The first instance is property rights. The second is copyright, a privilege granted by the government at the expense of others' property rights. When a private party leverages copyright to conduct censorship it's ultimately the government that is responsible for violating the victim's freedom of speech. Google certainly has the right to grant or deny access to their services as they please, but that is not the same as having a natural right to decide how the software they develop is used after it has already been released to the public.

I think that’s precisely what’s starting to be discussed now at national levels, with investigations into Apple, Facebook and Google in the EU and the USA.

In many countries, utilities are commercial entities, but they can’t refuse to serve customers because of what they say. I can see a future where we think the same of the big players on the web: commercial, but still public utilities.

Problem of course is that many countries also fear a completely open internet. Providers already have to filter pornography, hate speech, etc. So, would we end up with commercial entities that cannot filter the content published on their platform to suit their norms, but must filter it to suit the norms of the government? If so, would that apply to all sites, including, say, Hacker News, or pro- or anti-abortus sites, or just to large ones? If so, what’s ‘large’?

If they have shown the ability to control speech on their platforms section 230 should be repealed and Google etc should be responsible for the content on their property like any other publisher.

If there's anything that is an indisputable fact, it's that no high-volume platform with user content can proactively police their platform 100%. I think that's a silly rationale to say that they should be prohibited from manually policing content that is brought to their attention afterwards.

There is no reason to give these censorious companies extra legal protections no other publisher has if they are censoring society. They have been protected by a regulation that is now causing intense centralizing of power in the hand of a few technocrats and it is actively harmful to the rest of society to so empower them over everyone else.

It is operationally impractical that society should be subject to Google's whims but Google not liable for Google's network content.

Yes, there is a very good reason.

Traditional publishers review 100% of content before they affirmatively publish it.

User content on most websites are published by automation, and are not reviewed by humans, like this comment.

So what? They choose to publish it. They can choose not to. Their own internal business practices don't require society to give them loopholes with which they get out of all liability and abuse the rights of others.

It's a good reason to the publisher, its not a good reason for the rest of society.

Who chose what, exactly?

In western legal systems, laws typically take into account the mens rea of the crime that has taken place.

It is not reasonable to make people guilty by proxy. Someone either did the crime, or they didn’t.

If you own a building, and someone writes a bomb threat on a bathroom stall, are you guilty of a bomb threat?

If there is no crime in publishing the content then overturning special protections in section 230 will have no effect.

>If you own a building, and someone writes a bomb threat on a bathroom stall, are you guilty of a bomb threat?

If you have a magazine, and publish letters to the editor that contain bomb threats, yes. A building isn't a publishing business, and these companies are in the business of publishing, but it turned into publishing on computers and suddenly they get a special exemption.

They choose what goes on their platform, who can go on it, what is said. They've demonstrated amply their ability to control speech and enforce policy. Let them have their platforms, let them have the liability like everyone else.

It's all just equal treatment under the law.