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When it comes to the internet, Apple, Facebook, and Google are more powerful than the most powerful governments in the world. They should uphold the principles
by staunch 8y ago
When it comes to the internet, Apple, Facebook, and Google are more powerful than the most powerful governments in the world. They should uphold the principles of free speech, despite not being required to by law.
Everything that is legal to say, which is almost everything, should have a equal access to these major platforms. Everyone else should have the basic faith in humanity that whatever problems this causes are a price worth paying of living in a free society.
I'm more concerned with the cynical fools gleefully espousing the anti-free speech perspective than I am with the relatively(!) small number of dumbos that follow people like Alex Jones.
Whatever happened to the beautiful American principle of defending the right of your fellow humans to have equal rights as yourself? Is it young people that don't know history, people becoming more cynical, or are we just hearing more from the loud fools?
My fundamental faith in humanity makes me believe we'll have a backlash from the freedom-loving majority. Most people are smart and principled and will see the error of going down this dark path. It may take a while but I'm not worried.
- eksemplar 8y agoThe principal of free speech isn’t the same thing as the right to an audience though. It’s the right to say what you want without being prosecuted. Alex Jones wasn’t prosecuted and he had the right to say what he wants, he just can’t do it on Facebook. But that isn’t an infringement of his rights, it’s a simple consequence of being a total asshole. If you always talk about how great eating feces is at every dinner party you attend, you’re not going to go to jail, but you’re probably going to find yourself without any dinner party invitations. You could argue that Facebook and Apple are big platforms, but so what? I’m fairly sure infowars wouldn’t publish your submission if you sent an anti-trump article. Does that mean they are hindering your free speech? No.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- corerius 8y agoIt's amusing to watch so many people, for probably the first time in their life, fight so hard for the 'rights' of a large multinational corporation. The basic problems, of course, are the natural monopolies and near-monopolies that came from networks. Given the amount of power you'll find in those companies given the surveillance society, I wish that antitrust law would actually come into existence again. The be fair, there's nothing new here. Whether it was the day of Hearts newspapers or the big 2 1/2 TV networks, mass media outlets have always been political tools that are argued over.