In what world is Twitter a monopoly?
Its market cap is $36B. That's 2X less than Snap and 20X less than Facebook.
Its market cap is $36B. That's 2X less than Snap and 20X less than Facebook.
Microsoft isn't though. Not because they don't completely own the Desktop PC market just as they ever did, but because that market is less relevant than it used to be for web devs.
I live in a strange time.
GP's point was that private individuals have the power to arbitrarily deplatform speech they don't like, no court order required. The counter argument is 'go find another speech platform', but it doesn't work, because speech platforms have been monopolised by a single-digit handful of individuals.
it does not take much effort to realize that twitter is not a monopoly in the space of speech platforms. it's not clear to me that twitter is particularly unique as a speech platform: blogs minimally could serve this role, as could mastodon. more controversially perhaps: facebook/instagram.
contrast that with a situation where you literally /cannot/ get utilities delivered to your house because the utility company doesn't like you: seems like a fairly stark difference to me.
Twitter is one of a small handful of platforms where an individual can share an idea and have that idea spread - as long as the owners of Twitter don't disagree with that idea. It's not because twitter is special, it's because it was one of the first to achieve a sufficiently large userbase.
Defending arbitrary censorship on these platforms as 'oh well it's a private entity so they can do what they like' misses the forest for the trees. Technology has shifted the power balance for free expression, and applying pre-technology laws and mindsets to it just empowers that small handful of individuals to manipulate public discourse even more. Twitter doesn't quite have a monopoly on speech, but it's damn close in terms of practical outcomes. The fact that the legal definition of `monopoly` hasn't caught up with that, doesn't change the matter.
No, it's saying you're welcome to practice free speech, you just can't borrow my megaphone to do it.
How hard is this to understand? You are not entitled to use other people's property without their consent.
If twitter was actually the only way to communicate with people on the internet you might have a case, but that is completely, ridiculously, absurdly not true.
Yes, you can make your own blog and post whatever you like on it (actually these days even that is questionable with cloud vendors deplatforming blogs they don't like), but the chances of your speech reaching a wide audience are millions of times smaller than if you just posted on one of those established platforms and your speech was allowed to spread without censorship.
The problem with your analogy is that your megaphone makes it virtually impossible for anyone else to have one. This was not the case in the early days of the internet prior to these hyper centralised platforms emerging. This is where both the law and just general public mindset hasn't yet caught up with the implications of modern social media. In business, we have anti-trust laws specifically for this scenario. In information and social media, we have nothing.
A cafe owner refusing service to an individual is not comparable to a global-scale speech platform selectively suppressing ideas that the owner doesn't like from reaching a wide audience.
Bullshit. They're merely the easiest. People were sharing ideas far and wide long before these companies came into existence. You have a right to free speech, no one is required to help you spread it.
> A cafe owner refusing service to an individual is not comparable to a global-scale speech platform selectively suppressing ideas that the owner doesn't like from reaching a wide audience.
Maybe not, but I've yet to see a good argument for why being a global scale speech platform inherently means that anyone has a right to tell Twitter who they can and cannot ban.
Again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be consequences for Twitter, I'm just saying that those consequences should be social, not legal.
I feel like the people here are arguing that the reason they should face legal consequences isn't that they've done anything illegal or that necessarily should be illegal, only that they don't think social consequences will work and they can't stand the idea that other people might not care as much about it as they do.
The store? Then your analogy is flawed because there are other big stores that sell basically the same stuff and even some small shops. Not a monopoly. If all of them choose not to sell that product that doesn't mean anything. They don't have any obligation to carry whatever you want.
Man, people are being absurd about this whole thing.
If major cinema chains (Twitter, Facebook..) refuse to show a movie, but you can still rent the back of Moe's bar (and thousands bars like it) and use their second-hand projector (an analogy for the small audience of alternative platforms).
How successful will such movies be? Should we be concerned that the cinema chains can decide what sort of movies can be made or have any sort of impact?
There are significantly more than two companies that allow mass communication over the internet. In fact, there are a significant number of perfectly free and open ways to communicate over the internet.
Why is Twitter special?
> If major cinema chains (Twitter, Facebook..) refuse to show a movie, but you can still rent the back of Moe's bar (and thousands bars like it) and use their second-hand projector (an analogy for the small audience of alternative platforms). How successful will such movies be?
Sorta my point, because that happens all the time. No one goes around saying theater chains are monopolies and need to show every movie anyone deigns to have projected on a screen.
> Should we be concerned that the cinema chains can decide what sort of movies can be made or have any sort of impact?
Maybe, but that isn't legal standing for doing anything. If you don't like it, boycott theaters, tell your friends not to go to them, promote alternatives that deliver what you want.
Oh, but then the market might disagree with you and keep going to the theaters anyway. Well tough. You're not entitled to force people to care.
Alternatively, push for legislation around online communication platforms and how they are allowed to determine who can and cannot speak on them. But then don't be surprised when those rules apply to your mailing list too.
Farmers rely on access to groundwater for the cultivation of their crops. but since Coca-Cola's arrival, they have been confronted with a serious decline in water levels. [...] documents from the government's water ministry show that water levels remained stable from 1995 until 2000, when the Coca-Cola plant became operational. Water levels then dropped by almost 10 metres over the following five years.
https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/coca-cola-drinking-world...
The company was blamed for depleting the local supply of water even in communities where it did not have operations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/31/h...
Sounds like the plot of Idiocracy.