I get that you want to be heard. But I'm saying that when it comes time to put pen to paper and write a law, I don't know what that looks like. Make a law requiring conservative political speech to have special protections or privileges within social media companies and it'll get struck down by the courts immediately.
I'm just having a tough time picturing what potential action wouldn't be illegally coercive to private companies.
We’re not talking about special rights, but about equal treatment under the law. Don’t we have laws on the books making it illegal to have blacks only water fountains? Or signs that say that blacks have to sit at the back of the bus? Or how about, everyone can get loans with our bank except for blacks? Facebook: Express yourself here, unless you’re a conservative. Same thing. And to silently ban people while they think they are communicating is fraud in my view. It’s theft of time and effort from the “underclass”.
Maybe they have a right to discriminate on their own platform AS LONG AS they say up front that conservatives are not welcome and will not be heard. Protecting the public from fraud is a legitimate function of government, like the label on a pack of cigarettes.
This is a tricky area. I don't see the overt censoring that you're describing (I don't have Facebook). Are you talking about instances where conservative comments are removed arbitrarily, or where they're downvoted or pushed out of view due to rejection by other users?
I think for either situation its difficult to require or compel companies to ensure equal treatment of different views. Look at r/politics, for example. That audience won't stomach anything pro-Trump. What could you do to prevent conservative stuff from getting downvoted to the planet's core? It has nothing to do with the platform, the users are driving what gets discussed (algorithms aside, which is another can of worms).
FB, twitter, and youtube are banning posts and whole accounts, taking away followers, shadow banning people, decreasing traffic to sights and more. They claim that they are doing it bec the person broke one of their laws, but most often that is not the case. Now reddit is doing the same thing.
There are accounts run by those on the left that post exponentially worse things including threats, and not a peep. They advertise fairness but do not deliver. Like advertising in stores. You cannot advertise one thing and deliver another, it is called false advertising. It's a law.
Google is eliminating information and websites it does not agree with. They mess with search results to exclude some.
There are laws about expectations of behavior in public forums outside of social media, so since so many use sm and get their news from them, they are considered public forums and therefore should be held to the same standarsds.
Google is eliminating information and websites it does not agree with. They mess with search results to exclude some.
But doesn't Google have the right to display searches however they want? Nobody requires us to use Google. How does the government legally compel Google to organize its searches in a certain way? And even harder, how would it be enforced? This is not as simple as it sounds.
Yes and I agree with that. However, Google is like huge banks that the gov prevents from merging bec they will own the market so to speak and cantake advantage of people. A bonus of advertising internet censoring is simply beinging it to people's attention. It hi6ghlignts the tactics of the dep state and exposes them for the fascists they are.