It’s not particularly ironic. I would have said this because he’s right: it’s their site, you have to follow their rules.
This isn’t a moral judgment, it’s an acknowledgment of where the power is.
I don’t expect Facebook to allow content they disagree with. You really should read my post! here’s the important bit.
Of course [Facebook] can [censor content]! As hypocritical and smarmy and holier-than-thou Facebook is about rights and access to Facebook, it still belongs to them.Even if we got Facebook to agree to embody ideals of free expression, even if it believed in them to the heart of its culture, its nature and vulnerability as a private corporation forces it to act in its own perceived interests when a dilemma presents itself. If you care about being able to say what you want, your only option is not to speechcrop on Facebook. If you're not prepared to leave it for commercial reasons, because it's where the market is, that's cool. But unless it's nationalized and operated as a state-run utility—as if!—Facebook will always have the last word on what you get to say on Facebook.
When you post at BBS, you do not have free speech. If you think we should provide that, you’re not just sadly mistaken: you’re abdicating a constitutional right in the hopes of maintaining a social contract with another private party that will never be enforceable, in a venue where that private party has unrestricted power to control what you say, but does not have unrestricted power to control what it says.
This is what I mean by speechcropping: the delusion that companies like Facebook or Twitter (or us!) are even able to offer you anything more than the convenience of access to other people’s attention. We don’t, and we’d be lying if we said we do–especially if we meant it.
