Twitter is the one who has the ability here to allow users to block people. Twitter is the one who should be getting buttslammed by section 238 but they are ignoring it and for good reasons
they want the entire internet to be 1 big pay site for the vending machine guys who have no recourses to their actions in digital copyright as they have assumed it to be recently for anything they send out. digital items have no gaurantees and thats precisely what they are doing. turning every thing, that they can into a pay type of site but without the fees involved with it.

(Note: I think few users would, in fact, opt-out. If anything users might argue for a range of moderation algorithms from which to choose.)

The “parallel universe of social media” is a trope, not an empirical fact. What people complain of on social media is its reflection of disinformation content that originates outside them., notably by the right-wing disinformation sources identified in, e.g., NETWORK PROPAGANDA by Benkler, Faris, and Roberts. I should that when someone states that ‘the privileged classes can certainly point to the “diversity of expression on the Internet” as satisfying their need both to obtain and publish information’ it seems to fly in the face of the fact that Justice Thomas is a prominent member of “the privileged classes” who takes the opposite view. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190117/15361941413/splinters-our-discontent-review-network-propaganda.shtml

Not only am I intimately familiar with the case, I litigated and won a case on behalf of a major magazine that was sued by a reader who insisted she had the right to have her letter to the editor published. Tornillo begs the question. How do we as a society deal with the parallel universe of social media that doesn’t resemble the private press at all; in fact, these fora present little or no information of their own. And we do know that they are being used, wittingly or unwittingly, to control information and elections. It is a hermitically sealed information ecosystem. The privileged, educated minority may see beyond the walls, but most, like in the Truman Show, don’t.

You appear to be comfortable with this situation: tens of millions of people (conservatively) existing almost exclusively within the social media bubble whose speech and access to information is carefully curated by large corporations with both a desire and the power to influence what people see, hear, and ultimately believe. I suspect you would be less comfortable if they decided to promote the speech of Trump supporters and suppress the speech of his opponents. But I suggest that if doing so would serve their private interests, they would do it, and the consequences, well, might be ones we’d have to tolerate under the mantra “at least it’s not government dictating what we see, hear, and say.” To which I would say, “That’s cold comfort.”

So, I ask again, is nothing the best we can do? Is nothing what we should do?

I really think it would be worth your time going back to reread Miami Herald v. Tornillo.

I think we are ships passing in the night. Let me explain.

First, I think the privileged classes can certainly point to the “diversity of expression on the Internet” as satisfying their need both to obtain and publish information, but the reality is that, for the vast majority of Americans, social media has become the place to which they turn both to receive information and express themselves. I think that we can certainly agree on that much. These platforms have become the modern day version of the town square in a very real sense, even if the town square, today, happens to be owned and controlled by corporate oligarchs.

Second, I think that there is a very real disconnect between what people think goes on in their social media worlds and what actually goes on in those worlds. Most people think that that they get to say what the want on social media, provided it doesn’t cross some very clear lines of civility, e.g., not threatening or harassing others, not promoting criminal behavior, etc. What is really going on, however, is far different. These corporate oligarchs are actively blocking, as just one example, news reports on important issues based on ad hoc standards that are withdrawn just as easily as they are published, with the net effect of there being no clear guidance at all about what can stay and what must go. It’s a strange situation where customer expectations are colliding with corporate power and control. This may be how free speech plays out in private services, no matter how ubiquitous and relied upon by the masses, but the practical effect is to create an alternate reality bubble for large number of Americans. The Constitution would prohibit the government from doing this, but there are no restraints on corporations that are as expansive and wealthy as a government from doing so.

Third, it should give everyone one of us pause to think that, as a practical matter, elections are being influenced by this corporate-powered social media parallel universe. Can you imagine if these corporate titans decided not to allow people to tweet about police misconduct? Or acts of racism or sexism by elected officials? The fact is, they could be doing this, or may yet do it, and we either wouldn’t necessarily know, and could do nothing about it if it were discovered. I don’t think anyone should be comfortable with the gigantic corporate-approved speech bubble, but the question — which I posed to you — is whether we can or should do something about it.

Fourth, invoking the concept of “editorial discretion” elides the real issue. Are these omnipresent fora akin to a magazine or newspaper, that gets to decide what letters to the editor to publish? Or what points of view to present in articles or stories? So what, exactly, is editorial discretion as applied to the billion-person social media fora? It is really, as you suggest, a wild west of editorial discretion, take it or leave it, play by whatever the rules are, whatever the editorial “board” may decide from time to time (or moment to moment), take it or leave it? We may be comfortable with that in the abstract, but if causes, as Aldous Huxley presciently warned in the early 1960s, a mass media bubble of delusions and misinformation that effectively manipulate the behavior (votes) of the masses, doesn’t it cry out for something better?

Fifth, it is a truism that no one wants the government to decide what can and cannot be said. Nor do I advocate government pressuring private corporations as to what to say or not say, or even what to permit to be said and not said in the parallel reality of billion-strong social media universes. But are we so bereft of ideas that we can’t solve a very real problem because the postulated “only alternative” may be as bad or worse? I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.

There is a big problem here. It’s not just brewing; it’s arrived. People are living a world of information and speech that is, without the awareness of most, presenting them with “the world as megalithic corporations would see it,” not as it is. It’s impacting on how people vote, it’s steering conversations and beliefs in directions that are not subject to reasonable disclosure or control and are purposefully colored and influenced by hugely powerful government-sized corporate behemoths, and it’s heating up a cauldron of division and rage, and driving perhaps the worst elements of our society underground. If we look at other countries that managed to do the same thing–including through alliances between government and ostensibly private institutions–the results have been explosive and horrifying.

Or maybe that’s just how it is, and we should be grateful if the government simply throws up its metaphorical hands and says, “The First Amendment doesn’t apply to the vast economic titans that steer elections and contributions to favored politicians.”