If you were taught wrong, would you know it?

More and more we can understand concepts behind the movie Lucy...

...we (specially wolves*) die sooner than needed because fuoking ignorance! (Not ignored, all, even if you're too stupid to realize it!!!)

Freedum of ignorance superproceeds we! ll

You're slowing down the traffic of the world, rubber necking? I don't want your hickeys, yippies!

How about the weather?🙄$udo.riot$

Sure.

The justices in the case of Manhattan Community Access Corp v Halleck [2019] examined the issue in detail. The points I've been trying to make in this thread are best summarised by Justice Kavanaugh below:

MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. v. HALLECK [2019]

KAVANAUGH, J:

"The Hudgens decision reflects a commonsense principle: Providing some kind of forum for speech is not an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed. Therefore, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor. After all, private property owners and private lessees often open their property for speech. Grocery stores put up community bulletin boards. Comedy clubs host open mic nights. As Judge Jacobs persuasively explained, it “is not at all a near-exclusive function of the state to provide the forums for public expression, politics, information, or entertainment.” 882 F. 3d, at 311 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part).

In short, merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.

If the rule were otherwise, all private property owners and private lessees who open their property for speech would be subject to First Amendment constraints and would lose the ability to exercise what they deem to be appropriate editorial discretion within that open forum. Private property owners and private lessees would face the unappetizing choice of allowing all comers or closing the platform altogether. “The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use.” Hudgens, 424 U. S., at 519 (internal quotation marks omitted). Benjamin Franklin did not have to operate his newspaper as “a stagecoach, with seats for everyone.” F. Mott, American Journalism 55 (3d ed. 1962). That principle still holds true.

As the Court said in Hudgens, to hold that private property owners providing a forum for speech are constrained by the First Amendment would be “to create a court-made law wholly disregarding the constitutional basis on which private ownership of property rests in this country.” 424 U. S., at 517 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Constitution does not disable private property owners and private lessees from exercising editorial discretion over speech and speakers on their property."

Emphasis mine.

In the same case, from Justice Sotomayor:

SOTOMAYOR,J:

"The majority acknowledges that the First Amendment could apply when a local government either (1) has a property interest in public-access channels or (2) is more directly involved in administration of those channels than the City is here."

To the best of my knowledge the US Government neither owns nor controls any of the social media platforms. They are private property. I can't understand why anyone who prefers to live in a democracy would have it any other way.

I don't think anyone has argued that it does.
You know they do. They've openly threatened with legislation if Facebook does not censor certain legal speech. And it's not an empty threat when it comes directly from the lawmakers.

Do you have any support for this claim?

State controlled media is generally a feature of, shall we say, "less than democratic," societies.

The basic law is section 230 of the communications decency act. Its not that Facebook can not censor content its just that they do not do it evenly or fairly and certain Congressman(people?) complain of them being biased with respect to conservative "perspectives". The previous president did sign an Executive Order in 2020 to essentially eliminate this but it was never enforced and eventually rescinded by the current administration.

Florida tried their own social media law but that was blocked in Federal court.

Are you telling me you haven't seen the videos of the Speaker of the House threatening Facebook with regulations or with being broken up? She's done it more than once, and many of her colleagues in Congress have openly voiced their support.

I thought this was common knowledge. It's been widely reported in the press.

Here's from back in 2019, when someone had the audacity to post an obvious fake video mocking Nancy Pelosi. She received massive support from her party.

In early 2020, she accused the company of misleading the public, and suggested they could possibly be found guilty of antitrust violations.

In November 2020, she claimed Facebook was participating in "election-related interference."

Note how there are no concrete accusations of laws being violated, and how there's absolutely no relation between the supposedly "harmful" (and clearly legal) actions by the company (allowing mockery, misleading information, "misinformation") and the threat of legal action (antitrust violations).

Surely, a company guilty of antitrust violations should be investigated regardless? Why hasn't that happened?

"Nice social media company you've got there. Would be a shame if something was to happen to it."

Senator Josh Hawley has been after big tech and Facebook long before Nancy Pelosi. While both sides complain, censorship is a right and antitrust more of a left issue. The left wants more political misinformation censored the right less or none.

I don't see evidence of any form of government control in any of that. Just hot air from Pelosi... and so what? How does that even hint toward any evidence of the government controlling Facebook?

Have you got anything better than that? Preferably some concrete evidence which shows that the government is somehow controlling social media, or that it has a 'property interest' in any social media platforms.
Funny.

But no one individual has the power to do any of that, let alone the speaker. In my country (also a Western Democracy with a bi-cameral Parliament), the speaker has no voting power. I'd be highly surprised if that wasn't also true in the US.
Irony.
More irony.

I guess I've never understood "what all the fuss is about" concerning Facebook. I've never used any of these services and I never plan to. Even when it was "IRC = Internet Relay Chat" chatting endlessly with other people never really interested me.

I do think that the owners of these sites, including particularly "TikTok," should bear legal responsibility for what they allow to be on their sites. They are, indeed, "content producers" and "editors." Other people can "be damaged" by what is placed there. TikTok is being used to "challenge" people to perform illegal acts, and teenagers are stupid enough to do them. Google is purposely making information that it doesn't like harder to find. I don't think that property owners should be able to do things like that with impunity. The old "Section 230" rules are no longer descriptive of what these services now are and how they are now being used and managed.

If someone posts a challenge on TikTok to destroy the sinks in a bathroom, then both TikTok, Inc. and the person who posted it should be subject to legal and quite possibly criminal liability for their acts. If someone posts a Facebook page calling for and organizing jihad, then both Facebook, Inc. and the author of the post should bear direct liability for their acts. You don't get a "get out of jail free" card.

Here's a radical concept for you. I strongly suspect that a civilization having at it's most basic fundamental laws, boiled down to essences, that 100% Free Speech (even including an assumed right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater) would have less and fewer problems than one of of 100% censorship.

If you don't like the fact that [Facebook] is censoring you ... "vote with your feet!" You can do business with anyone and you can also stop at any time.

Or, as in my case, "don't start." I have never used any of these sites, nor do I ever intend to. (Even with "IRC = Internet Relay Chat," I very quickly became bored with "chatting" and of my own volition simply stopped doing it.)

Whereas, I am very active with forums in which like-minded people facing similar problems – at work or otherwise – gather in an entirely different way to assist one another.

What worries me is what happened to Parler. I don't know whether or not Parler was "a right-wing echo chamber" as some people claimed, but it certainly had a right to exist and people who were unwelcome at Twitter had a right to go and talk there. That's how private companies are supposed to work. A private company can ban you from its premises if it wants and that's OK because you can always go elsewhere. But when increasing numbers of people tried to go elsewhere and downloaded the Parler app (it was for a short while extremely popular), someone had a quiet word with AWS, who run practically all the web servers, and they pulled the rug out from under Parler. Because they were a private company, right? So they could refuse to host anyone they pleased.

Sorry, but organisations which have the power to do that are no longer private companies, regardless of who owns them. Democratic countries put limitations on the power of the state, not simply because it is the state, but because it is powerful and would always like to be more powerful. When privately owned corporations have this degree of power, limitations need to be put on them too.