But where does this end? Does the phone company want to allow conversations they find morally reprehensible? Does apple want to send iMessages that denigrate their company?
After all, they are private companies! /s
I'm no lawyer, but I think the distinction is in utilities. The postal service, for instance, can't just refuse service to people they don't like. Same with power companies. I'm not sure how phone providers and ISPs fit into this. But I think it may be useful to have ISPs, payment providers, and maybe also DNS and DDOS protection providers be considered utilities. My basic measuring stick is that putting HMTL and CSS out on the internet should be protected akin to the ability to send letters through the mail.
Democracies usually protect the freedom of initiative too, but it's a different protection, with very different exceptions, and companies usually have it much more restricted than speech.
They're granted immunity from lawsuits from the government because they're a dumb pipe, but then they censor/promote as if they are a publisher.
A business can't sue facebook for allowing a BLM riot to organize on its platform that destroyed their storefront, and similarly they have no recourse when said business gets a facebook page deleted because they complained about it.
Freedom from compelled speech is the default. Requiring people or organizations to host speech is the exception, and is limited to things like utilities and cigarette health warnings.
Making Facebook or Twitter a utility is very coarse grained. They would have to allow all legal speech. They wouldn't be able to ban users for nudity or porn, or explicitly espousing Nazism (actual Nazism, not the much more expansive post 2016 definition of "Nazi"). Both of these things are legal in the US, and a utility would have to permit them. If social media is made a utility, then social media is going to become 8chan.
That's why I think it makes the most sense to apply utility status at the infrastructure layer not the application layer. Social media companies can still moderate, people on the fringes can spread their message on niche applications or on sites they build themselves.
I don't emapthize with the ISPs here. Internet access has become a utility which is required to participate in many parts of the economy and society. Utilities should not be allowed to refuse to service someone who is using the service legally.
If someone is hosting illegal content, that's a different story.
Agreed - though I find it's more of a headache than scary. On end, I don't like the fact that increasingly internet infrastructure is acting as a de facto judge in deciding what speech is and isn't allowed. I empathize with both parties. ISPs don't want to host speech they feel is abhorrent, and I'd probably do the same thing were I in their position.
I'm much more accepting of platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, et. al. taking down groups and banning members than I am of infrastructure providers doing the same. The former kicks people off of large communities, but people can still put together their own websites. When it gets the the point that I might not even be able to serve plain HTML that I wrote myself, because nobody will even let it go through the wires that's when I start thinking utility regulation in ISPs, DNS, etc. is necessary.
Cloudflare's CEO was very humble when taking down sites. When talking about taking down the Daily Stormer, "Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet... No one should have that power.” [1] I largely agree, though I'd offer the caveat that something needs to have this power but it should be an institution like the courts rather than individuals in corporations.
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/cloudflare-ceo-says-removing...