You aren't getting it. Free speech and subsequent limitations of such free speech must and must be decided by elected representatives. Not by private companies.

In this case Germany has every damn right to frame such laws. They are a Sovereign Nation. The people of Germany have empowered their Government through their constitution.

Twitter/Facebook/Google et all are not Sovereign States. They haven't been elected by anyone. Their rules cannot override the laws of the State. They cannot frame rules that go against the laws of the State. They have to work within the ambit of the laws defined by the State. The power to frame such laws is in the hands of the legislature given by the people of the State. I never gave any powers to Facebook/Twitter/Google et all to regulate my speech as guaranteed by my Constitution (which is the Constitution of India). They cannot bring in First Amendment arguments of the United States to counter the Free Speech as defined in the Indian Constitution. It simply does not work that way.

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Rate limited so replying to qwytw as s/he raises a very important point:

> I don't see how this would be fundamentally different from, for example, requiring newspapers to publish every letter their receive irregardless of their editorial stance.

You are talking about curation not about banning/removal. Billions of tweets are sent to Twitter every day. But only few make it to the top of the trends. No one has a problem with curation. We have a problem with banning of our content just because Twitter feels it is problematic. Not because it is explicitly defined in the Constitution as being problematic.

Let us assume that you send a letter to a Newspaper to publish in editorial and you include swear words in it (Let us assume "orange haired buffoon" is a swear word. Because you are upset with Trump you call him an "orange haired buffoon" in your letter). The Newspaper won't publish it. That is perfectly fine. They won't punish you for it. Probably will make a paper rocket out of your letter and throw it around in the office. But if you send a violent threat in the letter (calling for assassination of Trump), they'll contact Police/FBI/CIA and hand them over your letter. Easy to grok?

Now let us compare that to Twitter. Twitter will read your tweet with swear words in it (Trump is a orange haired buffoon). It will immediately remove it and warn you of consequences of tweeting something like that again else face a 7 day suspension (with a subsequent warning of 30 day, 1 year and permanent suspension if you repeat it again and again). Already there is a big difference between how the Newspaper company handled your letter vs how Twitter handled your tweet.

Twitter is regulating speech here. It has decided that "orange haired buffoon" constitutes a violation of someone else's rights. You might have said "orange haired buffoon" in jest. The person receiving your tweet might also have gotten a good chuckle out of it. But Twitter decides nope. You do not have the right to use "orange haired buffoon" on our platform else you'll be kicked out. Even if you and your friend whom you are tweeting at swear at each other in real life, you can't do that on Twitter. Do you see how quickly this degenerates to suspending/banning for ridiculous things?

Which is why content removal/moderation must be only for those things that are clearly defined as illegal by the State. For everything else, the platform already has Section 230. They can enjoy not being liable for anything that is posted on their platforms. If I am a social media platform, why would I go out of my way to provide an imperfect implementation of speech regulation and waste my time on that aspect when I already have safeguards of Section 230? Wouldn't it be better if this is legally defined in the Constitution of the country where the user is from? That way there is consistency between platforms.

If I go to Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Google or any other platform I will be following the same rules (as defined by law) instead of reading the fine print of every service to see if I am in violation of any of their ridiculous rules/regulations.