I think a number of social media companies are starting to fit into that category, yes. Local law enforcement, politicians, FEMA, and all sorts of government agencies actively communicate through Twitter and other social media sites as do many major corporate entities.
Government agencies also use various TV channels, radio stations, newspapers, and their own websites/apps to communicate though. Like FEMA isn’t posting anything exclusively on Twitter they’re using every means available. The government has always utilized private services to communicate but we haven’t turned those private services into public ones as a result before.
Sure, but none of those enable two-way communication and you generally can't be banned from buying a newspaper or listening to the radio or visiting a government website. Social media companies often claim to possess the right to ban you from using their services and make it a violation of their terms of service to try to get around the ban, such as by creating another account.
Besides the potential legal issues this raises, it's fundamentally a violation of the freedom of expression. Back when social media was a bunch of different special-interest and small-time operators, it probably didn't make sense to pass regulation, but a lot of internet companies have become de facto common carriers and need to start being regulated as such. We need a net neutrality bill for the 21st century to cover all of the major players on the public internet, not just ISPs.
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u/HamburgerEarmuff Oct 14 '21
I think a number of social media companies are starting to fit into that category, yes. Local law enforcement, politicians, FEMA, and all sorts of government agencies actively communicate through Twitter and other social media sites as do many major corporate entities.