When you hear something outrageous on FOX or CNN, you yell "bullshit" at the TV.
When you read the same thing on Facebook and see 20 of your friends positively interacting with the news story and showing their approval, you remain quiet at best, join the lunacy at worst.
What you don't see is the three shadowbanned accounts explaining why it's lunacy.
How much traction could a lawsuit against Reddit, Twitter, etc. have against the practice of banning or shadowbanning?
If a user could show good faith participation, could they claim they've been prohibited from exercising freedom of expression in a public forum?
Suppose someone was banned from a subreddit for their particular hobby or, worse, city or region. This might be the single biggest forum for that person to address their neighbors and peers, and banning could prohibit their ability to find work, housing, opportunities, etc.
Moderators often ban users on a whim. Sometimes they ban users for merely commenting on other items or subreddits that they deem "wrong", and this practice is often automated.
If you can't sue Reddit, could you sue the moderators?
Yes. How close are these platforms to being de facto public squares?
If you're banned from /r/sanfrancisco etc., what do you do? Your voice and ability to participate in the community has been blinded and muffled.
Reddit and Twitter are bigger than Reddit and Twitter. If you're banned, you have less of an ability to participate in modern life. Events, jobs, commentary, and more are gone. There is no alternative, because platforms Hoover up as much as they possibly can.
Ideally these platforms would be protocols, but in the meantime the common carriers that operate them should be held to preserving accessibility.
Moderation isn't easy. It should probably be an order of magnitude more expensive than it already is so that safeguards against "personhood erasure" can be put in place.
You don't want racists, trolls, and bigots spouting hate speech, but you also need to keep the lines open for when these individuals are behaving. Because the pendulum swings and sometimes you find yourself on the other side of the censorship zeitgeist.
Perfectly salient thoughts and people can be memory holed. And that's not just a possibility - it's happening right now.
> If Fox News had a DNA test, it would trace its origins to the Nixon administration. In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition."
But they're domestic companies whose staff members, all the way up to the owners and CEOs, are not under threat of disappearance by the totalitarian regime of a hostile state...
Yes, as has been pointed out countless times, the US left would be considered further right than the Nazi party to all you enlightened Europeans. We know, we get it. Doesn’t change the fact that there is something called left wing politics in the US, and it’s considerably different from right wing politics in the US.
