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Social Media and the Pittsburgh Shooter: Gab.com Going Down

posted by martyb on Monday October 29 2018, @08:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the social-commentary-on-social-media dept.

bradley13 writes:

The social network gab.com is apparently going down on Monday, October 29th at 09:00 ET. Their ISP has terminated their services, ostensibly because Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh mass shooting suspect, had made offensive posts on Gab.

To get this out of the way: I have mixed feelings about Gab, more specifically, about the founders. However, the idea that some social network somewhere should refuse to censor anything that is not outright illegal? This is good. Social media has become the modern "market square", and free speech should be guaranteed, even if the platforms are technically private.

If you want free speech, you apparently don't want to be in the U.S.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Monday October 29 2018, @08:07PM (2 children)

    by curunir_wolf (4772) on Monday October 29 2018, @08:07PM (#755320)

    This does highlight the modern day problem that speech is now more governed by corporations and not the government, so the First Ammendment is not applicable.

    That's the narrative, but not the full reality. For instance, Facebook is looking to the Atlantic Council to help them censor content [fortune.com]. What's wrong with that? A private entity involved with a corporation? Well, the Atlantic Council receives a lot of funding from a lot of US Government agencies and divisions. So who is really doing the censorship? The argument can certainly be made that it IS the US Government censoring voices.

    Still, don't expect the ACLU or the EFF or the SPLC to make that point. Their own funding sources like the censorship that's happening.

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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday October 29 2018, @08:13PM (1 child)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Monday October 29 2018, @08:13PM (#755326) Journal

    Correct. The whole "private company v. government agency" thing is just a convenient excuse when corporate control of the levers of government is so widespread.

    In A Corporatist System Of Government, Corporate Censorship Is State Censorship [caitlinjohnstone.com]

    In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. Because legalized bribery in the form of corporate lobbying and campaign donations has given wealthy Americans the ability to control the US government’s policy and behavior while ordinary Americans have no effective influence whatsoever, the US unquestionably has a corporatist system of government. Large, influential corporations are inseparable from the state, so their use of censorship is inseparable from state censorship.

    • (Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Monday October 29 2018, @08:58PM

      by curunir_wolf (4772) on Monday October 29 2018, @08:58PM (#755351)

      Another Caitlin fan! There's a lot I disagree with her about, but we're very in sync on the establishment media.

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