> If it is not not on your server, than you don't get to complain.
That is a rather naive slogan to be repeating in 2022.
Once your servers become the de facto public square, we absolutely get to complain. Not even talking about how your server is running on top of a huge amount of infrastructure that was created by our society, enabled by principles and laws that have been discovered and refined across generations. Your server does not exist in a vacuum.
Democracy requires a healthy public square to survive and thrive, and that is more important than some overly simplistic notion of private property.
> Once your servers become the de facto public square
Twitter ? It's far from a public square, even in the US (outside of the US it barely exists)
Also, if an online public square is a pre requisite for democracy: it should be a public utility, not something owned by a company who's incentive are diametrically opposed to the interests of the users
I live in Europe and I can tell you that Twitter absolutely became the public square for politicians at all levels of government, in the various countries and in the EU. It is also where all journalists hang out, and many other type of actors too (academic researchers for example, all sorts of activists, etc). And I am pretty sure it is the same in the US.
I'm sorry but you do not know what you are talking about.
> I'm sorry but you do not know what you are talking about.
Big claim...
Look at the stats, how can it be a democracy pre requisite and a public square when not even 10% of your country's population is on it ? (and probably 30% of these are bots, and another 30% are inactive)
It's an online bubble of polarised people looking for attention, not a public square and not representative of anything
> It's an online bubble of polarised people looking for attention, not a public square and not representative of anything
I find that people who write things like this are expressing a distaste for politics taking place on Twitter. They tend to be expressing how they think things should be, and I can even sympathize, but that has no bearing on how things are.
How things actually are: the vast majority of politicians of any importance in the west (and probably not only) have staff dedicated to maintaining their Twitter presence. Most institutions use Twitter as an important communication channel, including the various institution the make up the EU, the USA and the UN. You can check this for yourself. If you actually talk with journalists, you will understand that Twitter is now central to everything they do, and that trickles down to everyone else.
10% is actually a huge number. The majority of people do not have a public voice nor an interest in actively participating in politics. Politics is made of "polarised people looking for attention". Always has been.
You have to be living under a rock to not be aware of all the major geopolitical incidents that take place on Twitter. It was the main communication channel for Donald Trump. We just recently witnessed the incident between Musk and Zelenskyy. A lot of interactions happened there during Brexit. I could go on, and on, and on.
You must confuse noise and mumbling rants with actual politics then
It's not a public square of constructive discussion, it's a public square in which everyone, most of them being absolutely incompetent/uneducated in the subject, has a megaphone and screams their version of reality
Not really, a bunch of politicians and journalists decided to go to some rich guys private mansion and now we get to see the fallout of using private property rather than ensuring actual public owned places exist.
So are we talking about US companies, because the US has a very very strong right to private property and freedom (and control of) that speech on private property. I don't see this changing anytime soon, nor do I even have an idea of what a legal model of what you're suggesting would look like in the US.
Outside the US this problem typically gets even worse. For one, why is your country depending on a (generally) US company for its freedom of speech? And two, outside the US freedom of speech laws are typically significantly different than the US model.
I didn't claim that it was (or wasn't) a free speech issue. What I said is that "if it is not your server you don't get to complaint" is an overly simplistic (and untrue) take on this issue.
In fact there is already some amount of legislation on this, for example in the EU.
There is a lot to unpack, but monopolistic competitive firms tend to consolidate markets. However, reducing all phenomena to a false-dichotomy is a common bias, as it ignores how some prefer an echo-chamber of sycophantic content.
Have a wonderful day, and here is an up-vote... lol... =)
That is a rather naive slogan to be repeating in 2022.
Once your servers become the de facto public square, we absolutely get to complain. Not even talking about how your server is running on top of a huge amount of infrastructure that was created by our society, enabled by principles and laws that have been discovered and refined across generations. Your server does not exist in a vacuum.
Democracy requires a healthy public square to survive and thrive, and that is more important than some overly simplistic notion of private property.