It’s not just about facts: Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about removing misinformation from social media::One person’s content moderation is another’s censorship when it comes to Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on handling misinformation.
You do not have free speech on social media today, private platforms decide what they want to have.
The state does not have to be the one to decide these things, nor is it a case of “deciding” what is true, we have a long history of using proofs to solidify something as fact, or propaganda, or somewhere in between. This is functionally what history studies are about.
That brings up another thing. At what point does it become a “public space”?
Theres an old supreme court case on a company town that claimed someone was trespassing on a sidewalk. The supreme court ruled it was a public space, and thus they could pass out leaflets.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/marsh-v-alabama-1946/
Imo, a lot of big sites have gotten to that stage, and should be treated as such.
There is a key difference here. Social media companies have some liability with what gets shared on the platform. They also have a financial interest in what gets said and how it gets promoted by algorithms. The fact is, these are not public spaces. These are not streets. They’re more akin to newspapers, or really the people printing and publishing leaflets. The Internet itself is the street in your analogy.
Your analogy about Newspapers isn’t accurate either. The writers of a newspaper are paid by the company and everyone knows that writers execute the newspaper’s agenda. Nothing gets published without review and everything aligns with the company’s vision. Information is one way and readers buy it to consume information. They don’t expect their voice to be heard and the newspaper don’t pretend that the readers have that ability either. This isn’t comparable to a social media site at all.
I’m not saying it is identical, there are some key differences, and yet social media platforms are much more like a publishing company than they are a town square. Just because they’re choosing to publish your tweets/posts for free and you’re choosing to create content without pay doesn’t mean it’s not a better analogy than saying their the equivalent of a public space. They’re very clearly not a public space. Using the street analogy, these are storefronts on the street, not the street itself. Again, the Internet itself is the street. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, or whatever social media platform, are not the street or the town square. They are not and should not be considered to be public spaces any more than a mall or a Walmart is.
Internet is a bunch of compters connected together. Social media sites are a part of the internet. If you say internet itself is a street, then social media sites are part of that street as well. If you’re just thinking about just the supporting infrastructure like cables, routers and switches, a lot of them belong to private companies as well. So you’re talking about a street in a gated community, then you shouldn’t expect any attributes of public space there either. Do you see that diiferentiating social media sites from public spaces just because they are owned by companies fail very quickly when you apply the reasoning consistently? Internet is quickly approaching the status of a basic human right, yet most of it is owned by private companies.
Do you know what’s equivalent to malls and Walmart on internet? That’s Amazon, eBay and Alibaba.
What’s the analogy to a real world place people go to express themselves, protest and engage with the broader society? The closest I can think of is a town square.
So a better analogy in my opinion is,
Private company servers are never public space no matter how many people they serve.
What is wrong with you?
Sidewalks are literally out in public.
So we should make a law that says Facebook allows neo Nazi hatred then? Not sure I follow what you’re getting at if you wouldn’t say yes to this question
I don’t trust facebook to decide what is hate speech and what isn’t, if thats what you’re saying.
Are you suggesting that large online spaces should have laws and police to investigate and enforce the laws? Of course this is already in place, but not at all enforced in the same manner as a public place.
No, I don’t trust anyone to do that. Everyone should be able to judge for themselves.
No, you don’t trust lIbRuLs, though Fox News can lie every second of every day and you’ll never criticize them
The Supreme Court is visiting such issues this month. Second block of text:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/10/major-second-and-first-amendment-cases-headline-november-sitting/