If you don't care about "good"/"bad" decisions and just care about the legal bounds, just say so and dismiss the article out of hand. Your roundabout question just drags discussion down.
So where's the argument? Where's the discussion? Forgive me, but I don't find the above assertion interesting to discuss when virtually everyone agrees with it. The actual topic of interest is: how can we prevent Facebook from making such decisions over its own platform?
That's a pretty big question with a lot of angles. So I chose, for the sake of argument, to focus on what the parent commenter highlighted, because its specious premise raises issues with the author's overall premise:
> For instance, if you’re a journalist and you want to promote your work, there is simply no viable alternative to Twitter at the moment. No other microblogging platform comes even close to having the number of users Twitter does, and most of the alternatives are hotbeds of extremism, so that anyone who joins them is thereby disqualified in polite company.
In the history of our society there has never been free or equal channels of promotion, i.e. advertising or being featured in mainstream media. It has always been the case that if you didn't pay, or otherwise get noticed by mainstream media, you were unheard and/or considered to be part of a "hotbed of extremism".
So I ask of the author (and those who agree with him), if you want to argue that Facebook/Twitter should be compelled to not censor, then what sense does it make to assert people (journalists are not) have a right (legal or moral) to have their self-promotion be noticed, when that precedent does not exist? Moreover, it's just a flawed premise because I can think of journalists big (e.g. at the NYT) and small (e.g. former students of mine) who have paid careers in journalism without being active on Twitter. I contend that this is not just quibbling over minor facts, but an example of how the author's argument only makes sense by ignoring details of how the world actually works.
What does this one point have to do with the article's overall premise? He wants our society to change in a significant way, but he neither accepts the legal consequences that would follow, nor proposes an alternative framework that would be feasible. I don't disagree with that Big Tech Censorship is of huge concern. But I believe that if we want to change this status quo, we'd have to agree to give the government greater powers to regulate private industry and wealth individuals. The author doesn't want to grant this, rendering this entire discussion to be an inane impotent exercise.
You're proposing something that will kill the literal forum that you're posting it on.
The reason why the Founders – and subsequently, the courts – enshrined freedom of speech from government censorship, is because that is the most the government can enforce without violating other limitations and stipulations of the Constitution. It's not as if the Founders completely forgot to consider "Hey wouldn't it be nice if everyone had a right to be heard in our society?"
If the author wants this ideal to become reality, then he needs to accept giving greater power to the government (or propose a completely different paradigm). The fact that he apparently can't – possibly because he recognizes that increased powers would end up undermining freedom of speech – is the reason why things are as they are right now.
I downvoted you because this is a ridiculous claim. If you use a platform like Gab that embraces bigots and extremists perhaps, but that's not the only other platform.
Edited to clarify my opinion that only one of these two claims is ridiculous
You have to realize that most things can be viewed as bigotry and extremism. Look at how feminism and lgbt are viewed around the world - as extremism. Would you say twitter "embraces" bigotry and extremism because they allow feminism and lgbt on their platform?
It's a question about monopoly and fairness and the cultural values of america. Free speech is both a legal and a cultural concept.
IMO if you can't even try to use an alternative microblogging platform for fear of being labeled an extremist by "polite company", that's indicative of a much more serious societal issue.
The quote included in this article from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty explains the danger rather eloquently I think:
> Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.