Ah, yes, we are not a democracy, we are a republic. Hence we do not allow mob rule. Do away with the electorial college and then we become a mob rule nation. But more to the point. Telephone service was a monopoly due to the fact that in order for several telephone companies to compete in the wire line business they would have to construct their own infrastructure. Imagine, telephone poles with lots of cross arms run riot through the country and rural landscape. Both telegraph (what's that?) and telephone service are geographical monopolies as are power, gas, and water. Even the internet, in that it uses fiber optic cable is something of a geographical monopoly. But fiber is cheap and relatively simple to place underground or up on pole lines. This means that one may have more than one operator in a geographical area.

Now we have cellular telephony that is monopoly like in that there is only so much spectrum available (frequency distribution) so that we have a legal cabal of companies that control it under the eye of the FCC who issues the licenses. By the way, there is a network of fiber optic cable that connects these cellular companies to the rest of the telephone network. It gets a bit complicated so I will stop there. All together, this is your internet. So now we have the social media companies, the news media, and several other bit players that sit behind their firewall routers and help to create content so that they can sell advertising. Now if these companies were sitting behind paywalls, then we should have to bring in the FTC and Fair Market Policies to govern them. But as long as access is "free", that there is no fee for entry to the site, then we must decide how best to regulate them. That their "free services" are a service to the community, then we must insure basic standards for them to use in the conduct of their business.

If free services are to be extended to the public at large then they must be extended freely and without reservation. In essence, they are not creating content, they are helping their informal clients to express their own individual opinions. Hence, this is the basis upon which they should be regulated.

Agreed they are now social media platforms not the thought police that has to protect snowflakes

Well, as much as I hate to infringe upon private industry and rights, the fact that these platforms are now such a media and social influence on the community, I think something needs to be done. I also think the Telecommunications Act needs to be repealed, so that bias news and reporting is reigned in.

Sadly given how our institutions are violating trust I believe this is a must.