as always metaphors are a lousy way to reason We'll put. Unfortunately in this case, iur legal and often social reasoning works exactly this way. I think you'

as always metaphors are a lousy way to reason We'll put. Unfortunately in this case, iur legal and often social reasoning works exactly this way. I think you've put your finger on the metaphor at the heart of this problem: the public square. I've had this thought several times when hearing/reading Jack Dorsey's response to all sorts of issues. We can't have a private owner and rulemaker for our public squares, without losing some of that metaphor's more meaningful implications. I think there are two big issues at play. One is that public square issue. If that is appropriate to think of FB that way, I think the implication is exactly opposite of what FB execs want: you can't exclusively exploit it for private gain. A (metaphorical) public square is a political (literal) forum. The types of problems that come with a private public forum are exactly those demonstrated by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The public forum gets auctioned off secretly to political bidders. The second issue is another (possibly) metaphor broken by a shift in the underlying reality. "Expectation of privacy" means something totally different online. There's no expectation of privacy when you get in your car and drive to the store. But, if a new technology happens to give a company the ability to log your car's whereabouts at all times.