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> You're arguing legalese but I'm arguing morals and ideals.

Sure you are. Except... you tie them specifically to the American interpretation. Which is firmly rooted in the Constitution/1st amendment, and what our founders thought about it.

Quoth: "But I was raised like a good little patriotic American boy, so I value free speech pretty damn highly"

So, either you subscribe to those specific values, or you should scrub the patriotic rah-rah from your argument.

> Instead of 'any and all' and 'amplify', how about 'dominant' and 'not suppress'?

Nobody "suppresses" anything. If you want to be a white supremacist, host your own server. These platforms are private entities - they get to choose who is welcome. (cf https://xkcd.com/1357/)

> Is it really that dangerous to let people express themselves?

Yes. Once a line is crossed, because at that point it turns from speech to acts of aggression utilizing speech. As I said above, everybody arguing free speech understood that back when we decided what basic rights we wanted or didn't want.

And please don't argue "slippery slope", because that's a strawman. There's a very clearly recognizable line from free speech to hate speech, be it white supremacy, gay bashing, nazism, or ISIS. And the vast majority of people is perfectly capable of recognizing that line

(Here's an interesting read on the whole concept that there are limits to tolerance: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...)




> These platforms are private entities - they get to choose who is welcome.

I feel like we're talking past each other. My belief is that when a corporation becomes large and omnipresent enough, it's basically a de-facto government, and should probably be constrained from abusing its power in similar ways.

Imagine that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit &c decide that idea X is inappropriate. It will become difficult for us, as a society, to have a discussion about X, because it has been suppressed in our dominant discussion forums. That's not a healthy thing for an open society.


Again, your OP was tied specifically to the US interpretation.

But even if we leave that aside, a loss of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit is not a threat to discussion. You seem to imply that before these existed, there wasn't any actual discussion of important topics.

Sure, social media has enabled massive amounts of screeching and foaming at the mouth, but beyond that, the impact on useful debate is more than doubtful.

Unless you prefer populism over democracy, in which case it's an incredibly useful tool.




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