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>And since political candidates are on there, you even lose the forum to talk with them. (AOC, Trump, other national politicians, local city councils, county co

>And since political candidates are on there, you even lose the forum to talk with them. (AOC, Trump, other national politicians, local city councils, county councils). When the soapbox IS twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat - just how much power should the corps yield to decide who talks and who doesn't? Honestly, breaking up the companies will come with the added blessing that public discourse can take place on platforms that are not, structurally speaking, race-to-the-bottom garbage.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago
To be frank, I don't see the US having any sort of wherewithal about splitting these megacompanies up. The last major company they did so was Ma Bell.. And look at how they've coalesced. And exactly what rubric could we split them? I can set up my own instance of Mastodon, which is a FB/Twitter like clone. I can set up federated Jabber chat. Is the monopoly FB sales? Or is it FB groups? Well, it's obviously the sheer number of people that's pulling the oxygen out of the room - but that's not a monopolistic attribute... yet. Monopoly isn't the right word here. I don't think we have a right term yet, to describe being deplatformed from society by private entities on a massive scale. But, it feels gravely wrong without due process. And it feels wrong as well to be deprived from access to my political representatives, even if it is a proprietary and private platform.