The fact that sites like Reclaim the Net willfully misunderstand this to drum up anger hurts the cause of digital freedom, rather than helping it.
We're in quite a situation then. Let's look at the options for forums with protected speech.
* If only publicly funded communication channels have protections of freedom of speech. Can you tell me where I can find a public social network with free speech protections?
* Private media doesn't owe anyone almost anything lately. They publish whatever they want and will not talk about what's not convenient for the stories they tell. We've seen too much of it this year.
* Even if there was this great publicly-funded unbiased media source. Public funded usually means government. Twitter, Facebook, and others are now explicitly marking all the government-funded media and sources, as a way of implying bias. Essentially, bit by bit discrediting these platforms.
* All the private social platform don't owe you anything and will kick you out at will without any need for explanation.
If we agree that free speech is a critically important value of a civil, prosperous, modern civilization, then we're in big trouble. Most if not all the discourse these days is happening online and all the communication channels that people use belong either to:
* private corporations that are not bound by free speech laws
* non-profits overrun by often biased volunteers
* privately owned media companies pushing their agenda without any boundaries or common sense
* biased government sources pushing their propaganda
So where is the avenue for free speech in the 21st century? Shouting on the street outside?
Not only that, but the proposed solution of repealing Section 230 of the CDA would make hosting free speech impossible for anyone other than trillion dollar corporations that can throw billions at making sure users never use their services to upload illegal content.
This is such a low effort take, such obviously motivated reasoning, that wouldn’t deserve response but for being so prevalent as a way for otherwise thoughtful people to stop thinking and not confront the hypocrisy of supporting mass corporate censorship because it supports their favorite political party.
Which is not to say there’s not a nuanced argument to be had, but your one-dimensional argument isn’t that.
Sometimes it’s not a low-effort take … but simply reflective of the way legal precedent works.
Instead of focusing on trying to prevent social networks from moderating their platforms so that they’re safe, you should instead work to strengthen open protocols so that they work better and offer better alternatives to what already exists.
I think the reason there’s always resistance to these complaints is because when it comes down to it, people want to be able to experience the internet in a safe environment, and preventing networks from moderating that experience limits that possibility.
It is perfectly legitimate to be angry when companies start restricting their services to political allies, or arbitrarily blocking communication for people who disagree on who to vote for. Freedom of speech is a value encoded in the constitution because it is important, and because societies have learned over and over what happens when it's lost. It's the first thing dictatorships get rid of for a reason.
And your comment does the exact same thing only more explicitly. The First Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. And it's very telling that people would prefer to focus on platforms regulating their content and "cancel culture" than addressing the very real and consistent attacks on the First Amendment by the current administration.
I think back to this article a lot: https://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/