Government oversight is bad, but this "flagrantly violating the First Amendment" argument is pretty spicy. We can't just let people go uncensored and speak to each other freely, that's against the First Amendment!https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1141415506810998784 …
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Replying to @St_Rev
Revoking legal privileges based on a platform's decision to carry, or not carry, a political viewpoint does flagrantly violate the First Amendment.
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Replying to @AlexGodofsky
In the age of the decentralized, networked, free-market Stasi, the claim isn't logically false but it could use some uh thoughtful reconsideration.
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Replying to @St_Rev
Why didn't the same logic apply with *more* force when the Internet didn't even exist and the primary communication channels - especially television - were few and subject to explicit editorial control?
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Replying to @AlexGodofsky
I think a better comparison would be to the Bell System, which never engaged in censorship because the prospect was technically absurd.
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Replying to @St_Rev
I'm making an a fortiari argument: that case for reexamining the First Amendment (in favor of permitting things like a fairness doctrine) ought to be stronger for systems like broadcast television. And yet I think experience and logic show it should never have been permitted.
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Replying to @AlexGodofsky
The Equal-Time Rule was a thing, but I think there are far too many differences to make a mutatis mutandis argument here.
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Replying to @St_Rev @AlexGodofsky
People never used TV to have conversations with friends, they just used speech. Closest parallel would be to CB/ham radio.
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Replying to @St_Rev
The point is that any censorship Twitter imposes is necessarily less effective at restricting the discourse than an editorial decision of a broadcaster when there were only four channels.
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It feels like we're having two different arguments and I don't know how to bridge the gap here so I'll bow out.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.