Twitter Censorship

[badrose]

Biased against conservatives

https://www.projectveritas.com/2018/...ical-opinions/

[suncat05]

In other words, Twitter is actively banning posts "under the radar" and unknownst to some people who are posting.
Uh, whatever happened to free speech and a person's Constitutional right to say what they think? I guess the left-wing liberal Nazis/Communists/progressives can't stand to hear or see anyone's point of view that doesn't jibe with theirs.
I don't like hearing or seeing whatever it is that they have to say, but I'm not the one that will deny them their right to speak their minds. According to the Constitution, they have every right to air their differences of opinion, no matter what I, or you, or anyone else says, much less whether we agree with them or not. These people are quick to call someone a 'facist', when in fact it is they who want to deny others who don't agree with them their right to express themselves.

[CitizenBBN]

Prior to the internet age companies were largely powerless to impact our lives beyond our jobs.

But now, they have great power to influence behavior and thought. As a libertarian I believe we have to stop looking at them as being OK simply b/c they aren't technically part of the government. They are part of the power elites, and now have far more control over us than the Founders ever imagined.

My analogy is this: in the past if you had a road and you put your shingle out and advertised your wares, say a gun store (something with some controversy), then tough. If it was legal to sell then you could do it. If the city said "no gun stores" then you could make a public case, go to court, etc. and the voters could decide on things. THere was at least some recourse at some level. And in areas where there was no controversy you were all good.

But what if that road were virtual, and privately owned? That's what the internet is today, the equivalent of roads. It connects us and we travel them the same way. Except now a private company can decide what traffic to let on that road, who can say what on it, etc.

Companies now control things like freedom of association and speech far more than government in this country ever did, b/c they own the infrastructure where those things now happen. They own the equivalent of the roads, the town squares.

So if they decide now to allow some things and ban others, they have direct sway over the national consciousness.

IMO it's like the railroads in a way. When the railroads came in they were like private roads, and parts of the country were completely dependent on them. The ICC was formed to deal with the fact that they had a basic monopoly and could control entire areas of the country due to that power. They were a utility on steroids, distorting the market rather than having open competition.

Google, Twitter, Facebook are like those utilities and railroads. They have high barriers to entry and have eliminated basic competition. The economies of scale are such that they are in charge. By having a billion+ on Facebook it's all but impossible for people to just up and switch over, even though it's costless to do so. There will be some, but then those companies buy up the upstarts, so Snapchat and Instagram are all just part of them now too. They have immense control.

It's deeply disturbing, and IMO we need a new paradigm within the ideology of the Great Experiment to deal with it. One that begins to take the position that even a private entity has to abide by parts of the Bill of Rights, b/c they now control the infrastructure where most of those rights will be exercised in the future.

[CitizenBBN]

And to extend my analogy, Google stopped listing guns and gun related items on their retail searches. Facebook won't let me advertise or promote my gun and coin auctions even though I"m a licensed FFL and follow all the laws.

In the modern era if you can't advertise on google and facebook et al, then you are severely limited in your marketing. It's the same as when the railroads would charge absurd rates on farmers to move their produce b/c they knew they were the only way to get things to market. Google and Facebook and Amazon control much of the marketing conduit of this nation now. If they decide they dont' want a product to be sold, they can do a lot to impact it.

And that's just products, but the real concern is things like assembly and speech and association, as well as their control over news and content.

[dan_bgblue]

Great thoughts and examples of where we are today on the digital highway.

How do you compare google, twitter, facebook, etc to newspapers, which are privately owned?

[KeithKSR]

I can't say I am surprised.

[Doc]

In other words, Twitter is actively banning posts "under the radar" and unknownst to some people who are posting.
Uh, whatever happened to free speech and a person's Constitutional right to say what they think? I guess the left-wing liberal Nazis/Communists/progressives can't stand to hear or see anyone's point of view that doesn't jibe with theirs.
I don't like hearing or seeing whatever it is that they have to say, but I'm not the one that will deny them their right to speak their minds. According to the Constitution, they have every right to air their differences of opinion, no matter what I, or you, or anyone else says, much less whether we agree with them or not. These people are quick to call someone a 'facist', when in fact it is they who want to deny others who don't agree with them their right to express themselves.

