Let’s observe the rest of the quotation in the headline: ... key decisions alone “without any supervision, without any accountability, and without any sort of d

Let’s observe the rest of the quotation in the headline: ... key decisions alone “without any supervision, without any accountability, and without any sort of dialogue or transparency for the kind of decisions that they’re taking.” I don’t know what the content of the bill in question is, though I would guess it is well meaning while somewhat missing the mark. I don’t think the statement is particularly objectionable. I feel like dialogue and transparency and accountability are pretty good things to have. But maybe dialogue and accountability are really just ways for politicians to have these platforms bend to their will. To me, it still feels better than these issues being decided as part of @jack’s part-time journey of self discovery[1]. It seems to be less extreme than requirements that certain broadcasters produce balanced coverage or that banks do not decide loans based on protected characteristics. I sympathise with the argument that private companies should be allowed to do what they like within the bounds of whatever contract they have with their users. But Twitter and Facebook position themselves as quasi-public spaces welcome to all, and I think if you’re going to act more like a (classical) forum, you might need to be treated by the law like one. In the U.K. if you set up a path open to the public across your back garden and leave it accessible for long enough and consistently enough then it will become a public right of way and you’ll have to keep it open and accessible. [1] there’s two other arguments here: one is that it’s a savvy political calculation to reduce the threat of legislation from democrats. The other is that it’s due to growing pressure from employees. I think I’m not cynical enough to believe the first alternative—Twitter seemed to be trying to act in the public interest after it was obvious who would win Georgia and before putting trump in Twitter jail, and if they want to curry favour with the new regime, why not make it obvious? I find the second alternative quite compelling but this is countered by the relative inaction for the past 5 years and the fact that it seems these companies are rarely subjected to more employee pressure than seeing a few memes being made about how awfully they are behaving. But maybe Twitter employees saw Twitter as appropriately trying to act as a public forum and we’re satisfied with the status quo until the events in the capitol.