Trump’s Twitter Exile Spurs Opposition from Germany, France

Post by tatersolid » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 11:48 AM UTC

noodles_nomore wrote: post #68

Clearly censoring political speech is an issue that cuts right to the heart of democracy. The idea that corporations should be in control of public discourse is foreign to us. Government embodies the will of the people through democracy enabled by free and fair discourse and so it has the sole authority to set the rules of discourse in the name of the people and there is no devious feedback loop at all.

> The idea that corporations should be in control of public discourse is foreign to us.

This has been the case since the founding f the nation. Those businesses which controlled the printing presses, radio, and then television transmitters have always controlled the public discourse. Add datacenters to that list.

Post by VWWHFSfQ » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #109

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have this backwards. Once a government establishes censorship there's no going back from it, and nowhere for private citizens to escape it. Private individuals or companies censoring their own platforms is far less serious since, ideally, there are many ways to legally escape it.

Actually what I'm saying is that if the voters want either censorship or after-the-speech rules, then establishing that as part of the political process is much better than establishing it by having the same voters (in their capacity as Facebook's customers and audience) push Facebook to do the job. That it could be evaded is IMO irrelevant if it usually isn't. If people largely follow the law and use the legal proce…

You think that the "voters" should decide what is acceptable speech. Just by consensus, "acceptable free speech" can be determined by 60% of the people in the society.

Merkel's government proved nothing. Certainly not that government-mandated censorship is any more altruistic than regular government censorship.

There's a strong fear right now that the EU countries are devolving right back into their old authoritarian ways.

Re: Trump’s Twitter Exile Spurs Opposition from Germany, France

Re: Trump’s Twitter Exile Spurs Opposition from Germany, France