Company towns were built with the subsidization of the state, such that all property and businesses were owned by the mining company themselves. They were "Corporate Plantations Campuses" if you will, but you couldn't even buy food that wasn't owned by the company.
SCOTUS actually asserted over a hundred years ago that under such conditions, the company was effectively a state actor, and was required to abide by the constitution, even if the business was privately run.
It's the fact that the state has, and is currently, proping it up with total authority as a public square. Through funding, through exclusion from regulation, through back-room deals with other industries at the government's behest.
Twitter.com shouldn't be the public square, but the government doesn't want decentralized communication. I'm happy letting Twitter do whatever it wants if it were a private company that was exclusive to itself and not operating as the extension of discussion from the state. That, however, requires ripping the fingernails out of the government. Since we can't do that yet, we have to recognize that a chilling effect on speech is very obviously taking place when the government is trying to engage in viewpoint discrimination.
Which would then mean they could censor whatever they want, no?
I'm not sure what you mean here.
If they weren't the public square.
Company towns were built with the subsidization of the state, such that all property and businesses were owned by the mining company themselves. They were "Corporate
PlantationsCampuses" if you will, but you couldn't even buy food that wasn't owned by the company.SCOTUS actually asserted over a hundred years ago that under such conditions, the company was effectively a state actor, and was required to abide by the constitution, even if the business was privately run.
What makes Twitter the public square? It is actually a private company.
It's the fact that the state has, and is currently, proping it up with total authority as a public square. Through funding, through exclusion from regulation, through back-room deals with other industries at the government's behest.
Twitter.com shouldn't be the public square, but the government doesn't want decentralized communication. I'm happy letting Twitter do whatever it wants if it were a private company that was exclusive to itself and not operating as the extension of discussion from the state. That, however, requires ripping the fingernails out of the government. Since we can't do that yet, we have to recognize that a chilling effect on speech is very obviously taking place when the government is trying to engage in viewpoint discrimination.
I'm getting strong "real liberalism has never been tried" vibes here.