Platforms want to be utilities, self-govern like empires
Let&#x27;s see.<p>So, you have an email address at Gmail which you&#x27;re using to authenticate everywhere, which is your username at most services, and possibly your main point of contact.<p>Then you mention something innocuous, I don&#x27;t know, a cucumber maybe, on YouTube in a comment, and now your account is gone because apparently cucumbers are a part of some neo-nazi slang or a secret pedophile ring slang, and you got reported into oblivion.<p>Since your email address was also a part of getting into your bank account, now you&#x27;ve got a problem of getting your money, too.<p>The hoops you have now to jump are worse than changing spelling of your legal name or changing the fucking citizenship.<p>Still, the internet hivemind is raving that &quot;it&#x27;s not censorship if a private company is doing it&quot;, &quot;they are a private company so they have a right to boot anyone off&quot;.<p>Of course another cohort of smug internet users will say: just self-host your email! Well, good luck getting your email deliverable if you&#x27;re a Joe Schmoe and not one of the big players in the first place.<p>The big companies pulled the blanket so much that without using their services, you may as well not exist on the internet. They&#x27;ve made it extremely difficult, at least. They got, in some sense, bigger than many individual governments in regulating information channels. And yet they dodge all responsibility on the premise of being &quot;private companies&quot;.<p>What a wonderful world to be living in.