I think the analogy has stretched past its breaking point, because I don’t quite understand what you’re saying.
Are we going to continue to allow capitalist enterprise to have a say in public policy conversation (concessions stands outside the town square)?
Ideally no from an ethics perspective, but then we as a populace need a way to and habit of contributing directly ourselves to fund social services ("dropping a dollar in the plate" - reference to collecting tithe during Catholic services).
They're tired of seeing public services starved of funding, then privatized and replaced by corporate, profit-driven ("plastic") replicas.
Basics of human nature keep undermining our attempts to build giant organizations together. We need to make and keep government a local, small-scale, accountable practice we all participate in, rather than one giant federal tent nobody is connected to - that gets Orwellian.
Hope that helps and hope I represented it faithfully.
That's how we used to fund public debate. Now we fund it by watching advertisements scroll past tweets by journalists and politicians, debating and sharing memes. Meta and Twitter reap those profits now.
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." –A.J. Liebling
I just think it would be cool if the public had some kind of ownership over the debate, rather than someone else who gets to determine the terms under which it occurs. The internet was supposed to be our public square.
Even better if the public can profit from all the money that gets generated from selling our attention. We can use that for public services, like you mention.
You did a great job, though. Thanks.
But also, insofar as "town square" means that everyone can contribute, it's a better analogy for the Internet than it ever was for newspapers. There are no gatekeepers! Social media companies may have big megaphones, but they absolutely do not set the terms of acceptable discourse.
Like, what is it about the Internet that doesn't fit your description?