I think you are thinking of the american First Amendment, but just because corporate censorship doesn’t fall foul of that, it doesn’t mean it isn’t a thing. Yeah there is corporate censorship. Not only on the internet, but when even when it comes to traditional media, newspapers, publishing, studios, writers and artists often need to deal with censorship that companies they work for or with imposes upon them.
Considering that private companies control the vast majority internet communications, there isn’t even a public social media in the way that there are public physical spaces, and social media companies aren’t neutral parties in the way that mail and phone services are, as common carriers.
But I get the sentiment here, that platform owners have the right to control what happens in it in the same way a hosts can set rules of conduct and have the right to kick you out for not following them. But in practice it’s pretty messy. Some rules are reasonable for polite coexistence and others are just overbearing whims, or downright prejudice.
LGBTQ people regularly have to deal with their existences being deemed obscene. The most modest images and basic information about them is treated as unnacceptable. They get their posts hid, removed or they get downright banned. You could argue that the owners have the right to do this, but is it a good thing that this happens? Whatever you may think, it is censorship regardless.
At best of times it’s difficult to find a balance of how platforms ought to be handled, but unfortunately they aren’t always handled with good faith considerations for interests of the people in it. I believe that a lot of people are here because they had to face that.
I appreciate your response. And I recognize how much control the news media have throughout the U.S. which has the realm I am speaking from. But even with artists and media, asking them to pay an artist for content they don’t fully support is unreasonable. And I understand how that power can be wielded, but I believe if your ideas aren’t fully welcomed by an entity, it’s the wrong partnership to begin with, unless you’re strategically leveraging them for a better platform in the future.
I think I would love the idea of public social media, as far as it relates to ownership, but I doubt that that would ever happen, because the ideas we’re discussing now is a huge non-starter. No one will want to be responsible for hosting content, without being able to define policies and behavior. I think the Fediverse is the closest we’ll get to public social media.
