alt Hacker NewsIn a sane world, the US as a supposed bastion of free speech and personal liberties would enact legislation that requires companies to provide a specific, articulable reason for suspending accounts due to rules violations and offer everyone the chance to appeal. That would serve as a counterbalance to more authoritarian regimes insisting companies like Meta censor people, even if the US can’t guarantee it for people not affiliated with the US. Unfortunately, the US seems more intent on censoring its own residents and becoming one of those authoritarian regimes than actually doing anything about it.
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You don't have a constitutional right to post on Facebook. When you invest your life into platforms run by for profit corporations, you agree to play by their rules. Merging state and big tech is not going to help.
There is a reason moderation decisions are not perfectly transparent: They are gamed otherwise. So there needs to be legal recourse with discovery and meaningful liability attached to submitting to the role of acting as the agent of a foreign government.
Agreed but Meta also banned a standing US president, under pressure from other Americans that claim they believe in free speech. It's clear that Meta doesn't stand for free speech and will ban anyone. It's also clear that many in the US don't want free speech, they only want their speech to be free.
Unfortunately we live in a world where any attempt to regulate "big tech" is met by massive campaigns to prevent it.
Becoming? It has always been this way.
> the US as a supposed bastion of free speech
Only americans believe that, this is almost as dumb as when they try to use dollars in Europe, "but it is valid tender I tell you!" or when they believe their TSA precheck works in China
Presumably Kuwait could just assemble a panel of self-proclaimed experts to denounce the speech of people threatening to the regime to be "very dangerous to our democracy", "hate speech", islamophobic, etc.
The US are an oligarchy with the PR department being instructed to claim they are thr bastion of free speech though, so ex falso quodlibet.
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In a sane world, hackernews wouldn't shadowban accounts for wrongthink.
> requires companies to provide a specific, articulable reason for suspending accounts
wouldn't that violate free speech though? forcing a company to keep something up/take something down is entirely up to them no?