Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

- Freedom of speech is of extremely high importance for any free society and should not be taken for granted

- Removing it in any capacity should be done with extreme care and free of any bias one way or another, with a lot of thought put into any future consequences

- Speech without a platform isn't speech at all

- Private companies' interest should have little, if any, control over the ability of the public to speak

- Just because a private company is legally allowed to do something, doesn't mean they should

- The marketability of speech (for financially or politically) should have no bearing on whether it's allowed or good

I don't know if all of this is being upheld. I think a lot of interests are at play here. I have no easy answers or even recommendations other than that everyone think about what objective barometers they really think makes speech allowable or not.

(Edit: list rendered real bad)

As I understand him, private companies should decide for themselves who they serve and if we think they are behaving immorally, convince our circle not to give them business. It's not the government's job to say who they can and cannot serve.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/rand-...

    PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.

    INTERVIEWER: But?

    PAUL: You had to ask me the "but." I don't like the idea of telling private business owners — I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant — but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind. 

    INTERVIEWER: But under your philosophy, it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworth’s?

    PAUL: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part — and this is the hard part about believing in freedom — is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example — you have to, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things and uh, we're here at the bastion of newspaperdom, I'm sure you believe in the First Amendment so you understand that people can say bad things.It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior, but if we're civilized people, we publicly criticize that, and don't belong to those groups, or don't associate with those people.

You feel this way because you agree with their political views. But that's not how free speech works. What if these platforms banned Joe Biden, because they correctly pointed out that he has used his right to free speech before to destroy millions of lives by unleashing a mass incarceration bill, which to this very day disproportionately affects certain racial groups based upon "immutable characteristics of their person" [1]?. Or if they had canceled him over what appear to be highly credible allegations of sexual assault [2]? Would you feel the same way?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcpO329xTGI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA_Wt22f6gs