No company owns all the internet, thus using the analogy that a few companies own the entire radio spectrum doesn't make sense.
> This analogy clearly doesn't hold up. It's more like a very successful private broadcast channel, but where making an effective public broadcast channel is too difficult for the government, so we pretend that the private channel is "like a public channel".
I think the analogy does hold up. Society limits private property rights all the time for the public good, and that's a good thing.
For instance my private property has drainage and utility easements that allow others to use to for the public good. I don't even own all the property in the area. Theoretically I could go all "muh private property" and demand the government spend a bunch of money to divert water around my land and remove the easement, but that would be silly and wasteful.
Right not we're in a situation where a too few companies control too much of the internet mass media landscape. If that's not remedied with something like antitrust breakups, some kind of "social media access easement" legal framework may be worth looking at.
It's more like a publicly traded company owning a really popular street or city. And these aren't just any cities, more like capital cities (or close to it). But this company still answers to the state. In reality this company owns and operates streets/cities in every country. Hence answers to every State and each of their laws.
Facebook and Twitter don't actually have free speech themselves. We pretend they do, but if they actually tried to enact a strong opinion into their business, banning some large arbitrary group, not just small disruptive minorities. States would just reverse that and say it's unlawful to deny, let's say, all X or Y countries citizens. Or all of Washington.
They are functionally a State apparatus. There's a reason why Facebook and Twitter are blocked whenever a country is in upheaval. But is kept around even in quite oppressive countries. I'm just saying we need to be honest about these State company hybrids.