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Nah, none of those networks were anywhere near as influential as Twitter is now.There are also many more people online now than ever before, but nothing fundamental has changed.
> Many reporters basically live on Twitter; it's at the center our media world.
You mean they "use" twitter? So what? Real journalists are outside chasing down stories in the real world, not retweeting crap on twitter as literally anyone is capable of. If a journalist "basically lives on Twitter", they're a crap journalist. Feel free to paste a few twitter feeds from famous journalists and incredulously ask me "so is THIS person a crap journalist?". I'll maintain, if they're not a crap journalist, any work that has elevated them to the status of renowned journalist has absolutely nothing to do with twitter. As far as content goes, almost everyone agrees that twitter is crap, it just happens that a lot of famous people crap there as well.
> private companies should be able to do whatever they want under all circumstances," which is what you and several others seem to be arguing here.
I am not arguing anything even remotely close to this. I don't think private companies should be able to break the law, for example. What I'm arguing is that it is the prerogative of a private company to decide what they host and delete from the servers that they pay for and administer. The public is not paying twitter any money, nor are they forced to use twitter, nor is twitter even that important. Just because celebrities use twitter doesn't mean it's an important societal institution. I'll admit that twitter has had an important cultural impact because it is popular, but just because something is popular does not mean the government should regulate it. Once again, nobody needs or is forced to use twitter.
> as a corporate entity grows large and powerful, it becomes a government
I'm sorry but this is totally absurd. Twitter does not have the power to levy taxes or a standing army or literally any influence or authority over your life at all beyond what you give it. Twitter is a glorified messaging app that happens to be popular with celebrities. That's it. The technology isn't even special or unique besides the scaling concerns.
> Let's say Twitter decides -- since, hey, it's a private entity and can do whatever it wants with its product -- to delete any accounts that some machine-learning algorithm has identified as belonging to racial group X.
Is that "cool"? Nah, I think racism is uncool, and it would piss off a lot of twitter users and non-users (like myself), but hosting a racist website is not illegal, and I don't think it should be. At most you should be entitled to your money back, and since you didn't pay any, you're not entitled to anything.