> They aren't. We're nowhere even close. To the point where I can't even envision how that could happen.
We are pretty close - Mastercard and Visa's (non-public) BRAM rules are pretty clumsy and arbitrary, and effectively do have a tremendous impact on global speech as they are effectively a duopoly. Their terms apply to essentially every business that requires any revenue, and therefore any platforms that people might want to speak on.
That is a problem. A terrible one. And they abuse it.
Yes, I well remember when the US pressured many big financial companies to stop financial transactions with WikiLeaks, and cut off something like 95% of their funding. (Bank of America also didn't like WikiLeaks' planned release of the bank's internal documents.)
I'll note that WikiLeaks is still around, and I believe they could always receive wire transfers. (As a less relevant point, WikiLeaks uses the money for ongoing acquisition and curation, and not only dissemination. The information was mirrored and available elsewhere.)
This therefore isn't an example of b800h's "private companies own every method of articulating your views."
We are pretty close - Mastercard and Visa's (non-public) BRAM rules are pretty clumsy and arbitrary, and effectively do have a tremendous impact on global speech as they are effectively a duopoly. Their terms apply to essentially every business that requires any revenue, and therefore any platforms that people might want to speak on.
That is a problem. A terrible one. And they abuse it.