Until fairly recently—namely around the time that the world's richest man, Elon Musk, bought Twitter—conservatives have been hyperventilating about the threat that social media posed to "free speech." Republicans proposed various big-government solutions to the problem, including having the feds commandeer these private companies and turn them into public utilities.
This led to proposed federal and state laws that ranged from mandating what these platforms must publish to micromanaging the details of their business relationships (e.g., forcing Apple to open its app stores to all comers). Big Tech foes' motivation wasn't principle, but pique. They were upset at content-moderation policies that they said discriminate against conservatives.
