The author sums up the core of the issue very concisely towards the end of the article: > Treating platforms like governments—encouraging their control, but co

The author sums up the core of the issue very concisely towards the end of the article: > Treating platforms like governments—encouraging their control, but constraining them with flimsy versions of democratic input or due process—is not part of democracies’ usual playbook when companies gain too much power, or when their businesses cause harm. Market forces and competition are supposed to keep private commercial power in check. When those fail to do so, the next line of defense is to enforce competition law, not to establish new quasi-governmental rules for companies. [..] > But we aren’t following the usual playbook, in which government sets the rules and companies follow them. We can’t—not as long as we want platforms to block speech that the U.S. government, following the First Amendment, has no power to restrict. Bypassing the First Amendment requires putting power in private hands. And that in turn means giving up on real democratic input, due process, Supreme Court review, or any of the other tools we use to constrain actual governments.