> Almost every regulation on business could be considered "at the expense of private property rights". That doesn't matter to anyone except libertarians.
This is something that matters to anyone that owns or aspires to own property and assets: houses, vehicles, servers and other fixed assets, as well as the money in your bank and brokerage accounts. Our economy doesn’t exist without private property rights.
> Likewise, any law could be called "blackmail", because they all threaten negative consequences if someone doesn't do what the government says, but that doesn't matter to anyone at all.
The reason and intent behind a law matters in a democratic society if you prefer laws to be just rather than tyrannical in nature. Section 230 despite the political football it has become was actually a fairly reasonable piece of law. The courts may have come around to similar law through procedure, but by passing it as a statute from the legislature, it quickly resolved what the risks were to running a server other people could use as long as you made a good faith effort to moderate publicly accessible data which enabled the sort of risk-taking that made an interactive web possible. You would take this otherwise fine piece of legislature and smack private entities upside the head with it, and if you can’t see the problem with it, I can’t help you see it.
> And it's ironic to call this "antithetical to free speech as a cultural phenomenon" when this would be a defense of free speech for 99% of the population.
99% is actually a reduction. What part of “Congress shall make no law etc.” is unclear? Generally when two parties have conflicting free speech interests, the property owner wins. That means the owner of the server prevails. You, as a private individual, can purchase your own server, and if you let me post to it, you can kick me off of it and I would have zero remedy.
> The rights of a few billionaires who own web companies shouldn't trump the rights of the public.
As I’ve just outlined, this is not zero sum. There are countless channels in which you can exercise your first amendment rights, but you are not entitled to do so on someone else’s property more than they allow.
> Finally, where do you get the idea that companies simply couldn't exist
This is something that matters to anyone that owns or aspires to own property and assets: houses, vehicles, servers and other fixed assets, as well as the money in your bank and brokerage accounts. Our economy doesn’t exist without private property rights.
> Likewise, any law could be called "blackmail", because they all threaten negative consequences if someone doesn't do what the government says, but that doesn't matter to anyone at all.
The reason and intent behind a law matters in a democratic society if you prefer laws to be just rather than tyrannical in nature. Section 230 despite the political football it has become was actually a fairly reasonable piece of law. The courts may have come around to similar law through procedure, but by passing it as a statute from the legislature, it quickly resolved what the risks were to running a server other people could use as long as you made a good faith effort to moderate publicly accessible data which enabled the sort of risk-taking that made an interactive web possible. You would take this otherwise fine piece of legislature and smack private entities upside the head with it, and if you can’t see the problem with it, I can’t help you see it.
> And it's ironic to call this "antithetical to free speech as a cultural phenomenon" when this would be a defense of free speech for 99% of the population.
99% is actually a reduction. What part of “Congress shall make no law etc.” is unclear? Generally when two parties have conflicting free speech interests, the property owner wins. That means the owner of the server prevails. You, as a private individual, can purchase your own server, and if you let me post to it, you can kick me off of it and I would have zero remedy.
> The rights of a few billionaires who own web companies shouldn't trump the rights of the public.
As I’ve just outlined, this is not zero sum. There are countless channels in which you can exercise your first amendment rights, but you are not entitled to do so on someone else’s property more than they allow.
> Finally, where do you get the idea that companies simply couldn't exist
Don’t put words in my mouth.