I don't fully agree here. It is illegal in the US to refuse customers based on race, gender or sexual orientation, but political affiliation is A-OK?
Well, that is a fairly limited law, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't apply to online services. Especially things like Facebook and Twitter where it's rather difficult to even nail down who is actually the customer, let alone what the user service is, if there even is a "service" at all. Keep in mind, Facebook makes their money off advertisers buying ads, and marketers buying data. In both a practical and a legal sense, those are the customers much more than the users are. The users are being entertained just enough to harvest information from them.
Also lets be honest here. These social media platforms are unprecedented in human history. They are the new public square. It seems you are suggesting that a private corporation (well, technically public since it is publicly traded) should be allowed to dictate the outcomes of elections?
The problem is these "platforms" are not public. They're private. It's not a public square any more than my house or warehouse is. Just because I invite a bunch of people to my party (and collect all their information as they enter, and monitor what they do), it doesn't mean I can't refuse entrance to anyone or kick them out whenever I damn well feel like it. Keep in mind, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail all started with needing invitations, too... From the network security aspect as well, the very nature of a user account is considered an authorization to use a private system that can be revoked at any time for any reason, posted or not. You can't argue that I don't have the right to kick off a user from my company's network.
Facebook alone has 2.32 billion members, close to 1/3 of the entire world population is on Facebook. That number must be about 90% of the west. Silencing groups based on politics will have a very, very real effect on the outcome of elections..
I highly doubt it's 90% of the west. But even if it is more like 75% (when removing duplicates, fakes, dead accounts, accounts of the dead, etc), I totally agree it is still a massive problem. It very much does have a real sway on people and opinion. And worse, that sway over people is rather ancillary to their currently primary business (or so they say -- I suppose we really have no way of knowing). It's a dangerous and unprecedented situation, for sure.
You touch on it slightly at the end of your post, but the fact these handful of companies have a complete monopoly on Social Media is not an accident. In this case we do need legislation, and maybe even a breakup of companies like Facebook similar to what happened to Ma Bell.
Well, I think you're going to have a very difficult time finding the type of predatory harm (in a legal sense) as was found in the case of Ma Bell. These companies have basically "stayed in their lane" and haven't branched out as wildly as Bell / AT&T did. There currently is no law against holding a critical mass of people. Only against leveraging resources from that critical mass to dominate and eliminate competitors across multiple markets. Also, I'd argue that the only reason Facebook and the others could be considered a monopoly at all is because of the absence of Net Neutrality. If you define the the ISP as a Telecommunication Service provider (as they were under Title II) you minimize the ability for Facebook and the others to utilize their user count and cash fund as leverage against competitors, as the ISPs are then forced to carry all properly classified traffic the same as the rest of that class.
(edited for clarity)
