MESSAGE
DATE | 2021-01-17 |
FROM | Ruben Safir
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SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] =?utf-8?q?Freedom_of_Speech_on_the_Internet_-_?=
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From hangout-bounces-at-nylxs.com Sun Jan 17 12:13:32 2021 Return-Path: X-Original-To: archive-at-mrbrklyn.com Delivered-To: archive-at-mrbrklyn.com Received: from www2.mrbrklyn.com (www2.mrbrklyn.com [96.57.23.82]) by mrbrklyn.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6C632163FA8; Sun, 17 Jan 2021 12:13:32 -0500 (EST) X-Original-To: hangout-at-nylxs.com Delivered-To: hangout-at-nylxs.com Received: from [10.0.0.62] (www.mrbrklyn.com [96.57.23.83]) by mrbrklyn.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DFA72163F5E; Sun, 17 Jan 2021 12:13:29 -0500 (EST) To: Hangout From: Ruben Safir Message-ID: Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2021 12:12:30 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.6.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Language: en-US Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] =?utf-8?q?Freedom_of_Speech_on_the_Internet_-_?= =?utf-8?b?VGhlIOKAmENvbW1vbiBDYXJyaWVy4oCZIFNvbHV0aW9u?= X-BeenThere: hangout-at-nylxs.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.30rc1 Precedence: list List-Id: NYLXS Tech Talk and Politics List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Errors-To: hangout-bounces-at-nylxs.com Sender: "Hangout"
Opinion | The =91Common Carrier=92 Solution to Social-Media Censorship Tunku Varadarajan 3 minutes
The punitive banishment of Donald Trump from Facebook and Twitter has met with almost uniform approval from the president=92s critics. So has the decision by Apple and Google to remove Parler, a Twitter alternative favored by Mr. Trump=92s supporters, from their app stores. Many Democrats see these actions as a righteous and justified silencing, especially in light of Mr. Trump=92s encouraging words for the mob that violently invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6. Even many of Mr. Trump=92s supporters concede that Twitter and Facebook owe him no platform=97that only the government has a legal obligation to respect the First Amendment.
Richard Epstein takes a different view. The gagging of the president by America=92s digital behemoths provokes in him a mix of indignation and distress. A professor at the New York University Law School, he is the foremost libertarian legal scholar in the common-law world. (Mr. Epstein, 77, directs NYU=92s Classical Liberal Institute, where I am a fellow.) We converse by Zoom, and he says that he=92d tell Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg of Twitter and Facebook, respectively, to =93give Trump his account back.=94
Mr. Epstein envisions the two CEOs as a captive audience: =93I=92d say to them, =91Boys, you=92ve got to lighten up. You have to be less confident that you know the truth about everything. You know you=92re doing your job when you publish stuff on your site that you strongly disagree with, and not in winning the short-term battle of keeping this, that, or the other guy out.=94
Mr. Epstein describes Mr. Dorsey=92s Jan. 13 Twitter thread, in which the CEO purports to explain the ban on Mr. Trump, as displaying =93a rare combination of hubris and ignorance, proof of how dangerous it is to have a committed partisan as an ostensible umpire.=94 Among many assertions that Mr. Epstein finds =93questionable=94 in the thread is Mr. Dorsey=92s argument that =93if folks do not agree with our rules and enforcement, they can simply go to another Internet service.=94
Mr. Epstein emphasizes that he=92s been frequently critical of Mr. Trump and called on the president to resign as early as February 2017: =93I thought his style was so confrontational that you couldn=92t keep peace in the land.=94 Yet he=92s been struck by the =93one-sided=94 nature of the de= bate over Mr. Trump=92s ban from social media, focusing almost solely on the First Amendment and how it =93applies only to Congress and to the states and doesn=92t apply to private parties.=94 Largely absent from the debate, he says, has been the word =93monopoly.=94
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So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998 http://www.mrbrklyn.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
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