According to this article, the cost of creating a social network platform is $100,000 to $500,000. Even if it’s ten times that amount, there is plenty of capital in the hands of people who are sympathetic to free speech, to people thrown off of other social networks, to right-wing politics, to politically-incorrect views, to truth about trans-gender issues, etc. There are also plenty of people who simply want to make money and see an opportunity here. The question is whether such kinds of focal points for new social platforms are profitable.
The big social media platforms are censoring content, and not in an unbiased way. Of that there is no doubt. Critics of this say things like this:
“Conservatives: Wake up. There is no neutral medium and no neutral market. This is naked politics-as-enmity, and some of you still cling to the-market-will-fix-it delusions.”
“Have Twitter and Facebook become so big they are now public forums? At what point should their rules for participation be determined by democratic process of that public instead of internal, corporate decision-making?”
These anti-free market and pro-“democratic process” sentiments play into the hands of big government proponents. Free markets can and will solve the free speech problem.
Whoever owns a company or social platform network gets to write its speech rules. Free speech on one’s own property is the principle to follow, the right principle and the only principle compatible with one’s own rights and the rights of everyone else. Forcing a company to allow all speech is the wrong principle to follow. This initiates violence against companies, so it’s incompatible with the rights of the company owners.
If certain kinds of speech are being disallowed by Facebook and Twitter, that’s their business and within their rights. Monopoly, public forum, bias, censorship and all the rest are irrelevant. These companies put their money where their mouth was. Their owners risked their money and are still risking it. If those of us on the outside don’t like it, it’s up to us to do something about it or else shut up. One can create a new social media platform.
8:25 am on May 14, 2019
