Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Corporations Have No Right To Discriminate
Corporations are the greatest threat to freedom of speech. This is a very succinct video from the Ghettoman. I've been following his work since December when he joined Steemit (he has since left) and he doesn't seem to have taken off yet, so I do whatever I can to promote him and his work. The issue at stake here is whether corporations, specifically social media companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have a right to discriminate on the basis of political views, that is, to treat political views differently by, for instance, enforcing terms of service selectively and defining political views they disagree with as hate speech, which isn't a legal term. I say they don't based on previous civil rights legislation prohibiting discrimination on other protected bases, like religion, and the fact that these conglomerates have a virtual monopoly on online political content, which is where the vast majority of people congregate nowadays. Furthermore, as the Ghettoman points out, corporations are charted by the state for the benefit of the public, which includes everyone on the political spectrum. And as I pointed out earlier they have a virtual monopoly on online political content making their bias against certain political views no different from censorship in practice. Social media platforms should therefore be considered public forums.