Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

How come dems always revert to whataboutism?

We’re not talking about biased news. We’re talking about concerted efforts by multiple groups of people to create a single unified voice for their party.

Also do you get that you can not be a dem and also not be a republican?

> What I'm saying is, that using the narrative makes you sound like a conspiracy nutjob that insinuates that there is some conspiracy going on.

Oh it’s no conspiracy, it’s a unified party fighting what they view as an enemy.

The nutjob thing is just stupid already. In fact you’re starting to sound like one for having such and issue with it.

Which is the way government is treating big tech, government wants the last word on "truth." Sounds like you are agreeing with my analogy.

But as mentioned, applying them to forums is controversial. This is like saying that the death penalty exists and is uncontroversial, so the police should be able to shoot people. You can't simply take a rule that's deemed acceptable in one context and apply it in another context. First, it begs the question. Common carrier status is somewhat controversial. The question of whether it should apply to anyone in the tech space is exceedingly controversial, and you had the prior administration roll back common carrier status for a number of high-tech areas because they felt they shouldn't apply. That's, by definition, controversial.

> There are principles that the 1st amendment protects, and it is those principles that matter.

Yes, and one of those is the right to free association. It's right there next to speech in the amendment. You seem to be saying that your right to ~speech~ be heard is more important that Facebook's right to association.

>Your line of argument, should cause you to think that anti-discrimination laws, are some "cudgel" to force groups to associate with people that they don't want to.

But you're not talking about associating with groups anymore, you're talking about associating with content. We generally think that discrimination based on attributes of a person is far less acceptable than discrimination based on their opinions. I can't kick you out of my restaurant for being black, but I can kick you out for being an asshole. Now you're saying no, I can't do that either. Why does your right to be an asshole trump my right to associate with you?

> is exceedingly controversial

You have misinterpreted, or I have misphrased. Yes I agree that the debate is not settled yet, and there are people on both sides of it. But you can't go around pretending like things like common carrier laws (which do similar things as this proposal!), don't already exist, and that we don't have existing legal precedent for similar types of laws.

And by saying that common carrier laws are "uncontroversial", I am using a different legal precedent, that already exists, to show that you cannot just dismiss all of this stuff out of hand.

There are lots of people, who do actually support the idea of expanding these laws. We wouldn't be talking about this at all, if this were some wild, completely out there idea.

It takes a while to change laws anyway, so it doesn't happen overnight.

> in one context and apply it in another context

But the context is similar. This is all about private businesses and communication companies, and things that philosophically have a lot of similarities.

Yes they are not exactly the same. But they have similarities, and therefore you cannot just dismiss it all, by saying that they are different.

> Now you're saying no, I can't do that either

I am saying that you cannot frame this as something obviously authoritarian, when we already have laws that cover similar things.

You can't just say that these proposals for new laws, which lots of people are proposing, is some crazy thing, that has no previous examples.

Yes, I agree that those laws do not currently apply to other things. But the point is that it is not some huge change, requiring us to get rid of the 1st amendment, when we already do similar things, which yes are not exactly the same, but are still similar.

> First, it begs the question

The issue is that you are actually begging the question, by discarding these ideas wholesale, by saying that they infringe on companies rights.

Yes, I agree that the debate is not settled yet. Thats why people are talking about it. Instead, I am pushing back on you, dismissing all of this, out of hand, and claiming that this is some crazy, new, out there thing when it isn't, and we have similar laws, doing similar things.

> you're talking about associating with content

The same thing applies to phone companies. So that is an existing legal precedent, and therefore you cannot just say that what I am proposing is extremely different than current laws, when we already force phone companies to associate with content.

I disagree tying big tech censorship to this.

Yes what you describe is nice and what the audience here (including me) prefer, that's why we're here. Such places with such rules are paradises.

However, I for one accept the risk of freedom over "safety". I acknowledge we humans are "good" and "evil" at the same time, maybe we'll "actualize" at some point in the future as a whole (I doubt it) but we're not there yet. Even if that's a goal, I strongly believe allowing cancel-candidate speech is vital to the progress. Producing questionable speech has its cost already, I actually think the cost is too high already given the mob nature of social media.

Yeah there are "misinformed" people, but isn't that the value of democracy? We disagree but we compromise.

Even for the anti-vaxx case, when the ones who refuse to vaccinate can screw up the whole population, I still don't think you should ban the speech, the law or executive order should be based on action instead.

Even for the GAB case, I don't think the platform should be banned, nor private conversation being snooped on. So how do we protect ourselves against such attacks? I'd say these are just extra protections that I don't want given the tradeoff, the law is there to punish the actions. I'll take that safety risk that's been there since before tech is a thing any day.

Guess the nuance here is the right to speech versus the right to publish given the nature of social media moving the forth pillar of democracy to the public. My take is that the same applies even for publishing. If nonsense sounds more attractive than scientific facts, maybe we educated people should work on our PR skills, or fix the root of the problem, education. Now that's progress.