[houstonn]

It's my right to be able to hear it.

As Frederick Douglass, a former slave and writer, wisely stated, “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

[AstralStorm]

It isn't your right to have a particular newspaper publish your particular opinion. It is your right to publish your own newspaper.

[NayamAmarshe]

This analogy doesn't work. Social Media is not newspaper, they're a printing machine letting you publish your own newspaper. You can't just register with a newspaper and post opinions for free.

Social Media websites and platforms are acting as common carriers. They provide you an audience, without upfront cost.

If they discriminate against you for an opinion their 'experts' do not like, they should suffer the consequences for it because social media websites, let me publish my own newspaper.

[NaturalPhallacy]

Exactly. People keep ginning up false analogies to justify censorship.

If you create a service deliberately designed so that anyone can sign up and start posting things without so much as an employee approving their registration, then you've deliberately created what amounts to a public square.

To then selectively censor people on such a platform is tantamount to a bait & switch. You promised people a public square, and then revoked that mechanism for people you disagree with.

And if you think big tech doesn't all have the same bias, take a look at this graph: https://i.imgur.com/Si183zE.jpg

Social media like twitter and facebook aren't a newspaper. They're not a podcast. They're not a TV show. They're a digital public square. The sooner we collectively admit that, the better.

[wvenable]

> If you create a service deliberately designed so that anyone can sign up and start posting things without so much as an employee approving their registration, then you've deliberately created what amounts to a public square.

That makes no sense. You can literally build something identical to a literal physical public square in the real world and still kick people out because it's private property. This is no different than that.

[legacynl]

> If you create a service deliberately designed so that anyone can sign up and start posting things without so much as an employee approving their registration, then you've deliberately created what amounts to a public square.

So if I host an open-mic night in my comedy-club, i lose the right to reject applicants?

[NaturalPhallacy]

False analogy. Twitter et al deliberately encourage and sometimes try to force you to create accounts and join their platform. Instagram won't even let you look at stuff without creating an account and logging in.

Is your hypothetical comedy club deliberately and indiscriminately trying to drive people into coming in to increase the number of people inside it? And bragging about how many people are in there?

[smaddox]

> You can't just register with a newspaper and post opinions for free.

You don't have to register to send a letter to the editor. The newspaper has discretion about whether or not to publish it.

There's certainly a difference in scale, but I don't really see a fundamental difference in kind.

[legacynl]

Social media isn't a common carrier.

The internet is the common carrier.

The analogy of the printing press doesn't work, because the printing press symbolizes a big clunky piece of machinery that a regular user can't build, maintain, run or afford. With the internet it's not like that is it? There are literally thousands of options for a regular user to create their own 'newspaper' without having to pay large sums up front or anything at all.

[NayamAmarshe]

> There are literally thousands of options for a regular user to create their own 'newspaper' without having to pay large sums up front or anything at all.

That's like saying censorship is not censorship because the banned users can just write their opinions in a text editor.

[AstralStorm]

They literally can write their opinions in a text editor and publish it on the internet for cost of ISP and a PC, and a public internet address. You can skip the public address part potentially with more complex censorship resistant tech like Freenet.

Even the software is free. Now, the problem with social media is the network effects creating popularity and visibility, which cannot be replicated.

[AstralStorm]

Well, running a website is cheap, but not free.

The analogy is clunkier than expected, but it mostly works.

However, you are still not prevented from building your own printing press or copy machine. There were regimes that attempted similar controls...

[AstralStorm]

Sure you can ask a newspaper to publish an opinion for free. It's called "letter to the editor". Very old institution.

That said, analogies are just that, and social media are just not common carriers. By their design, they are selective about information they show you, whether by algorithm, your choice or the operator's choice. Especially since they use user submitted data including social network structure to manage your feed, it's editorializing by design.

A common carrier version would have to make the algorithms public, well described, remove moderation and other more undesirable features that increase income. This is not what these private companies run.

[ViViDboarder]

I’m not sure it is. You certainly don’t have a right to listen to every conversation that every person has. Where would this basis come from?

[saurik]

You are reading something very weird into it, but the idea is that if I want to hear what you want to tell me it shouldn't be someone else's decision to prevent us both from doing that.

[mikeyouse]

If you want to hear his opinion, he can email you… I can’t believe so many people are in favor of compelled speech here.

[hunterb123]

I can't believe so many people (or bots) here are defending the social media oligopoly.

This isn't forcing a mom and pop store to bake a cake, it's giant corporations that are picking and choosing which users and ideologies in the world can be heard.

We don't let ISPs or mobile carriers do this, why let giant social media platforms do it?

These platforms have government officials and even entire administrations solely using them.

[legacynl]

> This isn't forcing a mom and pop store to bake a cake, it's giant corporations

what does it matter how big the company is? Rules should be the same for everybody regardless of how big they are.

> that are picking and choosing which users and ideologies in the world can be heard.

I don't agree with this at all. You act as if twitter is the only platform that allows people to post their opinions. It's not, it never was, and it never will be. If an oppinion is not on twitter doesn't mean that it 'can't be heard in the world'.

The cynist in me suspects that it's just people who are buthurt that bad orange man was banned, and these people rather bitch, moan and throw tantrums until people adjust to them, rather than get of their lazy ass and create their own platform.

[hunterb123]

> what does it matter how big the company is? Rules should be the same for everybody regardless of how big they are.

Do you support existing antitrust laws? I'll respond to the rest of your post once you answer that.

[supernovae]

Nothing stops this. You can hear what you want to hear.

What's funny is, y'all claim you should be able to hear what you want to hear, but when others don't want to hear it - you scream "cancel culture".

You can't have it both ways. Either grow up and run your own businesses/communities and attract revenue to support them or realize your ideas are bad and can't be sustained. This happens to everyone regardless of their beliefs.

You can't take successful companies and force them to be unsuccessful by embracing communities that fail.