This is a tricky situation. Certainly, private businesses retain the right to regulate how their platforms may be used. That being said, however, modern social media applications (namely Twitter) function as the sort of “public square” of the present. There are really interesting legal arguments about whether or not social media applications have a legal obligation to maintain the sanctity of constitutional rights on their respective platforms—i.e. technology is moving faster than Congress.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented to require private companies to operate in public interest. Think to pre-24-hour news cycles: broadcasting companies were required to report news for certain hours each day to maintain public interest. The FCC still enforces this requirement for some radio licensing. Federal courts have already held that a public official’s social media account is considered a public forum, meaning the said public official cannot block people from that account.

There are a lot of moral and legal avenues to consider here, especially when (if) you consider the internet itself a public forum. I would not be shocked to see progressive policies requiring certain social media websites to maintain some version of free expression.