People still don’t understand this. Apparently not even Clarence.
Your use of these services is not “free speech”. When you agree to use these services, you do so under a license agreement. That agreement explicitly states that the service can and will do whatever it wants with user submitted content. And you agreed to grant them license to do so. Explicitly in writing.
Free speech has nothing to do with this issue. User submitted content is not speech.
Read that last sentence seventeen times if you have to. That’s the point everyone seems to fail to understand.
User submitted content has been licensed to the service provider. You give it away, freely. The moment you submit the content to the service, poof, it’s no longer “yours”. You have no say as to what happens to it from there forward.
If you do not agree to those terms, you can not use the service. It’s that simple.
And for that very reason, no one should have used the service in the first place. Pay more attention to user agreements next time.
When the public square falls under the control of private enterprise, then the 1st applies and that is exactly what these platforms are nowadays: the public square.
When the public square falls under the control of private enterprise
These services are not the public square. Whoever sold you this nonsensical premise is not only incorrect, but completely blind to the reality of this situation.
The town square still exists. The problem is that some fools tried to replace it with a service that has abusive, tyrannical rules. Rules that all of the fools agreed to be governed by. And are now crying about. Despite being warned about this very thing by those in the know. For like a decade now.
And some of you are still ignoring the truth!
The town square never did this to you. The service did. You chose the service over the town square.
Now take you licks, and learn your lesson. Do not make this same mistake ever again.
Read the terms before agreeing. If you do not agree, then do not use the service. It can't be explained any more clearly than this.
The flip side of this coin is the fact that this "revelation" that I am telling you, which you should have known yourself if you were not so lazy as to have clicked agree to horribly abusive terms, is that no government regulations are needed at all here! All we need are consumers who stop following the herd off the cliff. We simply need smart consumers that make choices based on virtuous principles, instead of apathy and laziness.
What if only half of the service users had done even a single iota of research and critical thinking, and instead of following the herd, had looked into alt services? It would have helped those alt services grow, and would have signaled to the market that the users wanted something better. And alt services would have spring up to meet that demand.
Which is exactly what we are seeing now as mass exodus continues to bleed away users from big tech, and alt services pop up to fill the needs.
Instead we had mass delusion, sheep-droids following the herd into the abyss. If you feel anything other than shame for defending this debacle, you have some serious introspection ahead of you.
Except they are the public square, and there's precedent to call them as such.
All your ranting doesn't change this fact, the monopoly power big tech has over the 21st century version of the public square must be stopped and useful idiots such as yourself are only aiding their authoritarianism.
People still don’t understand this. Apparently not even Clarence.
Your use of these services is not “free speech”. When you agree to use these services, you do so under a license agreement. That agreement explicitly states that the service can and will do whatever it wants with user submitted content. And you agreed to grant them license to do so. Explicitly in writing.
Free speech has nothing to do with this issue. User submitted content is not speech.
Read that last sentence seventeen times if you have to. That’s the point everyone seems to fail to understand.
User submitted content has been licensed to the service provider. You give it away, freely. The moment you submit the content to the service, poof, it’s no longer “yours”. You have no say as to what happens to it from there forward.
If you do not agree to those terms, you can not use the service. It’s that simple.
And for that very reason, no one should have used the service in the first place. Pay more attention to user agreements next time.
You're the one who doesn't seem to understand.
When the public square falls under the control of private enterprise, then the 1st applies and that is exactly what these platforms are nowadays: the public square.
These services are not the public square. Whoever sold you this nonsensical premise is not only incorrect, but completely blind to the reality of this situation.
The town square still exists. The problem is that some fools tried to replace it with a service that has abusive, tyrannical rules. Rules that all of the fools agreed to be governed by. And are now crying about. Despite being warned about this very thing by those in the know. For like a decade now.
And some of you are still ignoring the truth!
The town square never did this to you. The service did. You chose the service over the town square.
Now take you licks, and learn your lesson. Do not make this same mistake ever again.
Read the terms before agreeing. If you do not agree, then do not use the service. It can't be explained any more clearly than this.
The flip side of this coin is the fact that this "revelation" that I am telling you, which you should have known yourself if you were not so lazy as to have clicked agree to horribly abusive terms, is that no government regulations are needed at all here! All we need are consumers who stop following the herd off the cliff. We simply need smart consumers that make choices based on virtuous principles, instead of apathy and laziness.
What if only half of the service users had done even a single iota of research and critical thinking, and instead of following the herd, had looked into alt services? It would have helped those alt services grow, and would have signaled to the market that the users wanted something better. And alt services would have spring up to meet that demand.
Which is exactly what we are seeing now as mass exodus continues to bleed away users from big tech, and alt services pop up to fill the needs.
Instead we had mass delusion, sheep-droids following the herd into the abyss. If you feel anything other than shame for defending this debacle, you have some serious introspection ahead of you.
Except they are the public square, and there's precedent to call them as such.
All your ranting doesn't change this fact, the monopoly power big tech has over the 21st century version of the public square must be stopped and useful idiots such as yourself are only aiding their authoritarianism.