https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210111/12082546034/some-thoughts-twitter-pulling-plug-trumps-account.shtml

First of all, corporations

enjoy First Amendment protections, among other constitutional

protections. Although some of my friends decry that proposition,

given the Supreme Court's current composition, that is not

going to change during my lifetime. And the First Amendment protects

the right to refuse to associate with speech one does not like.

There is only so much that legislation could do to prevent companies

like Twitter from controlling the speech that they allow.

Second, withdrawing or

adapting the section 230 liability shield

is one way to impose limits on platform's adoption or

implementation of their content control policies, perhaps, but there

is no reason to think that any withdrawal that is likely to pass, and

that would be constitutional (because it does not involve viewpoint

discrimination), would be better than the current state of affairs.

Moreover, that would be a very blunt instrument that could not easily

be calibrated. I strongly support the principles of section 230,

which allow online platforms to decide what speech they will allow on

their platforms by protecting them against liability for speech that

they carry (with very limited exceptions). They are not common

carriers, like USPS or the PSTN’s. (Thus, Apple and Google

could cabin Parler by threatening to deny it access to the App and

Play Stores, and Amazon could deny Parler web hosting services, all

on the ground that Parler failed to successfully enforce rules

against advocacy of political violence. I find it mind-boggling that

people who call themselves “conservative” are railing

about the plug being pulled on a platform for the stated reason that

it allegedly fails to block calls for political violence). And they

are not government bodies, which are (largely) forbidden to engage in

content discrimination, and especially viewpoint discrimination, in

allowing or suppressing speech. Section 230, both as a legal

principle but also as a social principle, not only allows platforms

to tolerate speech that I find abhorrent, but also allows them to

exclude speech that I detest, or speech that I adore.