Trump’s return to Facebook and Twitter is part of a larger shift in “free speech” happening across social media platforms, cable news, and even in Congress. I explain the connections and break it down in today’s piece. https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/hes-baaaaaack-but-thats-not-the-real?sd=pf
@jaykuo "This highlights the problem of giving companies full free speech rights as if they were people: When they act in ways we don’t like, we have no legal leg to stand on."
That's not a bug, it's a feature. For anyone who doesn't like the way companies exercise their rights, they can choose not to patronize them. The idea that this must be solved by government *is* the problem.
@jaykuo The closing bit contains some dangerous rhetoric...
The marketplace of ideas is no more an "oligopoly" than it was 100 years ago when newspapers were owned by a few rich guys. If anything, social media has democratized the marketplace of ideas to an historic extent.
Of course individuals make decisions. The point of the marketplace of ideas is that we have the choice to go along with their decisions, criticize them, or boycott them. If enough people choose to boycott them, guess what? They won't be rich oligarchs much longer. They understand this and *regularly* bend to the whims of the masses for that very reason.
That's the free marketplace of ideas in action.
It may not always work the way you want, but in the long run, it's much better than creating governmental speech regulations that will inevitably be abused by the same election-denying Republicans you're concerned with in the first place.
