Unless Twitter decides to collude with Amazon/Apple/Google to keep rival platforms out of the way.
Or the Girl Scouts, or the Post Office, or the little green men from Mars...
Twitter and Facebook have gotten to the level where they are the new "public square" with regards to expression.
and who let them become so influential? The public.
meaning who has the power to take that influence away?
The public.
But of course, if the social media companies got too intolerable, we can't let the public act on its own to correct them... that would be "cancel culture," don't you know...
No, no, no... the "public square" must be brought under government control... it's far too dangerous to entrust to the public.
One candidate having access to it, and another not, could determine election outcomes.
Then I strongly recommend that
every candidate follow the rules and Terms of Service if they don't want to sabotage their campaign.
To make an analogy, if we swap out the players, and the subject matter, the flaws with the "if you don't like it, you can leave" mentality (which I hate when conservatives say it with the love it or leave it rhetoric)
Pretend that the Catholic Church became even more powerful than they already are...to the point where all of the property developers, builders, plumbers, electricians, etc... took their queues from them.
We don't need to pretend; just remember -- there was a time the Church
had such influence... and a
whole lot more.
It'd be tough to form a competing church if you can't tap into any of those services, so simply telling dissenters "if you don't like it, build your own church" isn't an adequate answer.
Martin Luther managed to get it done... back when the Catholic Church literally had the power to have you executed by the state.
Forming a Church
shouldn't be easy under any circumstances... neither should running for office.
Political candidates kowtow to 1. corporate bigshots, 2. uberwealthy potential donors, and 3. special interest groups
every single day and half this country not only approves, but actively fights attempts to change it.
Social Media companies are all three of these things at once, and
now, all of a sudden, there's a problem... but
only with them; the others are still just peachy.
Yeah... sell that somewhere else; I ain't buying it.
Saying "you're free to go to any church you want if you don't like the catholic church" is hardly "freedom of religion" if the entity "in power" has already made all of the right partnerships in order to prevent anyone else from competing with you.
Again, a long time ago in Western civilization, the Catholic Church was
exactly like that.
They
lost their power when the people turned away from it;
not because the government rode in to their rescue.
And that was
The Church -- the institution which, so they like to claim, hold the literal and figurative keys to the Kingdom of Heaven...
If they can lose their influence, so can Facebook.
These major tech companies are in the unique position in that they came about during the infancy of certain technologies, and when you "get in on the ground floor", you can build a massive user base before anyone else has even gotten off the ground.
There is absolutely
nothing unique about that position. The first person to do just about
anything has the advantage by being the first.
Fun Fact: do you know why Hollywood, of all places, became known as the motion picture capital of the world? Why
that particular location was chosen? The weather allowed for more outdoor shooting, and more importantly, it was literally as far as you could get from New Jersey.
You see, motion picture technology was invented in 1888 by Thomas Edison, whose workshop was in Menlo Park, New Jersey. That meant that if you wanted to be in the movie business, you had to work for Edison.
Now, by all accounts, Edison was
not a pleasant man to work for, so his competitors packed up and headed west... a few decades later, "Hollywoodland" became the face of American cinema...
not Menlo Park, NJ.
So you see, it can be done, and has been.
It's the reason why, despite decades going by, there really aren't a lot of competing operating systems out there for computers. People have gotten used to Windows and MacOS by that point, and aren't keen on switching (even if there's something about the service they may not be crazy about)....
And yet there
are competing systems... Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Tails... Now, if you want to claim that these companies have engaged in shady monopolistic practices, I'm the last person who will argue. But to focus
only on social media? You're chipping away at the dragon's toenails because you're afraid to face its teeth.
For instance, as someone who works in the tech field, I'm very familiar with Windows and Mac (and the things about them I'm not crazy about, and the privacy concerns), however, all of the apps I want to use, games I want to play, etc... are basically available on those two platforms (and maybe a few Linux distros if you're lucky).
And that's a financial issue for the app designers... if there were a hundred different operating systems, they'd have to literally rewrite a hundred different versions of their app. How much would
that cost them?
Simply saying "write your own operating system" or "just find a different one to use" isn't a feasible response.
But starting ones own social media company
is a feasible response... Gab and Parler are proof that it can be done... perhaps they'll be as successful as Hollywoodland was.
But if it's not, before we cry "collusion!" let's first make sure it was done
competently. Mike Lindell's "Frank Speech" is a good example of how
not to do it... i.e., stupidly.
