> It is unprincipled to be okay with one and not the other.
The principle is very clear: officers of the law are given monopoly on the use of force by the state. That state-enforced monopoly on force comes with an enormous amount of responsibility and that responsibility means that breaches of trust should be prosecuted with prejudice.
The other situation is a private entity making a decision about what kind of content it wants to host on equipment that it pays for.
We can talk about whether certain companies are too big to have full freedom to make that call, but creating a parallel between that and state-ordained police officers wielding guns barging into people's homes to intimidate them into shutting up is either naive, ignorant, or disingenuous.
> The principle is very clear: officers of the law are given monopoly on the use of force by the state. That state-enforced monopoly on force comes with an enormous amount of responsibility and that responsibility means that breaches of trust should be prosecuted with prejudice.
I don’t disagree with that aspect but also think it doesn’t invalidate what I said. After all, corporations operating the digital public square also have monopolies over a certain kind of power and that power and responsibility is far greater than any individual police officer given their reach.
> but creating a parallel between that and state-ordained police officers wielding guns barging into people's homes to intimidate them into shutting up is either naive, ignorant, or disingenuous.
At the scale these tech companies operate, their influence over our our political process and daily lives is far more dangerous. Freedom of speech and press are part of the first amendment in the US for a reason - a free society depends on that right and any violation of it is bad. In my view the end effect on suppressing journalism and speech is the same, whether it is a censorship friendly tech giant or a police officer breaking the law, and therefore the parallel makes sense.
> also have monopolies over a certain kind of power
But they don’t. Or at least these are completely different types of ‘monopolies’ that don’t necessarily have that much in common
> Freedom of speech and press are part of the first amendment in the US for a reason
It only applies to the government though. If taken to the extreme limiting the rights of a social network/other tech platform to spread missinformation or propaganda is a violation of their freedom of speech that’s not clearly compatible with the first amendment.
You’re ignoring the “for a reason” part. Freedom of speech and press are principles that are in the first amendment but also exist independent of it, and are older than the US. We should strive to have those values enforced everywhere, not just in the government - but especially at large companies that are immune to competition in many ways. And especially in social media, which is basically a utility for the digital public square.
> If taken to the extreme limiting the rights of a social network/other tech platform to spread missinformation or propaganda is a violation of their freedom of speech that’s not clearly compatible with the first amendment.
It’s not a violation of their freedom of speech, just like regulating cellphone carriers is not. Social networks are just utilities or common carriers. Like your phone service, they should be obligated to provide service and not deny it, independent of content.
Also, the label “misinformation” doesn’t mean anything much these days. It’s just an empty label used to attack opposition, and it is rarely used when the misinformation aligns with the platform owner. Propaganda thrives when different sides’ ideas aren’t given a fair chance, like on most social media platforms. Propaganda is literally a systematic attempt to manipulate public opinion, which is what social media companies are doing when they implement vast moderation/censorship programs that reflect their employees biases.
> Freedom of speech and press are principles that are in the first amendment but also exist independent of it, and are older than the US
The constitution was written by the same people who brought you the Alien and Sedition Acts. It’s rather clear that we take the document much, much more seriously than its authorsever did (for whom it was mainly just a collection of nice sounding principles and vague guidelines).
Not much changed in the next 100 years. The Sedition Act of 1918 was not struck down as unconstitutional. Something like that would be inconceivable these days.
The current interpretation of the first amendment is pretty modern and “freedom of speech” in the way we understand it at least is not something that ever existed on a large scale at any point in the past.
> We should strive to have those values enforced everywhere, not just in the government - but especially at large companies
How? Do large corporations, their employees, CEOs etc. lose their rights to freedom of speech themselves when their organization surpasses a specific revenue limit?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a conversation about whether we need to treat the major platforms as public utilities and force them to provide equal access. There are good arguments to be made on both sides and it's worth airing them.
What I object to is your framing in the initial comment that it's unprincipled to oppose police suppression of speech but not oppose platform refusal to project speech. That's just the popular but mindless internet attitude of "anyone who disagrees with me is not just wrong but bad", and that attitude is far worse for public discourse and freedom of expression than anything the platforms are doing.
They don’t need to even show up - they can just block your journalism from ever being seen, all from the comfort of their plush offices, and so it doesn’t matter if you keep your computer. That’s what makes the algorithmic/censorship powers of social media platforms (TikTok, X, Meta, YouTube, whatever) far scarier.
The principle is very clear: officers of the law are given monopoly on the use of force by the state. That state-enforced monopoly on force comes with an enormous amount of responsibility and that responsibility means that breaches of trust should be prosecuted with prejudice.
The other situation is a private entity making a decision about what kind of content it wants to host on equipment that it pays for.
We can talk about whether certain companies are too big to have full freedom to make that call, but creating a parallel between that and state-ordained police officers wielding guns barging into people's homes to intimidate them into shutting up is either naive, ignorant, or disingenuous.