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Always love seeing the party of "small government" push legislation like this. Of course, everyone knows "Small Government" has a trailing caveat of "...for me

Always love seeing the party of "small government" push legislation like this. Of course, everyone knows "Small Government" has a trailing caveat of "...for me, but not for thee"

loveistheanswer 5y ago
Both parties have ironically forsaken their core values on this issue of censorship. It used to be the religious conservatives pushing for censorship of offensive speech and liberals fighting back against that. Freedom of expression is a fundamental liberal value, but it has become politically practical for many liberals/democrats at this time to forget about that.
- Tehchops 5y ago
  If we're talking irony, it's that the only free speech in danger here(corporations are people per Citizen's United) is that of the social platforms. Private entities have no legal obligation(thin "town hall" argument or not) to respect free speech, and are absolutely empowered to police content as they see fit. The ever relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ For an elected legislative body to come in and say it's "illegal" to post content(and they are by making the inverse equally illegal), they are explicitly treading on the free speech rights and Section 230 legal protections of companies like Facebook and Twitter.
  - loveistheanswer 5y ago
    >Private entities have no legal obligation(thin "town hall" argument or not) to respect free speech, and are absolutely empowered to police content as they see fit. Indeed, thats what this whole discussion is about: creating laws to protect individuals speech from corporations. Laws are not static. Private entities also had no legal obligation to serve black people or gay people not long ago, but we changed that too. As your XKCD comic is merely arguing from a position of conservative legal authority, it could have applied just as well to blocking black and gay people when that was not protected by law.

Always love seeing the party of "small government" push legislation like this. Of course, everyone knows "Small Government" has a trailing caveat of "...for me, but not for thee"

loveistheanswer 5y ago

Both parties have ironically forsaken their core values on this issue of censorship. It used to be the religious conservatives pushing for censorship of offensive speech and liberals fighting back against that. Freedom of expression is a fundamental liberal value, but it has become politically practical for many liberals/democrats at this time to forget about that.

Tehchops 5y ago
If we're talking irony, it's that the only free speech in danger here(corporations are people per Citizen's United) is that of the social platforms. Private entities have no legal obligation(thin "town hall" argument or not) to respect free speech, and are absolutely empowered to police content as they see fit. The ever relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ For an elected legislative body to come in and say it's "illegal" to post content(and they are by making the inverse equally illegal), they are explicitly treading on the free speech rights and Section 230 legal protections of companies like Facebook and Twitter.
- loveistheanswer 5y ago
  >Private entities have no legal obligation(thin "town hall" argument or not) to respect free speech, and are absolutely empowered to police content as they see fit. Indeed, thats what this whole discussion is about: creating laws to protect individuals speech from corporations. Laws are not static. Private entities also had no legal obligation to serve black people or gay people not long ago, but we changed that too. As your XKCD comic is merely arguing from a position of conservative legal authority, it could have applied just as well to blocking black and gay people when that was not protected by law.