Beyond that the suggestion that all user's data should be shared equally is inherently flawed.
The point of the parent comment was to discuss advocacy for a alternative and your comment essentially is replying well this is how it is currently so nothing can be done.
Internet is public utility just like roads.
There's probably no other way around it instead of treating stuff like Facebook as a partly private business and partly public utility.
It's not today. But is it in society's interest that a small group of elites gets to decide what we can discuss on our primary discussion platforms?
I realize this is begging for an "aha! the elites are proving the point!" response—but really no, we just don't want threads to clog up with low-information, high-indignation rhetoric. If you want to be all non-elitey within those params, have at it.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596102.
I'm sorry if my meager comment became work for you, however you do realize you are modding a 'hacker' forum, where social engineering is the purest and earliest form of 'hacking'? Consider that most of the original 'hackers' are/were looking for social equality, now while social media has been infiltrated by big money 'elites' to squash the lamentations of the poor and impoverished. Lastly, John D Rockefeller only bought into newspapers after Ida Tarbell exposed the ills he was incurring on American society.
If one can't wail at the wall of propaganda on a hacker news forum, where can impoverished ideologists still have a voice? All the main social media sites have been bought by 'elites', or hacked by their cohorts into oblivion when they don't play ball.
Emotionally charged drivel. I didn't vote for either Biden or Trump, and definitely didn't support either. They are both agents of the 'elites'. Trump wouldn't have won the Republican primary if he wasn't part of the problem. Further, I tried to warn Trumps supporters he was planning a Night of the Long Knives, to rid his party of there extremist brown shirts (aka the January 6th insurrection).
Facebook and Twitter both enjoy the rights bestowed upon them by the First Amendment to remove content as they see fit. Requiring Facebook and Twitter to host content that they don't want would violate their First Amendment rights.
Again, read up on it, because they clearly state that the First Amendment extends to corporations as well, since the First Amendment is is about abridging freedom of speech, not about individual citizens.
There is also a big difference between one person's voice on a platform, and a decision-maker of the platform who is creating policy/process for filtering those voices.
I have yet to see any proof or evidence that 'elites' are engaged in such activities.
If you blame 'elites' with no further clarification for something, I'm going to assume you're pushing a dishonest agenda. If you were being honest, you'd identify your scary shadowy actors.
If the purpose of 1a is to foster a society where speech is democratic, then it does, because corporations have largely replaced governments as the primary arbiters of information. So philosophically, the idea behind it is very relevant.
The kind of power that governments abused, leading to 1a, is in some ways analogous to corporate power today. Whether that analogy is valid is the debate, right?
I'm not from the US, but I wonder - just like how liberalism radically reimagined governance and the role of the commons in their relationship to the state, I wonder how a revolution this century could radically reimagine the digital commons.
What will seem like obvious, basic digital rights, 100 years from now, that are completely unimaginable to my digitally medieval brain, like a preliberal medieval peasant?
Congress shall make no law...
no business serving the public can discriminate because of a customer's national origin, sex, religion, color, or race
Right, at the time of writing, that would have been perceived as the gravest threat to free expression. But I don't think that's still the case.
> Unless someone can prove people are being removed from platforms for reasons above companies are well within their rights to refuse service.
Agreed completely, I'm not making a legal claim. My claim attempts to stand on the moral philosophy behind these laws.
This sounds like people want to have the benefits of these platforms without accepting the trade offs.
Social media is the tip of the dystopic iceberg
They reflect common, primal human fears and are not indicative of insight. Just as my fear of heights does not provide wisdom against constructing/operating tall things - whether it be buildings, pyramids, or airplane flights.
The elites, like any other group, have a culture and a worldview shaped by it. They believe similar things, read similar news sources, have similar incentives and goals, etc.