But the governments prefer the current situation, as they have channels to ask for removal, but have zero liability and the company is covered, as they can do as they please, because its their private platform where they are allowing them. So I dont see why would the government declare social media as public squares...

I think a publicly funded platform would be beneficial in today's world. Nobody can be banned but you can still block people individually. (Criminal stuff would still be criminal and you could potentially be muted by govt entities though) All govt communication would be through this platform, so nobody can be "walled off" from govt comms. It would still function as social media as well, but people would be free to twit/fb/whatevs - there would just no longer be govt entities there.

It would also lay the framework to potentially move our voting systems into the 21st century IMO.

So, I've left this on "unread" for so long only because until now I only used Lemmy on my phone, and I really hate typing long replies on my phone. I wanted to give your reply due consideration, though. Anyway, I'm embarassed to have taken this long to respond.

I agree with you about the public square, and I think you bring up an excellent point about these systems becoming "essential to society." I think it's a thing that is obvious to younger people, and almost completely invisible to older people. Even those of us who grew up during the IT boom decades and lived through the change may find it difficult to grok just how much of an impact this is having. I do think that people are generally well aware of how slow legislation is in adapting to rapid changes in society, but the impact you talk about has happened at such an accelerated rate, useful precedents are lacking. So we see legislators thrashing about more than usual, over or under-reacting, and mostly in extreme ignorance.

I see brigading in the fediverse as a worse problem than you do. It's mob rule, and it is unchecked largely -- I feel -- as a result of hesitance by moderators to be accused of censorship. I haven't yet seen much of what Reddit suffers from -- moderator affinity, where mods have a heavier hand with posters they disagree with -- but the result is unchecked herd mentality cowing dissenters.

But, maybe mob rule is good? I vacillate on this one. A well-functioning, healthy society has laws controlling gross topics, and social censure is used to moderate distructive elements. We don't want a society where we have laws for every little infraction; in that society, every citizen is a criminal by default, and the government always has a legal justification to persecute everyone they want to (and let slip those they don't). OTOH, we have what happened in the US in the 50's, with mobs of white people harrassing black integration students. I don't know what the right answer is for this, honestly, but it is an issue in meatspace, and it's as much or more of an issue online.

Your litmus is good, I think, but risks being based largely on our current clueless government. As the generations age out, and younger generations take control, the government will become increasingly social-media savvy. I can easily see a future government having a communications department that is competent enough to hit nearl every social media platform, regardless of popularity. What about cross-posting? If we use that litmus, then if I were the government and wanted to control a platform, all I need to do is start posting to it and now it qualifies as subject to regulation?

I think I've said before, but I'll repeat it: I don't have answers to any of these issues. I wish we could have a censorship-free internet; there was a time in the early history when most users were well-behaved and followed established etiquette. I think a lot of that may have been due to the lack of anonymity, but whatever the reason, we've been past that for decades, and we haven't yet adapted.