Thus, when we find wealthy people leveraging their wealth to dominate less powerful individuals, I'm just as opposed to that as I am to people using government power to do so.
Sorry, but that's the core of leftist ideology: the inability to distinguish economic power with coercive threats. They even invented the concept of "economic coercion" so they could use it to justify the state co-opting economic power ie regulating it.
I'm no fan of Alex Jones, but it's a f'in crime what they did to that poor crazy bastard, and he's not nearly the only one. Only the most notable.
I think Alex Jones was a sick man who harmed a lot of people. I don't know what anyone "deserves", but I'm glad he lost that lawsuit, and was exposed for what he is.
I should've stated that more specifically. I'm not talking about the economic coercion that lefties cite, I'm talking about using their wealth to actively violate peoples' rights. Bribing authorities and law enforcement for unfair treatment, burying smaller entities with frivolous litigation to choke out competition with financial attrition, hiring hackers or even thugs (though a lot of the latter went out after the early Rockefeller days) for corporate espionage/sabotage, etc.
Admittedly, the public accommodations arguments blur what would otherwise be very stark lines in this conversation. However (and I bring up Alex Jones specifically because he's the prime example of this), what we've seen now is multiple examples where several, if not all, of the largest social media giants deplatform someone simultaneously.
Even this, alone, wouldn't be enough justification for me to suggest public accommodations laws. The other end of the problem is their status as platforms, as opposed to publishers. Back in the day, the media were able to act as gatekeepers for the political dialogue, and that was never considered to be a problem, from the perspective of people actually being repressed in any way. I still don't consider it to be one, because those media organizations were all responsible for their claims, and were all subject to libel and defamation laws. These platforms, only BECAUSE of their status as platforms, have become places where most of the public dialogue takes place. If they didn't have immunity from legal retribution for shit that random posters say on their platforms, they NEVER could have allowed the sort of freedom that permitted any random idiot to spout their opinions to the world, and in turn never would have become the primary home for that dialogue.
So, what we've created is a situation where a handful of mega corporations have become the primary place where politicians, as well as voters, can disseminate their messages, and those corporations are completely free of responsibility for what those people say on their platform, but have the freedom to ban anything that they find objectionable for almost any reason. Because there are so many thousands, sometimes millions of people repeating and retweeting any random piece of outright libel, it isn't feasible to significantly quell untrue rumors from spreading through legal action, as one would be able to do against a publisher.
Combine these factors: This handful of mega corporations, all of whom verifiably share the mainstream political biases of their uniquely politically charged geographic region, are able to open the floodgates for libel that can't realistically be combatted legally, while simultaneously shutting out any opposing viewpoints, and, no matter HOW false the narrative is that they allow to persist without significant challenge in the public realm, they can't be held responsible. Icing on the cake: They've shown the willingness to act in concert and almost entirely black people out from being able to use this service, which suggests that we've got a de facto monopoly regulating the very flow of information.
My love of liberty doesn't make me feel obligated to allow these people to have near-absolute power to decide what influences public opinion just because they've managed to game their way into it without breaking any laws. This just shows me that the laws need to be adjusted to prevent billionaires from attaining de facto ownership of our democratic processes going forward.