Your argument makes no sense. It's a complete non-sequitur unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication.
That would get laughed out of the SCOTUS in an instant.
That would get laughed out of the SCOTUS in an instant.
It's quite literally not a non-sequitur. The parity of reasoning in both cases is clear: they are the same argument, I just swapped the details.
Every good regulation is intended to address some negative externality. Before a regulation is enacted, people point out the negative externalities and how they're harmful and that we should do something about them. Maybe they have some idea what that entails, maybe they don't.
You can't consistently dismiss such concerns by arguments like, "it's private property", while simultaneously supporting other regulations, like those enforced by the EPA, that also restrict one's rights to use one's property.
> unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication
I don't know what a good solution would be, I just know negative externalities in this case do exist. You can continue to deny them, you can accept that they exist but deny their importance, or you can accept they exist and that they are important, and so participate in a dialogue about how they should be addressed.
Basically, I'm just saying I found the grandparent a bit... overkill ;-)
If this incident happened in a vacuum, I would agree. Unfortunately that isn't the case. The censorship ranges from mild to extreme these days, and now even the mild cases drive the wedge deeper. The unrest in the US is only just beginning I think.
Anyway, the post to which I initially replied is a common response to private censorship, and the irony of arguing that private companies should be able to do anything with their private property apparently escapes most people who make it. "Oh, private property, right. So let's eliminate the minimum wage then, because that money they wouldn't otherwise pay to fill a role is the corporation's private property. No? Is private property suddenly not the only thing that matters?"
You might not like it, but that is the current reality. Personally I like it. I would much rather have corporations decide which speech is allowable on their platforms than have the government decide which speech is allowable.
This is not quite correct. Corporations used to be bound by their own charter until Congress relaxed those restrictions. Congress makes the rules under which corporations can operate. The Supreme Court ruled on how the current rules should be interpreted against the Constitution, but those rules are fairly arbitrary.
In any case, I'm not even suggesting "taking away their free speech rights".
> I would much rather have corporations decide which speech is allowable on their platforms than have the government decide which speech is allowable.
This is a false dichotomy.