A closer look at the rights of public platforms to censor posts

The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion and national origin. In the context of employment, Title VII of the Act also prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

Further, the Act does not exclusively regulate public entities. It also governs private businesses and, when those businesses are places of “public accommodation,” how those private businesses serve customers. A business is considered a place of public accommodation when it is generally open to the public. Examples include sports arenas, movie theaters, restaurants, day care facilities, gyms, gas stations and banks. Other federal laws, including Title IX in 1972, prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in education and related fields.

The law is very clear and human history is also very clear. If it turns out that posts were not censored because of a threat of terrorism or because they violated the law, say a threat of harm to an individual, but rather they were discriminating because of religion then it is illegal. The fact that the company would claim that it was considered violent speech would have to be proved in court.

Second, suppose the US government which has no right to violate the freedom of speech suppressed the speech of people online by advising the platform to censor them, or suspend their account. Then I believe that not only is that unconstitutional but the platform is liable for the damages. Many people depend on their online presence for their business.

Third, if a platform used fact checking to suppress speech concerning some issue like Covid that was deemed "false" and then later proved to be true I feel they are liable for that as well. Consider this, if we allow platforms to censor any speech they feel is false and then years later it turns out it was true and then they can say "oops, our bad" and there are no consequences this behavior will grow and get worse. If you broke the window to my storefront it doesn't matter if it was accidental you still need to pay.

I would argue that harmful speech that is disinformation is just as harmful as censoring accurate speech and claiming it is harmful and false. If you can sue Alex Jones for $4 trillion for harmful speech then surely Youtube and Facebook can be sued for well more than $4 trillion for suppressing speech based on unconstitutional requests from the US government and from phony Fact checking posts, claiming things that are true are in fact false.

If you can sue Alex Jones for $4 trillion for harmful speech then surely Youtube and Facebook can be sued for well more than $4 trillion for suppressing speech based on unconstitutional requests from the US government and from phony Fact checking posts, claiming things that are true are in fact false.

I could not agree more but that is just not how the world works. Babylon will always protect itself.

Not for long, the Day of the Lord is upon us.

You don't have constitutional rights on a private platform

Of course you do. It is illegal to discriminate based on race, religion or nation of origin. Nor can they discriminate based on sex. The only exception would be a private club where other members must refer you to membership. This is obviously not the case with public platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.

To get around this the debate has been over "hate speech" and "disinformation" which could be harmful to the public. These are vague terms which are not well defined. However, if you claim that speech is "disinformation" or "fake" or determined to be false and therefore banned it. What happens when it turns out that the speech wasn't false, wasn't fake, wasn't disinformation but was accurate?

I contend that you must hold the company accountable. If there is a compelling interest for society to censor information that is fake then there is an equally compelling interest to not censor information that is true. Recently Alex Jones was sued and is being sued for a total of approximately $4 trillion. This is because he spread false information that had a very negative effect on dozens of people. None were killed, but some had to sell their house and move. Likewise during the pandemic when the vaccine was mandated thousands lost their jobs and were forced to sell their houses and were slandered as "anti science" or some other perjorative.

So my feeling is every time a platform censors someone they need to be transparent and accountable just as Alex Jones is being held accountable for the things he said, they must be held accountable for the things they would not allow to be said and any slander they put on the people posting those things.

If you allow companies to censor and slander and harm people's businesses as they please and then if they made a mistake say "hey, just a mistake" then the problem grows. Many people on these platforms have a business relationship with the platform. Putting these people out of business could have been the goal all along which is something the better business bureau needs to investigate.

The Alex Jones case set a precedent that you cannot spout opinions online that could be harmful to other people if they are false.

(Obviously the opposite is not true since that would make it illegal to report crimes and courtroom verdicts).

However, I would contend that censoring opinions can also be harmful to other people if censoring them is harmful to them. This can easily be illustrated with what happened during the pandemic.

1. People were insulted

2. Their posts were censored and their sites were suspended or even shut down.

This resulted in harm both to those who operated these sites and to those who might have been helped by the information they were sharing. The platforms shut them down based on a claim of "fake news" or "disinformation" or "fact checking". But suppose, just like Alex Jones claims were found to be false, the claims of these platforms are also found to be false.

Well, the harm is as follows:

1. The vaccine would never have been mandated had those posts not been censored.

2. People were slandered, lost their jobs, and had to sell their houses as a result of that mandate.

3. Many people were harmed by a vaccine they did not want to take and wouldn't have taken had it not been mandated.

Surely death is a more severe harm than anyone harmed by Alex Jones comments suffered, and the number of people affected by this has to be several orders of magnitude greater than those who were harmed by Alex Jones.

