There is ZERO DIFFERENCE between tech firms deciding who their customers should be based on political and social differences and cake shops deciding who they should serve based on social and political differences.
Actually, it’s a false surrender monkey Libertarian equivalence. The cake shop is not shutting down speech. The cake shop isn’t cutting access off to basic business functions that will vastly impact the target.
Indeed. The refusal to bake a cake with an offensive message does not hurt the accuser in the least, as he/she/it is able to go across the street to another bakery.
This is not the same thing as a media platform, which can make or break a person’s career and /or livelihood. Thank you for pointing this out.
Neither is Mailchimp. Don't confuse the right to free speech with the right to be heard.
The cake shop isn’t cutting access off to basic business functions that will vastly impact the target.
So the first amendment applies differently depending on the impact of the speech?
It’s not a false equivalence at all. You misunderstand. In both cases, the LEFTISTS are deciding who a business’ customers should be.
The only difference is, for the cake shop, it’s OUTSIDE leftist agitators determining who their customers should be. For MailChimp, it’s INSIDE management agitators determining who their customers should be. In BOTH cases, leftists are determining who the business should serve based on politics.
Big Tech firms like Google and Facebook are so BIG that their refusal to provide service is akin to denying you access to the public square.
Break up big tech as monopolies, create a much more “diverse” marketplace, and you may have an argument.
However, that’s not enough. They have to be prosecuted for shutting down conservative alternatives. They criminally colluded to kill rivals so that they remained dominant.
Example 1: Mastercard, Stripe and Paypal colluding to kill Patreon rivals Subscribestar and Freestarter, because the latter two wouldn’t ban people liberals didn’t like. They killed Freestarter, and Subscribestar caved. That’s criminal collusion by financial and tech firms to shut down businesses that don’t agree with them.
Example 2: the killing of social media startups
Remember Gab.ai? The Twitter rival? Google has a special data mining relationship with Twitter. They also share political views along with other liberal big tech firms. Then they colluded together to kill it. Banning it from Apple and Android (google) app stores. Banning its ads and preventing it from being discussed on social media.
A cake shop not wanting to bake me a cake isn’t an issue because I can go to a dozen other places. The several big tech firms ARE 99% of the market. And we can’t even get the market to create alternatives because Big Tech colludes to kill them - repeatedly.
Break them up as monopolies, prosecute the executives for violation of civil rights and trade policy. THEN we will have true economic and political freedom.