>>maintain their fiefdoms of extrajudicial decisions about what is or isn't considered protected speech
Where do they do that?
My understanding of U.S.A. First amendment is that government won't infringe on your right of free speech. It doesn't say you can come into my home, workplace, store, or website and yell what you want on my property.
There's nothing "Extrajudicial" about it and it's not "Protected speech". It's just a business owner saying "you can say whatever you want, but not necessarily in my home, on a platform I built and pay for".
I think we've gone weird somewhere if we think Facebook == Public Square on any level. It's just somebody's storefront (and insert cliches about who / what is the product :)
In some ways, I am hoping tech giants do MORE weird policies / bans / things, so hopefully general population sees it as a private proprietary closed property / platform that it is, not a friendly public gathering spot we somehow take it for. But I still don't think they are doing anything illegal/extrajudicial... it seems people feel they have strange rights or ownership on Facebook or Twitter, have some investment in property, treat it almost as a mix of paid-for condo and public space (depending on what they need to assert at the moment)... and none of that is the case. At best, you are walking in a Mall, and if you start yelling obscenities, pontificating, or even start advertising for different shops etc, the mall security guard will escort you out, as is legal and proper. It's not government infringing your constitutionally protect free speech, it's not extrajudicial, even if you don't like it and really really wanted to yell obscenities or market your business or promote your personal point of view in the mall.
Both the government and private companies can censor stuff. But private companies are a little bit scarier. They have no constitution to answer to. They’re not elected. They have no constituents or voters. All of the protections we’ve built up to protect against government tyranny don’t exist for corporate tyranny.
Our government, on some level, is supposed to be accountable to general public and there exists, in principle, a mechanism to hold them accountable.
Whether that mechanism is flawless or not, whether it works as well as we want it to, should not distract from the fact that there isn't even REMOTELY such a mechanism for big corporations. When people clamor for flawed government being replaced by companies, I shudder exactly for that reason. You're trading system with public protection/accountability that's flawed, to one where public protection/accountability do not exist, by design.
My post should not be mis-interpreted as being against government or regulation.
But I don't think Facebook is infringing upon my constitutionally protected free speech. If we want to regulate Facebook (and I think we should), we need to have a more thought-through reason, method, desired goal and tracking of outcomes.
>My understanding of U.S.A. First amendment is that government won't infringe on your right of free speech. It doesn't say you can come into my home, workplace, store, or website and yell what you want on my property.
This is exactly my point. If we are going to classify online discussion on platforms like Facebook as being protected free speech, there is no way that we can allow those services to be in control of who gets to say what. The government has an obligation to provide an acceptable platform for citizens to have online discussions in that case which would actually serve as a digital "town square", protected by our first amendment rights. Anything else becomes a de facto infringement of those rights. And saying "well you can build your own website" is naive and missing the point. To put a barrier like that in front of the exercising of one's rights is tantamount to a digital Jim Crow.
>>If we are going to classify online discussion on platforms like Facebook as being protected free speech
But that is a massive "If" and I'm denying you the premise, until you convince me otherwise. I think you're starting from a certain point assuming everybody is there already.
Note, I agree with many of your detailed points later, such as "build your own website" missing the network effects of established platforms; but most fundamentally I think what you're taking for granted is the actual big important discussion to be had, e.g. "The government has an obligation to provide an acceptable platform for citizens to have online discussions" - I don't think Government has that obligation today, and if you / we think it should, then that's the discussion and lobbying to be had.
(Never mind how well I think a government-created platform with government-designed technical stack and UI, and with guaranteed free speech and no moderation whatsoever, will actually work in practice... to quote Frank Borman, what we have here is a failure of imagination :P )
Where do they do that?
My understanding of U.S.A. First amendment is that government won't infringe on your right of free speech. It doesn't say you can come into my home, workplace, store, or website and yell what you want on my property.
There's nothing "Extrajudicial" about it and it's not "Protected speech". It's just a business owner saying "you can say whatever you want, but not necessarily in my home, on a platform I built and pay for".
I think we've gone weird somewhere if we think Facebook == Public Square on any level. It's just somebody's storefront (and insert cliches about who / what is the product :)
In some ways, I am hoping tech giants do MORE weird policies / bans / things, so hopefully general population sees it as a private proprietary closed property / platform that it is, not a friendly public gathering spot we somehow take it for. But I still don't think they are doing anything illegal/extrajudicial... it seems people feel they have strange rights or ownership on Facebook or Twitter, have some investment in property, treat it almost as a mix of paid-for condo and public space (depending on what they need to assert at the moment)... and none of that is the case. At best, you are walking in a Mall, and if you start yelling obscenities, pontificating, or even start advertising for different shops etc, the mall security guard will escort you out, as is legal and proper. It's not government infringing your constitutionally protect free speech, it's not extrajudicial, even if you don't like it and really really wanted to yell obscenities or market your business or promote your personal point of view in the mall.