Therefore I think we have a precedent to sue these companies for trillions of dollars.

With so much owed to so very many for so much harm, it will be tough to squeeze that much out of the guilty.

Well it will become a memorial, just like Jericho was a memorial, to never build this city up again.

We have only begun to scratch the surface of the liability. These companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profit. Shutting down accounts and banning the most profitable and provocative accounts (like DJT) is not in the best interests of the shareholder. If it turns out that it was for made up reasons, well they will get sued, and everyone is terrified of being sued by hedge funds and mutual funds because these companies have the resources for a full on legal battle.

But it is worse still. Elon Musk is exposing the bots used on Twitter. That means they lied to investors who can then sue for that as well.

I have a problem with this law. I don't believe the founders would have supported it. Private orgs should be free to do what they want -- even discriminate based on race or religion. But... then someone like Elon Musk could come in and do a make-over. Or, people like you and I would never do business there and it would flounder, if not die. But...

I think this is fantastic. Suing Twitter or Facebook would be a great idea. I think it would take only one lawsuit to put the fear of God into them. Charlie Kirk is considering a lawsuit in a similar vein.

Have fun with that.

All those places you are upset about are basically private property. They could ban any discussion of the color chartreuse if they wanted, and be well within their rights.

They will all fall flat, they were involved in a criminal conspiracy, that violated their fiduciary responsibility and the spirit of their contract with all the content providers and all the investors. Their sins will be shouted from the rooftop.

Ask yourself this, can Walmart decide what to sell and what not to sell in their store. Seems like an obvious question, of course, it is their store.

However they banned Mike Lindell. His products were ones that he advertised on TV so these are a special category of product at Walmart because not only do people buy them making the company money but many people will go to Walmart particularly to buy that product and then buy other products. So suppose you could prove and no doubt all the data necessary to prove this is available, that this was a very profitable product per square foot. How about then, could they decide to not sell it anymore? Again, the answer is yes though it would seem strange.

However, Mike Lindell is a very well known person among the MAGA deplorables of this country, the "trailer trash" that shops at Walmart. He has his own TV show "FrankSpeech" and he is often on some of the highest rated shows on the air (Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, etc). All of the MAGA learn that Mike Lindell has been kicked out of Walmart, not because of profitability but because of politics. That is a slap in the face to your customer base.

Now suppose because of that your stock price drops 25%. That harms your investors and they may have had no idea that Walmart will not do business with anyone who is MAGA! Can they sue you for a violation of your fiduciary responsibility? That is plausible, but what is almost certain is that they will vote you out and find a new CEO. But there are laws in place about being transparent to potential investors. Did your annual report say that you will eliminate any MAGA products from your store? You could certainly argue in court that had you known that you would never have invested in the company since at least half of their customer base is MAGA.

Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to make their investors money. If they intentionally do things that violate that, even if they aren't criminal, they can be sued for breach of contract.

Ah now it becomes clear. You are a stockholder with shares in both Facebook and Google LLC (owner of Youtube) and you are concerned about losing money.

Right?

My next guess is, you got banned from either youtube or facebook, or both, and you are trying to find someone to agree with you that you should be justified in being outrageously upset about it.

wrong. I am a former stock broker with a series 7 and series 63 license and understand the law.

Wrong again, not interested in being involved in any lawsuit with either company. Never banned from Youtube and have had an account that I opened long before all this mess started and which I still have but have not done anything with since it became clear to me they were censoring people.

I got a 30 day suspension from Facebook and closed my account the same day. They tried for 30 days to get me to reconsider, so I was certainly not banned. Also, there was no "harm" since I did not use Facebook for anything related to business or in any way monetized it.

I consider this censorship to be like the walls of Jericho, the first stop that will have to be defeated as we enter the good land. CNN, Twitter, Facebook are all falling flat. However, I expect the army of God to go straight up and utterly destroy this cursed city.

They know it, why do you think the Atlantic had the big article about "amnesty". The Hunter Biden laptop, Russian collusion scam, Covid, all these things are legitimate grievances and I am praying that justice will be done.

Well, this justifies the behavior of these Leftist / woke corporations! How dare you ZNP!

FB, Twitter, and others routinely knock out conservative speech for 'terms violations', while allowing Farrakhan and the Ayatollahs to rant all they please. Sorry, if you think that no one has a right to complain about this, then you're on the side of those would ostracize you from society -- if not worse -- once they have the power.

Smart.