If we’re going to assert the inalienable right of free speech, then arguably free speech is such an important cornerstone of society that we should think long and hard before letting any company have such influence in that sphere to begin with.

To me the big glaring central point here is that everyone uses big tech platforms. It’s just a fact of life. If you tell people, sorry, I don’t use Facebook, I use some wonky alternative instead, can you add me there? you’ll get weird looks. I think it’s insane to just ignore that elephant and continue studiously down the path of, well, they’re a private company and therefore are entitled to publish whatever they want.

When we established the precedent that private entities can say what they want, we clearly didn’t have Facebook in mind. Like there is just intuitively an obvious difference between a private journal deciding what to write about and a huge platform everyone uses deciding what to pass through or not. The state of the law doesn’t currently reflect this but that doesn’t mean the difference doesn’t exist.