"Free speech" comes up so fast in this conversation it stifles any other aspects, like what counts as "public". We have to figure out exactly what it means that

"Free speech" comes up so fast in this conversation it stifles any other aspects, like what counts as "public". We have to figure out exactly what it means that Facebook is a massive platform with billions of users centrally controlled by a corporation and how that affects us, and free speech issues are only one aspect. I find it so strange how people on the left and right swap argument styles on the issue of free speech, though. As pointed out by Freddie DeBoer, people on the left want to strictly define free speech as government intervention and criticism, contradicting their usual tendency to interpret law more broadly. Then the right, contradicting their own approach to law interpretation, want a more expansive interpretation of free speech to include things like corporate censorship on platforms that aren't necessarily "public" as we'd traditionally understand it, but have public-y qualities nonetheless. Anyway, good riddance to white supremacy, but this is a transparent bid by Facebook for PR repair. Their public image was trashed by the 2016 election on several fronts, and this hardly rectifies it. It seems like cynical bullshit to me. EDIT: It also makes me think of Freddie DeBoer's essay "Planet of Cops": https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/planet-of-cops-50889004904d https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/planet-of-cops-50889004904d