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Are corporations allowed to limit free speech or not?
@SheChanges According to which law/statute?
the problem is monopolies
Like the fedi! Honestly if twitter was great, not many of us would be here.
@farhan @shebang @mewmew Mm, IDK. If everyone had heard of the #Fediverse, they might switch.
(Also, moving from one social media site to another isn't that enticing for most. How many users are switching from TikTok to Byte? I would guess not many.)
What problem does the Fediverse solve for the average person? Privacy? Censorship? The average person is not concerned about privacy and is untouched by censorship.
The good reasons I think to push for the fediverse are:
A. Twitter effectively pushes a certain social agenda and normalizes certain behaviors. I don't think I need to elaborate more on that.
B. Governments are HIGHLY incentived to migrate off Twitter. Think about it - the President communicates over a network the government does not control.
C. Creating walled-off communities.
I suspect Twitter usage will reduce after Trump leaves the presidency - and that could be an opening for the Fediverse.
speak for yourself
@realcaseyrollins Yes, in the current order (obviously) but ideally we should implement a standard by which once a platform reaches a certain level of either profit or widespread use, they should be treated as utilities.
@NAZl Ah yes. So when they become monopolies?
@realcaseyrollins No quite, cause we have Fedi, right? Technically Twitter isn't a monopoly, people *could* migrate here, no problem. But of course, it's not that simple. People are slow to change, there has to be a catalyst for migration.
So we can't use monopolization as the base standard for regulation.
@NAZl It's still a monopoly; monopolies don't need to have complete control of an industry, just a majority of it. I would say #Twitter's userbase utterly dwarfs the #Fediverse's
@realcaseyrollins Twitter has Facebook as a rival. Instagram has Snapchat. Youtube is the only outright monopoly I can think of. But this is really an argument of semantics. I think you understand my position.
@realcaseyrollins Marsh v Alabama suggests that when corporations provide a "town square" that they must then abide by the Constitution. Jack Dorsey has even described Twitter as a "town square", so he already acknowledges this - but he's not the one that apparently calls the shots at Twatter or something.
At any rate, CDA is also a contractual arrangement. Companies receive *special* protections *if* they do not censor political speech. However, companies don't have to accept that special protection and can always opt to be publishers, where they are free to censor anything they want.
So in short, yes they are free to do what they wish except they may not misrepresent what they are.
@realcaseyrollins Corporations have their own free speech rights.
Suppose Alice says something to Bob. Alice's right to free speech does not oblige Bob to repeat that (even if he were directly asked what she said!). In fact, obliging Bob to do so would be a violation of his own free speech rights which protect him from most "compelled speech".
Similarly, Twitter's free speech rights allow them to configure their server so that it doesn't republish certain content submitted by users. That's not limiting free speech; it's a natural consequence of the corporation's own free speech rights.