The problem is that you have to 'integrate with this very short list of megacorps, and if they don't like you you are not allowed to operate'.
At any substantial scale at all, these are true:
- If Cloudflare doesn't like you, you can't have a website.
- If Google doesn't like you, you can't get discovered.
- If Visa and Mastercard don't like you, you can't get paid.
We never elected these corporations; they power they wield is illegitimate.
Sure, that's $$$$$, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that operating "at substantial scale" is any sort of entitlement. Or that "investing to build the systems and services that tens of millions of people have chosen to use" is "illegitimate." You think "legitimate", political-backed power is would be better? Of the "Shut the internet down when people are protesting something the government does?" variety?
There's negative vs positive spin you could put on this, you know. Things like Twitter let people be heard to a much larger extent than they would've been in the past. Good or bad, it definitely has consequences, and one of them is that some powerful people listen to people who would normally be outside their circle.
Getting paid is more interesting, this is probably easier than it was in the past - there were always pretty limited options, but crypto is a new interesting one.
No, but that's not an argument against the thing you're arguing against. It's a false dichotomy. "Three or four unelected rich white dudes should not have this power" does not mean three or four elected rich white dudes should either.
There are a number of other CDN vendors. Akamai, AWS, GCP, Azure come to mind. Besides, Cloudflare doesn't have any problem with porn anyway, the only thing they do not want is CSAM or explicitly illegal stuff such as material violating copyright or unauthorized releases ("revenge porn").
Sure we did. We voted with our wallets. I'm not sure why you believe it would be any different if we _had_ elected these companies with votes.
In the current policital landscape in much of the western hemisphere has lots of people arguing for restrictive policies around speech or access to healthcare.
At least with the megacorps there is the potential to build a competitor. If they were heavily regulated good luck getting your account reactivated when the government sanctioned monopoly decides it doesn't like you.
Give an equal alternative to Google or cloudflare? If I can't get a comparable product from someone else whose views align more with my own, than I can't exactly "vote" with my wallet can I? They are essentially "running" unopposed.
It's also very convenient that the voting system is "whoever can spend the most money wins" when we're dealing with corporations who have more money than entire nations. We need something a lot better than "deposit cash to cast vote" when it comes to choosing who controls what we're allowed to see and hear.
No one stops people from going to Trump rallies.
There are plenty of ways to get your message out if people want to hear it. It’s work. But it can be done.
Rallies? Trump had like a hundred million Twitter followers. The total number of people who even can go to a rally is like 30,000 at extreme scale. Even if he had a massive rally daily (impossible) with no repeat visitors (absurd) in a year he still wouldn't get to 1/10 of the people he could reach via Twitter. And he'd be able to reach them each once. Plus he'd never get any casuals or outsiders like me - people who go to rallies are already committed. Rallies are not a substitute for the entire edifice of modern social media.
A hundred million twitter followers isn't worthless or meaningless. If someone you liked was ever silenced like that, you'd be up in arms and rightly so.
Conservatives love the free market until it’s not working for them. If the situation had been reversed, they would be the first ones screaming how regulation prevents innovation.
Trump is listed as one of the 400 richest people in the US, he really can’t get his message out there? I live in the South, I assure you that if he did some advertising and started heavily promoting Truth Social it would be successful.
Trump supporters: we are being treated unfairly and we can’t get our message out because of Twitter and Facebook, how will we ever Make America Great Again? Life is so unfair.
The civil rights movement: we are being beaten, we are being lynched, attacked by police, jailed, spit on just for trying to send our children to school, etc. Let’s start a grass roots organization.
There are definitely more MAGAs in proportion to the population and they are better funded than there were people working toward civil rights during the 60s. Maybe it’s not a matter of being persecuted it’s just incompetence when it comes to leadership?
Trump supporters overwhelmingly consider themselves Christians. If they really want to organize, they can do the same thing MLK did - go into the churches.
Not to mention he has a ton of media, sycophants and critics immediately amplifying every little toot he makes.