A closer look at the rights of public platforms to censor posts

The analogy about the car lease would only be accurate if Youtube and Facebook slapped their messages all over your posts and videos.

OR

The analogy about the car lease would only be accurate if instead of putting their own pro-choice bumper sticker, the car company said you could not put your own bumper sticker on the car.

Dr. Fauci lied, that is no longer up for debate. He lied to Rand Paul, I'm tired of enumerating his lies, many already have so if you are not aware then we have other threads where you can educate yourself. His lies led to thousands of people being killed by the treatment he mandated for Covid. That also is provable, again, if you don't know that talk to PennEd, he'll get you up to speed. That is only in the US, if you look worldwide it will be hundreds of thousands died because of the treatment he mandated (in the US) and prescribed which others followed in other countries. He influenced the prohibition of using effective treatments which also caused people to die and get very sick.

He played an influential role in the shutdown which damaged small businesses across this country and which harmed every single kid who had their school shut down or who had to wear a mask at school.

Meanwhile Dr. Fauci doubled his net worth during the pandemic. A public servant profiting greatly off the very, very bad advice he was ramming down everyone's throat.

Much of the "fact checking" done on these platforms concerning the pandemic, treatment and vaccine were lies. Everything that Alex Jones did that was bad, what they did was orders of magnitude worse.

Of course you do. It is illegal to discriminate based on race, religion or nation of origin. Nor can they discriminate based on sex. The only exception would be a private club where other members must refer you to membership. This is obviously not the case with public platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.

To get around this the debate has been over "hate speech" and "disinformation" which could be harmful to the public. These are vague terms which are not well defined. However, if you claim that speech is "disinformation" or "fake" or determined to be false and therefore banned it. What happens when it turns out that the speech wasn't false, wasn't fake, wasn't disinformation but was accurate?

I contend that you must hold the company accountable. If there is a compelling interest for society to censor information that is fake then there is an equally compelling interest to not censor information that is true. Recently Alex Jones was sued and is being sued for a total of approximately $4 trillion. This is because he spread false information that had a very negative effect on dozens of people. None were killed, but some had to sell their house and move. Likewise during the pandemic when the vaccine was mandated thousands lost their jobs and were forced to sell their houses and were slandered as "anti science" or some other perjorative.

So my feeling is every time a platform censors someone they need to be transparent and accountable just as Alex Jones is being held accountable for the things he said, they must be held accountable for the things they would not allow to be said and any slander they put on the people posting those things.

If you allow companies to censor and slander and harm people's businesses as they please and then if they made a mistake say "hey, just a mistake" then the problem grows. Many people on these platforms have a business relationship with the platform. Putting these people out of business could have been the goal all along which is something the better business bureau needs to investigate.

A private platform can filter content at their own discretion
That's not discrimination. They reserve the right to remove any content for any reason because it's a private platform

A private platform can filter content at their own discretion
That's not discrimination. They reserve the right to remove any content for any reason because it's a private platform

It is a publicly traded company. The owners are the shareholders which include hedge funds and pension fund managers. They invested in this company based on their prospectus and annual reports. If these people were deceived and as a result of that deception they lost money they can sue for damages. Generally speaking, but not always, it is understood that a company is there to maximize profit. So if you pursue a policy that is contrary to making a profit you must disclose it. There are "green" funds that pursue a policy of "carbon free" or some other policy. That is fine. Buf if you policy is to discriminate against half of the users of your platform and that policy results in your shareholders taking a significant loss in their investment, then of course you had better have disclosed that up front or you will get sued. This whole "it is a private platform" is baloney. It is a company that is owned by the shareholders and the CEO works for them.