Just exactly how do a series of market driven consumer decisions lead to a public platform? Re<i>public</i>s like the United States and most other liberal democracies are founded on social contracts that have never been dictated by the kind of corporatism that you&#x27;re describing and in fact have always rallied against it.<p>Even the traditionally held conservative commentators like Edmund Burke railed against things like the British East Indies Company and warned against &quot;corporate tyranny&quot;.<p><i>That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.</i><p>What you&#x27;re failing to recognize is that we&#x27;ve already given companies like Facebook a public platform through our system of corporate legal structures and more obviously though things like network neutrality.<p>Facebook, like any corporation or any faction of private interest, will take as much territory as it is possibly allowed. It is up to external checks from a government &quot;of the people by the people for the people&quot; to regulate and contain these factional interests.<p>Federalist #10 does a much better job with the discussions related to factional interest than I could ever hope to fit in to a comment box, as do the writings of Paine, Jefferson and, I really can&#x27;t recommend him enough, especially to the economically minded, Edmund Burke.<p>Also, all of the discussion and legal precedent around the anti-trust laws are very pertinent to any discussions of the limits of corporate power.<p>And yes, in case it isn&#x27;t clear, what I am arguing for is a form of conservatism, but a form not predicated on dogma. Think Chesterton&#x27;s fence.