IMO tech overplayed their hand. If there's one thing lawmakers don't like, it is being shown their power is limited.

This time it was the right, but the left knows it can happen to them next. I feel congress has realized tech has too much power now.

The ball has started rolling. Expect heavy anti-trust enforcement, regulations and forced interoperability to erode their power.

"In the case of Munn v. Illinois in 1876, the Supreme Court upheld the right of government to regulate industries that affect the common good or public interest (in this case, private grain storage facilities that all local farmers depended upon). Drawing on centuries of British common law precedents that justified regulations of privately owned ferries, wharves, and the like, the majority of the court declared that "when private property is devoted to a public use, it is subject to public regulation.""

Is the "private property devoted to public use" a million-page website comprised of 100% UGC.

Is it the telco infrastructure that provides the backbone of the internet.

Do we the public really need the help of middlemen or do we only need the backbone infrastructure.

Although 100% UGC, some consider the million-page websites "private".

Well, now we have politicians and other characters, who are using these million-page private website middlemen as agents in their efforts to persuade voters to vote them in, re-elect them, raid a capitol, and so on.

The middlemen are now caught in the middle of a political dogfight. Perhaps that is the price of being a middleman.

With Facebook and Twitter USA could have ruled the world.

But the magic power was spent on internal showdowns.

Good. Very good. Well done, folks.

> Traditionally two kinds of private industries have been deemed to be “clothed in the public interest.” One consists of “common carriers,” the other “public accommodations.” A common carrier like a railroad cannot refuse service to passengers or cargo, with narrow exceptions. And a public accommodation like a hotel or a restaurant or a grocery store cannot reject paying customers, with narrow exceptions.

Written in regards to SCOTUS precedent of instructions for private companies, it’s hard to see how the tech monopolies are not “common carrier” if not also a “public accommodation” depending on how you want to look at it.

> The result is our present situation, in which some of the indispensable industries in the U.S. economy, social life, the media and politics are allowed to make their own rules, in the form of ever-changing “terms of service” that nobody reads;

Either way... it seems like this can (should) not continue this way. Like everything hyper-partisan now; I expect we only see a reaction when the pendulum swings and for a brief moment “both sides” can agree something is wrong, until “the other side” switches there position and this is OK now.

In india, its well known the reliance and adani group pretty much run the country as its own. Everyone knows this but cant do anything because the "selected" leaders do everything in their power to keep their overlords' control.

Like literally the entire India is in a recession, every Indian has lost savings and investments are down and employment is shot to shit but these two people have earned billions.

Sounds like real honest to goodness capitalism to me. If there is demand for such services, surely there is a market to be made. Regulating the social media industry will warp the market with perverse incentives. If anything the government needs to meddle less.