Is it Social media's duty to provide a platform for everyone even if they don't abide by the rules set out in said platform?

Nope.

No of course not. It’s like the mods here. This is their yard. If I want to play in it, I must submit to their rules.

I feel as though we’ve exhausted this here lately. But I do find it funny that so many free-market, deregulate everything, capitalists are crying about this. When people rightfully have pointed out that there are problems when platforms that effectively serve as public utilities are owned, operated, and policed by unaccountable private entities, these people on the right pushed back and said it was fine. Now? Well…

No. Look what happened to Trump. He thought he was above the rules. He found out that he thought wrong.

No. Can you imagine what would happen on Fluther if there were no rules or if ruled weren’t enforced? It would be a free for all and this site would’ve died out years ago.

This has come up here before, and my feeling is still – No.

Almost every online forum that provides public access for ideas and information is privately owned and managed. There’s no duty, or legal obligation to offer a platform to anyone who refuses to comply with agreed on terms of service.

Even if ( and maybe espicially) they may be politically connected.

No it is not. However, the anger and backlash is not just about silencing Mr. Trump, it’s that the rules are not consistent across the board regarding moral or ethical standards.

Example:
https://medium.com/an-injustice/pedophilia-is-alive-on-facebook-report-these-pages-immediately-9ec2f3ea9296

Why doesn’t FB shut them down @KNOWITALL ?
BTW I don’t do FB killed my account a few years back didn’t care for the platform at all.

@SQUEEKY2 Good question. Too bad no one likes to answer those kind of questions.

Just remember, there’s always two sides to a story and here, you often only get one currently.

I think no, but there probably could be an argument that social media becomes a public space just like a private store is a public space regarding discrimination laws. Although, even in a store if someone is saying things that are offensive or disrupting business the company can ban the person from the store. Think about this though, all that QAnon garbage probably increased clicks, so increasing revenue, on Facebook and Twitter.

No.

No.

I know some conservative Jellies have expressed anger that Facebook and other social networks have censored right wing speech, anti-vaccine speech and stuff like that. To me, the owners of the social networks can do that, just like Breitbart can censor things however they want to on their website. If and when Trump has his own media network, he can post whatever he wants on there.

@KNOWITALL

That inconsistency swings both ways. I’ve reported plenty of threats, racist vitriol (including one user calling a black user “sub-human mongrel”), and harassment from right-wingers towards others, only to get a reply back from FB that “this does not violate our rules”.

Likewise, I’ve had my FB account suspended for “bullying” for telling a user, who listed his occupation as “drunkard” to “stick to being a drunkard”*.

(*Basically a sarcastic way of saying “don’t quit your day job”).

@Darth True. I’d like to believe more people are offended with public child sexualization than Trump though.