So in the discussion over whether internet companies can deny hosting to Nazis (such as here and here), I admit I see both sides. I understand the concerns that this grants too much discretionary power to large establishments about what speech is allowed on the internet, and I understand that “Nazis marching in the streets with torches and the organizing thereof is different and inimical to civil society.”
My question is, can anyone offer an argument for why private companies should get to choose this?
Like on the anti-Nazi side, everything they say makes a case for why it should just be illegal to host this violent, reactionary rhetoric.
And on the pro-free-speech side, everything they say makes a case for why no gatekeeper is pure enough to decide who does and doesn’t get to speak.
But what’s the logic for “maybe Nazis get to organize online, maybe they don’t, and that decision should be up to the rich people who control internet companies?”
It goes like this:
“Nazis can do whatever they want on their own time but this is my server that I’ve purchased with my money so therefore it’s me that gets to decide what pages are hosted on it.”
It becomes significantly more cloudy when we get to registrars like godaddy. They are a government-monopoly-by-proxy through ICANN.
Okay so I thought people weren’t going to take the naively deontic argument here, which is why I skipped it. But very well.
One, as @mitigatedchaos these aren’t really about “your property,” in as much as the CEO’s making these decisions often are not the shareholders, but managers entrusted to make the shareholders money (or other complicated legal entities”. These people have a ton of leniency in those decisions, but “what speech should be expressed” is generally not in the CEO job description. Maybe they make good decisions or bad, but I have trouble seeing fundamental property rights being worked up for the managers making these decisions. If it was a vote of shareholders that would be different.
But two, more importantly, I assume I am talking with people who think the internet should be largely content neutral. People who do not want Google to stop listing supporters of Bernie Sanders. People who don’t want Twitter blocking any criticism of feminism. People who’d be afraid if TWC stopped delivering content about either the Democratic or Republican parties. Maybe you wouldn’t be sure such actions are illegal, but you sure as hell would feel they are unethical.
Most people who are comfortable with Nazi’s getting deplatformed this way are so because they believe Nazi’s (or at least their current rioting actions) are different than just another point of view.
If you think a web company should continue to host political opinions they disagree with, but not that of Nazis organizing armed rallies, which I really do think is a reasonable point of view, then why do you think that question should be up to the CEO of the company?
(Or, to avoid the hot button topic of government regulation - I can see the argument for all hosts are open to Nazis, and the argument for no hosts being open to Nazis, what’s the argument for some hosts being open to Nazis?)
I’m not sure I would agree even if it were a shareholder vote.
Limiting legal liability is an absolutely extraordinary concession on the part of the state, not only to CEO but also to shareholders. The ability to even get the right-of-ways necessary to even construct those cable lines also depends on state power.
Especially as institutional size increases, the potential damage from legal liability also increases.
Therefore, in my opinion, “but it’s my server” has only fairly weak standing as a moral argument for large or even mid-size corporations.
(There are, of course, other considerations, too. Corps resisting warrantless surveillance of customers in the US is overall a good thing, for instance.)