Entrusting our speech to multiple different corporate actors is always risky. Yet given how most of the internet is currently structured, our online expression largely depends on a set of private companies ranging from our direct Internet service providers and platforms, to upstream ISPs (sometimes...
They also own the pipes and that means they have free reign over what goes through the pipes. That’s how free speech works in the USA, it’s protected in the public space, not in the private space. You can’t enter a restaurant and start calling the waitress a bitch and expect them to not kick you out because of the first amendment.
No! They’re common carriers, god dammit!
AT&T doesn’t get to dictate your political opinions over the phone, and ISPs have no goddamn business even looking at your traffic. They. Deliver. Packets.
And if you don’t think they can do that job as private entities, nationalize them.
Seeing how pedos came out of the woodwork to defend the freedom to share whatever they want on ISPs infrastructure in this very discussion, I don’t mind them having a minimum of oversight on the traffic going through.
You want censorship from snooping because you don’t understand websites.