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@freepeoplesfreepress I appreciate your stance, but I dont think its quite that straight forward, nor should one's stance be.
For starters I think there is a place for suspending on politicial views, but it is very much a niche edge case. If I ran an instance specifically for democrats I would see no real issue with them not allowing republicans to join their instance. In the case of federation though I wouldnt say its appropriate to defederate based on those terms in most cases unless the instance really is trying to create a bubble, but i cant see a good reason to do that at a federation level really.
The more interesting stance of yours is if social media should be allowed to kick people off of their computers... that just seems unworkable at almost every level. I would tend to agree with this once a social media network reaches a certain size where it is pervasive.. it almost resembles a public utility at a certain point, at which point I might be willing toa gree with you there.
Prohibiting someone from controlling what content they put on their website is a violation of the First Amendment clear and simple. Congress has given people who run websites immunity from liability for posts made by users of the site. The problem is that social media companies are not just kicking people off for moderation purposes, they're kicking people off to tailor the message that comes from their social media site.
A good example is IMDB's user-supplied movie reviews. If someone posts a review that is highly critical of a major studio's tentpole, that review will most likely get removed, especially if it is critical of racial bias in Hollywood. They are presenting a specific message, and they should not be considered as a "utility" that is just conveying information. They are the content provider and should not be immune from liability for that content.
A true communication utility is one which simply conveys information, like the telephone company. A telephone company is not liable for what people say over the phone, however, if the telephone company tried to edit what you were saying on the phone, you would not call that a utility.
So entities that try to control what is posted to their site should not be exempt from liability if they're controlling the message that way.
If the entity that's running the site is controlling what's being posted beyond simple and clear, unambiguous cases, such as specific words, or specific body parts, they are not a utility no matter how big they are and they should not be exempt from liability for the content on their site.
If they want to be treated as a utility and be exempt from liability for what's posted on their site then shouldn't be able to pick and choose what's going to be posted on their site.
@Pat @freepeoplesfreepress We already have laws in place that under certain circumstances prohibit the person who runs the infrastructure from having a say in peoples speech... basically we tend to create special protections for commons.
If I am an ISP and own a bunch of wire, even though its my wire and im a private company I can not legally moderate the content going over my wires...
In my view once a social media network becomes pervasive enough it falls under the same logic regarding commons as other structures.