Its the opinion in this case.
Its tight that there needs to be some form of reexamination of 230, it can’t be both ways a public forum that people can be blocked and a private platform that they can banned Trump.
It could if Twitter was in a competitive market, but they’re basically the only forum out there.
Thanks.
My opinion, loosely informed by what limited information I have accumulated about anti-trust and other law, is that once these platforms reach a certain level of ubiquity, they need to be regulated as utilities.
You are right they can’t have it both ways. They can’t both be protected from suit over offensive/libelous speech while simultaneously editorializing, censoring, flagging or otherwise suppressing speech by limiting its reach.
There is ample precedent to break them up in particular Paramount Studios case which forced the movie studios to divest from movie theater ownership; Standard Oil which broke the oil giant into a half dozen or so competing entities; and of course the case of Microsoft over their built in browser. All these cases the corporations lost.
What we have now is worse than a form of Keiretsu, the Japanese business practice where a bunch of separate entities create an affiliation to protect each others’ interests. Thus, any competition for Twitter is blocked by Apple and Google. And it’s reciprocal. Banned by one, banned by all. It has to stop.
Bottom line, if you come over for dinner and we talk politics, they can’t shut off my phones, electricity, water and gas because they don’t like what we spoke about. Should be the same with these large platforms that have such critical mass and behave in a predatory fashion that makes free market competition next to impossible.