Here's some extreme examples for the sake of illustrating my point:
- Is "Trans women aren't women" a political opinion?
- Is "The earth is flat" a political opinion?
- Is "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of babies to keep her alive" a political opinion?
- Is "Michelle Obama is secretly a man" a political opinion?
- Is "Donald Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide" a political opinion?
> How do you define a "political opinion"?
Do you think your power company should be allowed to cut off service to anyone who believes the things you listed?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police...
I think you might be dwelling a bit too much on their specific analogy, I don't think their argument should be so easily minimized in scope with things such as "basic utilities don't count" etc., which is also just a subjective opinion as well.
What's a basic necessity? Do you think they should have their phone service cut off, because the phone company doesn't want those words being transmitted over their wires? It's worth noting that not too long ago electricity wasn't considered a basic necessity.
I think there's an inflection point where a website's scale morphs it into a utility that needs to be governed by different rules than smaller websites. Where the line exactly is is not clear, but the large social networks are definitely on the "different rules" side of it. And personally, my preference is that social networks and internet services become a lot smaller and more diverse than stay large and be governed by some regulatory framework.
FWIW these sites are already under-regulated as is and there are legitimate concerns - for example, under certain circumstances if you get banned from a Google based social media platform it can affect your ability to use Gmail... And if your whole life is on that Gmail account, I believe that strays into "basic necessity" territory. But that's not quite the same thing that's being discussed here.
Yes, as this view is related to policy, highly contentious policy at that.
> Is "The earth is flat" a political opinion?
No, it's factually incorrect.
> Is "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of babies to keep her alive" a political opinion? Is "Michelle Obama is secretly a man" a political opinion?
No, a view about something a politican might do in their personal life isn't a political opinion as it's not about policy. There's no evidence for either of these outlandish views either.
> Is "Donald Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide" a political opinion?
No, it's factually incorrect.
All of these views should be allowed to be freely expressed though, whether they're considered political or not.
Why do you lack confidence in your positions and feel justified in appealing to power to silence your opposition? Probably because your positions are debatable and that scares you.
Demonstrate your ability to convince everyone with your dazzling philosophy and concrete facts on any topic you choose and see where all that smug superiority gets you.