If platforms are held to 1A standards, then they can't sell advertising. Online advertisers have already made it crystal-clear that they will not tolerate their brands on a free-for-all platform. Ergo, a requirement for platforms to keep constitutionally-protected speech up is effectively starving them to death. And if you're thinking of making it illegal to withhold ad revenue to a platform over their lack of moderation, then you're driving a stake through the heart of freedom of association.
A better idea would be to say, "ok, you can have rules, but you have to apply them evenly". A lot of platforms will bend the rules for popular users and that absolutely is a problem.
If all advertising media/mediums are free-for-all, then what, they just quit ads and marketing? If that's the case, I am all for that. I am all for disincentivizing hyper-marketing and advertising that happens today.
No, because even in this scenario there are large media outfits that publish their own stories and would still be able to sell advertising to brand-conscious advertisers. Ads don't go away, they just retreat to newspapers and large blogs while everyone else loses out on a means to fund their work.
Those are all individual relationships that creators have with advertisers and likely would not go away no matter how much of a cesspool the social media platform is. You see, most platforms don't actually intermediate these kinds of advertising deals and thus don't see a cent from them.
Some platforms - notably YouTube - have a platform-run ad exchange that creators can participate in and make money from. This is critical for people getting into the online video business. Like, to the point where people are expecting creators to jump ship from TikTok to YouTube the moment that Google figures out how to sell and attribute ads on Shorts.
In a world where platforms are legally barred from providing advertisers with brand safe placements, advertisers will just jump ship from platforms and start working with individual brands directly. Which means that the platforms are now just providing free hosting they can't pay for and smaller creators aren't able to use ad networks to get paid for their work.
If platforms are held to 1A standards, then they can't sell advertising. Online advertisers have already made it crystal-clear that they will not tolerate their brands on a free-for-all platform. Ergo, a requirement for platforms to keep constitutionally-protected speech up is effectively starving them to death. And if you're thinking of making it illegal to withhold ad revenue to a platform over their lack of moderation, then you're driving a stake through the heart of freedom of association.
A better idea would be to say, "ok, you can have rules, but you have to apply them evenly". A lot of platforms will bend the rules for popular users and that absolutely is a problem.