Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

It's very important to distinguish between the actual right you have, which is that nobody should be able to compel you to speak, or how to speak, which is a right that in this case Mailchimp has, and the complete reversal of this, namely forcing private entities to host the speech of others, and have the government coerce platforms on behalf of third parties.

The author wants nothing less than a complete reversal on how we treat association and speech on the grounds that in his perception, 'purple haired millenials' run a business in a way that he doesn't approve of.

It is far more obvious to me that there is an inherent right to choose whom you do business with and whom you don't than that there is an inherent right to have a single corporate entity employing unbounded numbers of employees and making unbounded amounts of money. The individual person can buy and sell on their own, without the government; the corporate entity only really works because it is recognized by the government.

To be clear, I'm not claiming that regulations are illegitimate. We do regulate, say, the individual farmer to make sure they're selling actual milk and not melamine. We do regulate the individual storekeeper to obligate them not to discriminate on race. But those regulations are all very measured and designed to solve specific problems (ultimately - protecting those who are even weaker than the individual businessperson).

Mailchimp is not some tech titan. They do not have more political power than any functional government. They are in no sense a monopoly in their industry, and they have exactly one industry, unlike the usual juggernauts that come up here. Calling them "Big Tech" is a clear example of the terrible slippery slope of adding regulations about obligating companies to do business vs. regulating their accrual of power, if that's the real problem.

Any regulation that would apply to Mailchimp would - if it's going to be effective - also have to apply to a startup that wants to be in the same industry. (It may not apply immediately, but it will certainly apply to the startup's medium-term goals, and thus affect its profitability.) If you just want to regulate Google and Facebook, I could almost believe that, but if "Big Tech" includes Mailchimp, who doesn't it include?

What we'll end up with is a system where anyone who wants to do business must have their business plan approved by Big Government, and where a professional specialization in complying with those regulations arises, and where there's a nice revolving door between implementing and enforcing them, and where Google continues to hold more political power than several countries and can engage in regulatory capture. It's hard to imagine that this aligns with the political desires of anyone except the current leadership at Big Tech. (Even the aspirational leadership of the next generation of Big Tech will find themselves shut out by this regulatory regime.)

Not a lawyer, but I wonder if the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper clause give regulatory power to the government under the guise of promoting the general welfare. After all, this has been applied to commodities in the past, even when said commodities weren’t even used in trade/commerce.

In plain English, there’s precedent in the constitution and law for the government to regulate business if it promotes the general welfare.

> So, who gets to decide?

Each individual gets to decide for themselves.