Re: First Amendment - False Claims
When someone speaks of their First Amendment rights, they are speaking about rights enshrined in the First Amendment. As part of the constitution, the Amendment can only address government.
Now, when I go to a public square, grab my soap box, and start speachifying, I am exercising my right to free speech. Humans being lazy creatures, I might even claim to be exercising my First Amendment right. If someone objects to my words, and they come by with a loud speaker, and use it speak over me, are you going to claim with an honest face that my right to free speech is at that point effective? There is a term, "heckler's veto". If we allow (or encourage) that, then we no longer allow effective use of the right.
What if, in some region of the country, a political party has come to dominate politics to the point that nomination by the party is tantamount to election. Suppose further that this party refuses my entry. No government violating any right as far as the eye can see. I claim that in fact said party is denying my right to be effective in my voting. (And for those who don't understand what I am talking about, in Grovey v. Townsend, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the rule by the Texas Democratic Party forbidding blacks from participating in their primary was constitutionally sound. Not our finest moment at all.
Big tech is hanging out at the town square. They are handing out megaphones to some people and not to others. (Also, playing Madame Defarge and plastering flashing signs all over the place) For many, many people, these platforms are loudspeakers allowing them to reach tens if not hundreds of times as many people (who actively want to hear what is being said) as any other method.
To deny the reality of the network effect and say, "build your own" or some such is at best disingenuous.
Certainly, we expect (and demand) that content promoting, planning or celebrating acts which are malum in se be taken down. But my idea of what counts differs rather drastically from, say, Pooh Bear's. And there is a strong concern that there is institutional bias in these companies against conservatives. It's easy to dismiss the anecdotes. I myself would be skeptical except that:
I personally witnessed, in 2015, a director at Google brag at a TGIF (weekly company-wide town hall meeting) that they had thrown an election in Central America.
Of course, El Reg reported research in August 2016 catching Google suppressing negative search suggested for Hillary Clinton.
El Reg also reported in 2012 that Facebook "partnered" with the Barack Obama reelection campaign to use their network. I've not heard of them doing so with any conservative candidate.
"Free speech", like "poverty", is intrinsically a comparative term. For thousands of years, even the ability to write a letter was the province of a few Mandarins. Then came universal education, and paper, so that the term "papers" was expressly included in the Fourth Amendment. Now, I can send an email to any of three billion people. IF, and ONLY IF, we can both find ISPs that allow us to do so.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
