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Cause this is a problem for online people, not for the "touch grass" offline crowd.
In the real world, there also aren't many free-speech zones for people to truly unleash their most radical, dark, unsavory thoughts. The real reason free speech flourished in the internet is because of anonymity. If people can speak their mind anonymously in real life, you'll hear them much more often too. In the real world, unless you're crazy and just speaking to no one, you're speaking to an audience, and therefore, they know you. They can judge you, they can laugh at you, they can raise their eyebrows or makes visible that they think you're disgusting, they can think twice about doing business with you, and on and on and on.
I would like to add a second point about the internet is that people who champion it being a "free speech zone" is because not only of the anonymity, which protects them from retaliation, but also reach. If you're the guy shunned by the local community, it's unlikely that they would repeat or share your words with others. Yeah you still got free speech, alright, your speech just isn't landing. On the internet, be dark and edgy and you can go viral, and of course "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes".
The things being censored were normal or mainstream opinions. Opposition to gay marriage, disgust with fat people, support for Donald Trump, even opposition to immigration could get posters deplatformed. The pandemic was censored! If you believed the pandemic came from the Wuhan coronovirus research laboratory and not Chinese people eating bats, you could be banned. If you didn't want to take a novel mRNA vaccine, you could be banned. There were government agencies on tax dollars paying employees to scour social media and report "misinformation" to twitter HQ.
The website you are posting on right now exists because of threats that the conversations that we have here were too "dangerous" for reddit to continue to host them.
This is a problem if you want to pursue truth and not status.
Yeah, from a private website, it's like being banned from a restaurant. And look, a rich man bought out a big square (Twitter/X), and Trump got his own (Truth Social). To me, this feels more like complaining about the consequences. You can be a moon landing denier but don't be surprised if you get punched in the face by an astronaut. Also, specifically about the wuhan coronavirus lab leak theory, I always get annoyed because Jon Stewart went on Colbert and literally just talk about it. I'm here to say that I don't think the stuff with the internet is markedly different if the example is not-internet. Even the case with payment processing, look, if you're a business owner that has only one supplier with monopoly power, and you piss them off because of your political views, well, yeah, good luck with that.
Yeah, i agree that if the government is doing the pressure then it's not good (because it's unconstitutional), but if pressed, I don't think I'm a freedom of speech absolutist in daily life. I personally think that just like how all the Biden pressure campaign stuff came out once Trump is in office, then all the Trump pressure campaign stuff will come out once Trump isn't in office. Though I do think Trump and his admin is more likely to just demand the results directly instead of doing things opaquely like Biden. I think if someone comes from the position of defending free speech, they'll find problems with every administration. And thankfully, America has a vibrant market and populace that is always vigilant on these things (Musk buying Twitter/X, Trump launching Truth Social, this site splitting off from Reddit, I'm hearing about Gab/Parler, watchpeopledie has their own site).
To me, this is equivalent to if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?.
What do you think about restaurants banning people for skin color? Do you think it should be legal?
a quick search (and also IANAL) shows me that the reason why it is illegal for restaurants to ban people based on skin color because of the following:
And like many before, it's pointed out that you can discriminate based on political speech, YMMV lol.
Personally, I think it is immoral to ban people based on their skin color. I think for the good of a multi-racial society (because that's what the US is whether one likes it or not), that should not be a thing because it just leads to segregation/disintegration and would in the long term lead to a fractured and balkanized US. Now I have reservations about upgrading from legal to constitutional, maybe race won't be a concern in the far future and "race" might mean something different and the law needs an upgrade (or maybe not, supreme court justices have been reasonably intelligent so far). So yeah, I think it's good that restaurants cannot ban people for their skin color.
What I want to know is why your principles for banning black people from restaurants differ from your principles for banning people from "private websites".
depends on the context. Banning people for political speech on website is fine, because you can also ban people from your restaurant for political speech.
That doesn't answer the question. Why are the principles different between banning blacks from your restaurant and banning people for political speech from websites? I'm asking you to explain the difference. Pointing out that they can be the same doesn't explain the difference.
As far as I can tell, your argument for banning people from private websites is "it's private, so they should be able to ban whoever they want". As a principle, that implies that since the restaurant is private, the restaurant should be able to ban whoever they want too. Why don't you agree with what seem to be the implications of your principle?
personal principles aren't the same thing as constitutionality and aren't the same thing as legality. and again, IANAL.
As I described, you can't ban people because of their race at a private establishment of "public accommodation" because it's made illegal. Is it constitutional to ban people because of their race? I actually think maybe, though I don't think anyone would want to work through the entire court system to just say that. I think the justices would pull some logic somewhere else to make that unconstitutional (maybe the Preamble? something about "domestic tranquility" perhaps). If somebody is running a racist restaurant, they can make it plenty uncomfortable to be the wrong color, but as long as they fulfill the terms of the commercial contract (I suppose this would be something like "you pay, i serve food".), it's not illegal nor unconstitutional. On a personal level, do I think private places should be able to ban people because of their race? No, and I would go into the streets to protest and advocate, and so on, if I think that such laws will be overturned. And if the laws are overturned, I'll damn sure to start finding legislators that makes a case for a constitutional amendment that would change that.
banning people for their political speech from your private establishment is legal because nothing made it illegal, and it's constitutional because your act of banning them is political speech and is therefore protected. Now on a personal level do I endorse banning people for their political speech in private places, no, I do think there should be more "integration"/"desegregation" so that a diverse polity as the US can continue to function and thrive. That's why I'm here after all, in a space that many of my friends would sneer and close the tab after scrolling for maybe 30 seconds. But do I think it's allowed for people to ban others for their political speech. Yes. if the mods decide to ban me based on my political speech, I wouldn't consider it illegal nor unconstitutional. If the mods decide to ban me based on race, then I would certainly think it's illegal.
Now let's get to your question of what's the difference between race and political speech. I think it's simple enough to answer: race, as of the current common modern understanding, can't really be changed, while political speech can. I can't change that I am Asian, but I can certainly change my political view. No one can influence or persuade or talk me into being not-Asian by biological or cultural heritage (I suppose one can self-delude to think of oneself as not-Asian), other people can certainly influence or persuade or talk me into a different political view. Politics is about trying to live near each other and not simultaneously trying to punch each other, then I think a simple enough grounding principle is to avoid conflicts on things people can't change about themselves.
Now to go back to the original theme of the thread, my argument is that there are plenty of equivalents in real life that maps to online. I'm not saying that the real life stuff is superior to the online stuff, I'm saying that the online stuff will just increasingly map to real life things as regulations and case laws catch up and that's why this is an online people problem and not a problem generally. Online people can go down to the dark web and make truly free discussion boards if they want to preserve that, and real life people can also just go out to the open sea and make racist restaurants that ban people by their skin color if they want to, just both groups of such people shouldn't be surprised that there won't be a lot of traffic.
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