randylahey wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 10:04 pm
The government was telling a private sector how to restrict free speech
Those are sure
words, but I’m not sure they really form a coherent sentence, for purposes of this conversation.
The issue - which you should know (your handlers certainly know) - is that since Twitter itself is NOT subject to the First Amendment in the first place, the rube-baiting nonsense about Elon “restoring” free speech on Twitter is cut from the same vapid, buzzword-vomit cloth as your post. It doesn’t
mean anything, even though it sounds like it should.
It’s a private site - subject to other laws, if Elon wants to exclusively allow far right shitposters, he can do that. Of course there’s not really any money in that, so he won’t. Instead he’ll bumbledick his way from self-created crisis to self-created crisis (without any consistency), because he himself doesn’t really understand Twitter. And he doesn’t really listen to anyone outside of the cafeteria libertarian universe you feel privileged to share with him.
I think there ARE interesting conversations to be had about how exactly social media SHOULD be regulated. Is social media a quasi-public “square,” such that it should be treated like quasi-public “places”? Or is it a private club, such that it should be treated like one? Something else entirely?
It’s complicated, and the laws covering it never really contemplated how things look on the ground now (not so unlike the Second Amendment, but that’s for another thread).
But what’s not complicated, is that at no time has Twitter been required, under the First Amendment, to protect or honor anyone’s right to “free speech.” That is evident in the fact that Elon has not landed in Constitution Prison for how he’s messed with the algorithms to promote some content and suppress other content. It’s probably bad for the public discourse at large, but it’s not illegal.