I agree with what you wrote, except that it's the 1st amendment that's relevant.
> There is nothing special about a social media company that should give them the ability to infringe on our rights.
I personally believe that social media platforms are public spaces (although I don't think it's clear how to precisely define this into law without or minimal loopholes).
But I don't think it's inconsistent or hypocritical for a company to not want to lose control over the discourse on its site while simultaneously advocating against government requests for self-reporting of social media accounts due to previously discussed chilling effects.
I think in this era we will see how or if our rights will be protected with all of these large corporations with immense powers.
In the Civil Rights era, it took from the 1930s until 1964 to pass the Civil Right act, despite bipartisan support. They ended up having to re-invent how the Senate votes to do it.
It will be interesting to see the law that gets created during this time.
Also, I don't think it is possible to divorce the other aspect of what the government is attempting to do here. Guests in our country are exactly that. We depend on the government to vet them in some way to prevent criminals or terrorists from easily crossing the border and causing mayhem. The government has vetted people for several decades in this manner by investigating who the candidate associates with, whether they have a criminal record, etc.
If a criminal comes to our country and commits crimes, and it is possible to know this from the social media that the criminal uses, what responsibility does the social media company have?
> There is nothing special about a social media company that should give them the ability to infringe on our rights.
I personally believe that social media platforms are public spaces (although I don't think it's clear how to precisely define this into law without or minimal loopholes).
But I don't think it's inconsistent or hypocritical for a company to not want to lose control over the discourse on its site while simultaneously advocating against government requests for self-reporting of social media accounts due to previously discussed chilling effects.