The sad thing about the net is that I could put up a website totallyuncensored.com to replicate everything Facebook, Google, Twitter et al do and if no one uses it, or visits it it doesn’t matter.
I could publish the absolute truth on the JFK assassination, UFO news, the Clinton crime foundation, the Bushes ties to a one world government and not take one word down of it if it were true.
However again if no one uses it or visits it, it doesn’t matter.
The problem at its heart in this day in age is is there a fine line, non-existent line of user choice and monopoly when it comes to social networking and search. I don’t have an answer.
No one is making anyone type google.com, no one is forcing people to upload thousands of pictures and bits of personal information, every single thing these big tech companies has competition. Sure, in most cases inconsequential and inferior competition but competition.
Just like Amazon, where does the line between people choose to use it and monopoly blend or begin?
No one had a choice with AT&T, no one had a choice with Standard Oil, US Steel may have had massive market share but it was never a monopoly.
I hate what big tech has become, they more powerful than nation states, more dangerous than national intelligence services to individual privacy, unaccountable, unregulated and unassailable legally in many aspects that newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets are.
All you can do is not use it but billions of people would sooner give up television than Facebook, Google and Twitter.
I believe that both the courts and Congress have addressed this issue, it just needs to be enforced. The SCOTUS ruled in Marsh v. Alabama that when a private entity in any given situation has the same kind of power to censor that we would typically associate with a government, then they must refrain from impinging on free speech, the same as a government would. Congress gave all internet platforms that don’t publish their own content a pass on libel laws, for the specific reason that they’re not in control of their content. The same logic should prevent them from censoring legal content. We don’t have to “regulate” them in any other way other than to prevent them from censoring legal content.