> Maybe the answer is obvious to you, but it is not to me: why should these things be equivalent? Why should you be entitled to twitter's channel for your views that twitter does not want to host?
I don't think there is an obvious answer here. We're in the realm of philosophy. My response to the grandparent was less about my own advocacy for freedom of speech (although that is clearly my position/bias) and more about their statements being disingenuous.
What my own personal opinion is as to the answer to your questions is pretty simple though. Twitter, like other social media "publishers", enjoys special legal status under the law via [0]Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. As such, they themselves do not have freedom of speech, they must not interfere with the content of the creators who use their platform. Interfering with that content (in theory) loses them that special legal status and opens them up to liability for the content they do choose to retain/host. So our legislation is pretty clear on the matter, Twitter does not have the right to censor you simply because they're a private business while also maintaining liability immunity as a common carrier.
> If Twitter is making the decision on its own -- that is, it's not coerced by the state, and if you are still capable of getting your information online by some other means, then Twitter is making its own free speech decision to curate its own website like you would your own site or your own store.
See above. "Publishing platforms" don't have free speech rights as long as they choose to operate as common carriers to maintain liability immunity, which Twitter does. That's setting aside the separate argumentation point which is that corporations are not people and corporate personhood is a sham, and therefore corporations themselves do not fundamentally have freedom of speech.
> Your definition for the "open web" sounds to me like, honestly, very severe state control of private enterprise.
Please elaborate. I can't imagine how you would come to that conclusion from what I wrote.
> A government telling you
"You." Civil Rights are individual rights, not collective rights. Compelled speech is obviously not philosophically aligned with freedom of speech. But it seems you are using a collective "you", strongly implying the impositions that come from corporate personhood as a legal concept to be more tangible than they are even in current law.
> Getting kicked out of the bowling club for sharing highly offensive statements has not prevented you from sharing those statements. Losing your job over them has not prevented you from sharing those statements. Being banned from twitter has not prevented you from sharing those statements. I really do mean to be absolute about this -- your freedom of speech not impeded _at all_. If you're reduced to screaming your opinions from a street corner in order to have anyone hear them, and you're still being ignored by people, well you've still got 100% of your freedom of speech -- it's just that the speech isn't resonating and the government isn't some despotic regime out of 1984 that would force audiences to listen to those views.
I'm less absolutist here. Your argument has merit, and yet it misses the point. The bowling club kicking you out is not the same thing as being banned from Twitter. The bowling club is not a publishing platform which exclusively exists for broadcasting speech to people who choose to follow you. Twitter is. People who are highly offended by your statements on Twitter have many modes of recourse in order to not be accosted by your statements such as not following you, blocking you, or otherwise using available technical means to ignore you. The bowling club, however has no such filtering mechanism, nor is it's sole purpose for existence to provide a platform for individuals to broadly publish their speech, it exists for people to bowl and your highly offensive speech reasonably detracts from its purpose for existence.
Platforms are different from other forms of private entities, and they are treated differently under the law as such. Trying to conflate the two is not reasonable, nor is it reasonable to take an absolutist position based in a conflation. Also, it's just plain wrong to say that "your freedom of speech not impededed _at all_." if you've been banned from a broadcasting platform. That's an obvious impediment, which shouldn't need further explanation.
[0]: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230