RE: Internet Censorship: The Dirty Truth
The big difference between the phone company and these internet companies is that the phone company was a government created and regulated monopoly. There was only one phone company to choose from because the government granted them a monopoly. These internet companies are anything but monopolies, there are endless alternatives. I see all this banning and kicking off content creators as a very good thing, it is just these companies hastening their eventual decline. Any of them could become the next Myspace as people leave their platforms to follow the content creators they exile.
right now there is not really a legal argument to be made but one possible solution for this problem would be to declare these sites as public accommodations, like a hotel or restaurant and for political affiliation to be a protected status, that would require an act of congress though. Under the current laws they are totally within their rights to kick off anyone who offends them from their platforms. I am glad they are doing it, they are only fucking themselves. It's probably the best thing to happen to Alex Jones all year.
That's kind of the point I was making- by accepting public funds they are a public utility. When all of the tech CEO's were in Congress they all said they were public forums, so free speech laws apply. They all just lied about censorship.
any public utility is like the phone company, they are legal monopolies, you only have one water pipe, telephone wire and electric wire coming to your house so the government grants those providers monopolies and as a result they have to be subject to government regulation and oversight.
I think that you are on to one possible solution of the problem but that the current law does not currently apply to them for various reasons. Some legislation is needed for that solution to occur. Congress could declare the alphabet to be public accommodations. They would also have to make political affiliation a protected class to keep people from discriminating on that basis and as we see from various incidents of people being thrown out of restaurants, which are public accommodations forbidden from discrimination in who they serve, political affiliation is not a protected class except for employment in some cases. In who you serve you may discriminate on the basis of political affiliation under federal law.
If free speech laws apply then a corporation should be free to decide what is said on their website. So I think a better solution to this problem is to let these giant CIA backed quasi monopolies ban who they want and be totally biased and evil and for all good people to use sites that don't do those things like @steemit and to let Facebook and twitter pass into internet oblivion like Myspace when the next thing comes out which will hopefully be steemit.com.