Thread by @willchamberlain

Quick thread

When I wrote Platform Access is a Civil Right, I answered arguments like this from @tianathefirst

Basically: government speech regulation is a one-way ratchet. The First Amendment protects against government censorship; that applies to social media too.

https://twitter.com/TianaTheFirst/status/1124072961709883394

But there's a corollary that most people aren't talking about

What happens if we DO NOT pass new laws protecting platform access

And then Democrats win the WH and Congress in 2020?

The answer is truly scary

A public-private deplatforming partnership

Right social media companies are running wild censoring people, with Nick Monroe just the latest example

And that's despite an adversarial President Trump, who is "monitoring" social media censorship

So this how FB/Twitter behave when mildly CONSTRAINED

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1124447302544965634

What happens under, say, a President Joe Biden?

Who launched his campaign with the "very fine people" Charlottesville lie?

A Biden administration with a Democrat Congress won't "monitor" censorship

It will actively ENCOURAGE IT

If FB and Twitter act this way with an adversarial administration, imagine how much banning and censoring they'll do with a friendly one

Bye bye everyone

The most conservative people on social media will be @SykesCharlie and his crew of quislings at The Bulwark

Oh, but you say, competitors will DEFINITELY arise then, because conservatives will need a place to congregate!

That's hysterical

Here's where the "public" part of the partnership comes into play

Competitors to FB/Twitter will be regulated into irrelevance

Here's the partnership:

Private companies will do all the discriminating against political speech, in order to avoid First Amendment problems

And the Biden Administration and the Democrat Congress will be the public backstop, using regulation to squash competitors

This isn't limited to social media

Think about Chase's de-platforming as well

All those big banks will become the Democrats' best friends

In the guise of "fighting hate," and with a wink and a nod from Biden, they could remove right-wing influencers from the financial system

Again with the public backstop

Think you could start a competitor bank to give access back to those de-platformed under a Biden administration?

Again, that's hysterical, they could be lawfully regulated into bankruptcy

A Democratic Administration/Congress, partnered with cooperative oligopolies in social media, banking, and other sectors

Could destroy conservatism as we know it and turn America into the GDR, with FB/Twitter as a private Stasi

All while complying with the First Amendment

How do you stop it?

Make platform access a civil right

Make new laws at the state and federal level to instantiate that civil right

ASAP

Because if you're a conservative, and you're against regulating Big Tech, you're wrong

FIN

humanevents.com/2019/05/03/pla…