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That’s is because the electric company are monopolies created by the government. And unlike power utilities there are zero laws about which cloud provider you are forced to used.

Parler is not some rube. They are a company with access to legal counsel. They agreed to moderate their end users in accordance with Amazon’s content policy and chose not to. They made extremely stupid decisions they do not deserve to be coddled for.

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Most utilities weren't created by the government. My local power company came from a series of merges of companies founded in the eighteen-hundreds.

The government, at some point, decided to regulate utilities. It certainly didn't create them or their monopolies. Most have a natural monopoly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly).

It was a good idea, at the time, and it's just helpful to update our list of what constitutes a utility.

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