>"The commons" are not controlled by Facebook; The commons used to be where people gathered. Now people gather on places like Facebook. That's why I put common

>"The commons" are not controlled by Facebook; The commons used to be where people gathered. Now people gather on places like Facebook. That's why I put commons in quotes. Facebook controls a significant chunk of the new "commons", and therefore has the ability to shut people out of a significant portion of the public political debate. >If people decided to have conversations on hacker news and reddit instead of Facebook that is where the political discussion would be and there is literally nothing Facebook could do about it. Irrelevant to the point I'm making. The fact of the matter is that Facebook is where much of the public political debate takes place. >people can still meaningfully participate in political debate without Facebook. They can't participate in the large portion of the political debate that takes place on Facebook if Facebook bans them, so their participation becomes less meaningful. When Twitter also deplatforms them, and Youtube follows suit, they are left with virtually no ability to meaningfully participate.