Past thought about free speech seems to be based on the assumption that people can communicate without having some third party approve the sender/receiver/message. Now we mostly use a communication medium that involves a lot of third parties. How many private companies carried this comment to your screen? The bakery whose WiFi I'm using now, their ISP, some unknown backbone carrier, YCombinator, your ISP. Maybe a CDN provider and some others I can't think of.
We already have an answer about a government-operated communication medium: the government (including those acting on its behalf) must uphold our rights. That implies an obligation to keep storing/hosting/delivering things we say. It costs money, but society is more or less ok with the idea of a government having a legal obligation to spend resources on something. But what do we do with a private entity which spends a lot of money to operate and maintain a communication medium?
We already have an answer about a government-operated communication medium: the government (including those acting on its behalf) must uphold our rights. That implies an obligation to keep storing/hosting/delivering things we say. It costs money, but society is more or less ok with the idea of a government having a legal obligation to spend resources on something. But what do we do with a private entity which spends a lot of money to operate and maintain a communication medium?