How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?
I would prefer not to completely stagnate the internet just yet.
Isn't Internet infrastructure in a lot of the US kind of stagnant right now?
"A common carrier in common law countries ... is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport..."
So, a _company_ can be a common carrier. An abstract notion describing interconnected physical entities and organizational entities related to them cannot be a common carrier (nor, in fact, any carrier).
The motivation here is they want to regulate Google for political purposes, not that they want to regulate utilities better.
If you have questions, Dave Yost's political donors are public information:
https://www6.ohiosos.gov/ords/f?p=CFDISCLOSURE:48:0::NO:RP:P...
The internet isn't a thing. It's not a single entity (or even a single idea).
It was different in the days of Ma Bell, when there was one entity for the entire U.S. with phone service (could we define that in today's age? is VOIP phone service? mobile? Whatsapp?), and it was even different later, when the baby bells blanketed the U.S. without overlapping areas.
What makes this more challenging is that by regulating "ISPs" (if someone could please define that, or even what the Internet is, in a legal sense), we might then be strangling new and interesting startups that might not conform to the definition of an ISP from a decade prior.
public utility status for the internet means that every packet delivered over internet protocol (aka "IP", which again, is a thing) must be delivered by the carrier/ISP without discrimination.
This is why this doesn't make sense. Some internet companies can arbitrarily block you and others can't?
it makes perfect sense if you are a politician looking to hop on the anti-google bandwagon enough to make it look like you're doing something without actually doing anything.
Because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen.
Maybe Google is the last straw that leads to proper governance of utilities in the public's interest.
So your comment is factually wrong.
Facebook and Twitter are not critical infrastructure. Nobody has to use them. They are private platforms their owners invited you to. I choose not to use these services, and anyone else who doesn't like them is free to do the same.
People do not have the choice to avoid using telephone or mail services, which is why they are regulated as common carriers. It is nearly impossible to function in modern society without access to mail and telephone service. The argument for net neutrality rests on the idea that general internet access is also a requirement in order to be a functional member of society.