Free speech does not apply. Its a private web site. Free speech is government.....

Liberals complain Fox does the same

[CitizenBBN]

Free speech does not apply. Its a private web site. Free speech is government.....

Liberals complain Fox does the same

But maybe it should. We've privatized the mechanisms whereby we now communicate and interact. It would be like a state selling off it's town squares to a company then saying there's no right to free speech there.

There are several situations whereby companies, due to size or economies of scale or barriers to entry, have to be treated as quasi-governmental in nature and regulated as such.

[CitizenBBN]

Great thoughts and examples of where we are today on the digital highway.

How do you compare google, twitter, facebook, etc to newspapers, which are privately owned?

Newspapers certainly disseminate information, much more like websites, but they don't control assembly and speech to such a degree.

Interestingly though, there are HEAVY regulations in the newspaper/radio/TV world to prevent the kind of monolithic entities we see on the net. Reagan began a process of deregulating radio ownership in response to the existence of the net, prior to that it was illegal for companies to own too many stations for fear of exactly what I fear with Google/Facebook: a small number of companies having too much control and no competition in the message getting out in the media.

In fact we found there that deregulation led to the surge in talk radio, and MORE not less free speech. But that's b/c the FCC was regulating actual programming to a large degree, not just ownership.

Then there is the "8 Voices" test that prevents cross ownership of papers, TV and radio unless there are at least 8 "voices" in the market. They have various tiers of ownership restrictions, all designed to promote diversity and competition and prevent one group or entity from totally controlling the flow of information in that area.

In short, we have for many decades used government regulation to insure that we get a diversity of media so that we don't have a few sources controlling the flow of information. We have used mostly the FCC to insure that we don't get exactly what I'm talking about, a few private entities with too much influence over the flow of information.

The FCC is eliminating a lot of those restrictions just b/c there are now all these new pathways and sources, but as that happens and as the internet concentrates instead of diverging, we're getting more concentrated media message.

So I see papers not as equivalent of Facebook and Google, but I do see them as part of the overall media landscape that is similar to the internet entities we are discussing.

EXCEPT, none of those other entities are really part of our association and assembly, but Facebook and Twitter absolutely are part of it. We all now gather THROUGH those places, and in that way I see them as much more like roads and the proverbial public square of old than I do a particular media outlet.

[Doc]

But maybe it should. We've privatized the mechanisms whereby we now communicate and interact. It would be like a state selling off it's town squares to a company then saying there's no right to free speech there.

There are several situations whereby companies, due to size or economies of scale or barriers to entry, have to be treated as quasi-governmental in nature and regulated as such.

Maybe...but not because of anything other than people being too lazy to get accurate and complete facts

[CitizenBBN]

Maybe...but not because of anything other than people being too lazy to get accurate and complete facts

yes and no. B/c these are places people assemble, they can control the flow of facts.

The reason for decades long regulation by the FCC is for the same reason, to insure there are lots of channels to go get those facts, so competition insures different views are presented.

But if Facebook and twitter just delete and ban anyone who presents facts they don't like, then it's raising the bar for others to get those facts. yes they could theoretically with enough work, but raising the barriers to entry for having good information for decisions like voting is the death blow for democracy.

The free flow of information is what the First Amendment is all about. Having the lowest possible barriers to entry, the lowest possible transaction cost of information flow. Assembly, expression, speech, all tied together.

Never before have so few had so much control over every aspect of that for the entire nation. It's vastly beyond unprecedented, just as is the level of interaction we can have with the internet, and it requires us questioning how we preserve the goals of the Bill of Rights in that world. It may require, just like the railroads, a change in how we treat certain private entities b/c they have gained too much power and are no longer being constrained by the forces of the free market due to things like economies of scale or barriers to entry.

That's a very acceptable principle in capitalism and libertarianism. Sometimes due to those economic forces the free market fails to operate fully or correctly, and adjustments must be made. We thus have to regulate utilities, once had to regulate railroads more heavily, and now may have to do the same with social media conglomerates who have so much influence over our basic ability to excercise our liberty.

[UKHistory]

Citizen very thoughtful comments.

It seems as if the technology that could bring us together is either full of fake news or very slanted points of limited views.

Instead of more people being educated and informed, technology is doing hbopposite