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by StanislavPetrov 1994 days ago
Twitter, Google, Facebook and Apple are monopolies that are most certainly the public square. "Market Allocation Schemes" where companies collude to fix prices and rig markets are explicitly illegal, and I don't see why the collusion of monopolies to "fix" speech is any different.

If we lived in a country with a functional government these monopolies would have been broken up long ago and the internet would be regulated as the public utility that it is.
1 comments
kombucha111 1994 days ago
They are not the public square they are private property that people gather on at the behest of its owner(s) but I will totally agree with you that to most people they are the defacto public square and that there plenty of monopolies that need to be broken up. Id also agree with you that regulating these companies as public utilities is the solution to your grievances (as well as having net neutrality). The only thing I disagree with you is the collusion aspect, even if they were colluding to "fix" speech, and not just towing the same line, that isn't actually illegal. Price fixing on the other hand is. I feel like there is common ground here that sensible governance, accountability and nonpartisan compromise could absolutely solve.
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StanislavPetrov 1994 days ago
>The only thing I disagree with you is the collusion aspect, even if they were colluding to "fix" speech, and not just towing the same line, that isn't actually illegal. Price fixing on the other hand is.

A persuasive argument can be made that coordinated efforts by tech giants to block rivals such as Parler is in fact illegal. In many ways it reminds me of the (ultimately successful) 1998 anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft which ironically allowed the rise of Google, Twitter, and Facebook who are today engaging in similar behavior. Although perhaps if the Microsoft lawsuit were brought today, Microsoft could simply argue that they were afraid of the "hate speech" that might occur on these new platforms and were therefore justified in using their massive market share to stifle all competition.

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