When freedom of speech was codified as a value in the constitution, it made sense because the government is realistically the only entity that could engage in mass censorship. Nobody predicted a private company would get to that point, which is why those laws don't exist.

We must decide if that needs to change.

That's certainly untrue, at that time access to any sort of mass communication was even more controlled by a few private actors. There were not all that many major printing presses out there and a limited number of publishers would have truly controlled your only access to dissemiating information to a significant number of people besides actual in-person speech. And they certainly did choose what they were willing to publish.

>Nobody predicted a private company would get to that point

Not quite, the East India Company is a counter example.

The example of the EIC was used as an argument against the British Crown by proponents of American independence. Source: Dalrymple's The Anarchy.

The East India Company was processing (and reading) the mail of hundreds of millions of people, and freely choosing who is allowed to continue sending mail?

I’m sorry but that just isn’t true. The framing generation was worried about the tyranny of the masses, global corporations, religious authorities, and many more threats to self-governance.

That line of thinking has no historical basis in the US. In past times mass publishers, large newspapers, had every bit as much influence.

Influence yes, but they weren't able to censor communication between two private citizens. Social media is the new telephone.

I wonder what fraction of the crackpots and conspiracy theorists on twitter would have had the wherewithall to start their own newspapers, though. The barrier to mass communication is so much lower than it was in the 18th century.

Actually your portrayal is not that far off from history.

The Boston Massacre was greatly exaggerated, really only five rioters were killed and arguably the British shot them after violent provocation. Paul Revere's engraving was fiction and portrayed them as murdering the colonists in cold blood, which planted the seeds of the American Revolution.

As far as the barrier to mass communication being lower, perhaps, but mass communication was more prominent in the 18th century than you might think. Pamphlets were fairly inexpensive easily duplicated short-form propaganda, and were read aloud in taverns and churches. Communication wasn't "instant" but it was possible, and the social aspects would have made it more like Twitter and Facebook than I think we'd like to admit.

Yes, I'm aware of that. There was plenty of nonsense and propaganda printed, but I don't think it's possible to deny that twitter gives more people a bigger platform than pamphlets ever did. Otherwise why are people even using twitter instead of printing pamphlets?

> We must decide if that needs to change.

This will require either amending the constitution to strip companies of their 1A rights, OR the supreme court ruling that companies are not people and have no 1A rights. Both are tall orders in my view, with far-reaching direct and 2nd-order effects.

Not necessarily. The phone company can't cut you off for what you said on the phone.

> supreme court ruling that companies are not people

Wait, in the US companies are considered people?

I was channeling Mitt Romney ("Corporations are people, my friend"[1]). But companies, trusts, PACs, SuperPACs, country clubs, HOA's, etc are legal persons. The supreme court ruled all persons (birthed or incorporated) have free speech rights, and additionally, money is free speech[2].

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-says-cor...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo

No, but they are collections of people and as such have certain rights.

Banning someone from twitter is still not mass censorship though. The ideas can still be passed around just fine over snail mail

This is true with regards to the Constitution and the 1st amendment. That said, the US has a strong ethos around freedom of speech that goes beyond just gov't intrusion.

Is big tech within their right to censor how they see fit? Yes.

Is it antithetical to the American ethos? Probably.

One would expect american companies upholding values of its country which enabled them to prosper. None of them would exist today if free speech was not possible when they started.

I think that private entities being able to limit the speech that is performed on their property is an expression of their own free speech, and should be protected by the right that protects that speech from intrusion by the government.

I also think that us being forced to rely on private platforms for public discourse is a grave threat to democracy. There must be public forums that are strong enough to be viable and legitimate places for the majority of public political discourse to take place without relying on private institutions.

It's an "expression of their own free speech" that - thanks to Section 230 - comes without any of the restrictions or liability that would apply if it was actually their own speech. They're very much getting to have their cake and eat it here.

Then they have a baseless false expectation.