link to original reddit post by /u/redditspeechcensor
I would like to poll the community and see how you all feel about this.
Personally my view is - my social media posts and messages are privately owned by me not by the host. They are a product of my thoughts and expressions.
Did you know (on Facebook for example) you can report someone for a private 1 on 1 message they send you? That would be like me taking a sealed envelope addressed to someone with a letter inside. Taking the letter to FedEx and then delivering the letter to the recipient. The recipient reads the letter and gets angry and then marches down to the FedEx office who then reads personal private correspondence and then bans me from future service.
Obviously that would be a gross violation of ethics and privacy. Again, this is not some public posting like a tweet or a facebook status that is open to multiple people... this is a private message between two people who have both consented to viewing that message just like you could throw my physical letter in the trash without opening the envelope or read it. So why then, when a social media company does it, some would say I don’t have any privacy rights on my message and they as a private business have a right to deny me service.
I would argue, the intermediary party - FedEx or Facebook - never had a right to view my message to begin with and I'm not going to accept the "but the TOS state blah blah" because you cannot legally give your rights away. If courts have used the 4th amendment to protect their "digital documents" from online theft - and they have - then why is that also not applicable to my digital document of a private message?
Give me your thoughts! I’m interested in discussing this.