> it's their platform and they can do what they want
this is not true for monopolies, AT&T can't disconnect your line because they don't like what you're saying on your calls.
this is not true for monopolies, AT&T can't disconnect your line because they don't like what you're saying on your calls.
We're a long way from being able to casually make a comparison between AT&T and Youtube that will be taken seriously.
But in either situation, phone calls are not analogous because they’re 1:1. YouTube is about public broadcast. You also don’t pay for their service to host your videos.
Several of the big tech monsters started a fight they can't win with half of the country that now absolutely hates them (and will at one time or another control vast amounts of political power), and the other half which still wants to see them restricted anyway. The question is how far the Feds and states will go in curbing big tech's abuses on eg cancel culture and content censorship, given the various monopoly positions of these companies. Florida's law on deplatforming is a small, correct first step. Texas is guaranteed to follow, and a lot more restrictions will follow after that.
The notion that they can do whatever they want with their monopoly platforms, is already probably not an accurate premise. In the near future, it will definitely not be. We're in about inning one of laying down innumerable restrictions on what big tech can do with their platforms. The odds are quite high the regulators will in fact go further than they should over time, severely damaging the US tech economy.
The free-run days for big tech are very clearly over. They're merely too arrogant to recognize it. What was the last major acquisition by Facebook? There are three other prominent US social networks out there with a collective $200b in market cap now. Everything Facebook has is very stale, boring. Instagram is a giant yawn at this point, it's old, increasingly boring and lame. Which is why young people flocked to TikTok so quickly. Facebook has been de facto barred for a long time from eating any of their major competitors. All that money piling up to the ceiling and FB can't even use it to further their monopoly, and they know it. The party is largely over, although big tech will continue to drift for a while on enormous momentum.
If Amazon were smart, they'd be in the process of spinning off AWS right now, to unshackle it from so much anti-trust attention that the parent draws, to get far out in front of that. That's guaranteed to happen within the ten or so years after the Bezos era regardless. Google could probably do the same with YouTube, but they'll aggressively fight against that (Amazon will willingly spin off AWS as their stock stagnates, in the typical unlock shareholder value move).