I’m not saying there are no monopolies today. But social media companies are very much NOT monopolies. Look here:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/#close
Now that’s an article about where companies should be spending their advertising time and money on social media. But right off the bat you can see they aren’t monopolies just because the article exists. If there was a social media monopoly that answer would be easy: the monopoly.
Now when you go deeper into it you see a lot of interesting stuff. There’s an estimated 4.6 billion social media users on the planet. The biggest platform, Facebook, self reports (and remember, these companies always over estimate their user base) 2.9 billion monthly average users. A lot, but far below the 80% market share line usually used to declare a company a monopoly. The top 4 combine for 9.1 billion MAU or nearly twice the total market. The whole top 10 combine for about 12 billion, or about 2.6 times the total market share. So we see from that that most users are on more than 1 platform. So clearly the anti-competitive moves that would make a company an illegal monopoly (remember, being a monopoly is NOT illegal but certain market moves do become illegal for monopolies) just aren’t happening.
So any time somebody talks about nailing any of these companies for being monopolies they are quite simply WRONG.
Putting the government in charge of speech is putting the government in charge of speech. Whether the bad excuse used is “hate speech” or “they’re monopolies” it’s still a bad idea. Explicitly forbidden in the Constitution. “Congress shall make no laws”. That’s the rule you want to cast aside.
Actually my response addresses EVERYTHING you asked. You just don’t like it. Which is on you. You are, as always, 100% wrong on everything.
I looked. What I see is a list of companies that are all monopolies in their niche markets.
Does youtube have a competitor? Not even close. Yes, Standard oil didn't own *ALL* the gas stations, it just had so many of them that it could control the market.
The biggest platform, Facebook, self reports (and remember, these companies always over estimate their user base) 2.9 billion monthly average users. A lot, but far below the 80% market share line usually used to declare a company a monopoly.
You may be surprised to learn that I am more concerned about the effects a monopoly has on American society than about what it does in foreign countries. I don't actually give a d@mn about the other 2.6 billion people who aren't Americans.
In the USA, Facebook has no competitor.
So any time somebody talks about nailing any of these companies for being monopolies they are quite simply WRONG.
I don't care if facebook is *NOT* a monopoly in the rest of the world. It *IS* a monopoly here.
Putting the government in charge of speech is putting the government in charge of speech.
We are not discussing putting the government in charge of speech. We are discussing using the power of government to make sure nobody is in charge of American speech. We are discussing the idea of using government to defend our rights, which is one of the actual legitimate tasks government is supposed to do.