And one man's "harmful communication" is another woman's useful communication.
Since your comment is egregiously wrong and, in my opinion, harmful, I'm going to delete it so that it doesn't mislead people about the harms of censorship.
See where I'm going with this?
I say my opinion, you present your side, and we can debate, or move on, but we have both had our say (albeit, at varying shades of grey on HackerNews ;)
The notion of "harmful tweets" is a very 2020s phenomenon but the concept goes back thousands of years. There's a reason our Bill of Rights is strongly inspired by Voltaire, Descartes, and other (then) modern thinkers.
"I disagree with what you say, but I will give my life for your right to say it."
It feels as though we've backslid from that ideal.
“I hate Bob” is fine.
“Bob should die” isn’t.
Some tweets don’t need to exist because it might lead Bob to be killed, especially when said by someone with a cult-like following.
"Bob, I am coming to kill you" or "Bob I'll kill you if you don't do X for me" a court would say is probably a credible threat, which is already illegal.
Why do we want to shift the responsibility of deciding how to police speech to private companies?
Sticks & stones.
However some jokes already are illegal or at the very least will get you in trouble, for example there’s one word you can’t joke about in airports.
Another point would be who decides what is or isn't a joke or hateful?
Do you want the companies to decide what the correct speech is, would you like a government panel to police speech?
Currently, I like illegal speech being the only rule because it gets murky otherwise.
So we agree. Trump’s tweets were pretty credible, don’t you think?
This whole mess this week happened because of one person who incited violence.
This whole mess happened because of the instigating of the media and the riots all year.
This event did not appear out of nowhere, there was major tension building and there still is.
> "I disagree with what you say, but I will give my life for your right to say it."
FYI none of the people you cited ever said that. This is a 1906 quote by Evelyn Beatrice Hall that has been misattributed to Voltaire.
“Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.”
Disallowing companies from banning users would be forcing those companies to carry content they disagree with, thereby removing their right to free speech.
If they want the protections the phone company gets, they need to act more like the phone company.
I can even prove it.
That's how it works. Right. Now.
We need the 1A because we don't get to choose our government, we do get to choose our internet messaging platforms and they choose to work with us.