Federal court upholds Texas law on social media censorship

That's an extreme, but it makes the point. I may go to church Sunday and ask to announce there is no God, we're not alone in the universe, there is no "purpose" to existence. If they deny me that, I'll go to court and ask government to step in to defend my First Amendment right.

 

Platforms are allowed to edit. I have no idea why you think they aren't. In fact, it is one of the defining features of an online platform in section 230.

 

This is a very different argument from the one you gave above. Instead of thinking about governmental coercion, this is concerned with political bias. This too is interesting, and fraught with philosophical perils.

First, who gets to decide what is biased? If it’s the government, we immediately turn our new problem into our old one, where governments are in control of the platforms. Perhaps you believe we can set up a non-partisan independent commission on bias, but who would be in charge of assessing that this commission is bias free? As you can see, this line of questioning can lead to an infinite regress.

Secondly, let’s skip our first issue and grant your premise that social media is biased to the left. So what? When has it been against the law to have a viewpoint? What I think you need is to show harm to the public good. You’re best bet, which I still find unconvincing, is to argue along the lines of @archigator_96 that these companies have become so large that they now serve as a de facto public square. I think this is an extreme step. If we accepted it, I think our best remedy would be break the mega companies up, rather than have government take control of them. In this world, however, we would be denying these companies the very trait, scale, that makes them so attractive to people.

 

The talking point for simpletons = “we must consider all sides of the debate!”.

 

That's been my take as well. If these companies are too powerful and/or are engaged in unlawful, monopolistic practices, that can be addressed on its own merits rather than micro-managing terms of service rules. A brief side note here: based upon what I've read, I have more concerns about government being too cozy with big tech as it relates to the 4th Amendment, which is an issue that seems to get less coverage.

 

Everybody says Twitter’s a cesspit. I like Twitter. Had it not been for Twitter I would have never known there were alternatives to hiding from germs. Sure, I’ve been subjected to those annoying fact-checks. But whenever I am I pursue the fact-checkers and challenge them directly.

 

They’ve created so many paradoxes with this reactionary populist politics…they want big daddy government to “correct” freedom.

Let’s look at teaching. Teachers are overwhelmingly liberal. Why? If nothing else, I’d say mostly because “the right” incessantly attacks it as a profession, underfunds it, and lately has resorted to deranged social media smear campaigns (CRT, grooming). There is no real reason for this other than behavior. The only barrier to entry to teaching, is essentially to get a degree in some discipline and get a certificate to teach it. There is nothing preventing “conservatives” from entering the profession. Yet the right has made it so untenable that nobody in their right mind should want to go that direction. Unfortunately teaching isn’t the only profession under attack, it seems to me some don’t like the idea of “professionalism” at all… in any field.

Good luck with that whole civil society thing living in that kind of politically oppressed state. Seems our right wingers learned a few pointers from the Taliban on how to run a government

 

Even assuming that the social media companies are operated by people with a certain "one sided political/life view" their primary motivation isn't political it is the bottom line and they maximize it through algorithms the increase engagement by generating outrage, the source of which is irrelevant. My guess is that Mark Zuckerberg had absolutely no problem with the Russian bots and false persona that did so during the 2016 presidential campaign and I suspect that's the case for the CEOs and senior management of the other social media companies and it's not just Trump's cult they undoubtedly feel the same about outraged lefties willing to read and post and their platforms. In the case of Trump, the former Dear Leader went over the top when he was actually able to instigate violence.