Regulate Google, Facebook, and Twitter as Public Utilities? Bad Idea.
A case in point is the Internet, specifically websites such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook. Many conservatives believe these companies are politically biased and are “censoring” conservative content in various ways or promoting their opponents. They propose increased government regulation of these companies. They are said to be "public utilities" that require the hand of government a little heavier on their shoulder than other businesses.Personally, I can readily believe these websites are biased and do discriminate against certain political views. But what should the government do about that? Should it do anything?
Of course the government shouldn't be involved. What a horrible idea. It's hard to even imagine that there are so-called conservatives and libertarians out there who would be advocating such a thing. Further regulation will simply entrench these services as monopolies. They're monopolies now you say? The same thing was said about MySpace in 2007. Today, these services could easily be replaced by newer and better services. Once the government gets involved, that will become much harder.
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Most certainly a terrible idea, we cant trust Facebook to enforce free speech, how can we trust the same government trying to quell dissent?
Facebook can only control speech on their platform. That's not really a problem now because there are plenty of platforms (including this one). The heavy hand of government regulation could change all that.
For certain that would be an extreme level of encroachment on their part.. After all if that does happen whats to stop them from creating backdoors to spy on every individual? Not even creating backdoors, but having legal access to everyones private data, communicating habits and connections. It's dangerous as hell.