[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.

[fullstop]

> What happens when 'the market' decides your personal liberties are problematic?

That's capitalism. Sorry?

> What is gained from focusing so intensely on this fact?

Because people (US citizens) complain that their free speech rights are being violated.

They're not, unless the US Government itself is restricting what they can say.

As it is right now, Twitter can do whatever the hell it wants with its platform and you're free to start your own if you feel so compelled.

>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 think that there's some misunderstanding of what the "rights of man" are, and where they are set. Do you really want the government involved in your private interactions with a private company?

Who or what gives you these rights? As far as I can tell, it's only granted by the constitution and amendments.

The 9th amendment is somewhat of a grey area, I suppose. Even so, I don't think that "I deserve to tweet whatever I want without being banned" is an enumerable right. If you want to go further, an amendment would be needed.

[BitwiseFool]

>"I think that there's some misunderstanding of what the "rights of man" are, and where they are set." and "Who or what gives you these rights? As far as I can tell, it's only granted by the constitution and amendments."

I'm talking about the concept of Human Rights. You can say that we are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", if you'd like. There's also the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" passed by the UN.

>"Do you really want the government involved in your private interactions with a private company?"

Yes. The government already does this and it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this sort of thing is ubiquitous and quite tolerable.

>"What happens when 'the market' decides your personal liberties are problematic?" >"That's capitalism. Sorry?"

I know we aren't going to agree on this, but I dread the idea of my human and civil rights being dependent on Capitalism. And I'm a supporter of Capitalism! The exercise of civil liberties should not be dependent on their profitability.

Edit: We've been going back and forth for a while now and I think it's been a good and respectful discourse. I understand if you want to drop the subject and move on.

[fullstop]

> Yes. The government already does this and it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this sort of thing is ubiquitous and quite tolerable.

I'm glad to see this, a lot of the anti-censorship people are, surprisingly, anti-regulation. I'm not quite sure how they balance the two.

> I know we aren't going to agree on this, but I dread the idea of my human and civil rights being dependent on Capitalism. And I'm a supporter of Capitalism! The exercise of civil liberties should not be dependent on their profitability.

We actually agree here, and it sounds like you may be a bit less capitalist than you think you are. I'm definitely capitalist, but abhor things like price gouging, scalping, and predatory loans. They exist because there is a market for them, gained through what I would consider a lack of morals.

The free market is great, until it isn't.

As for censorship, it needs to exist in some form or fashion. The reason why platforms such as Parler failed was because they were unable to moderate their platform. If you have a bunch of people posting child porn, planning attacks, etc (edit: and you, as a platform, do nothing about it), you will become toxic and nobody's going to want to work with you. I think that the disagreement that you and I have is where that line should be drawn.

[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.

[fullstop]

It is absolutely not a technicality for the purpose of this discussion, and I'd argue that it's actually imperative.

The US Government can not demand Twitter remove content (of US citizens) without violating their rights, which was implied by the actual article given that a large percentage of these requests came from the US Government. Conversely, Twitter can remove whatever it feels like without violating the rights granted to every US citizen. If Twitter is succumbing to US government pressure then we have the legal means to push back. If it is Twitter moderating content on their own volition, there is currently no legal means to do anything about it.

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

It's all over this discussion, not just this thread.

[stale2002]

Do you understand at all, that the original thing that someone brought up, was how a despot could censor a bunch of stuff, without doing it through the government?

You are ignoring the point that is being brought up.

You bringing up this other thing, makes it seem like you are trying to dismiss this other concern, by bringing up a fact that does not actually address their point.

Are you actually going to address the original point here, or are you going to keep ignoring it?

The fact that you refuse to actually talk about the issue, which is that a despot can get away with censoring things, by doing it through private companies, makes it seem like you don't actually have a response to that, and are trying to misdirect.

[fullstop]

No. I'm saying that there's no legal means to stop a despot from doing this, no amendment to help you, and you have no rights. If you want to do that we're going to need another amendment or monopolies will need to be broken up.

In the eyes of the law, Twitter has done nothing wrong by moderating their content.