> For a long time people said that deleting comments on social media wasn't censorship because it was done by private companies, and I agreed.
I feel like that is bad reasoning. If the state is a democratic one, wouldn't a democratically elected censor/moderator (pick your framing, it's the same thing) be better than one that is accountable only to investors?
No because I can leave a social network and go to some other website or publisher that allows me to publish whatever I want. The worst thing that can happen is that they delete my comments.
You can't escape the state. If they don't like what you post they'll beat you up and put you behind bars. Not good.
Regarding your "democratically appointed censor" point, freedom of speech means that I should not be a slave to whatever the status quo is.
Sure, you can leave Twitter and Meta and post on some Mastodon server nobody knows about, but if you do that, your reach collapses and you've been effectively silenced.
> You can't escape the state.
You can, by moving countries. I've done it four times in my life.
> Tell that to all the people (especially women) living right now in Afghanistan, North Korea or Cuba
Okay sure, but this was specifically qualified with a "If the state is a democratic one".
> Out of curiosities, what are those four countries and did you also acquire their citizenship?
I'd rather not dox myself too much, but they were two EU countries, the US and the UK. As a union citizen, I can move freely between countries in the EU; I went to the US on a specialty worker visa. I never acquired any citizenships other than my country of birth.
I feel like that is bad reasoning. If the state is a democratic one, wouldn't a democratically elected censor/moderator (pick your framing, it's the same thing) be better than one that is accountable only to investors?