On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 06:01:46AM +0000, jim bell wrote:
This article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzqniEaXwQg&feature=youtu.be has the headline: "Congressional Democrats Threaten Big Tech To Censor Americans Or Else"
If this kind of government-threat can exist, then one solution is to declare that communications over the Internet within wires (and fibers) located within the United States are governed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Private companies are availing themselves of a system initiated by a relatively small amount of government research, and developed by other designers and manufacturers.
Unfortunately as Juan correctly points out so often, gov is usually in partnership with BigCorp. The money behind the scenes - debt based (rather than credit based) banking, and the funnelling of money to create trillion $$ companies, is a very powerful enemy of the people. Combine that with the Shut It Down censorship of the trillion $$ tech companies, and we have a very formidable adversary. Combine that with military's (DARPA) general intention to control communications (therefore a huge push to endless centralisation) and we have, overall, an even larger problem. It's a big problem we face.
If 'private companies' wish to communicate over systems OTHER THAN the "internet", they are free to design that system, implement it, and the First Amendment WON'T apply to them.
Note: the majority of people use the Google and Apple walled garden app stores. What confidence do you have in people to avoid an "alternate, fully corporate owned and controlled" internet were built by BigCorp? The record shows that people, on the whole, do not oppose their own enslavement.
I'm not sure that this would really qualify as a "libertarian solution", but it is dangerous that "government" is trying to extort organizations like Facebook and Twitter to engage in censorship. This possibility must cease.
Our problems are multiplicitous. The paucity of benevolent politicians is a problem. Folks with a conscience (i.e. those who are not sociopaths) must cognise the necessity to take seats of power in our various communities. Usually only sociopaths take such seats of power, whilst "good" people get on with their lives. Evil only survives where good men do nothing.