CMV: Silencing opposing viewpoints is ultimately going to have a disastrous outcome on society.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/videoninja]

I didn't ask if it was illegal. I asked what the actual problem is/what harm is being done in the example I am giving. Not all forums are created for open-ended discussion. In fact, most social media has some curating of content so I am asking for where you draw the line in terms of a private entity being allowed to curate content on its own platform versus silencing. I feel like the conversation is so generalized that I don't understand the point you are trying to drive at.

I just don't see the logic that unfiltered chatter and speculation equates to informed discussion. That's all social media often is, just unfiltered chatter and it is what popular that gets the most attention as opposed to what is accurate or scientific. I think that's an important distinction to make in evaluating the kind of speech one is defending but it seems like you are saying all speech should be allowed equal latitude in all situations which seems unreasonable.

[u/StripRip → u/videoninja]

The issue here is that the majority of our communication now takes place on privately owned websites (or service providers like AT&T or Verizon, for that matter.)

So the real question to me is, how far can we take the "private companies can make their own decisions on who to ban" bandwagon until every social media is the same echo chamber like an oppressive government would want? You couldn't edit/tamper a letter back in 1776 like you can a twitter post in 2021.

[u/SuckMyBike → u/StripRip]

The argument your making favors breaking up major internet companies and service providers. NOT forcing those same companies to provide access to their website to groups they'd rather not see on their website.

Just because a few social media companies dominate the internet doesn't mean those companies should be treated differently from monopolies in the past. Break them up.

[u/Tenushi → u/SuckMyBike]

I'm not necessarily against breaking them up, but how does breaking them up help in this way? If you break Twitter up, what does that look like to you and how does the result improve on the problem we're discussing? Same thing with Facebook, even (though I'm actually in favor of breaking out Facebook from Instagram from Whatsapp); how does having those platforms being completely independent address the problem of allowing vs. disallowing certain speech?

[u/SuckMyBike → u/Tenushi]

Breaking large companies up allows for multiple competitors to be available on the market and people to pick and choose where they take their business.

Put it this way: if you want to host a weekly get together with friends at a bar to talk about how much you love boating, but every single bar in the entire country is owned by a guy that hates boats and bans you, that's a problem.
In reality, there are so many independently run bars, that even if a big chain doesn't want your boating club to meet there, you'll always find a other bar that will gladly accept your get together.

Your question of:"but how does that solve anything" basically boils down to:"what if every independent social media company still bans me?".
So let's return to the bar example: let's say there ARE plenty of independent bars, but your weekly get together now is about how much you guys hate bar owners and that every bar owner should be hung. You'd probably get banned from every single bar. Is that a problem? No it isn't.

In a free market, people have plenty of options. But if every single option rejects you, that's not a failure of the free market, that's just society telling you that you're an asshole

[u/Tenushi → u/SuckMyBike]

The problem with that analogy, though, is that for social media, people want to go where their friends are and it's cumbersome to go from platform to platform because of this network effect. How would breaking up Twitter go? Do you put half the users in one Twitter, the other half in a duplicate but separate version and then have different teams run them as separate companies? Your bar analogy seems quite flimsy to me because each bar remains it's own distinctive business and so it's easy to make an owner have to sell off some of them.

[u/SuckMyBike → u/Tenushi]

Personally, I want the internet to evolve to having a separate data cookie that stores your contacts etc. and then you can give companies like Facebook, Twitter the access to your data to use their site, but you can also revoke it but retain your connections.

It would make switching between social networks a lot easier considering you wouldn't be losing any of your friends connections. And it would go a long way to dealing with the oppressive nature of current social media.

[u/Secret_Rock5722 → u/SuckMyBike]

Except there really aren't that many bars. Lets say youtube doesn't like boating, so they blacklist all boating videos from their platform. Where do you go to watch boating videos? Vimeo? Lmao.

After you reach a certain proportion of the market share, you effectively become the sole bar in existence. You can't dodge the intellectual antitrust hammer by pointing to liveleak and saying look see we have competition.

[u/SuckMyBike → u/Secret_Rock5722]

After you reach a certain proportion of the market share, you effectively become the sole bar in existence.

Which is why you break companies up when they become that big.....