S.19.2-4: Expanding 1st amend article II speech rights to social media (Tabled)

[Leinad]

First off, most of these businesses are outside of the South (primarily on Fremont's Pacific Coast), so it's outside of our jurisdiction to actually do this for all if even any major social media sites.

Secondly, if a private entity wants to manage the views represented on their website it's their right to do so, and IMO it's a rather blatant crossing of government's realm of authority to force these websites to accept all views (honestly the blame for most of these places being trash is more likely due to a lack of moderation than too much moderation, but at the end of the day--and this is kinda my point--that's neither here nor there).

[Leinad]

The thing is, it's much like your other example, a bar, than it is a street corner. If someone owns a bar, they don't have to listen to someone go on and on about "global Jewry" or "the threat of the homosexual agenda," do they?

but banishment of entire political beliefs and ideology. The thing is who's to say that they won't all ban the republican party and any opinion held by it, while becoming 100% for the democratic party in the near future? I don't think that would be good for democracy or our south.

Outside of the obvious issue that there aren't "democratic" or "republican" parties here (), I think if someone actually ostracized half the people they would cease to have anything close to a monopoly on that type of platform.

Banning a few people for being outright racists or homophobes is hardly banning an ideology, and even if a major social media site banned an entire mainstream ideology and somehow didn't face a backlash there's many places on the internet where people can share whatever sort of views they want, so I still don't think it's enough to justify government intervention in the affairs of private businesses.

I understand  your first point, but this would only cover citizens of the south kind of like how google, facebook and others have to respect the laws of the eu or another countries. They would have to follow their legal system and the south is no different.  

I'm not sure how that would be enforced. Would someone banned from Twitter make Tweets to only the South or something like that? It's different in practice from something being banned in a specific place.

What would your thinking be of setting up an southern region community free zone platform(call it street-corner.gov) that would be like an massive platform with the abilities of  Facebook and youtube. Such would protect speech and allow our people to interact without being threatened with being banned for their beliefs. It would be a public utility so would have the protections offered in the constitution.

I don't even think it's a serious enough problem that we need to make a centrally-controlled social media site of free speech absolutism. What would it be called, BBChan?

[Leinad]

Don't have much to add because I agree with everything dfw just said (although I was confused because I forgot what party he was in at first lol).

Hopefully the Federal government doesn't act on this, because it's a pretty perverted idea of "free speech" to literally force a platform to accept literal white nationalists and homophobes if they'd rather not. It's literally "reverse censorship," which is kinda funny if you think about it, eh?

[Leinad]

R A M B L I N G   E S S A Y   T I M E ! ! ! !

My point is that it's not like everyone to the right of TNF is being banned from these sites. If Paul Joseph F-ing Watson is your example of the least offensive guy banned because he's merely a douchey crackpot instead of an outright hatemonger it's a pretty clear indication the problem really isn't that bad^[a]. Especially when, once again, there are many other websites people can share their ideas on (he's still on most platforms) and--crucially--it's just as much an affront to our freedoms^[b] to say that websites should be forced to keep everyone on it.

And that's the argument, right? It's a good strategy to make me explain and defend why each and every one of these people were banned, because that would be tiring and I don't necessarily agree with all the bannings, but this idea is not just to reinstate PJW (I personally probably would not have banned him--I guess petition Zuckerberg to bring him back if that really is the main issue), but to reinstate everyone or almost everyone who was banned, right? Which means it's an issue of whether websites have the right to ban people for saying certain things (it's not really a "free speech" issue because they can say anything they want on other sites).

Also I'm curious if any of the people getting upset at the bannings are also the people talking about the alleged right to refuse serving gay customers for religious reasons. Not the exact same issue--in fact I'd argue that's an easier case to argue for legal intervention in that case^[c]--but it's a similar question in a way and, well, I'm just curious.


Footnotes (I'm so sorry for adding footnotes to an Atlas post--really I am, this is self-indulgent even for me--I just didn't want to clutter up my post with my typical rambly asides. But at the same time I still wanted to include the rambly asides. Oh well.):
[a] - compare with America in the good ol' days with blasphemy laws, red scare blacklisting, and guys like Lenny Bruce thrown in jail for comedy acts that used words and topics that are filler words by today's comedians. I don't agree with everything about "modern values" but people are acting like we're on the verge of Orwellian dystopia and, as with sensationalism in any sense, it's just frustrating and a distraction from productive conversations we could have.
[b] - at least under a "pro-business" framework--if it's an affront to "freedom of speech" to limit corporate campaign donations it's nothing different to limit corporate policy on the users of it's own service, right?
[c] - ftr I'm not necessarily saying people can't discriminate if they're crystal clear about their policy to do so, because I know what would happen if they did that lol. And if we are going to have anti-discrimination laws, it should apply to sexuality and gender identity, too. But this is, like, multiple levels off-topic. (Then again I'm not randomly invoking a "but the Middle East" strawman to defend a weird interpretation of the first amendment.) Anyway I doubt too many people will read the footnotes, it's not really worth it.

[Leinad]

Aye