Should social-media platforms be regulated as public utilities for political speech?

The alternative case treats dominant platforms as political infrastructure whose private control can translate economic power into control over democratic participation. Neutrality obligations, public-utility concepts, or broader antimonopoly rules could protect viewpoint diversity and equal political opportunity. This position does not require treating every recommendation as neutral: hosting access, amplification, transparency, and algorithmic governance can be regulated differently.

• Massively influential platforms can leverage economic power into political power by excluding or demoting material central to public debate.
• Facebook and Google can be understood as democratic utilities because their algorithmic infrastructure structures access to information and public discourse.
• A viewpoint-neutral hosting duty could be constitutionally plausible under analogies to telephone companies, package delivery services, and other compelled-access precedents.
• Political equality concerns support limiting viewpoint-based moderation when it denies users equal opportunity for political influence.
• Antimonopoly measures, functional separation, and public-interest rules offer ways to address concentrated informational power beyond simple content-moderation mandates.

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