Posted on 06/01/2019 6:16:56 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
On April 10, 2018, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz grilled Facebook Chairman and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over the social media platform’s content moderation policies. Citing examples of Facebook censoring pro-conservative accounts and articles, Sen. Cruz explained to Zuckerberg, “to a great many Americans, that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias.”
Sen. Ted Cruz then pressed the Facebook chairman on whether his organization was a “neutral public forum,” arguing that neutrality is necessary to enjoy the protections guaranteed by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
A willingness to consider modifying Section 230 to weaken protections enjoyed by social media platforms is bipartisan. In a Recode Decode podcast episode released on April 11, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opined that “230 is a gift to them [the tech companies], and I don’t think they are treating it with the respect that they should.” She added, “For the privilege of 230, there has to be a bigger sense of responsibility on it, and it is not out of the question that that could be removed.”
Whether or not you agree with claims that American tech companies have attempted to mitigate conservative opinions, history shows that ham-fisted attempts by government to enforce “fairness” in matters of speech usually result in less freedom for all.
Legislation like the Radio Act of 1927 gave the government the power to enforce “fairness,” such as giving “equal time” to both sides of a political issue. It sounded good in theory. In practice, the result was that radio stations with unusual or nonstandard content were deemed too extreme by government regulators and denied licenses to operate. In the pursuit of “fairness,” dissenting voices were silenced.
(Excerpt) Read more at theresurgent.com ...
“Fair” is one of the favored words of commies.
So, is the government cure actually worse than the leftist big tech disease?
Nanny State PING!
Bump to the Top...
Tough problem.
I think the key is that these are advertising companies- not especially search or contact companies.
But how that key can be used I don’t know.
I worked for Ma Bell, RIP.
Censorship is bad, whether it comes from Big Tech or Big Government.
Have they not read about the French Revolution??? Things smoothed out sort of THIS century, but it was pretty bloody. “Fairness” of results makes no sense except to the DinDos and the GimmeDats.
For example, I was warned by TWITTER and had to remove a post when I said that Muslims are ordered to kill infidels. Anyone who knows anything about Islam knows that the barbarians are ordered to either convert infidels, and if they won't convert to Islam, then they can be killed, fined, enslaved, raped etc. (I said it much nicer than this).
I didn't say anything threatening about Islam, I think I just told the truth. When I received a threatening note from TWITTER, I should have been able to drag the liberal SOBs into court and TWITTER should have been ordered to pay the legal fees. A few $million dollar court losses for TWITTER and FAKEBOOK would make it very clear.
“Fair” means they win, we lose. It’s only fair.
“Fair” is now code for “Force”
Fairness = Redistribution.
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