[SandersAK]

Many of the comments in this thread do not understand the concept of free speech from a legal perspective.

Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want.

on a side note - these are super dog whistle comments, and I'm surprised the mods are ok with them.

[ciarannolan]

>Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want.

Most people understand this. It doesn't need to keep being repeated in every thread.

Facebook isn't bobsmessageboard.com. The debate is over whether it is a de facto public communications utility and should be regulated as such, or if it is private company that is free to do whatever it wants on it's platform.

[SV_BubbleTime]

I’m quite free market... but in this case Google with its infinite resources tried to take just a piece of the Facebook pie and failed miserably.

If Google can’t compete with them - then SocialSite5000 startup has no shot in hell.

Facebook is unfortunately a monopoly. We can wait it out, but they are in a position to keep their advantage for generations so I don’t think that’s entirely reasonable.

If there are a monopoly, then they should be held to the ideals of common carrier and free speech and platform vs publisher, etc.

[hedora]

Inciting violence is illegal speech. Facebook is giving the president a platform for his illegal speech.

The courts (and the senate) are not going to enforce the law, so as a society we are duty bound to take whatever legal actions we can to correct the situation.

[eplanit]

"we are duty bound to take whatever legal actions we can to correct the situation."

So, you're inciting violence? I do enjoy irony, but hypocrisy is quite different.

[rsynnott]

And it CERTAINLY doesn’t mean that you as an advertiser are required to pay the company distributing said speech to show your ads.

[raxxorrax]

I understand that very well. There was an understanding how it was handled on the net. That is why got legislation like removing platforms for the content of users. It was necessary to allow interesting content to flourish.

All that is now getting thrown out because some don't like a free net with diverse opinions. And yes, some of those are really shit. Life is hard.

It is the other way around, that people citing this legal fact don't understand the mechanisms that made the net as a whole workable for the largest amount of people, not just rich kids from prestigious universities without real life goals.

There are also people that understand the social contract of free speech and those that do not.

[drak0n1c]

Likewise, citizens are free to criticize the actions of private corporations - whether they are criticizing Verizon or Facebook.

Say an environmentalist criticizes the practices of an oil company, and the overwhelming majority of rebuttals consist of saying that the oil company is acting perfectly legally and within its prerogatives. That would be a straw-man misdirection - no one is arguing that point.

[jessaustin]

...comments, and I'm surprised the mods are ok with them.

Censor desires censorship. We're shocked!