As much as I am anti-censorship and hate all of this, there is no “Freedom of Speech” on social media platforms. They are private companies and are allowed to use any restrictions that do not fall into violations of the very few laws which restrict how companies can treat customers. In the USA, “Freedom of Speech” only guarantees that government agents and laws will not restrict it, and even that is not absolute.
Now the laws and policies about it need stripped along with all non-symmetric indecent exposure laws.
The phones are run by private companies. Should they be allowed to restrict what you say over the phone (or sms)?
Already happens. Facebook and other message systems have content filters built in to their chat systems.
Why did you say it already happens in phone and SMS communication, then name a company that does neither, and reference other services that explicitly are neither, as an example of this happening?
“People are already dying from stubbing their toe, just look at all the deaths caused by car accidents!”
Way to strawman my man. SMS is not the only mode of communication and SMS and cell phone communication in general fall under a whole litiny of laws because they are considered a utility along with landlines. This extends the constitutional protections for the first and fourth ammendment protections to them. Your initial suggestion was a fallacious argument to start because utilities are not wholly private corporations, and thus do not qualify for the initial discussion. I tried to save it by suggesting that alternative means of communication which are utilized that serve the exact same purpose as SMS and telephone calls but are controlled wholly by private corporations DO fall victim to arbitrary censorship and it is allowed because they are not subject in their business dealings with consumers by any state or federal oversight.
<.< At you unfamiliar with what a strawman is? I never stated what your position was, I just repeated what you yourself did, and gave a similar example. Unless you thought I was saying your position was about stubbing toes?…
The example of stubbing ones toe is a strawman. It is levying a rhetorical argument which has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It is also hyperbolic and sartorial.
Taken from excelsior.edu on the topic of sreawman arguments.
Distort: equate it with a non-topical example.Exaggerate: use hyperbole in the example to describe a link between stubbing one’s toe and deaths in car accidents.
Lack of engagement with my argument: there was no support for your assertion that the companies I mentioned do not engage in phone/textual communication when all of them work on the phone, are able to make voice calls, transmit text between phones, and are able to be set as the default SMS apps for a phone, which then subjects SMS communication to thier monitoring and filtering.
I know it subjects them to filtering as I once had Facebook Messenger set as my default SMS app and attempted to SMS a friend a porbhub link and FBM said that the message failed to send. Non-pornhub links worked just fine, but they filtered my porn message, and it was on SMS.
I know precisely what a strawman argument is. I made a good faith response, you did not.
And in the early days of the telephone, switchboard operators would listen in on conversations and cut off anyone they didn’t like. Then in civilized countries, they required phone companies to be common carriers and required police to get warrants if there was anything illegal suspected, to listen in on someone.
Similar thing with the postal service.
Yup, as I mentioned in my other response to Mr. Strawman that is the difference between a private corporation and a utility. Utilities ARE subject to the first and fourth amendment protections because they are a strange hybrid between public and private.
Yes, but Meta/Facebook is essentially positioning itself as a monopolistic utility by buying out all its smaller competitors and leveraging itself as one of the few players in the market. There are a lot of people, who if you want to talk to them or see what they have to say, you have to get a Facebook account. This includes politicians and small businesses.
Kinda what you’d expect to happen when a significant portion of platforms and ad companies come from a pretty puritanical country that’s just so… weird about sex.
