Yes. It's already been established that Twitter accounts used for government business that block people are violating the first amendment [0]. Twitter deplatforming government officials ought to count as similar censorship.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/trump-twitter...

Private companies are in general allowed to censor what they want. Only the US government is subject to the First Amendment, not Twitter.

However, I think a case could be made that deplatforming one candidate in preference to another would be a donation to the remaining candidates campaign, and could fall afoul of some campaign finance rules.

I think if companies that provide a platform are allowed to censor content, the rules should simply be changed.

We get a lot of problems otherwise.

Twitter should just blanket ban all candidates then. Seriously, all presidential candidates, all senators, all congressmen and women, even local mayors. Ban everyone!

I would be in favor of this, paradoxically. I'd like to think many of the popular politicians would move to the same alternative platform (maybe Parler?), and hopefully pull a bunch of Twitter users with them. Anything that chips away at censorious big-tech monopolies is a move in the right direction.

> However, I think a case could be made that deplatforming one candidate in preference to another would be a donation to the remaining candidates campaign, and could fall afoul of some campaign finance rules.

Could Twitter designate itself (or a subsidiary) as a Political Action Committee so they can deplatform (or promote) whomever they like?

the us government preventing some people form seeing its communications, to a company must host content against its terms when dealing with a politician is a big line to connect

It doesn't work in both directions though. That Trump isn't allowed to block people on a private website he (effectively) uses for official business is not equivalent to that private website being required to facilitate his official business. The first amendment prevents him from blocking because it would suppress the right of the population to address their officials, but it would also support their right to deplatform him as an exercise of Twitter's free speech.

Has there been anything unpalatable shared by or sent from @potus? (I could check, but I’ve blocked the other account for my sanity.) As I understand, most of the less palatable insults come through Trump’s personal account.

Trump has been deemed to be using his "personal" account for official business by the courts, and as such they've ruled that the constitution prevents him from blocking people on his "personal" account.

I'm not sure that effects what Twitter can do at all though.

If it gives access to some leaders, and deplatforms others, then yes, I would argue the same.

It might be "their platform", but it's our E.U., and we can make our laws governing how they operate here.

On many countries we already have laws that tv stations etc should give balanced promotion to political candidates before elections (re: interview time, etc). This includes private media.

If the US wants to sit back and accept it, e.g. Twitter and Facebook deciding "this politician gets a voice here, this doesn't", doesn't mean we should follow suit.

> If the US wants to sit back and accept it, e.g. Twitter and Facebook deciding "this politician gets a voice here, this doesn't", doesn't mean we should follow suit

In Germany, the tv/radio broadcasters can refuse to broadcast the (otherwise mandatory) election spots - if they run afoul of the law, which means they're inciting hatred. This refusal is rare and always contested: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahlwerbespot

> (otherwise mandatory) election spots

How do I qualify to have it be mandatory for broadcasters to carry my spot? I assume running in the election isn't enough?

In the UK, the spots are allocated to parties rather than candidates, and determined by past election (and to a lesser extent, current opinion poll) performance.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-rele...

Put that Wikipedia article through google translate, I'd suggest. Depending on the broadcaster different legal requirements apply - but generally if you are big enough to have a full statewide candidate list you're eligible. Different states allow for lower limits than this, and if you're refused you can file a legal complaint.

Those "fairness" and "equal time" doctrines really only exist because broadcast spectrum is a limited resource. Only one candidate can speak at a time on each of a small number of channels. By contrast Internet bandwidth and sites are effectively infinite so there's no need to force access to any particular platform. Just use a different one, we have lots to choose from.

>Those "fairness" and "equal time" doctrines really only exist because broadcast spectrum is a limited resource.

Laws don't exist because of this or that physical necessity. A physical necessity might encourage us to make a law, but in general laws exist because people (or at least, the legislative body) wanted them and can have them enforced. There's no physical necessity that says children should not work in factories, for example. They very well could in the 19th century (and well into the 20th, even in the USA). We just willed it as unacceptable and voted it into law.

So whether fairness doctrines where initially made because of limited time/space on tv, is neither here, nor there. A law could enforce it for any website that operates as a journalistic website, or is above a certain size, etc.

But even under the "law exists because of limited resource" model, the argument is flawed. Specifically:

>By contrast Internet bandwidth and sites are effectively infinite so there's no need to force access to any particular platform. Just use a different one, we have lots to choose from.

That's also neither here, nor there, as some platforms are more dominant than others.

The fact that politician X can get on Facebook, while Y cannot because FB doesn't let them, can already influence elections to the point of election fraud -- even if Y can still open a Tumblr or run their own webpage. It's where the eyeballs are that matters, and "viewer capture" is still a limited resource (that's the same thing that FB and co sell to advertisers: that they are the place where most people are).

And of course this setup (allowing X, disallowing Y candidate) can be leveraged as a mean of influence, from FB or from some country that controls FB for its foreign interests, or be sold as a service to the highest bidder "we advertise you, and disallow your opponent". The deal can be made under the table, if needs be.

Such a law is perfectly reasonable and doable, even if it explicitly regulates only a specific part of social media (say, the top-dogs of user engagement like FB, YT, Twitter and co, and not the long tail, e.g. some random blog or Diaspora).

> in general laws exist because people (or at least, the legislative body) wanted them and can have them enforced.

I think it's actually more common for laws to exist because people wanted them despite enforcement being impossible than because people wanted them and could have them enforced.

Consider things like the Jewish law that a child who disobeys his parents must be stoned to death.

>Consider things like the Jewish law that a child who disobeys his parents must be stoned to death.

Is this a typical "more common" example of law though, or some curiosity from antiquity?

