> If social media is that important - and that isn't a decision anyone has actually voted on, it's just something people say now - then the government can build

> If social media is that important - and that isn't a decision anyone has actually voted on, it's just something people say now - then the government can build its own social media platform and regulate it as a utility. Why does the government need to built its own social media platform? We regulate other privately-owned utilities all the time. Cell phone companies, power utilities, water services, waste management, etc. This is no different - social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are fundamental services in our modern society and it is unacceptable for users to be unfairly discriminated against or banned based on their viewpoints. > Having the government take over a private business because it decides the free speech rights of politicians should be more important than the free speech and association rights of everyone else is a bad idea. We already do this all the time in many different ways - it’s called regulation and it is not the same as “taking over” a business, so spare me the hyperbole. The free speech of individuals is more important that the association rights of Twitter or the cabal of other tech oligopolies that are all immune to competition due to their market capitalization and network effects. > This isn't like the FCC regulating the airwaves, the internet isn't a limited spectrum, and there's no reason to act as if the capacity to disseminate information over it is actually a scarce resource. Actually it does bear some similarities. The scarcity is not around a ‘spectrum’ but it does exist because these products rely on network effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). These network effects mean that access to users and attention is limited and there is a barrier to entry that prevents market competition from functioning properly. So there absolutely is reason to act as if the capacity to disseminate information is a scarce resource.