[pjlegato]

Existing free speech rights restrict only the government itself from preventing free speech. They do not apply to private parties. For example, you have no obligation to permit religious or political proselytizing within your home or business.

You are proposing not merely the active enforcement of free speech as such, but removing the existing longstanding right of private entities to determine what forms of speech they permit within privately owned venues, simply because some such venues happen to be large and popular.

This same argument was made 200 years ago when newspapers were the dominant mode of mass information exchange. The country decided then that the government ought not to regulate what newspapers must and must not print, and enshrined this in a constitutional amendment.

How is your proposal to regulate what private sector social media companies are required to publish any different in substance than a (clearly unconstitutional) proposal to regulate what private sector newspapers can and cannot publish?

[zakk]

> How is your proposal to regulate what private sector social media companies are required to publish any different in substance than a (clearly unconstitutional) proposal to regulate what private sector newspapers can and cannot publish?

I am talking about service providers, not users.

Suppose there's only one printing house in town and within a 1000 km radius. This de facto monopoly means that if you are denied their services you cannot publish a book.

My proposal is: we should mandate that the service provider (i.e. the printing house) provides the same services for the same price to all customers.

Of course that would require a definition of who will be considered a service provider, but I think that the FetLife controversy clearly shows that some freedoms are being endangered: outside the Internet no monopoly/oligopoly is so strong that can send virtually anyone out of business in a matter of a week.