Then people will have to come to terms that banning Alex Jones was a bad idea too. You can't support a companies right to ban people you don't like while simultaneously advocating protections as a utility.
Utilities are limited in how they can raise money... tariffs are the core of utility regulation.
Alex Jones and other fringe elements with disproportionate large reach wouldn’t exist on a regulated utility because the advertising practices that allow Facebook to monetize Jones would likely not exist.
Yes, universal access to the utility makes sense. But what would the utility be? Could FB possibly be nationalized? It's international at its core. If governments created a copycat, it could fragment social media by country, which seems bad. I like the protective intent, but barely have an idea of how it might be implemented.
Centralized social media isn't long for this world IMO, look at what is happening to Twitter (userbase erosion) & Reddit (people are flooding there from Facebook, hurting site quality). Meanwhile notable figures have moved on from both sites, in part due to bans or purely due to the degradation of their former social home.
They don't want to be regarded as a utility as that would suggest that regulation is a reasonable course of action. They banned Jones in part to demonstrate that they can "self-regulate" and don't need regulation. Being seen as a utility is the last thing Facebook wants.
Not for constitutionally protected speech (under the limitations on student speech set by Tinker's "substantial disruption" test, Fraser's "indecent" limitation, and similar jurisprudence).
