system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The way Facebook, Google and other tech megacorporations control speech on their platform limits free/effective speech in the world today

Let me start by saying that I am totally aware that private companies are legally allowed to choose what is and isn't allowed on their platform. 

The internet has undoubtedly changed how we communicate with each other, connecting us in ways we never thought possible.

However, as the wild west days of the internet fade behind us, we have entered a world where speech is increasingly being controlled by megacorporations like Facebook, Twitter, Google and others who now have become major channels for the expression and discover of our ideas today. 

 These companies effectively control vast amounts of the flow of information in the world, and as the climate continues to polarize, we are now facing serious problems with our situation. These private companies have already begun using their platforms to determine which voices are worth listening too, and deplatforming or soft-censoring voices they don't like.

Here are my main problems with this situation:

* The private aspect means that a small group of individuals can decide based on their own personal biases or preferences what voices are heard, distorting the flow of speech to their own benefit, or others detriment

* Further, political biases at these companies tend to lean left, resulting in voices that oppose or disagree with such ideologies being, at best, potentially underrepresented in the public conversation•

* At worst, disliked ideas can be branded as "hate speech" or similarly nebulous terms, and banned on platforms without evidence or warning, all on the whim of of a mouseclick. Sometimes this happens in tandem at multiple companies, forcing someone off multiple platforms at once

* The monopolistic nature of these companies also means that competing platforms can essentially be muscled out by the big guys

* Cooperation with world governments without civilian oversight means that government censorship is also an increasing threat without proper tools to deal with it

The end result is that free/effective speech is at severe risk of being censored by private companies at the behest of everyone but the people it actually matters for. 

•Left wing ideologies are also at risk here, because if these tech giants can censor peoe they don't like, they can censor people they like, too.
gpt
A small group of people have always controlled information and decided what the populace could or could not know. This was true of television, radio, print, and even town criers. These platforms have effectively made dissemination of information at scale as much of a mertiocracy as the world has had. How do you contextualize your argument historically when dissemination of information has never been a right for more than the privileged few?