> Completely free speech has never existed on internet platforms
I just find it odd that you brought up government like it’s relevant to free speech and censorship by corporations. I’m genuinely curious as to maybe you think corporations censoring speech is appropriate. And I like this forum to be able to ask.
In my mind, I don’t want the phone company bleeping me out when I curse. Or disconnecting my service because they think I might be buying drugs. Phone companies are regulated by government to legally require these kinds of free speech requirements. But that doesn’t mean I can crank call people, or spam people, there’s still rules.
I think my problem with these companies is that they are arbitrary in their restrictions. And they seem biased politically.
Perhaps they aren’t biased. But similarly, while being required to show ID to vote may seem reasonable, in practice it discriminated against certain political parties.
Many of us run an ad blocker in our browser. Is this not censorship of certain types of speech?
Yes, this is exactly what's happening. Or, maybe the inverse: people think "free speech" means they can say whatever they want without consequences. This is not the letter nor spirit of the law.
This is funny. Do you think someone confused Twitch with the US government? Do you think only the government should be concerned with free speech? Do you think corporate censorship isn’t important?
I see comments like yours frequently and get confused. Of course government censorship is more dangerous than corporate censorship. But saying that Twitch isn’t government is like responding to BLM with “well, technically all lives matter.” Of course it is true, but not really relevant.
The issue here is that Twitch doesn’t seem to respect free speech and build it into their services. Legally, they are allowed to do this. Ethically, that’s bad. Ethically, companies not supporting and building and fostering free speech leads us to some sort of Disney hellscape where all video calls must include smiles or people get booted, etc etc
Slippery slope hyperbole aside, I think it seems pretty fundamental to me that private communication platforms for the general public need to have free speech as an ideal and apply restrictions carefully. Making blanket band without considering context seems like it will make the experience less useful for communication.
That being said, I’m surprised there was even a confederate flag emoji ever available and surprised took this long to remove.