I didn’t realize that within our Constitution, Mark Zuckerberg was given special powers. On Monday, November 27. 2023, The Conversation published this headline, “Supreme Court to consider giving First Amendment protections to social media posts.”
Citizens have sometimes been surprised to find public officials blocking people from viewing their social media feeds.
The First Amendment does not protect messages posted on social media platforms.
The companies that own the platforms can – and do – remove, promote or limit the distribution of any posts according to corporate policies. But all that might soon change.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear five cases during this current term, which ends in June 2024, that collectively give the court the opportunity to reexamine the nature of content moderation – the rules governing discussions on social media platforms such as Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter – and the constitutional limitations on the government to affect speech on the platforms.
Content moderation, whether done manually by company employees or automatically by a platform’s software and algorithms, affects what viewers can see on a digital media page. Messages that are promoted garner greater viewership and greater interaction; those that are deprioritized or removed will obviously receive less attention. Content moderation policies reflect decisions by digital platforms about the relative value of posted messages.
“Mark Zuckerberg must be disillusioned into thinking God gave him some kind of special powers over all of us”, said Thomas Robb, the National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, based out of Harrison, Arkansas. Speaking from his National Office, Robb continued, “Our forefathers didn’t include the First Amendment just for certain people, or only to include certain words. The First Amendment is our God-given right to say anything, to anybody. Now of course, we shouldn’t go around threatening the lives of others, but just because we say something that someone else doesn’t want to hear, it is our right to say what we think. Take for instance, I’m a Christian Identity Pastor. Being such, I believe that the Israelites spoken of in the Bible are in fact the White race, and that’s exactly what I preach. Now if I post that on say, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who is a jew, and as such is disillusioned into thinking that jews are God’s chosen people, he can censor me just because he feels like it? Why then would I be condemned if I censor anyone that says the jews are God’s chosen people? Or that the holocaust was real, which in fact, neither are true? That would get pretty confusing wouldn’t it? We all have the freedom to say or post whatever we want. So called ‘hate’ speech is still free speech. If I say homosexuality is a moral sin against God, which it is true, but if some homosexual thinks I’m being homophobic for saying such a thing, that’s just a difference of opinion, and free speech. Your opinions of people aren’t hate speech. Even lies and misconception is free speech. It’s time to take down Big-Tech. These people shouldn’t be allowed to judge who can say what.”