated in a significant way.

[fullstop]

... but it's not. The entire purpose of that amendment was to prevent congress from passing laws which infringe on your rights, and Twitter is definitely not the congress or the government.

The USA is a capitalist society. If there is a market for an "uncensored" social media platform, the invisible hand of the market will take care of it, right? Even so, you yourself are likely pro-censorship in some way. Surely you are against child porn being on Twitter, likely along with discussion about planning mass shootings, bombings, and things of that nature. We all have a line that is drawn between what is acceptable and what is not.

[BitwiseFool]

>"the invisible hand of the market will take care of it, right?"

I don't see this happening and I think the premise is flawed. In fact it looks like the dominant players in the market ganged up on nascent competitors like Parler and shut them out of the ecosystems they created. In practical terms, when payment processors, server hosting companies, domain registrars, and app stores ban you, how are you even supposed to compete? Sure, you can theoretically bootstrap your own payment processor, cloud service provider, even your own smartphone ecosystem with gobs of cash, but we all know that's not going to happen.

[fullstop]

Would you agree that, perhaps, your concern lies more with monopolies and not with censorship? Dominant players shutting out competitors is one of the most capitalist things that I can think of.

[BitwiseFool]

I am more concerned with censorship than I am with these monopolies (or near monopolies) in question. Censorship is not reliant on having a monopolistic position and even disparate companies that don't compete can effectively come together and deplatform people. I know "begging the question" is a logical fallacy, but I can't help but ask the following: What happens when 'the market' decides your personal liberties are problematic?

"I'd also argue that a lot of people care about this "technicality". Businesses are not the government, end of story. The 1st amendment is quite succinct, and there's little room for misinterpreting it."

What is gained from focusing so intensely on this fact?

I feel frustrated because I believe that tyranny and infringements on the rights of man can come from both the public and private sector. I fully accept the 1st Amendment says "Congress shall pass no law...". But to me, the actual preservation of civil liberties depends on both domains. You can't have one without the other.

[stale2002]

Ok... Now what if what people actually care about is not being censored?

To give an example, if there are two situations, situation 1 is that the government comes to my house, and threatens me for speech that I made, and situation 2, is that the mob comes to my house, and threatens me for my speech, the thing that is on my mind is not "Well, situation 1 is a violation of my speech rights, and situation 2 isnt!".

Like, literally that does not matter. Nobody cares about that technically that you keep talking about. What matters is that I don't want someone coming to my house and threatening me, regardless if it is the government, or the mob.

[fullstop]

It's not a technicality. One is limits that we have carefully placed on our government to prevent such abuse. The other is a matter for the police and the legal system.

This is akin to a private company only allowing men to vote in board meetings, and people saying that it's violating the 19th amendment. Is it wrong? Absolutely! But it's not violating the 19th amendment.

I'd also argue that a lot of people care about this "technicality". Businesses are not the government, end of story. The 1st amendment is quite succinct, and there's little room for misinterpreting it.

[stale2002]

> It's not a technicality.

In the context of this discuss it is.

It doesn't matter because what people want is to not be censored. Thats the point of all of this.

And you are bringing something up that just isn't relevant at all, that nobody brought up, but yourself.

> But it's not violating the 19th amendment.

Its not violating the 3rd amendment either. But nobody brought that up. Nobody cares if the 3rd amendment was violated, in this context.

What people care about is the bad thing happening. And you are distracting from the conversation, by not focusing on the fact that it is bad, and instead focusing on something that nobody cares about, in the context of this discussion.

The original context of all of this, is that someone said "It seems to me that if you really want to be a despot, you should own the companies that control the flow of information".

They didn't bring up the 1st amendment. You did. And that distracts from the important conversation, which is, that if someone wants to censor a bunch of other people, then they can get around all these laws, by just having a private company do it instead.

Thats why you got downvotes. It is because your point about the 1st amendment comes off as a bad faith way, of ignoring what everyone was actually talking about, which is about how a despot can censor a bunch of people, and cause a lot of harm, and that they can do that without running into 1st amendment issues, by just getting a private company to do it.