This would be ideal. The network effect is strong. As Barrin92's response to my comment stated, anyone can make an alternative site. But all of the value comes from the large networks of people on these sites.
I would prefer if such a "public square" site weren't for profit, if I'm going to be honest. Not sure how well that would work, but profit motives introduce too many flaws for such a necessary part of society. OTOH, so do influences from other means...
Misrepresentation of the publics interest and voice will continue to occur. There is no solution that I'm aware of.
Works perfectly fine. There are plenty of alt-platforms that are based on self-hosted principles like that (Mastodon, Pleroma, Matrix), and all of them are about the most "free" platforms (rather, protocols) you can find.
Although it was the FCC under Trump that, in 2017, removed common carrier status as a requirement for ISPs. Hard to make the case that ISPs are not common carriers but Twitter is.
I don't understand why many liberals defend a corporations freedom to silence speech but get angry when conservatives in the government do it. Six of one, half dozen of the other, it's still speech being silenced by someone more powerful than you. But one being a corporation and one being a politician doesn't change the fact that both limit freedom of speech protected by the constitution.
Because it’s a false equivalence that has nothing to do with being “liberal”.
The government has the power of coercion. No corporation has that by law.
In general, you are conflating the right to free speech with the privilege of easy armchair dissemination of one’s speech. Simply, your right to say anything doesn’t extend to forcing the world to disseminate and listen to what you have to say. Frankly, that extension is very much 1984.
In extremis, Trump has the means to publish a newsletter and nobody is stopping him from doing it.
The answer is: no you don't. Because the government enables these companies to do these things that enroach upon your rights while making people like you believe you still have said rights simply because it's not the government proper doing it. The government and through lobbying can influence and control a lot of what you do without legislation you know.
Unless the government (the people) buys it and funds it through taxes, it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the concept of a public square, just like a newspaper isn't a public square, and the commercial TV and Radio isn't a public square either. Neither are phones. Or billboards.
If something becomes ubiquitous enough to be regarded a public square, we either have to make it one, or fix the reason why a commercial for-profit company is regarded as public square in the first place.