{"id":800,"date":"2019-06-02T00:32:30","date_gmt":"2019-06-02T07:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lionspeak.asinglelion.com\/?p=800"},"modified":"2019-06-04T23:49:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T06:49:16","slug":"platform-access-a-civil-right-think-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/?p=800","title":{"rendered":"Platform Access a Civil Right? Think Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent article in Human Events<\/a> a conservative organization bemoans how modern social media platforms are censoring \u201cPaul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos were permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram. \u201c.\u00a0 Will Chamberlain make the error by comparing what big social media is doing to the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The article makes the argument \u00a0that could have been \u00a0made\u00a0 by any leftist\u00a0 or\u00a0 fascist. It shows \u00a0how for\u00a0 statist conservatives have gone in purging\u00a0 Reagan’s ideas of liberty and\u00a0 limited government from\u00a0 their vocabulary.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

\u201cPlatform access is a civil right.<\/p>\n

You should now have the same right to speak on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that you do in a public park.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFree Speech is more than the First Amendment, which only protects you from the government infringing on your rights. In 2019, that is woefully inadequate. Access to the large social media platforms \u2013 Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram \u2013 is a prerequisite to meaningful free speech in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConservatives should focus on passing legislation \u2013 at BOTH the state and federal levels \u2013 that protects all citizens\u2019 access to large social media platforms on civil rights grounds. Access should be forfeitable only if one engages in unlawful speech on a platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

From\u00a0 Platform Access Is A Civil Right, By Will Chamberlain\u00a0 on May 3, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Legislation, Judicial activism? This is something I would expect from the mouth of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Has conservatism fallen\u00a0 into the statist pit, I believe so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

First, let get one thing straight, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter regardless how statist politicians on both side try to redefine it, are private\u00a0 companies. The First Amendment does not apply; in addition, their size, being\u00a0 public\u00a0 company has no bearing. Second, rights do not\u00a0 trump rights. The freedom of speech and of the press does not trump Facebook private property rights.<\/p>\n

So how we got in this mess? Answer, conservatives allowed the centralized control of media by social media platforms. It was not the case in the early days of networking.\u00a0 I started in early 1990\u2019s on bulletin boards. While we did of big platforms\u00a0 like CompuServe, Prodigy and American Online, most media was distributed by individual Bulletin Board Systems. There hundreds of BBS around the county no one group could control them all. If one did not like a BBS, one could start their own BBS; all it took was a PC, software, modem and a telephone line.<\/p>\n

Then we saw creation of the internet with personal web pages, content management systems, and blogs.\u00a0 Again, these systems\u00a0 were decentralized in nature, running in individual servers. One can link their page via web rings. All one had to do is buy server space or turn a used\u00a0 PC into a server using Apache. Then \u00a0came the Zuckerberg, Twitter and Goggle with the utopia of social media communities.\u00a0 Conservatives were too quick to surrender their independence by laying their continent at the feet of Facebook and big social media, but soon we learned the so utopia is really a dystopian network as the big three social media companies excerpt control over media.<\/p>\n

The solution is not\u00a0 statisism by bruit though force legislation \u00a0and Judicial activism, violating the non-aggression principle. The solution is decentralization not giving Facebook control over our content.\u00a0 We need to back away from social media. For example, this\u00a0 post on my blog is using WordPress on a server. Facebook has no control over my site. Other conservative sites have moved to other social networks, like Conservative- Libertarian Fiction Alliance had moved\u00a0 their content to MeWe<\/a> from \u00a0Facebook. Others have\u00a0 exploring\u00a0 social \u00a0media\u00a0 alternatives like using Blockchain. \u00a0Because a Blockchain is decentralized, running on many servers, no one person or group can control the\u00a0 social the media database.<\/p>\n

Finally, conservatives can do better in not giving cause to be banned. I often say never give a sucker a break. Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos are much in fault by their inflammatory\u00a0 rhetoric. We need to lean to argue with\u00a0 logic and self-restraint, not giving social media a cause ban an account or delete a post.<\/p>\n

Stoical media is\u00a0 private property, regardless they are jerks about it. Government is not the solution. Stop putting all your eggs in the same big social media baskets, and keep your nose clean. \u00a0Find an alternative to Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent article in Human Events a conservative organization bemoans how modern social media platforms are censoring \u201cPaul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos were permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram. \u201c.\u00a0 Will Chamberlain make the error … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[357,20,374,375,376,30],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","tag-censorship","tag-conservatism","tag-facebook","tag-instagram","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804,"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/lionspeak\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}