Re:I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
by flyinghamster on Sunday June 13, 2021 @08:41PM
(#27498065)
Good points. Scale and centralization make the world of Facebook et. al. a much thornier problem. They've become Too Big To Fail™, with all that entails. Not to mention antitrust issues, but that's a digression in itself.
I see some hope in federated systems, and, for that matter, old-school forums that have survived. Usenet still sputters along, but it's not what it was before spammers ruined it.
"Freedom of speech" is a philosophical concept, not a legal principle. You seem to have it confused with the US-specific "First Amendment", which is the one that only applies to the government.
I personally see a big problem with social media banning trans-people (Facebook), or declaring that the whole LGBT crowd is inappropriate (Livejournal, Tumblr). I think it's a problem when scientists sharing Covid-19 information get banned for being ahead of the official CDC/FDA guidance (Twitter)
Maybe the solution isn't legal, but I still think it's bad that we have a massive media apparatus that can wipe out any voices it disagrees with, and which is fairly eager to use that against people like me.