You can't have it both ways. For the self-proclaimed free-marketers, how is this different?
It's about scale. We have an antitrust issue, not a free speech issue.
By the way completely agree with you on antitrust. And its not a free speech issue.
For example, you could change your religion and it would still be illegal to discriminate on that basis.
I can decide to not say offensive things in a store so as to not be kicked out. But I can't decide to change my faith to be allowed entry to the store, because faith doesn't work like that. You can't force religious belief. At most, I could pretend to change my professed religion. But my faith remains unchanged and unchangeable.
To me it sounds like you could just as well be describing conservatives.
They literally described what it's like to be a left coast conservative.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/#:~:tex....
In other words that's a really shallow argument.
One thing that continues to bother me is that on almost any political issue (or even non-political issue) where people point out a double standard, you can easily reverse it and get a reciprocal double standard held by the side claiming the other has a double standard. Yet this is always ignored. By always, I mean I cannot think of a single case where I've seen the side doing the calling out realize that it was reversible on them. I have seen a number of memes from third parties calling out the two major sides as being reciprocal double standards, if that counts for anything.
On the other hand, the public square, itself, has been privatized into the hands of multi-billion-dollar corporations from whom there is no appeal.
Nobody actually needs a cake. But a head of state needs to talk to his citizens and his citizens need to hear him, even if we think he is a [insert epithet, here].
And all that head of state needs to do is hold a press conference to be heard. He or she does not need Twitter, or Facebook, or Parler, or any other social media platform.
The Internet is meant to dis-intermediate communication. That is its purpose. It's one of the things that makes it such a disruptive change over legacy media platforms. The current de-platforming trend is an attempt to put that genie back in the bottle.
Wow! Another bureaucracy that'll have its own factions with their own agendas that will never work against either their superiors or the electorate.
Over the air? But the youth don't have TVs. They use Twitter and YouTube. But those platforms have banned you.
See the problem?
He does not need Twitter or Facebook to reach his constituents; he has a press briefing room in the White House and 24/7 access to reporters. And guess what, whatever he says will get covered by everyone, posted and discussed immediately.
When people argue that social media is too powerful because the President needs it, they are according these companies with way more power then they actually have.
He could send a letter. I think the USPS is obligated to carry it.
Is the distinction between these two important?
A judge isn’t going to (seriously) consider PWAs if Microsoft sued Apple for not allowing xCloud on iOS.
The distinction is important if you believe you should be able to run whatever software you want on a piece of general purpose hardware you purchase.
I think the comparison is pretty unhelpful. At stake in that case, and those on the right, was a concern of being coerced into violating one's religious beliefs because of Colorado's anti-discrimination law. The legal arguments at the time were if it violated the cake shop's 1st amendment rights of free exercise of religion.
In today's context there is no anti-discrimination law for the likes of Parler, nor is there a concern that being forced to keep an app like Parler online would violate any constitutionally protected rights of these service providers should a statute ever be passed that did.
Those backing the cake shop decision did largely for the free exercise of religion, not an appeal to the free market.
Disclaimer: I didn't think a cake shop should be allowed to deny service because it's for a gay wedding.
So I’d say we can definitely have it both ways.