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A comment on Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others. Parent comment

Re:Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWar... by losteric on Thursday May 02, 2019 @05:15PM (#19813030)
Do you mean it should be seen as a public space?

I agree there is an argument for regulating large for-profit social media sites as a public utilities... but I can't see how they are "a government" in and of themselves.

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Re:Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWar... by ben_w on Friday May 03, 2019 @06:49AM (#19817179)
Not quite. I mean that it has rules of behaviour, it hires people to enforce those rules, it has strategic objectives and engages in world events, and is an economic force just above the middle of the IMF 2018 list, roughly equivalent to Slovenia (assuming GDP ~= revenue), or North Dakota if prefer to compare against a state of the USA.

Facebook is not a nation, despite all that, but not all government are national governments and I think it counts as a kind of government.

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