A private company can do whatever they want and ban whoever from their platform.
But can a private company that's used by 99% of the population do the same? I think there's an unexplored grey area there. If HN bans me that's not necessarily censorship, but if Twitter does so, there's an argument it could be. Censorship is not a function of who does it, it's function of scale. The bigger the audience, the more important it is that free speech is upheld.
Our free speech laws have to be updated for the information and Internet era, and the era of mega corporations monopolising a huge chunk of the public space. Of course none of this would happen if open and decentralised standards were used, but that's a discussion for another time.
I can't see any way to justify requiring Facebook et al to host misogynistic content at the barrel of a metaphorical gun.
Yes, because that's how rights work. The rights being debated here are freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, be careful where you draw the line in the sand and decide those rights end, because lines in the sand can be redrawn.
Plus, Twitter isn't used by anywhere near 99% of the population. It isn't, despite what many people say, a primary means of discourse, communication, broadcast media or politics. It's popular but it isn't infrastructure. It isn't the public commons, it isn't a utility. It really isn't worth burning the Constitution over.
If you want the government to take over social media and coerce speech, fine, but accept that that position is explicitly the opposite of what the First Amendment stands for.
Essentially, the first amendment is the floor, not the ceiling. People who want to minimize freedom of speech will point to the first amendment and say that restricting congress from restricting our speech is all we should have.
Big tech companies should be forced to enshrine freedom of speech into their platforms, or face still government sanctions.
The reason the First Amendment denies Congress the right to abridge speech is that freedom of speech implicitly allows freedom from speech, just as the right to assembly implicitly allows the right not to assemble and freedom of religion implies freedom from religion. The First Amendment is written the way it is to protect the right of the people, and of private enterprise, to moderate speech on their property. Their doing so isn't a violation of freedom of speech, it is freedom of speech.
>People who want to minimize freedom of speech will point to the first amendment and say that restricting congress from restricting our speech is all we should have.
First, no one here is actually making that argument.
Second, it baffles me how you can type that and not realize that allowing congress to restrict our speech more than they're allowed to makes our speech less free.
And third, I have to echo the sentiment of sascha_sl's comment here. It's telling that this outrage only ever comes out on behalf of people with a specific political bent. None of Hacker News' free speech advocates ever go to bat for LGBT or black or leftist content that gets unfairly demonetized or banned, which despite the narrative happens all the time. Only ever for the right-wingers, racists and assholes, and only after Trump's white supremacist fringe base started getting banned en masse.
This isn't about freedom of speech, and never has been. It's about one political ideology wanting the government to coerce private platforms into publishing their propaganda against their will.
1st Amendment: Congress SHALL MAKE NO LAW [...]
Curious, isn't it?
I'm not sure why you think that Congress, which is likely near the MOST PARTISAN it's ever been, will responsibly and reasonably use this "force" to ensure viewpoint neutrality, instead of say, amplifying the voices that support their position.
Also, part of the 1st Amendment is allowing people to associate (or not) with each other. As long as you aren't discriminating for an illegal purpose, you can make whatever rules you want. If you don't like the "big tech" rules, don't participate. But if you break their rules, they can kick you out.
The first amendment means that the GOVERNMENT can't silence jerks, but is ALSO means that people who don't want to hear jerks don't have to listen.
These companies were regulated because of market dominance. It isn't efficient to have 2 electric or 2 telegraph or 2 phone companies when they were established -- so government set a reasonable profit margin and then drew up rules by which the companies had to abide to stay in their position. (I'm guessing bus/plane was more about not crowding others out, as they don't have the sunk costs or moat that the other companies acquire by their nature.)
In my opinion its far more damaging to allow sites like youtube to become so influencial in public life yet wield the power to censor anyone they don't like.
I believe that social media should be tightly bound by the constitution so that they may not overstep the rights of the people.
They shouldn't be allowed to ban viewpoints they don't like.
They shouldn't be allowed to unreasonably collect and use data, nor come up with agreements that allow the use of important data.
Quite simply I would rather trust a government that at occasionally follows the rules than near despot oligarchs who never do.