The Call To Regulate The Internet Like Utilities Is A Trap

If internet platforms were to be regulated as utilities, its likely that you'd have to get a government license to put up a website.  You'd probably even to have a government license to have social media account.

You'd have to pay, to ask a government nanny for permission to speak on the web, and that permission would come in the form of a license that could be revoked by regulators; at the slightest expression of wrongthink.

You could expect speech on the web, to become as filtered and as sanitized as over-the-air TV was in the 1980's; with nanny state regulators salivating, as they monitor your speech for an excuse to snatch your internet license from you

You'd  have to blow a goodbye kiss to the ability to express dissenting opinions on the web, and the to ability to use it to challenge the fake news narratives, that are vomited out, by the mainstream media.

Sure, you might be permitted to do makeup tutorials, post cat videos, and  discuss, whether the income tax rate should be set at 38% or 39%,  but drop the F bomb, or ( gasp ) express a politically unpopular opinion, and get your internet license revoked.

As bad as corporate regulation of speech on the web can be,  government regulation would be worse.

Don't think for a moment, that a parchment barrier, like the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, will safeguard your freedom of speech from government bureaucrats and judges; who would be thrilled to expand the power they have over you.

Once the necessary regulatory and technological structures are in place, all they'd really need to do, is redefine free speech, so it means what they want it to mean.  With academics and activists stating, "free speech isn't hate  speech," it's already being done.

Don't like that a government regulator just declared that disagreeing with government licensed, fake news outlets is now disallowed hate speech, that can get you kicked off the internet?  

I'm sorry, they can't hear your vote, over the majesty of their regulatory power.

Government regulators are not impartial.  Like everyone else, they have opinions and agendas; and like everyone else, they're looking out for their own interests; not yours. The same goes for judges, including Supreme Court justices.  

What's Needed Is The Building Up of Parallel Platforms

What's needed is not government regulation, but the building up of parallel platforms, like minds.com [affiliate link],  gab.ai,  bitchute.com,  lbry.io,  dtube.video,  namecoin dns,  twister p2p microblogging, and p2p web hosting; like zeronet and ipfs.

It's also strangely coincidental, that this recent expansion of corporate censorship is  happening,  shortly after the latest push to defend the Obama era, "Net Neutrality," regulations.

It leads me to suspect that the censorship happy, tech giants might be doing it,  in order to get their political opposition to cry out for internet regulation; while they can still use that regulation to protect themselves form competitors, like DuckDuckGo, Minds, Gab, and BitChute.

When big businesses call for regulation, the stated goal usually has something to do with comsumer protection.  However, the real goal, is usually to use government regulation to crush smaller competitors,  that are less able to afford the costs of regulatory compliance.

Regulating the internet won't prevent people from being censored, and it won't protect consumer choice.

What it will do, however, is erect government imposed barriers to entry that insulate Orwellian, censorship-happy organizations like Facebook, Twitter, and Google from having to compete with alternatives that don't act as the enforcers of political or patriotic correctness.