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The scale. These major platforms are becoming increasingly dominant forms of communication and mediums of expression. There's a real question about when they c

The scale. These major platforms are becoming increasingly dominant forms of communication and mediums of expression. There's a real question about when they cease being just another website or chatroom and become a public utility.

Apocryphon 6y ago
Then regulate them, break them up, nationalize them, etc. But don't pretend that internet communities don't have the power to moderate their content. It's inherent to the format and has always been with us. One would imagine in the '90s, AOL was probably as dominant as Facebook or Twitter is today- large enough to push its own alternative to URLs ("AOL Keywords"). The difference was there were far fewer people on the internet and the internet and computers in general were not as significant to our day-to-day lives. I doubt that Twitter today acts any differently from AOL Time Warner in Y2K. Finally, scale is a measure of quantity, not quality.
- ellyagg 6y ago
  Right, that's what the debate that is coming to. Are the platforms the townsquare for speech and should we hold them to a standard of free speech that doesn't just mean "no interference from government"? Also, a difference of degree can be such that it becomes a difference in kind.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    It's just strange to me that the Internet free speech debate is getting so heated after it's been around for as long as the Internet- or at least the Web- has. People are acting like they suddenly realized websites have TOS that include clauses on acceptable content.
    - bezmenov 6y ago
      It's the selective enforcement of such clauses which a causing a stir.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      You keep skipping over the reason. It's like saying the internet is nothing new because we had radio before. That's how big of a change social media is with the scale and reach. It all basically happened in a decade, and especially grew in the last few years where even presidents are making news on Twitter first. And when the CEO of Twitter says social media is a right, it further begs the question of what access and moderation really mean.
    - viklove 6y ago
      People aren't in disagreement over what social platforms can do, they're in disagreement over what they ought to do. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        It's hard to understand why they're acting like they woke up yesterday when "Free Speech on the Internet" has been a hotly-debated issue that's existed for as long as the Internet. Why wasn't there mass anger in the AOL days, at least among the web-surfing public? Facebook has existed for over a decade and a half. Why did it take until now for this issue to peak?
        viklove 6y ago
        You really can't figure it out? It's because today, and not a decade ago, the internet is the primary place for discourse. If you're banned from FB or Twitter, you're effectively banned from having a conversation. 10 years ago this wasn't the case -- only a minority of the population was using the internet as the primary place of discourse, and even then there was far greater stratification over various discussion boards. This issue has peaked because a few massive corporations have consolidated the internet discussion market share, and they now wield massive power because of it. People want that power to be limited.
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        It's strange to me because it feels like I've been seen articles about the topic for at least a decade, and people just shrugged their shoulders until the polarization from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the subsequent culture wars, and deplatforming becoming a major tactic used in the culture wars, kicked it into overdrive. Pieces like this one [0] read so very quaint now. I suppose, just like social media's detrimental effects on mental health [1], these advance warnings were just collectively ignored by society- and the tech companies themselves- until very recently. Odd, that. [0] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/12/facebook-ban.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/12/facebook-... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664351
- manigandham 6y ago
  That's exactly what's in progress, but this is all new territory and has developed incredibly quickly. Legislation hasn't kept up. As far as scale, your comment already proves the point. A portal with a few millions users showing some brand pages is nowhere near the same as having a billion people constantly connected with every detail of their lives shared. AOL was only dominant for a short while as an internet destination, but it wasn't dominant in people's lives and still competed with TV and print media in a mostly broadcast fashion. Modern social media is much more pervasive and powerful than AOL ever was.
shadowgovt 6y ago
I don't think the scale argument holds water, because back in the days of AOL, AOL had, by percentage, about as much control over what mainstream user saw as Twitter and Facebook.
- soneil 6y ago
  I don't recall seeing AOL chatrooms quoted in mainstream news on a regular basis. They may have had a sizeable percentage of the online audience, but it's the "online audience" that's greatly inflated in scale.
- bezmenov 6y ago
  It's disingenuous to compare the relative reach of AOL in the 90s to that of Twitter and Facebook in 2020. In absolute terms, both Twitter and Facebook dominate contemporary discourse at a scale far surpassing any company prior.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    I agree. AOL had far more control over the average online user than FB and Twitter do now. The fact we even say "FB and Twitter" indicates this. In the early AOL era, one couldn't even use it to access the web.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Not to mention that the other dominant ISPs were unlikely to have TOS's that were any less restrictive than AOL's. Hell, Prodigy billed itself as family-friendly, so it was likely more censor-happy than both AOL and CompuServe.
    - bezmenov 6y ago
      You're still overlooking the absolute scale. How many customers did peak, monopolistic AOL have? How many collective human hours are spent within the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter daily?
    - r00fus 6y ago