How many modern laws are wanted "despite enforcement being impossible"? (Which as per your example, doesn't even mean "enforcement being impossible" but rather "enforcement being undesirable" or something). We have some laws that we can't enforce in the sense of there's no easy way to practically check if somebody broken it (e.g. pirating some software). But most laws we can and do enforce them if the perpetrator is caught.

Dominance is irrelevant, and a law based on that would be completely unreasonable. Twitter might be popular today, next year it could be something else. And how would you even define "social media" in a way that would pass Constitutional muster?

> Dominance is irrelevant, and a law based on that would be completely unreasonable.

There are quite a few laws in the US that give special legal privileges to some construction such as "the top two political parties" or similar. For example, specifying that a committee's membership be composed of 1/3 one of the top two parties, 1/3 the other of the top two parties, and 1/3 unaffiliated. Or 1/2 one of the top two parties and 1/2 the other one.

You're absolutely correct that this is completely unreasonable, but it's also common as dirt.

How is it "unreasonable"?

At best, it's a matter of judgement of what's desired socially.

It is a way to stealthily enforce the two-party system against the future. It's not much different than explicitly giving the same special legal privileges to "the Democratic Party" and "the Republican Party", except that it is less likely to outrage people.

>Dominance is irrelevant, and a law based on that would be completely unreasonable.

Actually that's exactly how monopoly law works, checking dominance in a market.

It's also not different from the subtle laws (even in US) for determining religion or cult.

>Twitter might be popular today, next year it could be something else.

That's not a problem at all, as a law could e.g. cover all social media companies "above a certain user threshold".

>And how would you even define "social media" in a way that would pass Constitutional muster?

I don't really need to pass U.S Constitutional muster, as I'm speaking about E.U. That said, I'm pretty sure if US legislators wanted it, they could find a way. They have defined what's journalism, they could also define what's social media. Or they could extend the law to all media.

And yet there are kids observing this play out right now, who never knew a world where Twitter (or more broadly, a mass communication "brand" of some sort) wasn't the primary platform by which world leaders directly communicate with their polities, not to mention each other.

The perceptive shift in which it is subconsciously accepted as normal that "any given world leader can be silenced by corporate entity XYZ" (and that conventional diplomatic apparatus is seen as a fusty, high-friction secondary channel to be bypassed when politically expedient) this goes a lot deeper than Twitter or Trump and may have significant repercussions once generational effects start kicking in.

> and may have significant repercussions once generational effects start kicking in.

That's ok, I'm pretty sure there's nothing forcing us to take that into account now

Alternatively, the popular social media platforms should simply refuse to do business in countries that engage in censorship like this.

First, you got it backwards. It would be the social media platforms that would want to engage in censorship (and countries in my proposal would enforce them to be open).

Second, they should be careful not to let the door hit them on their way out. They'd lose the money, E.U. gains getting rid of Facebook (and gets the chance to grow its own, open, alternative).

A social-media lose - EU win situation if there ever was one...

The tension is that although it is indeed their platform, the function it plays in society is similar to a public broadcast channel. IMO, a good analogy is the broadcast radio spectrum. Imagine if one or two companies had sole ownership over all of the broadcast radio spectrum, and could decide at their sole discretion who gets to publish. It would be insane, yet with Twitter and Facebook, this is the situation we're in.

IMO this tension is fundamentally what drives so much of the controversy around social media.

This analogy clearly doesn't hold up. It's more like a very successful private broadcast channel, but where making an effective public broadcast channel is too difficult for the government, so we pretend that the private channel is "like a public channel".

No company owns all the internet, thus using the analogy that a few companies own the entire radio spectrum doesn't make sense.

>> The tension is that although it is indeed their platform, the function it plays in society is similar to a public broadcast channel. IMO, a good analogy is the broadcast radio spectrum.

> This analogy clearly doesn't hold up. It's more like a very successful private broadcast channel, but where making an effective public broadcast channel is too difficult for the government, so we pretend that the private channel is "like a public channel".

I think the analogy does hold up. Society limits private property rights all the time for the public good, and that's a good thing.

For instance my private property has drainage and utility easements that allow others to use to for the public good. I don't even own all the property in the area. Theoretically I could go all "muh private property" and demand the government spend a bunch of money to divert water around my land and remove the easement, but that would be silly and wasteful.

Right not we're in a situation where a too few companies control too much of the internet mass media landscape. If that's not remedied with something like antitrust breakups, some kind of "social media access easement" legal framework may be worth looking at.

No company owns all the internet. But States do.

It's more like a publicly traded company owning a really popular street or city. And these aren't just any cities, more like capital cities (or close to it). But this company still answers to the state. In reality this company owns and operates streets/cities in every country. Hence answers to every State and each of their laws.

Facebook and Twitter don't actually have free speech themselves. We pretend they do, but if they actually tried to enact a strong opinion into their business, banning some large arbitrary group, not just small disruptive minorities. States would just reverse that and say it's unlawful to deny, let's say, all X or Y countries citizens. Or all of Washington.

They are functionally a State apparatus. There's a reason why Facebook and Twitter are blocked whenever a country is in upheaval. But is kept around even in quite oppressive countries. I'm just saying we need to be honest about these State company hybrids.

> Imagine if one or two companies had sole ownership over all of the broadcast radio spectrum

umm .... that's true though. iHeartRadio and Cumulus domain the American radio market.

That would be a silly thing for them to do because it would invite burdensome regulation, such as what the FTC imposed on radio station operators.

Absolutely, they have the right to do anything they want on their platform and even take sides when it comes to political factions while restraining speech of other political groups. They even have the right to lie about their policies.

Nobody is forced to use or read hyper global social media such as twitter.

Just like people are free to protest, complain and take action against Twitter by any legal means.