> We're okay with social media companies regulating free speech, but draw the line at governments.
> Ironic, isn't it?
Not unless you're Alanis Morissette.
The difference is the concept of monopoly: A government has a monopoly on being a government in a given region. That's pretty fundamental to what a government even is, as per Weber and Westphalia. A social media company isn't a monopoly on being a social media company. You can talk online without using Twitter, or Reddit, or Facebook, or even Hacker News.
You can talk in the physical world without being in any particular country so none of the governments have a monopoly either. With that definition we don't even really need the concept of free speech as you always have a choice of where to speak.
Social media sites have network effects and if you make your own site to put your speech on then nobody will ever see it. If you actually want to interact with others then you need to go on a big site that has a monopoly on the speech of that group of people. It's not that much different than a government and if we want to keep the concept of freedom of speech then we need to discuss whether those rights also apply in some way to public forums.
> Ironic, isn't it?
Not unless you're Alanis Morissette.
The difference is the concept of monopoly: A government has a monopoly on being a government in a given region. That's pretty fundamental to what a government even is, as per Weber and Westphalia. A social media company isn't a monopoly on being a social media company. You can talk online without using Twitter, or Reddit, or Facebook, or even Hacker News.