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

Have fun with that.

All those places you are upset about are basically private property. They could ban any discussion of the color chartreuse if they wanted, and be well within their rights.

FB, Twitter, and others routinely knock out conservative speech for 'terms violations', while allowing Farrakhan and the Ayatollahs to rant all they please. Sorry, if you think that no one has a right to complain about this, then you're on the side of those would ostracize you from society -- if not worse -- once they have the power.

Smart.

I learned many years ago that when God says "vengeance is mine, I will repay" He means it. His vengeance is far worse than anything I would do. So no, I have no interest in getting involved in a lawsuit, I want God to repay them.

Wrong again, not interested in being involved in any lawsuit with either company. Never banned from Youtube and have had an account that I opened long before all this mess started and which I still have but have not done anything with since it became clear to me they were censoring people.

I got a 30 day suspension from Facebook and closed my account the same day. They tried for 30 days to get me to reconsider, so I was certainly not banned. Also, there was no "harm" since I did not use Facebook for anything related to business or in any way monetized it.

This being said, Twitter can do what they please -- until they get in bed with the government and allow the party in power to work through them to do an end-run around the Constitution. Then, all bets are off.

But... we are co-laborers. And -- while I'm not advocating you lead 10,000 people into a Walmart with swords and spears -- God did use humans to accomplish his aims. Often does. I think a lawsuit is a perfectly valid course of action here.

The Alex Jones case set a precedent that you cannot spout opinions online that could be harmful to other people if they are false.

(Obviously the opposite is not true since that would make it illegal to report crimes and courtroom verdicts).

However, I would contend that censoring opinions can also be harmful to other people if censoring them is harmful to them. This can easily be illustrated with what happened during the pandemic.

1. People were insulted

2. Their posts were censored and their sites were suspended or even shut down.

This resulted in harm both to those who operated these sites and to those who might have been helped by the information they were sharing. The platforms shut them down based on a claim of "fake news" or "disinformation" or "fact checking". But suppose, just like Alex Jones claims were found to be false, the claims of these platforms are also found to be false.

Well, the harm is as follows:

1. The vaccine would never have been mandated had those posts not been censored.

2. People were slandered, lost their jobs, and had to sell their houses as a result of that mandate.

3. Many people were harmed by a vaccine they did not want to take and wouldn't have taken had it not been mandated.

Surely death is a more severe harm than anyone harmed by Alex Jones comments suffered, and the number of people affected by this has to be several orders of magnitude greater than those who were harmed by Alex Jones.

Therefore I think we have a precedent to sue these companies for trillions of dollars.

Eh, a ban won't kill ya. My uncle gets banned all the time. He refers to it as being "in facebook jail."

Going by some of the racist jokes he shares in our family group text... Gee, I can't imagine WHY he would be banned.

The thing that is concerning about the Jones case is that Alex Jones lied.

He lied when he said the whole thing was a hoax. He lied about dead kids, grieving parents,etc....

He's a liar.
An apologetic ad nauseam liar.

Meanwhile, other people who heard his lies felt compelled to act out violently against grieving parents.
Supposedly.

These violent people terrorized the parents. How did they get their address, btw?

No news of their being sued.
No reports of arrests.

Those supposed offenders caused grave distress to the grieving parents. Vandalism,terroristic threats, stalking, etc.... All illegal offensive acts.

Yet, not a peep about their being arrested, sued, for offenses far beyond lies.

Instead Alex Jones is held accountable for hurting the feelings of grieving parents.
While those who caused physical,emotional , harm to them, and violated their private property with acts of vandalism are ghosts.


Jones is a liar who lied.
And he's being threatened with the loss of all he's worked for.

Unknown terrorists,those who supposedly according to those grieving parents terrorized them,threatened,stalked, them, are scot-free.

Thought policing.
Jones is a scapegoat.

Free speech under threat. While domestic terrorism remains unaddressed.

''HE HURT OUR FEELINGS!PAY US!Learn your lesson.''

Certain ones in Jones audience threatened us,harassed us,vandalized our property, stalked us.
But that's OK?

They have always been in bed with the government. The value of Twitter and the Main stream media is in manipulating a gullible populace. The CIA has been fully involved in this long before the internet.

Ah, it's a conspiracy thing.

Did you know we have a whole conspiracy forum here? This thread really should have been there.

Of course this IS the misc. forum, which leaves the door wide open to even threads which already have their proper forums. So... Yeah, it's probably okay here too.

Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to make their investors money. If they intentionally
do things that violate that, even if they aren't criminal, they can be sued for breach of contract.

Makes it sound like you are against people standing on principle or having morals that interfere with corporate money making.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

If you tell me you are a Christian and you want to start a bakery but that you will be sticking to your principles and morals. That is fine, that is transparent. If you want me to invest in your business then that is fine. I will not be surprised when you refuse to decorate a cake for a gay couple's wedding.

But if you tell me that your goal is to make money and maximize my profit and you show me all the incredible tools that Walmart has to maximize profit over every inch of the store and I invest in that then I expect you to stick to that. If Walmart said in their annual report that they have decided to focus on being anti MAGA, then that is fine.

But there is no morals and no principles when you tell me one thing and do something contrary to it. If it turns out the Mike Lindell was some of the most profitable square footage in the entire store then you bet, shareholders can sue.

Shareholders are the owners of the store. The store does not belong to the CEO to do according to his personal desires.

Makes it sound like you are against people standing on principle or having morals that interfere with corporate money making.

The bakery guy was in business to make money, also, but that gay couple wanted to force him to sell
them something that was not even on his "menu." So, big difference in the hypotheticals you are giving.

Also, Walmart is controlled by the Walton family. Sam Walton's heirs own over 50 percent of
Walmart through both their holding company Walton Enterprises and their individual holdings.

Sometimes Magenta... Sometimes I just love having you around! This was almost unnervingly cool.

It doesn't matter who "controls" the company. The fact is they sold shares to people and unless they were informed about Walmarts goals they have every right to say they were deceived.

The Baker's menu included decorating wedding cakes, in fact they had a reputation as one of the best. The issue is can the gay couple force him to make something he doesn't want to and which violates his principles. The answer is no, and if this person had someone who had invested in the business and they understood that these are his principles then it would be fine. The point you are missing is that if it is your business, 100% yours, then of course you don't have to disclose to others what your principles are. No one can sue you for breach of fiduciary responsibility. That however, is not the case with a publicly trade company and Walmart is a publicly traded company. There are a lot of requirements in order to get listed on the NYSE and Walmart met those requirements because they wanted access to the capital that can be raised. Now, everyone who bought shares did so with an understanding based on what Walmart revealed and if that was deceitful they can sue.

Let's use another example. You lease a car. That is a legal contract. They show you the car, you test drive it, everything is find. But when you get the car it has a pro choice message painted on the side of the car. That was not part of the deal. Can you complain? Of course.

I learned many years ago that when God says "vengeance is mine, I will repay" He means it. His vengeance is far worse than anything I would do. So no, I have no interest in getting involved in a lawsuit, I want God to repay them.