I’m not proposing that newspapers publish any story submitted by the general public as a news article, if that’s what you’re taking away. For newspapers I am proposing that their comment section should be free of censorship. For social media I am proposing the same. That also means their algorithms would need to “promote” things in a content neutral way. I’m also proposing that society is served better when ideas from powerful publishers (like journalists at big newspapers) are easily challenged by the public via features like comments sections.

I think we’re getting a bit off topic but since you mentioned it - universities already teach many crackpot theories - the social “science” fields are full of them (https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studi...). But they don’t teach the alternative viewpoint to those crackpot theories. As institutions with tremendous power, they influence society greatly but their commitment to a one-sided biased environment serves to only amplify one ideology, and this unbalanced outcome is effectively propagandizing all of society. Giant social media platforms are similarly problematic, because their degree of reach and network effects give them power other new social networks cannot mirror or challenge. Their policies restricting content that they don’t like ends up amplifying one worldview disproportionately while shutting down others, which also is effectively propagandist. In both cases these institutions are as powerful and influential as nations’ governments, and their choices to promote certain speech or censor certain speech are as damaging as the government taking such action. We have outsourced the ability to exercise fundamental rights like free speech and free thought to spaces that are legally non public but really should be held to the public standard.

Your claim is that there are “huge, successful sites” or other media that fall outside the control of these institutions I am complaining about. However, that’s not really the whole truth because the scale of those alternatives is simply completely different. Facebook has more users than any country and Twitter is probably close to that as well. Universities have no diversity of thought and there isn’t much of an alternative to the university system at all. It doesn’t matter if some other alternative site could have millions of users carrying speech blocked on Facebook or Twitter, because the amplification of ideas allowed on the biggest platforms will drown out all others. These are really public squares that should be held to public regulation, including upholding the right to free speech.

As an aside, your inaccurate and uncharitable characterization of Quillette as building a reputation around “pseudoscience”, when it is actually built around high quality critical thought, makes me think you’re on one side of this ideological war and happy with the status quo because your ideology is currently winning the power struggle by censoring/deplatforming dissenting views. But what you’re labeling as fringe wouldn’t be fringe if it was given a fair chance to be heard and amplified in various institutions or platforms. Because ideologues have tried to suppress and diminish challenging views in aggressive and unfair ways, these ideas are in lesser prominence than they deserve.