But that brings back the first point: why should anyone care whether I, or anyone else, has a voice on social media at all? As my friend puts it …
Even if every media company cancelled you and I, it would not be an abridgment of our freedom of speech, because some interested person (or some company acting as a juridic person, as we might say) has a right not to associate with us.
The media of the 19th century was scandalous, in its manifest bias, slander, and disregard of truth, as such. It is not as though the government acting as arbiter began to change that. It was the people's own desire for truth, and competition among news providers, which brought accountability. Why would we need a public social media company? Do we have a need for a publicly-controlled free-for-all forum?
I don’t know if we *need* a publicly-controlled free-for-all forum, but in point of fact we (sort of) have one: literally, there are public squares. There are city parks and street corner were people can (and do) get up on soapboxes and speak about the end of the world and the next presidential election, and give out tickets to the Philharmonic concert series starting next spring. And while these forums are largely free-for-all (I’ve heard some pretty crazy things on street corners!) they are to a certain extent controlled: the usual limits on public speech and dress and behavior apply.
I’m actually not sure that free speech laws would have a whole lot of meaning if there weren’t public places in which we can freely speak. If (say) the whole country were privately owned, like in Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and various yakuzas and mafiosi could determine who was allowed to say what on their respective and, collectively, all-encompassing territories, I’m not sure that situation would actually involve a first amendment right anymore, whatever technically remained on the books. (It is ironic that this libertarian paradise—well, a paradise for a certain brand of libertarian—would actually end up rendering moot one of the libertarian’s favorite bits of constitutional law.)
Right now, we aren’t exactly in that situation with the internet. It isn’t a limited bandwidth situation; anyone with the requisite money to host a website and the requisite skills to set one up can do so. But it’s quite a bit harder (and more costly) than walking out to the corner of 10th and Main used to be. And yet, these days—at least where I live—walking out to the corner of 10th and Main is somewhat frowned upon; and no one will listen, since everyone else is indoors (except for the indefatigable dogwalkers who, however, just keep on going and going). And so one is relegated to one’s little blog, with its 3.7 readers, for saying anything interesting—or else to those social media companies, which offer soapboxes widely, but have the right indeed to withdraw them at any time.
Tl:dr, I do not think
there is any reason that social media companies are obliged to give me a
soapbox, much less that the government is obliged to make them give me one; I
have no rights in the matter. But I do think
the situation of a regulated social media realm is a bit closer to a private
square than might at first blush appear.
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