Facebook is a monopolist platform with billions of users. They share little in common with a tiny physical bakery in Colorado.
The problem with Facebook is precisely that they have an extremely powerful monopoly, as is the case with Google. The Colorado bakery has no monopoly on baking cakes, it's trivial to find alternative service offerings. If they did have a monopoly on baking cakes, then it would be reasonable to require that they bake cakes for everyone (or no one).
This is why Republicans don't widely expect or demand the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, etc. to not lean left. The NY Times for example has basically been left leaning for its entire history. They don't have monopolies on news, or monopolies in newspapers.
When the three broadcast networks held their co-monopoly over TV, imagine them deciding they were only going to allow right or left views on television and strictly exclude all others. Now magnify that by several fold in terms of the reach, financial success and influence that Facebook has today.
And since Facebook is a large communication platform, with WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and the core FB service, a telecom common carrier is perhaps an even more apt example: imagine the AT&T monopoly deciding to remove all left or right leaning persons from their telecom service. Oh you want phone service? How did you vote in the last election?
It becomes very obvious very quickly why it's going to be necessary to regulate the tech platform monopolies as common carriers and treat them as something closer to public utilities.
The problem with Facebook is precisely that they have an extremely powerful monopoly, as is the case with Google. The Colorado bakery has no monopoly on baking cakes, it's trivial to find alternative service offerings. If they did have a monopoly on baking cakes, then it would be reasonable to require that they bake cakes for everyone (or no one).
This is why Republicans don't widely expect or demand the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, etc. to not lean left. The NY Times for example has basically been left leaning for its entire history. They don't have monopolies on news, or monopolies in newspapers.
When the three broadcast networks held their co-monopoly over TV, imagine them deciding they were only going to allow right or left views on television and strictly exclude all others. Now magnify that by several fold in terms of the reach, financial success and influence that Facebook has today.
And since Facebook is a large communication platform, with WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and the core FB service, a telecom common carrier is perhaps an even more apt example: imagine the AT&T monopoly deciding to remove all left or right leaning persons from their telecom service. Oh you want phone service? How did you vote in the last election?
It becomes very obvious very quickly why it's going to be necessary to regulate the tech platform monopolies as common carriers and treat them as something closer to public utilities.