The Public Square conceptual framework led everyone to project certain legal and regulatory assumptions onto social media that people might like to be true (“public spaces are politically neutral!”) but due to their real nature as private platforms, were never true.
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The more they promoted platforms as public square, the more they were constrained by the expectation of “neutrality,” which led to endless ref-playing.
Anyway, good on @pbump.com for highlighting this issue. Please read his piece!