Obviously they can and they do. We are discussing whether that is a good thing overall, which is further complicated by the political issues surrounding Venezuela and its current.. dual government.

Venezuela does not have a duel government. It has a government that won the UN certified election and an opposition leader that receives 100% of the US media industry's support.

Come on, link me the source where it says the UN certified the results, I'll be waiting... But I know that you won't link anything that is not from Telesur or RT and that it doesn't exists since they haven't allowed the UN to oversight the elections for quite a while.

My personal opinion is that after reaching a certain size of audience, the rules should be different - e.g. Facebook should be required to keep all points of views, even if they disagree with them, as long as they are legal. But until the rules are not changed it is what it is.

Legal where? Legal in the USA? Or legal in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia?

Well, this was once true of, say, television networks, telephone companies, electricity providers. But, they had too much power (mostly due to network effects), and so they were made into a special kind of private company, called a "utility". They still got to make a profit, but their actions were controlled by an elaborate web of rules and regulations, which were sure not perfect, but they were better than letting Thomas Edison decide if you could have electricity or Alexander Graham Bell decide if the contents of your telephone call were allowed or not.

Good god am I fucking sick and tired of the 'they're a private platform' argument

What is a solution? Facebook is a private company, so they can do business as they please within the confines of applicable laws and regulations. Those laws and regulations say they can censor as they please on their platform. Should we enact laws forcing private platforms to give everyone a voice?

Perhaps. It's definitely a conversation worth having, given the advancements in public speech through social media. There is no reason to believe that 200-year-old laws should be the end of the conversation.

What if the law said that operator of a platform cannot delete user content, as long as it does not break the law and shouldn't artificially limit its exposure? In the event that the platform runs out of space they should be allowed to charge people reasonable amount for the space.

I would not use any platform that doesn't delete viagra spam or work from home spam or any of the other things we recognize are awful (say, someone spamming pages of all-caps AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA or Ż̵̧̦͈͕̼̜̫̦̟͈͎̆̈͒̀͆̉a̶̩̺͊̔͑́͆̕ļ̴̨͇̲͈͓̥̝̠̜̘̠̹̫̀̋͛̄g̸̹͇̫̗̼̺̰͍̻̦̯̹͆̆̈́̂͜͜ǒ̶̧̪̹͖͖̮̻̹̻̮̦͐́̌̐̀͐̃̒̓̏͝ ̷̠̯̹̣͖͍̩̦̪́̀̾ͅt̵̼͈͉͖̯̫̪̟͔͛͌̐̿̎́͌̇ͅe̶̫͓̖̲͍̞̞͈̎̔̿͐x̴̛̠̺̮̼̏͒̀̒̎t̸̮̼͔͖̹͙̦͚͙̣̜̍͋̈́͌). I regard a platform that won't remove this stuff as bad, user-hostile, and not worth using. In fact, I would think pretty poorly of Hacker News if moderators didn't want to remove what I've already posted because frankly the above text is annoying and detracts from the site.

I think any law that requires that platforms allow the signal to noise ratio to go through shit via spam (and in your specific law, even sets a minimum price to be permitted to spam) would be a bad one.

If you allow platforms to remove posts based on content, as I think you should, then we're back to having a debate about which particular types of content should be protected by law, or else which particular types of content a platform ought remove (irrespective of whether they are compelled to or not). You might disagree with me about which types of content those would be, but supposing we are in this type of world, then it is possible that the process of adjudicating which types of content might be removed could ultimately arrive at an end-point where fraudulent health claims (not so far removed from viagra spam!) are one of those types of content.

Also, as relates Hacker News, it's hard to imagine a world where it is illegal for a site owner to remove content a user posted, but it is legal for peer users, using a voting algorithm, to do so (by virtue of downvoting posts until they are dead or hidden). Would this lead to, for instance, wanting to impose criminal sanction on sockpuppet accounts, since we feel using multiple accounts to downvote is tantamount to interference that would be illegal if done by a moderator? This strikes me as a bit much.

Excellent points. Platforms obviously need to have some power of moderation for spam and off-topic remarks.

One idea for a type of system for adjudicating disputes would be something similar ot the jury system used in common law countries. When a conflict arises (some moderator deletes a post whose poster feels is within the rules), a set of users could be chosen randomly and asked to deliberate whether that is the case or not. This would be similar to a court proceeding, with the accuser and accused allowed to argue their case, but much less formal. Participation in such juries would just be a cost of using the platform. This would not apply to posts that are removed for legal reasons, where the regular legal system would have to be used instead.

Note that spam is generally already illegal, and advertising products with specific health claims that you do not have proof for is definitely illegal in many jurisdictions (fraud / false advertising).

I would also expect that any such moderation should only apply to broadcast messages. Direct, private communication between two or more people must not be moderated in any way (though users should be given certain tools to help them, such as optional spam filters, the ability to block specific people from sending them messages, etc).

Should be allowed to censor but we should still discuss if each particular instance is a good idea or not.

comedically broke take isn't it

Especially since eventually the winds will change, as they always do, and the "but it's a private company" crowd will find little argument against these same companies as they press the censoring boot against their necks. Creating a monster just ends up with that monster running out of control destroying everyone but they naively believe they'll always have it on a tight leash.

Probably true in the US. But this is a global platform making decisions about foreign leaders. I highly doubt this same legal reasoning applies to every jurisdiction in which they do business.

Regardless, the more interesting question here is not whether this is technically legal but whether it should be legal. Obviously, there is a lot of social good that can be done by allowing platforms to ban obvious scammers. But it's far from obvious to me that this is scam. And furthermore since Maduro is a head of state, it's important to the health of the democracy for the people to know what he is thinking.

You want the US Government to legislate a law that mandates Twitter and Facebook cannot deactivate the accounts of foreign leaders/government officials?