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> In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to
by NotYourLawyer 4y ago
> In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to “the freedom of speech.” But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.
The implications of the platforms’ argument are staggering. On the platforms’ view, email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate, or business. What’s worse, the platforms argue that a business can acquire a dominant market position by holding itself out as open to everyone—as Twitter did in championing itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” Blue Br. at 6 & n.4. Then, having cemented itself as the monopolist of “the modern public square,” Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017), Twitter unapologetically argues that it could turn around and ban all pro-LGBT speech for no other reason than its employees want to pick on members of that community, Oral Arg. at 22:39–22:52.
Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.
- evrydayhustling 4y agoThis quote is indeed the heart of the argument and is indeed dumb. Citation or no, calling Twitter a monopolist of the public square is absurd, when it is used by less than 1/4 of American adults and occupies only a fraction of their attention. And if it is a monopoly, the antitrust solution is to break it up, not to solve one specific complaint about it by forcing it (and it's employees) into specific performance they disagree with. Twitter's not special, it's just a useful platform that a few people would love to force into broadcast their messages.
- cudgy 4y ago> calling Twitter a monopolist of the public square is absurd, when it is used by less than 1/4 of American adults and occupies only a fraction of their attention. Monopolies are not determined by simply referring to their affect upon the entire population. It is determined by their affect on consumers of that monopoly, which is a subset of the population. Therefore, it should be compared to the number of people that want to use platforms like Twitter to express opinions.