>If the private company is "so powerful the government needs to step in" then it should be through breaking up a monopoly.
I definitely agree that the government does need to break up some large tech companies. But I don't agree that that should be the only form of regulation. I think the government should regulate technology companies in several ways. Here are some no brainers:
ISPs - Net neutrality required. No data caps allowed.
Device manufacturers - Right to repair. Can't lock down the device the way that gaming consoles and mobile phones (and TVs, etc...) often do.
Cloud providers - Greater privacy protections like they have in Europe.
>There are literally THOUSANDS of other hosting providers out there.
You're glossing over the other infrastructure examples I named. We're talking about a cumulative effect here. It makes me uncomfortable that key parts of the internet's infrastructure are controlled by private companies with little to no regulation on what they can do. And I feel like it's getting worse every year.
>So don't buy an iPhone? Buy any number of android phones
Not everybody gets to choose what phone they have. Maybe they got their phone handed down to them or donated to them and can't afford to buy a new one. For a lot of people, their phone might be their only computer. Also, vaping was just one example. Apple routinely blocks apps and only backpedals if the app creator has enough clout. They tried to do it with the open source blogging platform WordPress a few months ago.
If there were regulation in place that Apple could maintain their own app store, but couldn't block or make it difficult for regular users to install other apps then nobody to choose. Same thing with like a gaming console - buy a gaming console and you could install Linux and use it as a general purpose machine without having to break some encryption scheme.
It's clear that maintaining an operating system/platform is an expensive endeavor - and maybe it just isn't feasible for more than those two operating systems to exist. That's where regulation comes in. There need to be ground rules especially when the barrier to competition is so high.
>Parler isn't a protected class, vaping isn't a protected class, nobody should be forced to do business with them if they don't want to.
So companies should be able to do whatever they want as long as they're not discriminatory/racist about it?