I think that we've been going about new social media platforms all wrong. Let me know what you think, but I honestly believe that using open-source or decentralized technology and using freespeech as a honey pot has been nothing but a quagmire for every site that's gone that route. In other words, because we're trying to solve a State issue and a human issue through technology, we've been trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
Companies like Gab and Minds are saying that their mission of free speech is backed by the 1st Amendment, but the State has shat on the 1st Amendment time and time again. Not only that, but these sites are pretty much forced to be mandated reporters if their users do something illegal or are in connection to something perceived to be illegal, as we've seen with Gab. Even if you were to exercise your 1st Amendment rights in meatspace, the State still refuses to respect it and can easily arrest you for hate speech, disturbing the peace, incitement of violence, and a number of other trumped up charges that clearly violate your natural right to express yourself.
I think that a solution to this is for sites to be discriminatory as to who can join their sites and what they can say. I mean, we're asking these companies, which are private entities, to act like public entities by allowing everyone and anyone in, but then get indignant when they act like public entities and ban people or suspend them. We're asking them to be two things which are non-compatible, to run things privately and protect our security, but to do so free of charge and to let us speak as if we were in a public forum. If we want the former, we have to be compliant to the rules set forth by the site and understand that they are free to discriminate. If we want the latter, we need to understand that they are quintessentially acting as a public utility and are subject to the rules of the State, which means that you're free to say whatever you want until you're going against the State narrative.
Until that's settled, I think that there will always be issues of accountability and allegiance between the users and social media platforms. Who they don't want on their site, what they don't want said on their site, what pictures/videos/audio they don't want on their site, and any behavior they will not tolerate needs to be put up-front before the user even signs up for their account. Not just in some T&C agreement that everyone skims through, either. I mean big, boldfaced, 10-commandments-esque rules for the site that no one can say they weren't aware of. And if the site tries to pull some shit, that can be used against them and they can be held responsible for breaking their end of the contract.
I think the biggest issue of all that we will have to face, once that's cleared up, is the State. I don't think these sites would have to be duplicitous if it weren't for State pressure for compliance and being made into unwilling snitches. If they really wanted to, the US government could just throw the Patriot Act in Mind's, Gab's, WrongThink's faces and get whatever information they wanted. At some point or another, this is going to need to be seriously addressed and have some kind of pushback against the State by both users and sites. Ultimately, it's the State that de-platforms and censors people, even if they only use their influence with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and hosting companies to do so. If we want to change how thing work and have better social media platforms, we need to do something about the State first.