The whole "if you don't like it, vote with your dollars" angle doesn't really work when a handful of companies own, control and host 99.999% of social media. The power that these private companies wield is greater than the power of any government. They're not democratic. They are driven by the unending pursuit of growth. They have no moral compass, so their rules are in their own private interest. They dodge taxes, support populist movements to virtue signal, and they quietly collude with governments that wish to spy on their journalists and citizens so they can "disappear" them for wrongthink. Their rules are "whatever is best for us".
I don't know what the answer is, but having seen these large private companies censor rational discussion of scientific fact, this scares me.
> The whole "if you don't like it, vote with your dollars" angle doesn't really work when a handful of companies own, control and host 99.999% of social media.
"Voting with your dollars" means taking your dollars and giving them to the 0.001% that agree with you. Then this will strengthen them a little so they may become 0.0011% or whatever.
Any large social movement should be able to support a share of the economy commensurate to its size, complete with their own journalists, printing presses, leaflet distributors, radio stations, TV shows, phone factories, app stores and social media apps, or whatever communication infrastructure they want to use.
Of course that requires lots of work, but if that work is divided by the number of people involved, it becomes manageable again (after all, the whole rest of society manages just fine).
If people want to skip that work and instead rely on others to provide them with everything, they shouldn't be surprised if they don't get exactly what they want.
Voting for Parler is not enough if you don't also vote for an app store that will offer Parler for download and a hosting provider that will allow them to use their infrastructure etc.
To use an analogy closer to the founding of the United States: if you want to publish a radical new newspaper, you need to be prepared to buy your own printing press and build up your own network of stores, because the existing printers and sellers may not want to support you.
I don't know what the answer is, but having seen these large private companies censor rational discussion of scientific fact, this scares me.