[temp_account_32]

They pretty much are de facto public services. The town square is now digital, and the laws have failed to adapt. Just because some big corporation owns it doesn't make it different in practice. Do you really want to defend a future where you can be banned from doing anything because some random $BIGCORP's algorithm decides so on a whim?

[anoonmoose]

Yes, I want that future, because their right to restrict service is the same right to restrict service that I personally have, and diminishing their rights diminishes my rights.

If you want government-run services that act as public versions of these services, advocate for that. But I don't support this particular method of socializing private businesses.

[falcolas]

You can keep a private/public company as a company while still restricting some of its activities via laws. This is reality for every company in existence.

There's even precedence when a private company is a de-facto public space (and must follow the governments' mandates on public spaces) in the physical world; extending this to the digital world makes sense.

[ekianjo]

Or you know, you could choose to use decentralized services just like we used IRC back in the days. Dont blame the platform when the users created their own problems in the first place.