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One of the reasons you kill monopolies and block vast concentrations of power before they take root is that you avoid situations like this, where a few private companies are the arbiters of all online speech, and the decisions that go with that entirely.
Our antitrust thinking has been so gutted by post-70s thinking that this kind of forward thinking, prophylactic approach is mostly alien to most people, but I hope it can come back.
It used to be, in some circles anyway, that people could anticipate the dangers of concentrations of wealth and power and try to bypass all the mess that would arise from that. Now it’s just a free for all, and we’re left trying to create a patchwork response.
This is what I was trying to get at here, too: https://twitter.com/jesse_brenneman/status/1259143595031846912
And to be clear: I’m not saying Trump and others shouldn’t be banned because they’re violating the terms of service. That may well be the correct choice. But with strong antitrust, pro-democratic power laws enforced we may not have gotten to this point in the first place.
When private companies become this powerful, and end up controlling vast amounts of human interaction and life, they end up making choices that shouldn’t be only up to them. Even if some of their choices are the “right” choices.
