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Comment by byrneseyeview | Hacker News Reader

There is a difference between supporting free speech and supporting it on a particular platform. The First Amendment doesn't give me the right to force the NYT to say what I want. Similarly, it doesn't require FB to post stuff it disagrees with; they're completely within their rights to censor this stuff.

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"censor"

A private citizen or company may choose not to broadcast whatever it likes, for whatever reason. This is not "censorship" except in the broadest and most meaningless possible sense.

I agree with you, but to call it "censorship" is to cede part of the argument.

There's an important difference you're glossing over. If I post a photgraph to Facebook and Facebook takes it down, that's censorship. If I don't post the photograph in the first place, that's not censorship. That doesn't mean it's a violation of free speech or the first amendment, but we shouldn't redefine words like "censorship" just to gloss over all these issues.

Is FB more like the NYT or the ATT telephone network? I think it's a stretch to claim that FB is "saying" the things that users post on walls. Perhaps a better offline metaphor would be a mall tossing out someone for wearing an objectionable t-shirt or handing out pamphlets.

I did not mean to imply that private censorship is forbidden by the first amendment. Freedom of speech is more than a legal right. It is an ideal that many of us support in all contexts.

You're supporting it in the sense that "Someone who wants to broadcast a message in a particular medium has the right to decide how that medium is used." Plenty of bad examples -- Pepsi doesn't have the right to push their products in Coke's newsletter.

After the Jewish haters, Facebook will have to deal with the Black haters, the neo Nazis, the anti abortion, the anti gays, the anti government, the fascists, the socialists, the chicken haters, the fast food advocates ...

The list is endless, you can just run around and shut down all non straight opinion makers and by the way Facebook is not NYT.

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