You make some great points and I mostly agree with you.
I think my take is that Verizon taking this stance (on Facebook advertising) does not maximize their own financials. I think they're operating in the fog of (political) war and are giving more weight to this campaign against Facebook than they should. In doing so, they're likely alienating customers who are center-left, centrist, or conservative. Will those users switch away to a different provider? Realistically they won't do so in large numbers. But my gut tells me an even smaller number of customers would adopt Verizon specifically because they took a position on this issue, so they aren't really going to gain anything from this either. Unless of course, the play here is to weaken Facebook so that Verizon has a better shot at being a content provider themselves - in which case this is a wholly selfish move.
As for the regulation of companies' speech. I think I agree with you except in the case where companies become too big. I see Facebook, Twitter, Google (particularly with YouTube), and Amazon as being too big. These companies control so much of information flow in our societies that they are the new town square. Enough of societal discourse takes place on their platform that their acts of censorship are as problematic as governmental acts of censorship. I'd be OK with a solution that retains companies' speech but with revised/enforced anti-trust laws that breaks up big tech. I also think there's a reasonable argument to treat some of these companies as utilities and hold them to a standard of neutrality we'd expect from public agencies.
I think my take is that Verizon taking this stance (on Facebook advertising) does not maximize their own financials. I think they're operating in the fog of (political) war and are giving more weight to this campaign against Facebook than they should. In doing so, they're likely alienating customers who are center-left, centrist, or conservative. Will those users switch away to a different provider? Realistically they won't do so in large numbers. But my gut tells me an even smaller number of customers would adopt Verizon specifically because they took a position on this issue, so they aren't really going to gain anything from this either. Unless of course, the play here is to weaken Facebook so that Verizon has a better shot at being a content provider themselves - in which case this is a wholly selfish move.
As for the regulation of companies' speech. I think I agree with you except in the case where companies become too big. I see Facebook, Twitter, Google (particularly with YouTube), and Amazon as being too big. These companies control so much of information flow in our societies that they are the new town square. Enough of societal discourse takes place on their platform that their acts of censorship are as problematic as governmental acts of censorship. I'd be OK with a solution that retains companies' speech but with revised/enforced anti-trust laws that breaks up big tech. I also think there's a reasonable argument to treat some of these companies as utilities and hold them to a standard of neutrality we'd expect from public agencies.