Goodness you folks are active posters in the mornings - I take it not many of you have children and/or attend (non-)religious events on Sunday mornings.
So some random things, mostly just related to free speech stuff. I'm amused at all the stuff going around now about how media companies (Facebook and Twitter most dominantly but also Google to some extent) should or shouldn't censor things or have algorithms that effectively filter views in general. The argument is generally along the lines of "free speech protections are in place only for the government in the US, not for private companies, so private companies can do whatever they want".
I would argue against that view - one of the reasons for free speech protections was to prevent a powerful entity from controlling the dissemination of information. When the amendment was penned, it was arguable that the only entity strong enough to control information that way was the government. In today's society, I would say that private companies can do much more damage even than the government when it comes to filtering the information that is presented.
The media companies basically control the opinion of the country - sure there are a couple companies that present slightly different views, but when you control the top three or so conduits through which people receive information, you essentially control what people think of is important - note that it doesn't even have to be that you are saying certain things are false: just by nature of the information that is presented more often than information that isn't presented, that imparts a "societal importance" of some topic.
The media companies really scare me in this - mostly because I think that the younger generations today aren't getting an education (hah! see how I closed the loop there?) that helps them think for themselves, so basically whatever the media companies push, that is what people know. Essentially something along the lines of "what the media shows you is what you know."
The worst part of it is that there is no even semblance of accountability with the media companies - at least with the government there is the remote chance of voting people out of office. With media companies - good luck!