My social media followers may have noticed that Facebook recently removed one of my posts, saying “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.”

This post wasn’t an offensive meme or a politically or socially insensitive comment. It was a link to a photo on my newspaper’s, YOUR newspaper’s, website.

I shared this to social, and people were sympathetic, but then I settled down and considered a truth that I have often emphasized when other people tell us that their posts were “censored” by Facebook: social media is not a right.

I know a lot of people who are deaf to this argument, and I kind of understand why: Facebook is a huge, influential, international entity, and pictures and words can carry messages across the globe. But that doesn’t make it a right.

“Yes it does, Richard. I have the right to say anything I want.” I know you do, I do too.  But your right to free speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, not social media and other websites.

If you still disagree with this, suppose you created your own website, maybe “bobsadaopinion.com.” You own it, but you also allow people to contribute to it. Maybe your website is devoted to the opinion that 2+2=4. Then someone posts a comment saying that 2+2=5. Do you have to accept this comment? It’s your website, not theirs, and you won’t accept that 2+2=5. Is this a violation of their free speech if you delete that comment?

No, of course it isn’t. Facebook, Instagram, X, Youtube, Pinterest, and on and on – and I can’t emphasize this enough – don’t belong to you, and aren’t obligated to let you say anything they don’t want you to say.

I’ll say that I thought Facebook was wrong to remove a link to a newspaper’s website because some algorithm thought it was inappropriate, but my newspaper and I weren’t censored.

I think social media in general tends to create a community of incivility, and we should all take it a whole lot less seriously.