You are right that congress could try to pass laws regulating Twitter and the SDMB but that would not be a constitutional protection for you but a legal protection. Not the same thing and I am willing to bet such a law would be challenged in court as soon as it was passed.
And again, your right to free speech is not, can not, be abridged by Twitter or the SDMB or any private company or citizen. Your first amendment constitutional right to free speech protects you from the government only. This is not a matter of opinion. That’s what it is and how that one works.
Try it this way:
If I come into your living room and start spewing some nonsense and you tell me to shut up and I don’t so you call the police and have me forcibly removed have you violated my right to free speech?
No. But I paid for my living room, the government didn’t give it to me, and you have no right to use my living room for any purpose of which I do not approve. If my living room was given to me by the government, they could in theory, in a ridiculously isolated circumstance tell me I have to let you act like an idiot in my living room.
When you use Twitter you are using their property. The government did not give it to them. It is their servers. Their program. They paid for the lot. You are, in effect, in their virtual living room. You are using their property. They are not compelled to let you use it. They can deny you access for any reason they want same as you can kick me out of your living room for any reason you want. No one’s rights are being trampled on.
Their virtual living room does not exist without my share of the airwaves and my share of the internet.
I’ve stated my case clearly. You may disagree with me, but your analogies are failing. If you believe people have ownership of public resources that is your right. I disagree.
A broadcast signal from (say) NBC is streaming through your home right now. The content on that is in your home right now and you can access it for free same as anyone else in their broadcast area. The government regulates that since the public owns the airspace so has a say what is in their living room.
Not so with Twitter. When you access Twitter you are going to THEIR server. Literally a box they own on their property and you are using their resources. They have no control over how the information is sent back to you. They do not broadcast over airwaves from their server to everyone. They send the information back out a hardwired pipe that they paid for.
The signal does not end up in every living room in the city over public airspace. It might travel down a cable pipe that you paid for or it might be broadcast from a cell tower with a limited range whose service you also paid for. For those in the area who are also in the signal’s range cannot view it because the data is coded only to be displayed on your equipment (which is why you do not see your neighbor’s text messages).
It is NOT a public broadcast.
This is not my opinion. This is how it works currently.
Twitter does not have a ‘hard-wired pipe’ to my cell phone. They do not have any hard wiring that does not depend on public resources. I didn’t say it was a ‘public broadcast’, those are your words, not mine. They use public resources.
They’re both the same thing, just on very different scales.
Everything, every single thing, you claim about Twitter’s use of “public resources” applies to this board and pretty much every person and business everywhere. Everyone uses public resources, that’s why they’re public.
Some public resources are fairly available to all people because they are in effect unlimited. The internet is not, nor are the airways. The Dope is not an ISP (is it?). As I said, the Dope is a user just like the shithead in question, as are you and I (users, not shitheads, if that is not clear).
There doesn’t need to be. There only needs to be a Twitter interest in censoring things they don’t like.
Here’s a better analogy than yours:
People who use Twitter are posting as if on Twitter’s front door.
If people post things on your front door, are you required to leave all of them up? I’ll remind you that your front door is visible from the street. (If your own literal front door isn’t, then imagine that it was.)
First off I said “broadcast” because you brought up use of public airwaves. Those who are regulated when using public airwaves are the broadcasters. Twitter is not a broadcaster.
Next, where are you getting “public resources” from?
What part does the government own?
Twitter rents a connection to an ISP. Given the size of Twitter I would not be surprised if they connect directly to a backbone provider. Either Twitter or the ISP owns the cable running in to the Twitter offices which connect to Twitter computers.
There is no government here. None.
Once at the ISP the data goes to the person who requested it. It is not ending up in everyone’s living room like a broadcast is (which is why those are regulated).
The whole way it is a private endeavor. You are making use of Twitter property. You abide by Twitter’s rules. Twitter absolutely has the final say in what they allow on their property with only minimal government protections (I assume if they banned all black people or women they’d probably get in trouble for discrimination).
I should not be able to prevent people from reading what is on my front door from the public street. It would be trespassing if they posted on my front door, but then I just go back to private ownership. I don’t own the street in front of my house though, I can’t stop someone from posting on that street. But that street is accessible entirely through other public streets. The internet is not, you cannot get on the virtual street without going through private property, even though that street is a public resource.
The situation is like the government allowing people to buy and own the property at either end of my street and all the cross streets so that the only way I could use the public street I live on is through the permission of those property owners. Supposing that there is good reason for the government to allow this should they then allow those property owners to deny my access to the public street that I live on because they don’t like my beliefs?
Twitter and the SDMB consume the same amount of public resources: zero. Twitter isn’t a broadcaster. They don’t send their stuff out. People choose to use a public resource to access their servers, but saying that this allows the government to dictate their policies is precisely as absurd as saying the government can dictate a business’s policies because people get there using a public road.
That’s what Twitter is too. Twitter is a website, not an ISP.