mdk
Diamond Member
- Sep 6, 2014
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You don't a have right to a social media account or a wedding cake, Marty. No one does. It's amazing how property and association rights differ when folks feel it's their ox being gored. If you find Facebook's business practices unacceptable than go to another platform that fits your views. I bet it takes less than five minuets to set up an account on Gab.
The problem is another platform isn't the same commons as the one everyone else is on.
And not getting your cake is not the same as your opinion being voided out in our national debate.
IF facebook wants the right to ban, then they need to claim ownership of everything posted on their site, and have responsibility for it. If they want to continue to claim to be an open site for everyone, they need to be forced to hold to that.
Either businesses have a right to associate or they don’t. You despise the government forcing a business to provide a service against their wishes, but only certain ones. You’re not any different from those that wish to force the baker to make a cake. Thank goodness the gubmint and it’s regulatoions are here to make it all better.
Can Con Ed decide who they send power to? Utilities have to adhere to rules similar to what I would impose on social media sites that claim they are open forums. They can avoid it by saying they are not open forums.
Have you ever seen me post about utilities being unfairly harmed by regulations?
I believe the internet should be classified as a ulitity. Nobody (unless ordered by the court) should denied access to the internet if they have the ability to pay; however, individual sites on the internet should not be classified as such. Not having power or water doesn’t rise to level of being unable to share LoLCatz and recipes with your kin on social media. There is nothing you can say that will conceive me otherwise.
but when social media takes the place of the commons, denying a person access to that commons, or more importantly, equal access, denies them the ability to join the discussion. Or even worse, it allows people in power to ignore the other side of the discussion, because they can point to a sanitized social media and say "well not many people have that opinion, we don't have to recognize it"
If facebook wants to create an echo chamber, they should have to come out and state that fact. Same as twitter.
If they want to pass themselves off as areas of free expression, they need to be held to that.
If one can make power and water regulated utilities, and thus regulated companies, regulating social media isn't much of a stretch.
I have a wonderful name for these new regulations you wish. It’s called The Fairness Doctrine.
You can tell how entitled Americans have become when they feel not having running water is akin to not having a bloody social media account.
Though I do enjoy our back and forth, I am afraid we’ve taken this thread dreadfully off course.