I saw a particularly funny comment that made me think about this, in response to Parler being deplatformed by Apple/Google simultaneously, as well as Amazon.
The commenter noted that without US hosting services, that meant countries like Russia and China could end up being the hosts that provide access to those services, which means they will get exclusive access to information/data on virtually all American conservatives, which (in the commenters view) was a potential nightmare for the noble Democrats and their vision.
They also put themselves in a position of extreme legal liability.
There's a precedent set in mid 2020 where a service Patreon was sued for millions of dollars by a rather obscure fringe commentator who got banned from the service.
Update: Patreon lost.
The judge applied well-established law and denied Patreon's motion / sided against them in their lawsuit against Owen Benjamin fans.
Patreon will now be forced to arbitrate 100+ claims, and pay up front fees of up to $10,000 per arbitration.
But beyond that, I think these corporations just kneecapped their own future expansion potential.
First is that these services just completely deciminated some of their future expansions into other states that currently regulate/block them, not to mention the share they have within countries where they exist. Even just within the US, Twitter is already down-valued a few Billion.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/overnights/533733-hillicon-valley-parler-sues-amazon-asks-court-to-reinstate
But Facebook and Twitter remain blocked in countries like China, while being heavily regulated in others, and those blocks were issues they tried to break down in the future plans.
Ironically enough Twitter was blocked/banned in China not due to their "great firewall" policy at the start, but they were later blocked as a response to the race riots there, where Uyghur rioters used the platform to coordinate riots and refused to deplatform the violent organizers:
Is Twitter blocked in China?
Yes, Twitter is blocked in China. Anyone who attempts to access the Twitter website will immediately see an error page. The app’s feed will not refresh and new tweets cannot be posted.
Twitter was first blocked in China in 2009. This was preceded by a number of riots in the western capital of the Xinjiang province, Urumqi. Minority Muslim activists reportedly used Twitter and Facebook to communicate and organize the riots. The presumption is that the Chinese government was trying to block these sites due to their ease of use in spreading political and social commentary that is in direct contradiction to the Communist government.
Reference to what I'm talking about
...The first day's rioting, which involved at least 1,000 Uyghurs,[13] began as a protest but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han people. China's People's Armed Police were deployed and two days later hundreds of Han people clashed with both police and Uyghurs. PRC officials said that a total of 197 people died, most of whom were Hans,[10][7] with 1,721 others injured[8] and many vehicles and buildings destroyed.
...The government blamed the exiled independence group World Uyghur Congress (WUC) for coordinating and instigating the riots over the internet. Government sources blamed Kadeer in particular, citing her public speeches after the Tibetan unrest and phone recordings in which she had allegedly said that something would happen in Ürümqi.
...Chinese authorities accused a man who they alleged to be a key WUC member of inciting ethnic tensions by circulating a violent video, and urging Uyghurs, in an online forum, to "fight back [against Hans] with violence".
...Kadeer denied fomenting the violence, and argued that the Ürümqi protests and their descent into violence were triggered by heavy policing, discontent over Shaoguan and "years of Chinese repression", rather than by the intervention of separatists or terrorists; Uyghur exile groups claimed that violence erupted when police used excessive force to disperse the crowd.
At the time from my understanding, a lot of NED-funded CIA extremists kept promoting false rumors to encourage killings, mainly Uyghurs targeting Han but also the reverse, so it's somewhat understandable China wanted to censor those specific people. Imagine the pre-made viral (and forged) memes like "Jacob Pederson, undercover cop" from BLM protests, except the forgeries usually encouraged violence explicitly. But I digress, I don't speak Mandarin/Turkish so my understanding is limited to accounts of NED critiques
I will say however that CIA/MSM (and what Twitter refused to deplatform by extension) sources objectively encouraged/incited violence for it's own sake
The older wikipedia pages on "terrorism in China" explicitly condone it
...The occurrence of violence as a form of political resistance in China has been attributed to government policies restricting the practice of religion and political expression, particularly in the Xinjiang region. Because expression of grievances against government policies are not permitted, "acts of violence have replaced peaceful demonstrations as the expression of the Uyghur malaise," according to Rémi Castets.
Anyways, my points
First
With the current precedent of banning/silencing political leaders, they lost their "muh free expression" brand, and now can only lose ground to foreign competitors. I've heard tiktok is actually less aggressive than youtube/etc with censorship.
Mexico's AMLO has already categorized American social media as harmful in the same way (or worse) way that Chinese social media are called national security threats, and he proposed state-funding for new neutral platforms.
Note: I'm trying to refind my link for this point.
Second
Second is that they shredded apart whatever remaining public sympathy they could possibly have, which means their political funding sources are at risk for content alone, which they can be sued for and lose.
Google has already openly positioned itself as a wannabe-monopolistic power that see's state-funded institutions, China in particular, as dangerous threats to it's hegemony
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/opinion/eric-schmidt-ai-china.html
Eric Schmidt: I Used to Run Google. Silicon Valley Could Lose to China.
We can’t win the technology wars without the federal government’s help.
By Eric Schmidt
Dr. Schmidt is the chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Defense Innovation Board. He is the former chairman and C.E.O. of Google.
Feb. 27, 2020
...Many of Silicon Valley’s leaders got their start with grants from the federal government — including me. My graduate work in computer science in the 1970s and ’80s was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
But in recent years, Americans — Silicon Valley leaders included — have put too much faith in the private sector to ensure U.S. global leadership in new technology. Now we are in a technology competition with China that has profound ramifications for our economy and defense — a reality I have come to appreciate as chairman of two government panels on innovation and national security. The government needs to get back in the game in a serious way.
So the TL:DR is that Silicon Valley welfare queens demand our unconditional allegiance as they seek to subordinate/ruin foreign competition development, while they also siphon away our tax revenue/funding and political institutions, while also taking away our essential free expression rights with the "private company" excuse.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Chinese (or any other country) worldwide tech hegemony, but I think China (for all it's faults) still isn't as harmful/tyrannical as Silicon Valley, nor do they seem as anti-competitive.
there doesn't seem to be anything here