If social media's bad then so is free speech?
 

As long as it's open source platforms, run by communities, what's the problem...

You should be able to guess my answer, "parents!" None of them are perfect but THINGS evolve. ;)

Corporations, on the other hand are all bad!?

It is my understanding that ALL social media has some form of "moderation" and moderators whether people with opinions and agendas or algorithms. By definition that is not "free and open" speech. The degree to which that is so creates an environment that encourages "rabbit hole" clickbait.

Of course corporations are not in and of themselves inherently bad but in some environments, like what is referred to as "Late Stage Capitalism" those that have succeeded progressively work their way into Law giving rise to such things as bribery, kickbacks, "pork" and the lobby system. It may possibly go even deeper when corporations are too concerned (or solely concerned!) with stockholders instead of customers. further fueling stagnation and artificially reduced competition.

It's weird. Corporations used to deal commonly in 100 year contracts. Now they often don't consider past the following quarter.

Aha. But none of the "most popular" ones are either of those things.

They're private services provided by businesses.

As such, they have the right to deny service to whoever they like. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

Politicians here love to quote Voltaire, but when it gets down to brass tacks they'll stop at nothing to silence voices they disagree with. This happens on both sides of politics. Neither side is more (or less) guilty of this behaviour.
"A million monkeys bashing on a million typewriters will eventually recreate the works of Shakespeare."

Well, social media disproved that theory.
No, not at all. Corporations are run by people. It's people who are bad.

Advocates of the right to Free Speech believe it's a natural right.

That's the reason it's enshrined in law in some countries; since it's a right that no-one should interfere with, lawmakers decided to explicitly block what they thought was the only entity that could really prevent people from publicly speaking freely, the government, from doing so.

As it turns out, in the modern world, there are issues with both the "government" and the "publicly" part of that reasoning. Governments are no longer necessarily the strongest enforcer of rules and regulations, and what do you do when the commons have all been bought by private corporations?

The problem is that, even though the platforms may be open source, control is most definitely not. Thanks to "cancellation", a penalty is often inflict for speech which was, until recently, considered noncontroversial and people were free to speak it. Pretty severe penalties can be inflicted too, including loss of jobs, income and reputation. So, control has been forfeited in many social platforms like Twitter whether "open source" or not and you can no longer say that the speech spoken by anyone is free.

And BTW. Has Donald Trump been free to say what he wants on Twitter since January? I know quite a few people who actually want to hear what he has to say, and some of those are people who don't agree with him (they do want to know the issues, however). And if he can't speak his mind there, can I?

I know you haven't asked the particular question I want to address, but for my money, the situation is odd and dangerous. You see, we used to live in a country - a world - where the government was at odds with the corporations. Many of us in the '60s felt aligned with the free-market (and protested government control) because the government was far more dangerous - they had the guns. I'm not sure when it happened (it happened so gradually). But now the corporations (not limited to "social media corps.") have aligned themselves WITH the government (and I haven't been able to determine if they capitulated to the politicians or bought them outright). We've lost a lot of our freedom because of that and we will lose more.

If you don't hold opinions that offend the censors at Twitter, you can. Otherwise, no.

That's why people like Donald Trump, certain feminists, and quite a few scientists are blocked on Twitter, while radical terrorists of all stripes get to post all sorts of horrific stuff with impunity, up to and including death threats. That's what a privately-owned public space looks like.

What commons? These are private services. If you don't agree to their terms and conditions, you're not obliged to use them. I don't have a Twitter or Facebook account for that very reason.
Again. They're not. These are private services. There are terms and conditions to which you have to agree before you can use these services. Only after you agree to those terms and conditions are you allowed to (for example) "Tweet."

By agreeing to the terms and conditions, you're signing a legally binding contract between yourself and the service provider.

If you are in breach of those terms and conditions the provider can withdraw service.

It is quite simple. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It's all about legally binding contracts. Some rights cannot be signed away, but you can easily sign away your right to free speech. Just ask anyone who has ever signed an NDA.
No you haven't. And no you won't.

If you don't like Twitter or Facebook, there are other providers you can use.

Me neither.

The Taxi services are private businesses. So are Lyft and Uber. Would you be OK with being banned from all these services because of some opinion you happen to hold? You could possibly still take the bus, of if no bus covers the area in question, you could walk. No-one's stopping you.

Walmart, Costco, and Kroger are all private businesses, and so are McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and Wendy's. Suppose they all decided you were persona non grata at their respective establishments because you made some slightly derogatory comment about the food processing industry. I mean, you could still go to a Farmer's Market and cook your own food.

How about being banned from using Amazon and eBay? Not because you've abused their services in any way, but because they just don't like you? How about Zoom and Microsoft?

The private entities mentioned above occupy large swaths of "the commons," to the point that in some areas there literally are no alternatives. Facebook and Alphabet (Google/YouTube) have maneuvered themselves into just that position on a near-global scale. Together, they are now in a position to ruin people's lives should they choose to do so. And they have indeed chosen to do so on numerous occasions.

If this is a valid principle, that privately owned spaces can be freely regulated by the owner in any way s/he pleases, regardless of the establishment's size, purpose, or general accessibility, then surely it must be fine to exclude, say, black people from an establishment in those parts of the world where there's no explicit law against it? And by the way, why should there be a law against it? Doesn't that infringe on the owner's rights?

(BTW, the U.S. Supreme court disagrees with this notion; see Marsh v. Alabama, 1946.)

I would suggest that "social" media is not inherently bad, but many of the persons who use it are.

Yeah. I take full responsibility for my own actions. If my conduct were to cause me to be banned from all of those, then I probably deserved it.

Actions have consequences. That is a universal law. It exists in every society on Earth. It exists in nature. It exists everywhere.
Oh please.

People "ruin" their own lives. They need to learn to take responsibility. A big problem these days is that everyone seems to think that everything is always everyone else's fault, and that there are no consequences for their actions.

Think of it this way: You have the right to free speech. As a direct result of you exercising that right, I have the right to think you're an idiot.
You're kind of missing the point that there are terms and conditions to which you must agree before you can use the service.

What we're talking about here is not publically accessible space. You cannot access the space until there is acceptance of a private contract between you and the provider.

Bingo, (no pun) teach all children!

1 year-olds learn to knock other's blocks over & don't say when they need to pee...

plus, (perhaps ironically or just most,,,) anyone who takes up law, was not taught at 1: by anybody who knows what they're doing!

Sorry to say!!! Doh!

My nephew was almost two, when, "parents" (no offense to mine who we're legal guardians @;) time +:D I too helped ​rear) put child locks to cabinets. I instantly taught him how they work:
,,, yelling at me: "what, he wanted to know how they work; I could tell!" (I then continue to put everything dangerous up high...) I feel like if ALL taught every one-year-old on the planet for generations to cum, I wouldn't have to yell at we'all... tho, not only because I'd b😚 dead!(?). :p

rkelsen said: "If you don't like Twitter or Facebook, there are other providers you can use."
Yes, true, and I don't use Twitter. I'm back on FB after years of ignoring them only to correspond to some old friends from ages gone past. But in both cases, no real alternative has appeared. In a society committed to free enterprise, alternatives would be apparent by now. The fact that they aren't tells us all that true competition is being effectively subverted. Some call that over regulation by g'ment bureaucrats. Some call it corruption. I say it's our willingness to put up with stuff like that.

I guess we'd have to define: social media, are we on it now?

Been told by family and friends that I'm::: "anti social" to which I reply, I'm not but if you invite me to a party,,, I don't want to have to go! Lol