The Digital Town Square

I’ve always believed that human beings should challenge the status quo even if it pisses people off. So naturally, I’m a big fan of the first amendment. Let’s read it!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Basically it’s like, yo you can express whatever the hell you want, you can believe whatever the hell you want, and if you don’t like the way we all decided to run things you can protest and petition to try to change it. I think this is one of the most beautiful and concise rules we’ve ever enshrined into law.

I bring it up because for a very long time I’ve heard people on both sides of the aisle say that Facebook and Twitter are digital “town squares”, so we should be entitled to our first amendment rights in these spaces. This seems reasonable, but the way the internet is currently structured prevents it from becoming a reality.

American’s do not have a right to internet access, like legally it’s not a thing we’re entitled too. The internet is also not a public utility like water or electricity. As a result our country hasn’t built an infrastructure to deliver it to every home. This obligation has fallen onto private companies called internet service providers(ISP’s). These companies are the gatekeepers of the internet. They’ve spent huge sums of cash and time dragging wires all over the place and we pay them to connect to that network.

Once connected, we find stuff by using Google, we send messages with email and talk with friends on Facebook and Twitter. We watch movies and TV shows on Netflix and Hulu and buy most of our stuff from Amazon. This is the internet we’ve come to know. A bunch of private companies providing services which are so ubiquitous that we couldn’t imagine why we’d want to use the internet if they didn't exist.

So where does the first amendment come in?

Well let’s say you share something on Facebook that is universally abhorrent, something like graphic violence. This content would appear on your page for anyone to see, but eventually the algorithms and users would report what you’ve shared and your content would be removed.

So the question becomes, is it a violation of your first amendment rights when a social media company removes what you share?

I think the answer is quite clearly, no.

What kind of person expects to log into a free account on a private server and share whatever they want with impunity? What would happen if these same people stood in the candy aisle of Target or Wal-Mart with a bullhorn and share their opinions on abortion? They would probably be forcefully removed, and they should be. Individuals have a right to their opinion, but they don’t have a right to a forum.

I also think that Facebook and Twitter operate beyond first amendment rights. The amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech”, but Facebook and Twitter ain’t Congress. They’re private companies that are the gods of their own digital kingdoms, and their kingdoms are solely inhabited by citizen’s who have blindly accepting the Terms of Service. You don’t own what you share on these social network, they do!

But I can understand people’s frustration. Every day we hit the button on our phones that connects us instantly to these platforms. We’ve become accustom to communicating and connecting with other people in this way and we assume Facebook and Twitter have our best interest at heart, they don’t.

Social media is really just a giant advertising machine that cloaks its true intention by connecting us to friends, entertainment and dopamine hits. If something you share conflicts with Facebook’s public image, advertising revenue or ever changing community standards, don’t be surprised if it gets taken down.

We should stop expecting Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and Netflix to honor our constitutional freedoms. They are monolithic monopolies that have been allowed to shape the internet to benefit themselves. We need to strip them of the tenuous power they wield and create a real digital town square. Such a place would be funded with our tax dollars and users would be vetted and verified. If we had a space like this we could reasonably expect our constitutional rights to translate, but until this happens I suggest you start a blog or a podcast.

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