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by justsomeadvice0 1071 days ago
> Social media networks with over 100,000,000 daily active users should not be considered as "private companies with a right to free speech through censorship". They are effectively public squares that we have all elected and chosen to share. Right and left alike.

Shouldn't this also apply to TV channels? Chat apps like iMessage? Popular newspapers, blogs, and email newsletters? And indeed, why stop at 100M DAUs - why not 10M, or 1M? The problem I expect is this path leads to the death of freedom of the press.
2 comments
gowld 1071 days ago
It's not 100M readers that makes it a public square. It's 100M writers.

Like a shopping mall, the classic US example of a privately owned public square

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BizarroLand 1070 days ago
To be fair though, freedom of the press should be limited to things that at the time of publishment/boardcast were believed to be true by reasonable actors.

They shouldn't get carte blanche to claim wild conspiracy theories and to turn people into figurative monsters and then claim 1st amendment rights to protect them from the consequences of their public agitating slander.

On the other hand, reviewing and moderating anything other than their current carte blanche status quo would be an inhuman ordeal, so it's not like I have a more perfect idea to replace it with, just an understanding that there are bad actors using the rules of our American Social Contract as a weapon against the fundamental rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that the self-same social contract they are exploiting has promised us for our abidance.

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dcow 1069 days ago
I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not sure it matters. If you don't like the bad actors spreading "disinformation" then speak louder. You're 100% right that it's untenable to moderate "the news". We have laws preventing bad faith actors from spreading demonstrably false information that damages somebody. Anything else is just... insignificant to your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness unless you aren't mature enough to ignore opinions that make you unhappy.
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