> The EFF tried hard to placate Twitter and Facebook banning accounts on account that they are public companies and they could do as they pleased with regard to

> The EFF tried hard to placate Twitter and Facebook banning accounts on account that they are public companies and they could do as they pleased with regard to speech. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/eff-response-social-media-companies-decision-block-president-trumps-accounts https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/eff-response-social-me... > The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions. We also note that those same platforms have chosen, for years, to privilege some speakers—particularly governmental officials—over others, not just in the U.S., but in other countries as well. A platform should not apply one set of rules to most of its users, and then apply a more permissive set of rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful. Instead, they should be precisely as judicious about removing the content of ordinary users as they have been to date regarding heads of state. Going forward, we call once again on the platforms to be more transparent and consistent in how they apply their rules—and we call on policymakers to find ways to foster competition so that users have numerous editorial options and policies from which to choose. This doesn't read like placating these companies to me. It affirms their general legal right (it can be more harmful to regulate this right if done incorrectly), and yet criticizes them for not properly wielding this right responsibly.