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The answer to all of your questions is..."Are you a platform?" [0] If so, you must accept, by law, all customers/participants/users without prejudice or discri

The answer to all of your questions is..."Are you a platform?" [0] If so, you must accept, by law, all customers/participants/users without prejudice or discrimination, and you may only deny or limit service to same after a written order from a court of law instructing you to do so. Furthermore, this rule supersedes any Terms of Service that a company may wish to enforce. That's not what we have in the US today—but we should. My money is on the EU crafting legislation to that effect first. I'd normally expect California to implement this kind of legislation first, but given the amount of money donated by the big tech companies, I doubt it'll happen. [0] A "platform" is any business with a userbase that exceeds 1% of the population (for non-commercial customers, e.g. YouTube/Twitter/Facebook), or in the case of a business-oriented marketplace (such as Amazon's Seller Central), 10% of the specific market the business is targeting with their platform.

filoleg 7y ago
Eh, I would be wary of that definition, even though I am totally in support of platforms not being allowed to get rid of content that isn't illegal. There should be way more nuance than what your definition provides. For example, if I host a very popular forum for discussing cars that somehow manages to exceed 1% of the population of the country it is offered in, I feel like I would be totally justified to remove posts that have nothing to do with cars and talk about completely off-topic stuff like videogames or politics.
- erichocean 7y ago
  The 1% rule is for the US. If you want a higher % for your own country, knock yourself out. It's the principle of the thing that matters anyway, not the exact % that defines a platform. That said, I see no issue with asking a privately run forum to keep it's membership under 3.4M if they don't want to be regulated like a platform.

filoleg 7y ago

Eh, I would be wary of that definition, even though I am totally in support of platforms not being allowed to get rid of content that isn't illegal. There should be way more nuance than what your definition provides. For example, if I host a very popular forum for discussing cars that somehow manages to exceed 1% of the population of the country it is offered in, I feel like I would be totally justified to remove posts that have nothing to do with cars and talk about completely off-topic stuff like videogames or politics.

erichocean 7y ago
The 1% rule is for the US. If you want a higher % for your own country, knock yourself out. It's the principle of the thing that matters anyway, not the exact % that defines a platform. That said, I see no issue with asking a privately run forum to keep it's membership under 3.4M if they don't want to be regulated like a platform.