Won’t one party always have restricted freedom of expression in this situation? The private company wants to express themselves freely by curating the content on their social media platform. The individuals wants to express themselves by posting material of themselves with less clothes than the company wants. These both seem to me as entities wanting to express themselves freely. Which freedom are you most willing to limit?
And if you argue that the freedom of an individual should be valued more than the freedom of a private company, should individual people owning websites have their freedom of curation/expression limited?
I think these mega-platforms are way too different from an individual’s website to make that equivalence. The dominant social media companies are, as Elon Musk eloquently put it before shitting all over his own moral principles, more akin to a town square than a back yard. The fact that they are privately owned is a corruption resulting from our authoritarian legal structure—it doesn’t make them morally equivalent to a website I use and produce by myself.
YouTube is a place that tolerates almost any viewpoint or type of content. No one thinks that they actively support or endorse this content. In fact, US law explicitly exempts them from being responsible for it. If that’s the case, why should we grant them the authority to decide what should or shouldn’t be posted there?
Now, there is certainly content, in contrast to non-sexual nudity, that does direct harm, and I support the removal of such content. But either way, I don’t think YouTube deserves the unilateral authority to decide what that looks like. I’d much rather see it managed communally and democratically.
Won’t one party always have restricted freedom of expression in this situation? The private company wants to express themselves freely by curating the content on their social media platform. The individuals wants to express themselves by posting material of themselves with less clothes than the company wants. These both seem to me as entities wanting to express themselves freely. Which freedom are you most willing to limit?
And if you argue that the freedom of an individual should be valued more than the freedom of a private company, should individual people owning websites have their freedom of curation/expression limited?
I think these mega-platforms are way too different from an individual’s website to make that equivalence. The dominant social media companies are, as Elon Musk eloquently put it before shitting all over his own moral principles, more akin to a town square than a back yard. The fact that they are privately owned is a corruption resulting from our authoritarian legal structure—it doesn’t make them morally equivalent to a website I use and produce by myself.
YouTube is a place that tolerates almost any viewpoint or type of content. No one thinks that they actively support or endorse this content. In fact, US law explicitly exempts them from being responsible for it. If that’s the case, why should we grant them the authority to decide what should or shouldn’t be posted there?
Now, there is certainly content, in contrast to non-sexual nudity, that does direct harm, and I support the removal of such content. But either way, I don’t think YouTube deserves the unilateral authority to decide what that looks like. I’d much rather see it managed communally and democratically.