Censorship and Facebook – Letters Of Liberty

**Censorship and Facebook – Monterey Herald, submitted June 10, 2020, unpublished**

Regarding your editorial about Mark Zuckerberg enabling Trump threats to looters: I thought I would never see a newspaper demanding censorship! Facebook is a public platform and not responsible for its content as spelled out in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. And because Facebook is a public platform and not a publisher, they cannot be sued for third-party content. That was the deal. No censorship, no lawsuit liability.

Zuckerberg does not want to be the arbiter of truth. He understands that everyone has a right to free speech, no matter if that speech is true or not. Only tyrannical governments want to determine which views are true. That was what happened in Soviet Russia.

Zuckerberg is not betraying Facebook’s ideals; he is upholding the First Amendment. The Monterey Herald should follow Zuckerberg’s example and oppose blatant calls for censorship.

–Brandon Kelsey