I'm not sure I understand how this is self-evident. The closest equivalent I can see would be a human who looks at many pieces of art to understand:

- What is art and what is just scribbles or splatter?

- What is good and what isn't?

- What different styles are possible?

Then the human goes and creates their own piece.

It turns out, the legal solution is to evaluate each piece individually rather than the process. And, within that, the court has settled on "if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck..." which is where the subconscious copying presumably comes in.

I don't know where courts will go. The new challenge is AI can generate "potentially infringing" work at a much higher rate than humans, but that's really about it. I'd be surprised if it gets treated materially different than human-created works.

These moves would eventually lower trust in Big Tech among conservatives to a point that more conspiracy theories will rise.

This makes methink we are about to see a Golden Age of conspiracy theories. Something that makes 'Q Annon' stuff look like peer reviewed paper in science.

I have strongly felt that the actions taken by these companies is morally and ethically the right thing to do, for any business and that is inconsistent with believing in true free speech. My line for free speech seems to lie in speech that incites violence or speech that discriminates against people for immutable characteristics of their person, both of which I know Parler harbors in abundance. I think there are simply some ideas that are too repugnant to not rebuke.

That said I don't like how centralized we've become on these existing platforms either. Monopoly on communication means it's too easy to let that window slide on what is acceptable speech to limit.

Regarding the former situation, the president is one person with clear, self-serving motives. His actions are constantly examined under the critical eyes of the media and his political opposition. The public itself can also use social media to provide additional scrutiny (with varying degrees of quality and professionalism).

The public has to search through garbage to find the truth. It's all easy to access, but there's a lot to go through.

In the prior situation, businesses are trying to denying the public access to provide scrutiny based solely on the content of the message, regardless of quality. Those same businesses also happen to facilitate content discovery for the overwhelming majority of internet users. There are still political opponents and a few media organizations which might broadcast the message, but it will unquestioningly reach a much smaller audience.

The public still has to search through garbage to find the truth. Now, though, some of it is much harder to access.

Neither is good, but the prior situation sounds much worse to me.