The issues get even dicier when you start talking about AWS or say cloudflare, blocking content. What happens when the block at the DNS level. Sure you can use other providers, but what happens when those providers, unbeknownst to you, integrate block lists from the aforementioned?
Yes people have a choice in products and can go else where, but when the products are so deeply intwined into the modern version of the internet, it becomes ever so more risky.
Everyone is onboard when its something they feel is morally right, but how long until it flips on them? It's not an if, but a when.
It's an extremely slippery slope we've been headed down for a long while.
I've commented so much about this in the past I'll just say this: I think the conception of social media as lofty forums for society to wrestle with serious issues is horse crap. Either I'm some genius (I'm not), or what you see online is what you get: 99% garbage.
The way people discuss online censorship is like that scene from Star Wars 'I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.'
Facebook Twitter et al are just companies, and companies come and go. They are a source of amusement, to be sure, but, at their most serious, they spread more darkness than light. Sci-hub is more likely to contribute to a cure for cancer, or heart disease. If Instagram called it quits tomorrow, it would no more detriment the life of the average person than if a restaurant or a disco they liked went out of business.
In short: these social media websites, as designed, are just bad at, for lack of a better phrase, 'enlightenment stuff'. Millions of people use them (sure, someone pooped out a good physics paper on 4chan, even) but they mainly produce memes and self-promotional nonsense. Not worth ruining liberal democracy, and social harmony over.
If network effect information monopolies would not be allowed, then corporation censorship would not be a problem. These monopolies can be broken by mandatory federation and open API's. (EU legislation is moving towards that direction).
It feels to me as if that clear line is getting fuzzier recently.
If anything, Amazon, Facebook and Google were too laissez faire for too long.
As any kind of business, beyond protected class discrimination, am I required to host any organization on my infrastructure, publish any blog post or book, create any to-spec work of art or craft, sell any work of art or craft, allow anyone to remain who is offending, frightening or putting people in danger, or planning or coordinating any of that?
Is HN required to host my comments, or not flag my posts, or not shadow ban me? There are an exceedingly small number of "other similar forums" that I could "just move to."
There are rules. Some made by the government, some by businesses.
By tolerating Donald Trump's insane tweeting for so long, only to ban him when he's definitely a lame duck, Twitter and other such companies have lost the moral high ground: they have shown that they have cynically accepted his campaign money, enabled subversive and misleading political ads, but have decided that a tenuous link to 'inciting violence' is reason enough to ban him. I'm sure the public has noticed. Public opinion will turn against these companies, and when the Republicans come back in the next midterms, they will, justifiably, have an axe to grind. We shouldn't be surprised when they pass draconian legislation that will affect not just the giants but also the minnows.
If any kind of filtering is relevant to this it is 'if it bleeds it leads'; if you have decapitation videos on your platform that is great for engagement and clicks.
