Posted on 04/07/2018 6:27:26 AM PDT by dangus
Why are conservatives so passive about YouTube and Facebook deleting people's accounts? It's actually NOT Facebook's freedom of speech or freedom of association.
Your videos, photos or commentary are NOT Facebook's or YouTube's speech. If they were, God only knows how many life sentences Zuckerberg would be serving. They have both legally disavowed by default any responsibility for anything expressed on their services. They are YOUR speech. Facebook and Alphabet LICENSED to use your speech, under whatever terms you agree to. But ownership includes responsibility, and they do not have ownership of them.
Deleting an account is like a landlord burning your journals and manuscripts because you've been evicted. Just because they provided a tool which was used to create your intellectual property doesn't mean they can destroy your property. They may even be able to seize it, but they can't destroy it. Cancellation of an account is an act of destruction.
It WOULD be reasonable of Facebook or YouTube to reject a submission, or even under clearly defined rules, to restrict a post or video so most people can't see it.
But this has to be done by rules, and for a legitimate business purpose.
So let's be clear about the freedom of association:
If you don't want to let someone into your place of business, that's your right. If you think your cousin Irene is about to marry a louse, you're of no obligation to rent your restaurant to them for their reception.
But restraint of trade is NOT someone's right. It's not intuitive to some conservative's thinking that restraint of trade can involve a single provider. But we've been down this road before. A railroad denying access to a farmer puts that farmer out of business. Facebook denying access to a content provider puts that content provider out of business.
Facebook and YouTube are part of integral parts of others' business plans, and not because the people who use them "are stupid," but because they provide something of significant value to many businesses. And both services are directly involved in people monetizing their accounts.
Lots of conservatives seem to think that Facebook and YouTube can do what they want because users sign a contract. But contracts merely allow people to allow the law to be applied to areas where statutes don't already apply it. A contract which is not lawful is not valid. A contract which demands the right to arbitrarily restrain trade is not valid.
If social media providers sold their services for cash, this would be obvious to more people. But they sell their services for information.
And yes, they do SELL their services, even if you THINK you're getting it for free. You may GIVE them lots of valuable information about yourself for free. But you HAVE to pay YouTube, for instance, with your name, birthday, gender, phone number and nation of residence... so they can sell this information. (The fact that you may use fake data doesn't mean that they aren't requiring data.) Anything you have to provide in exchange for the service is commerce.
(This would be difference if Facebook or YouTube took responsibility for their content. Then, for instance,if you published a threat, YouTube could argue that it collected such information to respond to that threat. Or if you were continually harrassing someone, and YouTube used this information to prevent you from signing up again with a different account to continue the harrassment. This is plainly NOT the case.)
In many cases, statutes may NOT provide conservatives what they need to win lawsuits. But why aren't conservatives demanding that those statutes be created? And why aren't we testing out those statutes that already exist? Like racketeering?
The idea of free speech is to allow a marketplace of ideas. When big, multi-national, anti-Democratic corporations dominate that marketplace and control speech, that's not free speech; it's the death of free speech. Insisting on free-trade or free-speech policies that don't actually exist promote free speech are as dangerous to free speech as disarmament before genocidal tyrants is to peace.
Hell, look at how long and disgustingly the libs have whined about Fox News. And they’ve gotten exactly the sympathy here that they deserved. ;-)
That’s a lot of text with which to completely misconstrue a very short, straightforward statement from me.
Again, it is censorship.
But 1A (AKA the Constitution) does not apply.
I agree in general.
YouTube is a publicly traded company. Publicly traded companies should determine major policy issues by shareholder vote. The CEO and board members have a fiduciary responsibility to insure that the profitability of the company is put ahead of their own political agendas.
For companies that have a stranglehold on a particular market, they either need to be more regulated or broken up. Right now Google owns the biggest search engine, biggest video sharing site, the largest email service, the most used Internet browser, and half of the smart-phone operating system market. And it has many other major operations that do not fall into these categories.
Google is the personification of political hegemony. Just like the uniparty, options are only an illusion.
I agree in general.
