are TikTok, X, YouTube, Facebook, even BlueSky "private platforms"? certainly there are senses in which they are! they are organized under private firms. 1/

but there are senses in which they may not be "private". for some of them, their ubiquity and reach is such that they can significantly, unilateral, affect coordination at a systemic level. i'd argue makes them inherently public in an important sense. drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/03/31/s... 2/

plus, the fact that much of the value of these platforms comes from enclosing network effects—which I'd argue should be understood normatively and ultimately legally as property of the public—undermines a claim to their merely being ordinary firms, private speakers under the constitution. 3/

does this mean that Newsom — or DeSantis or Abbott — are right or righteous in the ways they have tried or proposed to regulate these firms? absolutely not. 4/

but i do think that arguments of the form "these are private firms, we have a first amendment, therefore these firms' rights claims trump all other complaints by all other stakeholders QED" are insufficient. 5/

these are not pamphleteers. you can just distribute your own pamphlet if you don't like their speech. they present more serious problems to traditional understandings of free speech than that. /fin

is apple getting stingier about refunds? my wife tried a free trial of an app subscription. she says she canceled immediately after starting the trial, but was billed anyway. usually when this kind of thing happens, we’ve appealed to apple and always been refunded. this time, apple has refused. 1/

i think this means we will never use free trials of Apple-mediated subscriptions unless we are almost certain to buy. it’s not the first time what we understood to be a canceled free trial has been billed, but it is the first time we couldn’t get the billing reversed. /fin