How is it censorship if a private company does the moderation? We've long been told that we have freedom of speech, but nobody has to listen, and most definitely nobody else has to pay for it. There are, of course, exceptions. Some private entities operate "common carriers" and aren't allowed to moderate what they carry, but as far as I can tell, twitter, Facebook, etc, are not common carriers.
The USA got rid of the "fairness doctrine" in broadcasting over just such issues, as I recall. Why the sudden about face?
This effort to collect complaints seems a little anti-free-market, and a little like government overreach if the point is to make Twitter and Facebook and whatever other company carry particular political speech.
The current narrative by Trump, his supporters and the Republican party is that all social media sites are controlled by leftist ideologues and globalists and are currently engaged in a coordinated effort to suppress and purge Conservative, Christian and Republican speech, because they're terrified of the threat that he poses to the deep state and the establishment.
There is also a second narrative, put forth by white supremacists and the alt-right, which attempts to push the Overton Window of normalization on such views by implying that deplatforming or censoring anyone on the right, however extreme, hateful or lunatic fringe, should be interpreted as an attack on mainstream Conservative or Republican politics.
This form, like the wall, is an expression of propaganda and nothing more.
I agree completely, but I find that if I express less than absolute doctrinaire capitalist opinions on Hackernews, they get downvoted pretty rapidly. I am experimenting with posting non-doctrinaire capitalist opinions as questions about contradictions, like my question above, where I state that I'm a firm free market capitalist, just confused about why there's a contradiction in a government or corporation's actions.
The USA got rid of the "fairness doctrine" in broadcasting over just such issues, as I recall. Why the sudden about face?
This effort to collect complaints seems a little anti-free-market, and a little like government overreach if the point is to make Twitter and Facebook and whatever other company carry particular political speech.