Capitalism is not a suicide pact.
They should at least be required to announce their censorship routines to the public and to specifically declare the extent of their political censorship. Otherwise, they are engaging in fraud on their users. Users have a fight to know whether they are being discriminsted against politically.
The Internet is a Common space, a company should be able to provide a place to congregate, but not Regulate what is said among those that gather. Kinda simple.
I don’t want Facebook regulated. I want them sued. A class action by non-members who’ve had their privacy violated without their consent.
Example: A dinner provides a product and a place for people to meet and enjoy a meal, and the company of friends, it does not have the right to regulate the political views of its customers.
How about some enterprising conservative start his own version of Facebook? He could censor leftist loonies.
I’m old enough to remember BEFORE Heritage Foundation went Deep State Globalist.
IOW outlaw any competition to Facebook. Bad idea.
No.
Facebook is an online service. They are not the only online social network website. If you choose to use their services, you have to agree to their terms and conditions.
If you don’t want your private information exposed to the world, and sold to the highest paying company, sign up for some other social networking site that doesn’t invade your privacy.
“The US gov’t should declare Facebook a common carrier and explicitly prohibit it from censorship. “
Facebook is a website, not a communication platform.
And where does the federal government derive the authority to do this anyway?
IMO...I think FB is not needed...and I don't partake.
I would agree on the general principles but knowing Adam Smith was no fan of monopolies and how Facebook has a near de facto monopoly in it’s class of service, I would suggest that anti-trust measures could insist on regulation of Facebook (& Google), and as government regulated utilities their censoring habits would be deemed as government interference in free speech, and classified as out of bounds.
“The US gov’t should declare Facebook a common carrier and explicitly prohibit it from censorship. “
What is the legal logic for that?
Facebook is not needed or required for any health and safety cause. Everyone is free to join, or quit whenever they please.
It is not possible to make a plausible case that they are a common carrier.
If stupid people want to get their news there, that’s their business. They are the kind of people that will never be reasonably informed anyway.
Facebook can allow or deny any posting they wish, based on any criteria they wish.
Just like Jim Robinson at Free Republic.
The proper solution is for the marketplace to provide avenues where others view are not censored. I’d dump Facebook in a minute for another viable platform.
Exactly. If “conservatives” like the Heritage Foundation had their way, the telephone company could deny us the right to use their lines if we didn’t have politically correct phone conversations.
I know the neos grabbed hold of the Reagan and Bush administrations. When they went into hiding after the fustercluck that was the Iraq War did they hunker down at Heritage and takeover?
It’s the lib Heritage Foundation. What do you expect.
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
I’ve seem more supposed “conservatives” whining like little babies in the last few weeks than I ever thought I would.
Zuckerberg can damned well do anything he wants with his creation unless and/or until I am forced to use it.
Public outrage, expressed by good old American free enterprise, should be the way Zuckerberg is motivated to stop censoring conservatives. Much as I would LOVE to have the law broken over his head, that’s the slippery slope that would come back and bite conservatives in not only the butt, but everywhere high and low, in between. If conservatives would find some way to make his bank account suffer, the little puke would sing another tune.