I agree with this line of reasoning, but then we have to ask the question: are platforms obligated to host all speech that is not illegal (in whatever jurisdiction they reside in)? Should they be obligated? If I as a private citizen decide to create a platform to host discourse, do I have the freedom to decide what is permitted there?
If the answers to the followup questions are "yes", then we arrive to the status quo, where most of the big platforms heavily censor the content. This means that if you want to say something that'd be censored, you have the right to do so, but you don't have the means. I suppose you can walk out into the street and say to the people there, but there's a certain lack of reach in that approach :)
So there's also a practical aspect, where you may have full freedom of speech by law, and yet in reality you have no freedom because nobody will give you the possibility to actually communicate what you want to say. You may try to build your own platform, but then you run into second order problems where you'll find that no service provider will want to host your servers.
At one point, you may hit a barrier where you have no monetary means to build all the infrastructure necessary to be able to provide a truly free speech shelter.
I believe that common carrier applies to platforms, not just the infrastructure of wires. These platforms could not exist without the large privilege given to them I'm immunity to the illegal content they serve up.
The problem is that these platforms have it both ways. They can censor entire political parties, yet play dumb and cry immunity "we're just a platform" when there's literal illegal content that makes it's way to their public hosting.
Once they censor based on content, they should lose all until and be considered a publisher of that content. They're no longer a passthrough, they're now actively working to manipulate opinions
I hear this argument quite a bit, and I wonder if you have ever tried to use a discussion group that has been overrun with spam? Because that’s what you will get.
The reason why platforms are expected to host even the speech they don't agree with is the same why some bakers are forced to make cakes for homosexual weddings. If you compel to the latter, you should also compel to the former and vice-versa.
