People have a right to any platform they are able to create. The problem with centralized social media is that it is a monopoly with legal protections and is able to essentially exclude people from the de facto town square.
At the end of the day, I'm a strong supporter of free speech. But, it's up to the speaker to provide their own platform. If all they can manage is a literal soapbox in the town square, so be it. There is no fundamental right for a person's speech to be easily broadcast, nor is there a right for that speech to be heard or acknowledged.
As long as Twitter, Facebook, the NYT, and the WSJ are private entities, they also have their own rights. If we really want to prevent de-platforming, the solution seems to be categorizing media companies as some sort of utility. But, I don't really know what they would look like.
Yes it sucks your audience is limited but you are correct, people have a right to any platform they are able to create.
Also monopolies and oligopolies are what happens in unregulated capitalism. If frustrates me that the many of folks today who take issue with the tech giants have been pro deregulation, pro capitalism, and screaming about how afraid we should be because a boring sleepy vanilla POTUS is going to usher in socialism and communism... WTF is your solution then? Everyone can point out problems and evoke FUD.
This argument is becoming increasingly disingenuous based on actions of just the last few days.
Didn’t Parler go ahead and do exactly what you recommended?
* cut off from Google Play and Apple Store. Most people don’t even have personal computers anymore, so their phone / IPad is the only way to access the platforms.
* Apple doesn’t allow side loading. Google makes it less and less viable and so many necessary APIs are moved out of the open Android Sdk and into the gated Play APIs.
* As if to demonstrate the absolute futility of your suggestion, AWS cut off Parler‘s servers.
* Any site need some sort of financial API. How many times have we seen companies like Stripe, GoFundMe, Visa and MasterCard, and even large banks give in to the mob.
* every other required piece of the puzzle will do the same: DNS providers, CDNs, and even the large backbone ISPs. Sorry, bigot, but we’ve decided we won’t be routing your traffic through our exchange.
* Even power companies are privatized in the US. Sorry, just go make your own power grid, right?
Parler only went halfway there. They created a app/website. But, that's not an entire platform (as we see today). An entire platform in this context includes servers, fiber optic networks, routers, etc. If Parler wants to speak on the scale they envision, they can build their own infrastructure to do so. Yes, that's expensive, but it's also no different than the pre-internet era, where similar speech would be relegated to self-published fliers, because no newspaper or TV would carry the message.
Social media created a new type of platform. But people are forgetting that it also created a new and more vicious type of activism, too.
Maybe you could compare AWS to a haulage company, the equivalent of trucks distributing the newspapers. If Parler were to buy their own 'trucks' (servers), would they be able to drive freely on the 'roads' of the Internet? Or would nobody be willing to provide them a connection?
This argument is absurd and I feel in bad faith. We have public roads and you are free to travel on them to distribute your flyers. You still need permission to enter the premises of private owners though if you want to solicit or leave your property (flyer) on their property.
No, they didn't.
Parler set up a web site on AMAZON's platform, and it was subsequently shut down. If they had created their own platform with their own servers, they would still be running today.
What happens when registrars cut them off? No DNS routing for them until they build their own registrar? Will the point at which the segregated internet’s join become a DMZ guarded by both factions?
This entire app, and business, was shut down for a few bad actors. Traditionally you subpoena for info, but cancel culture stepped in again.
I don't think anyone, from Trump to Alex Jones, is asking to be able to force people to follow them on Twitter or youtube. But they should have a right to be there, and talk to people that have chosen to follow them, that's quite a different thing.