I like this trend of cancel-"cancel culture" activists attempting to compel speech and showing their hand that this was never really about "free speech."
Imagine that a private company bought an entire city. Should we take away people's right to protest in that city, since doing otherwise would be compelling speech by the company?
> Should we take away people's right to protest in that city, since doing otherwise would be compelling speech by the company?
I guess, if they didn't like the protesters, they would just say any protesters are on their property and they have the right to eject them or never even let them in. Whilst it was never built (for other reasons) a good example is the Garden Bridge in London. [1]
Despite this looking like publib infra:
"All groups of eight or more visitors would be required to contact the Garden Bridge Trust to request a formal visit to the bridge,” states Lambeth council’s planning report to its committee, which recommends conditional planning. “This policy would not only assist visitor management but also would discourage protest groups from trying to access the bridge.” [2]
Obviously this hasn't been tested at the city level, but the direction of travel ain't great.
I like this trend of conservatives discovering the concept of monopoly and advocating anti-trust.
Of course I assume this will only apply to narrow issues such as right wingers being deplatformed. For any other issue they'll go back to a maximalist interpretation of corporate property rights.
> Of course I assume this will only apply to narrow issues such as right wingers being deplatformed.
This argument goes both ways. Don't most people who think Big Tech should be allowed to keep censoring people because of the First Amendment, also think that the First Amendment shouldn't apply to corporations when it comes to Citizens United?
Perhaps but it's a bit more complicated. Citizens United is more about money than speech per se. You can't prevent members of corporations from speaking whatever they want as they are people, but corporations acting as corporations can bankroll political campaigns and push propaganda in ways very few individuals can afford.
It gets even worse when you consider that many corporations are international entities whose interests may not be aligned at all with those of US voters. It's a bit like letting people overseas come into the US and contribute to campaigns and run political ads without limit. In fact it more or less allows this since it's trivial for a foreign individual (or state actor) to use a corporation as a front.
Personally I think Citizens United is a threat to national security. If we were still in the Cold War you'd have the USSR contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to PACs and DC think tanks after laundering it through byzantine financial relationships with US front companies.
I'm just referring to the hypocrisy of right wingers suddenly discovering the issues with monopolies (and narrow oligopolies) when it affects them. You'd be hearing nothing about big tech from the right if they hadn't deplatformed people on the right.