How does this square with the fact that Donald Trump regularly blocks people from viewing his Twitter account for disagreeing with him or refusing to acknowledge his (apparent) infallibility? Is that not a much more egregious violation, and by an actual government official to boot?
He can't block them. That's my point.
"Trump can't block users from his Twitter feed, federal judge rules Blocking users from viewing his Twitter account is unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment, according to the judge."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/trump-can-t-block-users-his...
I don't think he should be allowed to block americans from posting legal content on his feed.
Somehow the right-wing rage machine never takes on that particular free speech battle. Strange isn't it?
[1]https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-violates-federal-...
[2]https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/23/trump-twitter-bloc...
And I'm against it as long as it is an american behind the account.
> Somehow the right-wing rage machine never takes on that particular free speech battle. Strange isn't it?
Nothing strange about it. People with agenda all want censorship when it suits them. This entire thread is chock full of left-wing rage machine defending censorship just because it suits their ideology.
Left-wing rage machine and right-wing rage machine are ultimatel the same thing. They want control and obedience.
Firstly, stop qualifying it with "hate", "factually incorrect", etc. It's a cheap tactic by authoritarian types to justify censorship. The religious zealots, authoritarian governments, etc all use the same argument you do to censor. Free speech is free speech whether you like it or disagree with it or whether it is factually incorrect.
Secondly, the question is whether a private company has a monopoly position. For example, we wouldn't allow power, water, telephone, etc companies from denying service based on what these companies feel are hateful or not. A christian ceo of these companies can't deny service to lgbt homes/companies/etc just because he doesn't like them or their speech. You get the idea?
Thirdly, if a social media platform is a vehicle for communication by elected officials, should that platform be allowed to limit citizen's access to said politician. I believe the courts already ruled twitter cannot deny people access to trump's twitter. But I'm not sure.
> Surely, it's clear here that having the actual head of the US government threatening to shut down private companies for how they choose to manage their platforms is a far more disturbing and direct threat against free speech even in the narrowest sense.
Yes. It is a concern worthy of discussion. But so are the other aspects of this issue which you naively dismiss as "hate"/etc.