2 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2022
    1. This Article is a manifestation of Madison’s hope. Start with the reality that it seems quaint in retrospect to think that any of the Bill of Rights would be preserved absent the force of law. This is one of the great lessons of the Internet and the rise of Aggregators: when suppressing speech entailed physically disrupting printing presses or arresting pamphleteers, then restricting government, which retains a monopoly on real world violence, was sufficient to preserve speech. Along the same lines, there was no need to demand due process or a restriction on search and seizure on any entity but the government, because only the government could take your property or send you to jail.

      Ben Thompson makes the point that during the time of printing presses and pamphleteers, when free speech laws were drafted, the threat to free speech could come only from one entity: the government (with its monopoly on violence). Thus, placing restrictions on one entity — the government — would be sufficient to safeguard free speech.

    2. Aggregators, though, make private action much more possible and powerful than ever before: yes, if you are kicked off of Twitter or Facebook, you can still say whatever you want on a street corner; similarly, if you lose all of your data and phone and email, you are still not in prison — and thank goodness that is the case! At the same time, it seems silly to argue that getting banned from a social media platform isn’t an infringement on individual free speech rights, even if it is the corporations’ own free speech rights that enable them to do just that legally, just as it is silly to argue that losing your entire digital life without recourse isn’t a loss of property without due process. The big Internet companies are manifesting Madison’s fears of the majority operating against the minority, and there is nothing the Bill of Rights can do about it.

      Ben Thompson argues that in a world of aggregators, restricting one entity — the government — no longer safeguards free speech. Because getting banned from a platform effectively infringes on that right (even though the platforms are within their rights to do so). Also, the dynamic has changed, since there's more than one entity to rein in.