Re:Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Fre...
by coldtea on Friday January 29, 2021 @05:24AM
(#25955911)
>And who judges what is a "social platform" objectively? Because you've just granted the government the right to use its monopoly on force to remove fundamental rights like freedom of speech and association from the people running any website which meets some arbitrary "population reach" threshold.
Actually it's the opposite: I "granted the government the right to use its monopoly on force to ENFORCE fundamental rights like freedom of speech and association from the people running any website which meets some arbitrary "population reach" threshold".
And the arbitrary threshold wont be that arbitrary if it's legally defined. We have lots of such thresholds in law (from "age of consent" and "21 to be allowed to drink", to "statue of limitations").
>You just disagree with companies having the right to choose with whom they do business
They can pick their vendors (whom they do business with), but not their users, same way a grocery store can't (and doesn't in a civilized country) just send you away ("refusal of service").
If Obama, or any other President, had acted the way Trump did on Twitter, I'd have no issue with them being banned, either.
>No, I'd say that having an account to social platforms above some population reach level shouldn't be a "privilege" but a right
And who judges what is a "social platform" objectively? Because you've just granted the government the right to use its monopoly on force to remove fundamental rights like freedom of speech and association from the people running any website which meets some arbitrary "population reach" threshold.
To me, that's a lot scarier than platforms fact-checking statements or banning racists and people calling for violence or spreading misinformation.
>(that is, subject to due process/law, not up to the whims of the company).
Companies aren't anarchist collectives, they are subject to due process and the law. You just disagree with companies having the right to choose with whom they do business, and with Twitter and other big social media platforms being able to moderate content and ban people. But they're still doing so within the framework of a state and its laws.