Entrusting our speech to multiple different corporate actors is always risky. Yet given how most of the internet is currently structured, our online expression largely depends on a set of private companies ranging from our direct Internet service providers and platforms, to upstream ISPs (sometimes...
My initial concern is that internet access is mostly considered a utility which at least the UN considers a human right. “If you can take away a right, it’s not a right, it’s a privilege.” That being said, “rights” are a social construct anyway which we regularly violate for “good” reasons, eg prison violates one’s right to freedom of movement, and as an institution they weirdly reinforce The State’s monopoly on violence and arbitration of who qualifies as “human” - in a twisted sort of way, prisoners are rendered “less human” by the state by their rights being taken away. Maybe it would be better to consider taking away internet access via ISPs sort of the moral equivalent of turning off someone’s water if they’re using it to poison the town well? If you abuse your right, you don’t get to use it anymore as a defensive mechanism for everyone else’s rights, ala sex offenders being put on a list which violates their privacy for better protection of more vulnerable groups.
I’d rather prisons focused on rehabilitation, and kept everyone in there until they were sufficiently rehabilitated. Instead of having second class citizens who can’t participate in society because of what they’re branded with, and prisons that do everything they can to break people and make them incapable of seeing themselves as part of society.