Not even then, unless you can point me to, whatever it is, that prevents Stormfront from banning “mud people”.
When I, the owner of the site, choose to let them take some or all of my stage. I can also then choose to remove them from my stage because they are left handed, if I so choose. There’s still nothing magical about it, as creating their own stage is little more difficult than taking some of my stage, and there is effectively no difference. I assume I don’t need to repeat my stance on their rights to my audience again.
What people seem to forget is that a new account on Twitter has an audience of zero. They don’t inherit Twitter’s audience, they still have to get their own. Twitter does make it easy for them to grow it, as someone simply has to click a button and they will now be part of their audience going forward. If the person is booted off of that platform, they just need to let their audience know where they are now sharing their incoherent ramblings.
What people don’t seem to realize is that a new account on a random mastodon server has an audience of zero. They don’t inherit that server’s audience, they still have to get their own. The mastodon software makes it easy for them to grow it, as someone simply has to click a button and they will now be part of their audience going forward. If the person is booted off of that platform, they just need to let their audience know where they are now sharing their incoherent ramblings.
More importantly, if that mastodon server is YOUR server, no one will be kicking you off of it. I just realized, for the purposes of free speech or expression, mastodon is better than Twitter, Q.E.D.
That’s fair, although I assume if it ever was challenged and made its way up to the Supes, they would tell them that that is not kosher. 
i seriously doubt there are any Constitutional grounds to challenge it and even if there were there are easy ways to get around such limits because of various SCotUS decisions about private clubs where membership is not open to the public.
Exactly. The only thing keeping people on Facebook is their desire to be on Facebook. Classic network effect stuff. The only monopolistic thing about them is that they tend to buy smaller competitors. But they’re not making any efforts that I’m aware of to lock users in, or prevent them moving to other platforms- there’s no reason someone can’t have a Twitter, a Facebook, a Parler and any other social media platform account that they so choose to have- they don’t interfere with each other. Facebook and Twitter just happen to be more useful at the moment.
Amazon Web Services is even less monopolistic- they only have about 1/3 of the cloud computing space market share. There’s no shortage of other firms that Parler could have potentially gone to, but they’re basically radioactive at this point, so they had to find some janky bit player to host their stuff. The best analogy for them would be that of a landlord; you get too loud and obnoxious and make the news, and your landlord may tell you to take a hike if that violates some terms of your renter contract, and other landlords might not want you renting from them either.
I do think the social media companies have a certain ethical obligation as good corporate citizens to crack down and not distribute hate speech and things like that. The question is, who decides?
I see no reason to argue as we appear to agree that there is no inherent right to membership on these platforms. I’m willing to concede that even the small right I was willing to afford someone doesn’t exist.
Not even disagreeing, just filling in details for the box seats.
The problem in this situation is that the government is, in your own words, choking your means of expressing yourself. If it was a real public square it would be like some suit coming up and saying, “you can preach whatever you want, but I’m going to physically squeeze your throat you so people can’t hear you.” The choking part interferes with freedom of expression.
~Max
And possibly some sort of speedy arbitration under those regulatory standards, so that there is a real review remedy if a person is restricted in access.
Well, when there are obvious double standards, purely based on ideology on how terms of agreement, laws, and even what speech or apparel is acceptable people have the right to point out the hypocrisy and unjustness of it.
Ain’t nobody here arguing that people don’t have a right to complain about things that in their opinion seem hypocritical or unjust.
But they don’t have a right to expect that everybody else will agree with their opinion and endorse their complaints.
But that’s part of what I’m objecting to. They didn’t remove Trump because he was unpopular. Hell, people were so eager to see his tweets they were actually arguing he shouldn’t be allowed to block them. And they didn’t remove him because he broke the TOS. They removed him because they saw which way the wind was blowing. It was a political decision.
So now you’re agreeing with us?
Twitter does not provide an audience. A new Twitter account has an audience of zero. Users get an audience by posting things that other people want to read. Twitter merely provides a platform to enable people to hear each other.
What’s this “now”? AFAICT, neither k9bfriender nor anybody else in this thread has ever argued that the government should be dictating a social media company’s policy on allowing legal speech by its users.
With the possible exception of you yourself, because you seem to be suggesting that the government ought to be dictating to a social media company that they must allow speech that they don’t want to allow.
Sure. Go for it!
I don’t know what “put chokes on your blog” means from a technical standpoint, but assuming that it would stop this speech, then this would be a free speech violation in my opinion. I think we all agree that the government censoring constitutionally allowed speech is a violation of the first amendment. Of course, the OP was speaking of the behavior of a Google or Twitter, not the government, so no clue why we’re off on this tangent. Twitter can “put all of the chokes” on my presence on their site without violating anything other than my precious feelings.
Again, I have no clue what the argument is supposed to be in this thread as it feels like a game of whack a mole.
The OP seems to be saying that Twitter and Google are hurting freedom of expression. They’re not.
You seem to be saying that if the government did something similar it would be hurting freedom of expression. It would.
Others seem to think that there are some finite number of possible soapboxes to stand on. There are enough soapboxes for every single atom on the surface of 100 earths to have their own, without accounting for possible subdomains. When you add subdomains, you actually get something like (3.4 * 1038) * 621800, give or take a few soapboxes (in theory that 1800 is actually an infinite number, but practically, you want to limit your URLs to 2048 for the sake of supportability. I just took a few hundred off that number for the rest of the url and settled on 1800.) I’m not sure if we’re at an atoms in the galaxy number yet, but let’s just call it infinite for now, as that’s close enough for government work. [Oprah]You get a soapbox, you get a soapbox, everyone gets a soapbox![/Oprah]
@asahi and you (I think?) appear to be of the opinion that the government ought to set some standards on what these social media platforms are allowed to be published on them, in addition to the restrictions already in place, such as incitement to imminent lawless action, child porn, etc. No, they shouldn’t, as that would also be a free speech violation.
I’d love to see the GabDotComs of the world disappear, but the government had better not be the ones that shut them down or I’ll be posting from the other side on this issue. That would be a first amendment violation. Since GabDotCom (don’t want Discourse to autolink to their shit site) and their cohorts can host their platform on their own computers on their property without issue, I have no sympathy for the fact that some cloud providers don’t want their shit in their house and tell them to move.
Twitter, on the other hand, can become a left-wing echo chamber, a massive cheering platform for QAnon, or a place where people post nothing but Vogon poetry. That’s up to them as long as the posts on their site don’t break the existing exceptions to free speech, and even those exceptions might be allowed in some circumstances thanks to Section 230 protections.
Did I miss anything?
Then why in the world did you think this thread needed to exist?
This makes no sense. Damage is damage whether it’s done by the government or by Twitter. Only one is a 1st amendment issue, but that’s not what we are talking about here.
This may be the root of the misunderstanding. You as the OP titled this thread “Are social media’s recent bannings a freedom of expression issue?”. And to Americans, “freedom of expression” typically implies constitutionality considerations with regard to the First Amendment.
Twitter deciding not to let me use (their) stuff that they let others use is not damage.
One’s allowed. One isn’t.
Then enlighten me, because you seem to be jumping all over the place. Lay out a specific argument that you want to discuss. Hell, get formal and start the sentence with “Resolved:” if that helps.
For example:
Resolved: Twitter should not be allowed to ban Trump simply because he has tiny hands.
(not only should they be able to, they should cackle while doing so)