Apocryphon 6y ago

Then regulate them, break them up, nationalize them, etc. But don't pretend that internet communities don't have the power to moderate their content. It's inherent to the format and has always been with us. One would imagine in the '90s, AOL was probably as dominant as Facebook or Twitter is today- large enough to push its own alternative to URLs ("AOL Keywords"). The difference was there were far fewer people on the internet and the internet and computers in general were not as significant to our day-to-day lives. I doubt that Twitter today acts any differently from AOL Time Warner in Y2K. Finally, scale is a measure of quantity, not quality.

ellyagg 6y ago
Right, that's what the debate that is coming to. Are the platforms the townsquare for speech and should we hold them to a standard of free speech that doesn't just mean "no interference from government"? Also, a difference of degree can be such that it becomes a difference in kind.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  It's just strange to me that the Internet free speech debate is getting so heated after it's been around for as long as the Internet- or at least the Web- has. People are acting like they suddenly realized websites have TOS that include clauses on acceptable content.
  - bezmenov 6y ago
    It's the selective enforcement of such clauses which a causing a stir.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    You keep skipping over the reason. It's like saying the internet is nothing new because we had radio before. That's how big of a change social media is with the scale and reach. It all basically happened in a decade, and especially grew in the last few years where even presidents are making news on Twitter first. And when the CEO of Twitter says social media is a right, it further begs the question of what access and moderation really mean.
  - viklove 6y ago
    People aren't in disagreement over what social platforms can do, they're in disagreement over what they ought to do. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      It's hard to understand why they're acting like they woke up yesterday when "Free Speech on the Internet" has been a hotly-debated issue that's existed for as long as the Internet. Why wasn't there mass anger in the AOL days, at least among the web-surfing public? Facebook has existed for over a decade and a half. Why did it take until now for this issue to peak?
      - viklove 6y ago
        You really can't figure it out? It's because today, and not a decade ago, the internet is the primary place for discourse. If you're banned from FB or Twitter, you're effectively banned from having a conversation. 10 years ago this wasn't the case -- only a minority of the population was using the internet as the primary place of discourse, and even then there was far greater stratification over various discussion boards. This issue has peaked because a few massive corporations have consolidated the internet discussion market share, and they now wield massive power because of it. People want that power to be limited.
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        It's strange to me because it feels like I've been seen articles about the topic for at least a decade, and people just shrugged their shoulders until the polarization from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the subsequent culture wars, and deplatforming becoming a major tactic used in the culture wars, kicked it into overdrive. Pieces like this one [0] read so very quaint now. I suppose, just like social media's detrimental effects on mental health [1], these advance warnings were just collectively ignored by society- and the tech companies themselves- until very recently. Odd, that. [0] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/12/facebook-ban.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/12/facebook-... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664351
manigandham 6y ago
That's exactly what's in progress, but this is all new territory and has developed incredibly quickly. Legislation hasn't kept up. As far as scale, your comment already proves the point. A portal with a few millions users showing some brand pages is nowhere near the same as having a billion people constantly connected with every detail of their lives shared. AOL was only dominant for a short while as an internet destination, but it wasn't dominant in people's lives and still competed with TV and print media in a mostly broadcast fashion. Modern social media is much more pervasive and powerful than AOL ever was.

shadowgovt 6y ago

I don't think the scale argument holds water, because back in the days of AOL, AOL had, by percentage, about as much control over what mainstream user saw as Twitter and Facebook.

soneil 6y ago
I don't recall seeing AOL chatrooms quoted in mainstream news on a regular basis. They may have had a sizeable percentage of the online audience, but it's the "online audience" that's greatly inflated in scale.
bezmenov 6y ago
It's disingenuous to compare the relative reach of AOL in the 90s to that of Twitter and Facebook in 2020. In absolute terms, both Twitter and Facebook dominate contemporary discourse at a scale far surpassing any company prior.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  I agree. AOL had far more control over the average online user than FB and Twitter do now. The fact we even say "FB and Twitter" indicates this. In the early AOL era, one couldn't even use it to access the web.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Not to mention that the other dominant ISPs were unlikely to have TOS's that were any less restrictive than AOL's. Hell, Prodigy billed itself as family-friendly, so it was likely more censor-happy than both AOL and CompuServe.
  - bezmenov 6y ago
    You're still overlooking the absolute scale. How many customers did peak, monopolistic AOL have? How many collective human hours are spent within the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter daily?
  - r00fus 6y ago