The right to speak freely in the public square and in your own home is basic, but what about in somebody else’s domain?
Surely, the monastery where people go to contemplate, meditate, or pray, in silence, must be able to exclude those who choose to speak, regardless of topic. Theater staff and private club members presumably may exclude anyone breaking rules of etiquette, which may include making certain statements or discussing certain topics.
So, why is there such resistance to the idea that Google, Facebook, and Twitter, may suspend, ban, or simply not show posts or other content that are not to its liking?
The answer is that these tech giants are virtual monopolies in their respective media spaces. Denying the use of Facebook and its normal process of displaying posts in someone’s friends’ or followers’ feeds is like denying a person access to a popular street corner or denying electric or water utility service to a paying customer in a developed jurisdiction where utility service is offered to everybody else.
These tech giants became so big, so fast, by offering their services to almost all applicants, setting up an expectation that they would behave like a public utility or a public department. They also became so big, so fast due to investment by governments, which new entrants into these media spaces by competitors did not have, and by laws shielding these new technology providers from liability that was expected to attach to them, due to their similarity to other organizations that have to exercise more control over information emanating from them.
These companies are fundamentally public, conferring on them the obligations of a government, public service. These companies did not arise in a private market. On the contrary, they were incubated in cocoons of governmental protection and stimulation, so there is some level of responsibility attaching to them to serve all. That means that they must not arbitrarily suppress some of their clients, now that they have become so big and ubiquitous that there is no a practical way to address abusive behavior on the part of the media company. Opening or patronizing a competing business, which is the natural and best way to address a dispute in a private or non-monopolistic market, is not an effective remedy to being abused by a de facto monopoly that has grown in a protected cocoon.
The existence of one provider of a service which maintains a virtual monopoly more than briefly, is a sign that the market in which it operates is not free, but manipulated by government in the form of regulation, license, or subsidy. Even maintaining monopoly power by cartel is historically a temporary phenomenon, except in cases where the cartel is propped up by governmental power, or where the cartel may be at odds with the recognized government, but in fact, the cartel exercises powers ordinarily expected of a government.
Because Google was birthed and nurtured by government funding, and Facebook and Twitter have been shielded from costly risk by that government, these tech giants have an obligation to treat their paying customers like an electric utility would. They have an obligation to offer normal and customary service to each paying customer, and they have an obligation to respect the free expression of their customers in the same way that free expression is protected on the public sidewalks of any downtown in the USA.
