Of course, over the last few years, the debate about the power of social media oligopoly to set the parameters for acceptable speech on their platforms has centered on whether or not, as private platforms, can do whatever they want in terms of allowing people to speak their minds.
It's always been the libertarian argument that private companies can do what they want so long as they don't physically harm people (with the exceptions of like football leagues and boxing venues in which people voluntarily hurt each other), steal, or breach contracts. Surely enough, there has been debate among libertarians when it comes to free speech on social media. There's a fair amount of libertarians who have been defending the practices of Twitter, and the like on that basis. I clearly haven't been one of them. Some may view me as being intellectually inconsistent. I don't think that I am and I'll cover that later.
The thing is, the left has always been in favor of government meddling in business practices. When religious bakers and photographers refuse to work gay weddings, they want the government to step in and force the businesses to associate. Hell, Democratic Socialists even want government to step in and dictate how businesses structure themselves. Yet, when it comes to social media practices in regard to speech, that's where they've stepped up and said that private companies can do what they want and it's not a violation of free speech. Now, that is intellectually inconsistent.
The difference is pretty clear. The position of the illiberal Left is about their own convenience. Businesses can't do anything that they don't like nor refuse to do anything that they want them to do; but, when social media companies are comfortably silencing speech that they don't want to hear, that's the private company's prerogative. That is, until an actual advocate for free speech makes it into the board and there's a sense of danger that the oligopoly won't capitulate to the state.
So, why am I not being inconsistent? Well, you can correct me if you think that I'm wrong; but, I'll make my case.
Well, the first, easiest, and simplest answer is that there's nothing in libertarian philosophy that tells us that we have to like everything that a business does. There's no moral inconsistency in defending the right of Nazis to march and turning around to criticize the Nazis in your next breath. The same goes for business practices. I can think how you operate your business is dumb and have serious problems with it; but, that doesn't mean that I'm gonna call the cops on you.
What's more, the comparisons of social media platforms to platforms that are actual venues don't hold up. If you run an auditorium and decide to refuse to let a speaker use your stage, that's legitimate. Only one person can use the stage at a time. Curation needs to happen. Synagogues don't need to allow Nazis to speak in the building. Social media companies don't need to curate. Millions of people can and do use the platforms at the same time at any given moment and millions more can curate their own profiles and decide, for the most part, what they want to see. A libertarian doesn't need to like an oligopoly stepping in and deciding what we're allowed to write or read anymore than a government.
Finally, libertarians hate collusion between corporations and government. We tend to hate it even more than socialism. Ayn Rand (even though she didn't like libertarians) said that capitalism with government help is the worst of economic phenomena. It's clear that the social media oligopoly has been playing ball with the state. Twitter has become a convenient way to work around the First Amendment.
The reality is that the people on the illiberal Left who have been telling us that social media companies are private and can allow or disallow any speech they want who are suddenly freaking out now that Elon Musk is involved are people who have been supporting major corporations and government being in bed with each other so-long as the coupling was reinforcing their echo chambers. Now that it may not do that and maybe, hopefully, the collusion will end, the illiberals have a problem.