For years leftists told libertarians that corporate power could be suppressive, oppressive, tyrannical. Libertarians scoffed. Demanded evidence.
So leftists provided that evidence: they developed major social media (with a little help from the alphabet soup of U.S. “intelligence” agencies) and then used their leverage to censor information, inquiry and opinions that run counter to their narrative and party line. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter now routinely censor opinions on the coronavirus they (and the World Health Organization) don’t like. And more.
They proved their point. They became the oppressors they warned us about.
Libertarians lost the argument, and are doubly unhappy about it: they were proven wrong and they are oppressed. But leftists? Their win must be . . . bittersweet. I mean, to win by losing: by becoming the very thing you most hate!
twv
Wirkman Comment 
The nature of the oppression? It is not merely to have our ideas curtailed, in apparent breach of contract (without consequences for the companies involved in taking down “misleading” information), but to have the resulting misinformation left mostly unchallenged be used by governors of the states and other local politicians to curtail quite palpable freedoms. Indeed, to suppress labor and trade.
As I have repeatedly stated on the LocoFoco Netcast, and probably also on Paul Jacob’s This Week in Common Sense, as well as on this blog, the current pandemic lockdowns are the biggest hit capitalism has received since Communism.
Well, I see an easy way:
Your opening statement is a fallacious generalization.
While some “Libertarians”/”libertarians” might’ve indeed “scoffed. Demanded evidence”, others would simply point out, that “corporate power could be suppressive, oppressive, tyrannical” only in the circumstances of the state, i.e. when it is protected from competition whilst shifting the cost of such protection onto others.
Hence, no, nothing to “prove” here.
But Andrii, the dominance of these social media platforms as central to Internet and social life is not a function of government protection, it is a function of network effects and path dependence. Libertarians and other abused people still use these media. We may be voluntarily oppressed, but oppressed nonetheless. And the dominance of these social media bigots and censors is being played against us in the real world.
That being said, there is a good chance they will not succeed. They may fall. And maybe if Congress takes away immunity from slander and libel lawsuits they will retract their claws.
But many libertarians oppose libel and slander lawsuits….
“But Andrii, the dominance of these social media platforms as central to Internet and social life is not a function of government protection, it is a function of network effects and path dependence.”
This is a theory in itself, and I have not seen any evidence or proof for it yet. Do you have any?
I have a different theory: the current layout of the markets is in a great way a product of layers upon layers of past and current (government) interventions. If it were not for those, we would have had unrecognizably different setup.
Would such a market be more or less “suppressive, oppressive, tyrannical” than a current one? Economic theory points that it would be more populated, and players would be much more diverse. Also, in absence of the “single point of control” there would be much less demand for politico battlegrounds such as twitter today.
And politico battlegrounds are in no way “a simple corporate entity”. I see them a part of the machinery of the State. Hence, their “suppressive, oppressive, tyrannical” characteristics are no surprise, whether they are in leftists hands or in rightists.
When the world was on paths of using WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 or Quattro Pro, Bill Gates spent years and lots of money to get the world on paths of using MS Word and Excel. When the world was on a path of using Netscape Navigator, he spent years and lots of money to get the world on a path of using Internet Explorer.
The left works to take and maintain control of the commanding heights of the social order. Like Gates (who is indeed one of them), they spend what it takes, in time and other resources, to overcome any path dependency that runs against them, and to create a new path dependency. Relatively few classical liberals or conservatives do this; most are oblivious until a situation become obvious, and then they just yowl. I think it rather important to take note of this social ineptitude wide-spread within the classical liberal and conservative communities.
We use the dominant social networks because some classical liberals and conservatives implicitly or explicitly refuse to go elsewhere, and because we don’t create appropriate alternatives. (Appropriateness includes such things as _not_ using technologies such as Javascript, peer-to-peer, and blockchain simply because “That shit is cool!”)
What is otherwise the best possible social framework will not produce good results if the classical liberals are twerps.