[ggggtez]

How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?

YouTube banning antivax content is speech.

You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance on important issues of healthcare? Churches spend all day every day taking stances on abortion. You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?

[leetcrew]

> How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?

I can be deeply disappointed by youtube's moderation decisions without suggesting that the company be compelled to allow certain content. as an aside, I find it frustrating to see people constantly swapping between "free speech" as a legal concept and "free speech" as an abstract ideal in these threads. we talk past each other the same way every time the debate comes up. just because the law is written the way it is doesn't mean that's necessarily the way it should be. and even if we can't write the law "just right", we can still advocate for higher principles to be followed.

anyways, I generally agree with the "companies can manage their properties as they see fit" line of thought. but it becomes problematic when our public spaces are increasingly controlled by a small number of huge companies that mostly share the same politics. I'm not really sure what the solution is, but it sucks to watch it unfold.

[stale2002]

> You want the government to start mandating that a company

There is already an established history of requiring certain large communication platforms, to act a certain way.

They are called common carrier laws, and already apply to things like the telephone network.

Sure, they don't currently apply to other things, but the law could be updated, so that they do.

Philosophically, common carrier laws are uncontroversial, and already apply to major communication platforms, so you don't get to pretend like this is unprecedented.

[londgine]

I like the free market. If a store who also likes the free market decided to raise their price significantly because they claim to be better than everyone else then I will still think that is their right in the free market. However, since I value the free market so much I won't buy from them. Similarly, if YouTube wants to exercise their right of freedom of expression to censor content then I, as someone who values freedom of expression will use them less. Unfortunately, while in the first example many people would behave like me and cause the store to lower their price, not that many people value freedom of expression for YouTube to care about loosing those people.

[BitwiseFool]

I think discussions of the free market need to include scale. Scale absolutely matters when it comes to "voting with your wallet", or I suppose, in this case, your usage of a platform.

I think our notions on the merits of a free market, and indeed, the very understanding of a free market itself, come from a time before the network effect and the de-facto digital monopolies we see today.

[drewcoo]

> You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance . . .

I, for one, want less monopolistic media so that the people can exert viewership pressure; they can get their media elsewhere and the ad money will follow. The content being stopped is not the only loss of people's voices happening here.

[Covzire]

No church has a monopoly on the public square that is being exploited by one political party or corporate interest.

[zionic]

>How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?

Because these "platforms" are in fact utilities.

We have allowed corporations to own and control the common square and bypass rights our forefathers fought wars to establish.

The gov has been all too lenient enforcing laws against these giants because it allows them to censor-by-proxy.

For the left-leaning among, please recall that the definition of fascism is "the merger of state and corporate power".

[Supermancho]

As Thiel says, (in whatever form it ultimately takes) the free market is a selector for monopolies. At peak capitalism, you still have start ups competing with an increasingly low chance of success excepting scandals...which are inevitable in large organizations.

The biggest companies are basically utilities and that will not change anytime soon. The market has resulted in this condition. The government has to play catchup, as usual.

[tomjen3]

Youtube is a monopoly, and monopolies should be limited in the same way the government is, and for the same reason. This also applies to groups of otherwise independent businesses that operate in concert.

That, and adding political beliefs to the list of protected classes, is what is necessary to start the US healing processes. Until there is no other option but to talk with the people you despise, neither side will start doing it.

[AnimalMuppet]

The problem is that Youtube is big enough, and carries enough of the global conversation, that we think it should be a common carrier. (Think of the phone company back in the day. They didn't care if you were literally the Nazi Party of America, they carried your phone calls just like everybody else's.) People kind of think of Youtube that way, even though, legally, Youtube isn't playing by those rules.

But there's also this two-faced evaluation of Youtube. When Youtube blocks the other side, people say "private company, First Amendment, they can carry what they want". But when Youtube blocks their side, people at least feel the violation of the "common carrier" expectation, and get upset.

So maybe it's time for us as a society to decide: Has Youtube (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google) gotten big enough and important enough that they should be regulated into some kind of "common carrier" status? Or do we want them to continue as they are?

[ThrowawayR2]

> "How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?"

Corporations are not humans (regardless of the "corporate personhood" doctrine) and thus should not be entitled to the full rights of humans. Semi-monopolies like Youtube are especially not entitled to use their dominance to manipulate public opinion, given how easily it can be abused.

Ask yourself, if YouTube were pushing conspiracy content and suppressing pro-vaccination content instead would the parent poster and those like them still be saying what they are saying? Fair-weather friends indeed.

> "You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?"

The United States government already can and has in the past; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine .

[joshuamorton]

> Corporations are not humans (regardless of the "corporate personhood" doctrine) and thus should not be entitled to the full rights of humans.

True, but corporations are just connections of people with shared goals. Should groups of people lose "fundamental" rights when they organize?

> Fair-weather friends indeed.

Yes, I fully support the rights of platforms to do stupid things. Use rumble or whatever if you want. I'll mock those platforms, but I don't think the government should ban them.

> Semi-monopolies like Youtube are especially not entitled to use their dominance to manipulate public opinion, given how easily it can be abused.

So, you think that we should circumstantially limit constitutionally protected rights, for the greater good? Fair weather friends indeed.