Yes, Virginia, there are privately-owned companies that can “do what they want.” And the word on Wall Street is that more than a few shareholders invested in Facebook and Twitter are not pleased that some people did something that damaged the value of their investments.
Related: “We are witnessing an unprecedented merging of corporate and government power.”
In the days after both platforms evicted US President Donald Trump (for inciting violence) and various other high-profile accoutns, Facebook and Twitter lost a combined market value of 51.2 billion dollars.
[L]awyers are scanning prior declarations by Dorsey and Zuckerberg about their censorship policies, and planning shareholder suits due to big losses in stock price based on false claims made by Dorsey and Zuckerberg.
Any stockholders who lost money, arguably due to reliance on their false representations, can sue the companies.
If you ask the average pocket-leftist, they will insist – using CNN or a Democrat Politician as their source – the President did incite violence. The problem here is that lawsuits rely on a process of discovery and evidence.
The evidence demonstrates that Mr. Trump not only did NOT incite violence; he encouraged peaceful protest. Before, during, and after what transpired.
He is not responsible for the action of people who ignore him.
Social Mediastan, always looking for a reason to flex its partisan muscle, incited mass censorship under false pretenses (fed by their personal bias). They are entitled to them, but if these acts cost their shareholders significant loss of value unnecessarily, those private individuals can go after these companies and their CEOs for their own pound of flesh.
At this point, I don’t see this amounting to much more than a few happy headlines on sites like this. Nor do I suspect that either Facebook or Twitter (Google, Apple, Disney, et al.) will feel much pressure to change their censorious ways.
These behemoths have mountains of cash and rooms full of lawyers. If they are not broken up by Big government into more manageable bits, they will continue unimpeded as long as they are useful to the State.
A State whose absolute power they facilitate, like all useful idiots, until the State no longer needs them. At which point, they will discover what real censorship means.
