that is the default answer but there comes a point when you have to reconsider it in light of the facts of a particular situation.
Take email for instance: first class mail is protected by the 5th amendment, and a warrant is required to open and read first class mail. Move communications to a private digital platform and the presumption of privacy is completely flipped into a presumption that all your emails will be read and stored for future reading. When all communications go online that leads to a very significant change in how the law applies to private communications and that is exploited by the government just as much as it is exploited by the corporations. After many years of there being a free-for-all where law enforcement and intelligence claimed they could view anything online without a warrant there was finally some push back by courts to reassert the rule of law, but email still has substantially less privacy than first class mail.
Speech on public forums is a similar case. The 1st amendment applies to the town square but if a corporation creates a digital town square then it gets the right of censorship. Then the government applies pressure on the corporation to censor on their behalf and the government begins to exercise a power it did not previously have. That was not a problem when online platforms were small and inconsequential, but when they grow to billions of users globally, then the power to censor speech on those platforms becomes quite influential on the exercise of real world power.
Corporations do not have police powers but they are subjects of governments that do, so once they get power they can always be made tools of the people that hold power over them.
Take email for instance: first class mail is protected by the 5th amendment, and a warrant is required to open and read first class mail. Move communications to a private digital platform and the presumption of privacy is completely flipped into a presumption that all your emails will be read and stored for future reading. When all communications go online that leads to a very significant change in how the law applies to private communications and that is exploited by the government just as much as it is exploited by the corporations. After many years of there being a free-for-all where law enforcement and intelligence claimed they could view anything online without a warrant there was finally some push back by courts to reassert the rule of law, but email still has substantially less privacy than first class mail.
Speech on public forums is a similar case. The 1st amendment applies to the town square but if a corporation creates a digital town square then it gets the right of censorship. Then the government applies pressure on the corporation to censor on their behalf and the government begins to exercise a power it did not previously have. That was not a problem when online platforms were small and inconsequential, but when they grow to billions of users globally, then the power to censor speech on those platforms becomes quite influential on the exercise of real world power.
Corporations do not have police powers but they are subjects of governments that do, so once they get power they can always be made tools of the people that hold power over them.