Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse
Not sure if there&#x27;s a more eloquent name for these kinds of &quot;throw enough shit and hope some of it sticks&quot; arguments but the article is very confused, from claiming ad hominem attacks are as bad as racism, to ranting about millenials and throwing in WMD&#x27;s in Iraq for good measure.<p>The actual key issue is somewhere in the middle of that article:<p>&gt;<i>&quot;When tech companies take it upon themselves to arbitrate what is or isn’t misinformation, or taking action based on events that occur outside of their own platforms what they are doing, at its core, is adjudicating international law&quot;</i><p>No, it isn&#x27;t. It&#x27;s a private company determining how and who it conducts business with. Being a &#x27;patrician&#x27; of your own property is completely fine and in fact a basic right, and if you don&#x27;t like Mailchimp&#x27;s content policies, go to a competitor.<p>Unless someone explains to me, in plain English, why we ought to abolish the very important freedom of deciding for themselves who and how private entities do business with, I don&#x27;t want to read any essay length pieces any more about the Gulag archipelago, Orwell or how his friend being cancelled by Mailchimp is like being stuck in Soviet Russia.<p>And to preempt the inevitable <i>&quot;but they&#x27;re so large!&quot;</i>. This is not an indicator of anything. Tech companies are large yes, but competitors are, as Google actually correctly put it at one point, one click away. Size is not an indicator of market power, inability to chose alternatives is.