Furthermore, the country most in favor of limiting free speech to protect minorities, Germany(70% pro, 29% against, total population) , ironically has the most experience with the dangers of both extremes of allowances on speech. On one hand the Nazi's were able to rise to power partly because they were able to publicly scapegoat groups of people who were eventually slaughtered en mass. On the other hand you have the Stasi who would torture and murder people based on a whiff of being critical of the ruling party.
Look, I'm for free speech, but lets not pretend that its an issue that doesn't require a modicum of nuance to approach.
They're not publishers, so your argument falls apart in the very first sentence.
I don't recall a time in history when services (what Facebook et al. are) were allowed to police the content of communications made with their service. I don't recall AT&T, when they allow customers to communicate using their telephone lines, being allowed to police the content of those communications. I don't allow printer manufacturers being allowed to police the things people print.
Before you reach for the keyboard to type the words, "that's different" - no, no it's not. It's not different at all. Facebook offers a service. They aren't publishers. My analogy is closer to reality than yours. It just so happens that Facebook is technically able to police my speech, and so you've chosen to shrug and say it's okay. If AT&T had been technically capable of listening to my speech and policing it, what argument would you make that they shouldn't be allowed to do that? Whatever argument you come up with, I make the same argument for facebook.
> I'm for free speech, but
"...but I'm not really for free speech."
It's all or nothing. You either accept it as a principle because you understand that it's literally the most important principle, or you don't. In your case, you don't.
This is because by posting on facebook or appearing on google you are implicitly now a representative of them because they're branding is all over that homepage. If you say something that facebook really disagrees with and would rather not say they have every right to not say it.
It's why Cloudflare didn't drop the Daily Stormer until after DS started to try and say the CF was on board with their views.
What law you would write and who it should apply to? You think Facebook should be mandated to host all non-illegal content, yes?
What about Flickr? What about Gardening.com? What about NoNazisAllowed.com? What would you propose as the legal standard for deciding who is a common carrier and who is not?
I don't have a horse in this race, but let's at least start the discussion with something concrete.
Has liberalism and free speech only existed in the time span where there's been regulated common-carrier type "services"?
Lets roll back the clock to before AT&T. Was there free speech and liberalism? Was any printer required to print anyone's manuscript? Was any newspaper required to be open to all opinions? Was any private person or organization required to spread those opinions across the world?
Historically, Facebook is much more like an open-to-the-masses publisher/distributor than you claim, with the difference resting more in economics (cost of publishing) than anything else. But that difference is hugely significant in practical terms - an unrestricted Facebook doesn't have much historical analog at all, hence the debate.
EDIT: apparenty people do talk about free speech, but they seem unaware of their rights.
