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The fundamental question is, do people have a right to free speech on the web? The web is nearly entirely privately owned, which makes answering this question

The fundamental question is, do people have a right to free speech on the web? The web is nearly entirely privately owned, which makes answering this question difficult. On one hand, the web is where we do 90% of our communication these days and losing that right seems like losing most of the first amendment. I’m convinceable either way. Did telephone companies have a right to censor land line speech? Should they? Should ISPs be able to censor? Should cloudflair? AWS? It seems like industries like ISPs should be regulated to be “dumb pipes”. But where social networks fall is less clear.

triceratops 6y ago
ISPs and telco networks are on a different layer (physical, and transport layers) of the stack than social media (application layer). ISPs and telco networks can and do perform traffic routing shaping, and throttle or cut off abusive users who consume too much bandwidth, or run a high-traffic web server from their home network. Because these actions affect other users of their networks. But if someone uses Comcast to post a sweary rant on the interwebs - it makes no difference to other Comcast customers. So they don't (at present, though the repealing of net neutrality now allows it) and shouldn't moderate actions at the application layer. Social media is the opposite. Abusive users of those networks operate at the application layer, and can spoil the experience of other users at the application layer but (likely) not at the network layer. So they moderate user activity at the application layer. In each case it's about trying to ensure bad actors don't ruin other customers'/users' experience. It's just done in different ways depending on what part of the network stack the bad actors do their work in.
- randyrand 6y ago
  What about Cloudflare/AWS? Cloudflare notably denied to service some unruly websites, and those websites got DDOSed off the web.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Good question. I don't know the answer.
cmendel 6y ago
A broader question would, I suppose, be do we have rights at all on the internet? We've already lost the right to privacy, we don't have the right to not self incriminate, we don't have the right to be free of arbitrary punishment, we aren't presumed Innocent until proven guilty, and we don't have unlimited free speech. Do I think this as it should be? No. We exist, as humans, on the internet and therefore should have human rights.

triceratops 6y ago

ISPs and telco networks are on a different layer (physical, and transport layers) of the stack than social media (application layer). ISPs and telco networks can and do perform traffic routing shaping, and throttle or cut off abusive users who consume too much bandwidth, or run a high-traffic web server from their home network. Because these actions affect other users of their networks. But if someone uses Comcast to post a sweary rant on the interwebs - it makes no difference to other Comcast customers. So they don't (at present, though the repealing of net neutrality now allows it) and shouldn't moderate actions at the application layer. Social media is the opposite. Abusive users of those networks operate at the application layer, and can spoil the experience of other users at the application layer but (likely) not at the network layer. So they moderate user activity at the application layer. In each case it's about trying to ensure bad actors don't ruin other customers'/users' experience. It's just done in different ways depending on what part of the network stack the bad actors do their work in.

randyrand 6y ago
What about Cloudflare/AWS? Cloudflare notably denied to service some unruly websites, and those websites got DDOSed off the web.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Good question. I don't know the answer.

cmendel 6y ago

A broader question would, I suppose, be do we have rights at all on the internet? We've already lost the right to privacy, we don't have the right to not self incriminate, we don't have the right to be free of arbitrary punishment, we aren't presumed Innocent until proven guilty, and we don't have unlimited free speech. Do I think this as it should be? No. We exist, as humans, on the internet and therefore should have human rights.