UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

In short, I would not be ok with Twitter wanted to ban LGBTQ posters, although I would be ok with Catholic.com wanted to ban those same posters. So, you misunderstand my views.

But, here is the long answer that merits discussion.

Internet companies are like restaurants or other services. We don't allow either of them to discriminate on the basis of race. But, we do allow them to discriminate on the bases of political views or religious views sometimes. It may be time to reconsider how we handle this. Surely if we can force a baker to provide services to people the baker doesn't agree with, we can force internet providers to provide services to people they don't agree with.

On the one hand, I think of UHND as a private service, totally under control of the moderators. I don't begrudge management by the owners of the site. I think of it like a private club.

And, there are sites like Catholic.com, which clearly have a viewpoint, and I don't begrudge them restricting posts to only those above a certain level of decency and honest seeking. If there were a transgender site, I wouldn't begrudge them kicking me off if I went there and started pointing out how antiscience they are. Private services, right?

But, then there are sites like Google, Twitter, Reddit and many others. They have become, essentially, utilities. Sort of like the old Usenet, which was totally content neutral--anything went on Usenet, and that was kind of nice. Everyone had a voice. When sites like that begin discriminating on the basis of religious views, or political views, then maybe they cross a line that should be protected. I think it is time to extend the First Amendment to cover sites like that...to expand the 1st Amendment rights to include private actors.

Much thought needs to go into how to do it properly, but I think the time has come to have the conversation.

It used to be that only the government had the reach and power to silence people, so the 1st Amendment was sufficient to protect freedom of speech. And, to DRO's point, we all have said at some point, "Not the government, so punishment by that speech by a private individual is ok." But, now, private organizations and private individuals have the power to take people's livelihoods away from them using the Internet. This is a new development. I think that needs to be stopped somehow. We can't keep consoling ourselves that just because the government isn't abusing someones speech or religious rights, it is ok to abuse those rights, especially when we are talking about a service which has become a commodity or utility used by society for basic communication.

It used to be that private discrimination was ok, and blacks could be barred access to facilities or restaurants or the like, but we expanded Constitutional protections to that level. It was the right thing to do, and we no longer say, "That is a private restaurant, they can discriminate if they want to do so." It is time to do this for communication and the internet.

Thoughts?