YouTube is a publicly traded company. Publicly traded companies should determine major policy issues by shareholder vote. The CEO and board members have a fiduciary responsibility to insure that the profitability of the company is put ahead of their own political agendas.
For companies that have a stranglehold on a particular market, they either need to be more regulated or broken up. Right now Google owns the biggest search engine, biggest video sharing site, the largest email service, the most used Internet browser, and half of the smart-phone operating system market. And it has many other major operations that do not fall into these categories.
Google is the personification of political hegemony. Just like the uniparty, options are only an illusion.
Sure it’s censorship. So is a Christian bakery refusing to make a Sodomite wedding cake.
Problem solved. I have all the free speech I want standing on the outside looking in.
Facebooks belongs to Facebook just like your yard belongs to you.
Anything that message or post there belongs to Facebook.
If you are not paying for the product, then you ARE the product.
What happens when the company changes their rules mid stream to annex their own contracts for purges? Is that not a court fight or am I missing this?
“What happens when the company changes their rules mid stream to annex their own contracts for purges? Is that not a court fight or am I missing this?”
Big, multi-national corporations function above the law. In the case of YouTube, like pretty much every giant online platform, they have terms of service (the kind no one reads) that they can change at will and the only recourse any user has is to leave.
Currently this is completely legal, and merely a PR issue.
Of course anyone can sue anyone for any thing. In the case of Google, they have a deep war chest. So it does not always matter if you have a case with merits. The bigger issue is if you can win against their ability to bring overwhelming force to bear.
Their biggest vulnerability is the possibility of damaging their reputation.
Their next biggest is the threat of regulation. Quite frankly, companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and lot of other big, multinational software and media companies need to be regulated or broken up. We are not playing on a level playing field.
Even multi-million dollar companies can not leverage the perpetual patent protections like Microsoft. Nor can they devise tax strategies to avoid paying any income tax like Apple. They can not get special sweetheart deals on Postal delivery like Amazon.
“What happens when the company changes their rules mid stream to annex their own contracts for purges? Is that not a court fight or am I missing this?”
Big, multi-national corporations function above the law. In the case of YouTube, like pretty much every giant online platform, they have terms of service (the kind no one reads) that they can change at will and the only recourse any user has is to leave.
Currently this is completely legal, and merely a PR issue.
Of course anyone can sue anyone for any thing. In the case of Google, they have a deep war chest. So it does not always matter if you have a case with merits. The bigger issue is if you can win against their ability to bring overwhelming force to bear.
Their biggest vulnerability is the possibility of damaging their reputation.
Their next biggest is the threat of regulation. Quite frankly, companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and lot of other big, multinational software and media companies need to be regulated or broken up. We are not playing on a level playing field.
Even multi-million dollar companies can not leverage the perpetual patent protections like Microsoft. Nor can they devise tax strategies to avoid paying any income tax like Apple. They can not get special sweetheart deals on Postal delivery like Amazon.
No person worth anything gets their news from fakebook
Only FREEREPUBLIC ! Thank you JimRob !
Why do conservatives use Facebook?
Why isn’t there a conservative with a better site?
Sad truth thanks. Don’t know much at all about the law and fighting this issue. I went up against the power of the state and won but in the end I’m losing. As you wrote, people will just have to leave and make their own platform. The one good thing about capitalism is if enough people don’t like what is sold the company or the product will die. I’ve a feeling with google, FB, YTube and other platforms/search engines/social media this might be the end of their soaring heights sort of like oh say Netscape, and My Space. I don’t know about Microsoft or Apple. But Enron died and IBM and AT&T are no longer the giants they once were.
I hope you enjoy the gulag.
If you’re not going to even read the article, shut up and go away.
And selective enforcement of terms of service is consumer fraud.
The baker is honest about it, Facebook is not. They profess to have impartial terms of service.
What the hale are you talking about?
No, but it is a CONTRACTUAL endorsement, and FB, GOOG, TWIT, et.al. have conducted fraudulent inducement to imply that users can post within a certain framework of unfettered idea expression and then subsequently deny or inhibit their opinions, PARTICULARLY in light of their mining of the participating parties data for their subsequent monetization.
Other than the data mining, the same is true on FR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.