[mwfunk]

No, none of this applies to privately owned web sites. If anything, forcing them to act like utilities impinges on the speech of the platform owners. The Ben Shapiros of the world have desperately been trying to spin a different narrative though and they will jump through endless hoops and contradictions to do it. This is all just moderated-vs-unmoderated newsgroups/mailing lists/web sites all over again. There’s room for both. Nobody has a constitutional right to force YouTube or anyone else to host their content, or to have those companies shield them from criticism.

If someone wants to argue that YouTube should be declared a public utility that is required to host everyone’s content no matter what, that’s totally understandable and they should make that argument instead. Otherwise they’re just asking for the government to mandate that YouTube, etc. are safe spaces where everything is permitted and no one is allowed to judge other people for what they say, including the company paying for the servers. Which is so totally counter to what those very same people seem to think about everything else that I’m surprised the hypocrisy and inconsistency doesn’t create a singularity or something. But here we are, in 2020, and AM-talk-radio types are demanding the government mandate safe spaces for them on privately owned platforms where they are shielded from consequences.