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The New Graveyards of Free Speech
- bediger4000 7y agoThis article makes a pretense of balance. It does acknowledge the tension between ownership and free speech: "the conversation around censorship (especially in regard to Big Tech) pits two important ideological tenets of standard conservatism against each other: the right of private companies to operate as they please and the necessity for absolute freedom of speech in the political sphere." But it goes on to totally ignore the property rights side of the tension in favor of what it refers to as "absolute freedom of speech in the political sphere". The author (or more clearly the seminar reported on, would have done well to consider a couple of things. First, the very recent SCOTUS decision about property rights and (essentially) the platform owner not having to pay for your dumb FREEDOM OF SPEACH. Second, the history of forcing platforms to "be fair" or "carry opposing opinions" or whatever you want to call it. The USA got rid of the Fairness Doctrine in the 80s. Collectively, we decided to put property rights first, and free speech second. Arguably, this led to the overwhelming prevalence of conservative talk radio and Fox News. That's the kind of viewpoints that platform owners wanted to put out there, I guess. I have a certain amount of sympathy with the Heritage Foundation on this issue: I'm not a platform owner. My kind of opinions aren't very well represented in mass media today. But until the American Spectator and Heritage Foundation deal with having backed eliminating non-conservative viewpoints during the 80s and 90s broadcast media consolidation, and now wanting guaranteed access to consolidated internet media, and using two reasons that are in tension with each other, they will just look like they're advocating for conservative opinion affirmative action.