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Why not put a protocol in the public domain and let service providers implement it, like email? Is there something about broadcast communication that makes impa

Why not put a protocol in the public domain and let service providers implement it, like email? Is there something about broadcast communication that makes impartiality or neutrality impossible? Even if the broadcast protocol is based on follow/subscribe interactions? This is an interesting subject!

geofft 6y ago
That's a great idea, and I think if private individuals (either businesses or open-source hackers or whoever) want to do that, they should! But I think if private individuals (again, including business) don't want to do that, they shouldn't be compelled to! No law makes an email provider use SMTP; they do it because the industry / the market has settled on it. (Imagine if nobody could use STARTTLS until it got approved by the government!) Twitter is running a product, which includes broadcast communication as a component, yes, but also includes lots of other components: the idea that the product is structured as short messages with "retweets" and "likes" (distinct from Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, email, etc.), limitations on message size, the idea of "Verified" and the choice of whom to verify, the discovery page and curation, showing "Who to follow" and curation of that, the data model of threading, the whole concept of hashtags, a "Home" view where the timeline goes sideways, images and video and audio and alt text and link previews, encrypting traffic to their site, not encrypting DMs, etc. And part of their product is determining what their rules are about what's on-topic and what's off-topic (whether you count it as spam or as harassment or as whatever else). Absent a compelling reason otherwise, I don't think the government should be in charge of any of those decisions. I don't agree with all of those, and I certainly don't think it's impossible for them to make better-in-my-opinion decisions. But that's not for me to decide, nor is it for the FCC to decide. Come to think of it, that's probably the underlying principle behind the US (and many other countries') political philosophy: the default is that choices are in the hands of individuals, including groups of individuals who make a company, and the government overriding that is an exceptional case that requires a strong justification. It's not the only model - monarchies and authoritarian states follow the approach that everything is in the hands of the ruler / the party, and liberty is granted as an exception when there's an argument for it.
- guscost 6y ago
  You make good points. But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. In this context it is not at all that “government should be in charge of these decisions”, it is entirely that Twitter’s privileged status should be questioned, given the amount of control they are exercising over the amount of content they distribute. Put another way: AT&T should not be liable for what I publish on my personal website, but if they were dropping packets from my server because of a “content policy” then I would think differently!
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    > But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. That’s not quite true — Section 230 protects all platforms from liability for content produced by third parties. You enjoy that exact same immunity for comments others post on your personal website. And conversely, Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce, such as descriptions of trending topics.
    - guscost 6y ago
      > Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. It may not be as far-fetched as you think: DJ Shadow can copyright a song made entirely from snippets of other recorded music. For the record, I think the law should be changed. Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly.
      - jakelazaroff 6y ago
        > Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. Any challenge to what? I don’t understand what you’re proposing here. Even if Section 230 were repealed, Twitter would be perfectly free to e.g. censor all conservative content. The issue is that by doing so, they might be liable for unrelated content they allow that ends up being defamatory. > Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly. This would be a hard argument to make. There are hundreds of competing social networking communities, some of which are even bigger!

geofft 6y ago

That's a great idea, and I think if private individuals (either businesses or open-source hackers or whoever) want to do that, they should! But I think if private individuals (again, including business) don't want to do that, they shouldn't be compelled to! No law makes an email provider use SMTP; they do it because the industry / the market has settled on it. (Imagine if nobody could use STARTTLS until it got approved by the government!) Twitter is running a product, which includes broadcast communication as a component, yes, but also includes lots of other components: the idea that the product is structured as short messages with "retweets" and "likes" (distinct from Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, email, etc.), limitations on message size, the idea of "Verified" and the choice of whom to verify, the discovery page and curation, showing "Who to follow" and curation of that, the data model of threading, the whole concept of hashtags, a "Home" view where the timeline goes sideways, images and video and audio and alt text and link previews, encrypting traffic to their site, not encrypting DMs, etc. And part of their product is determining what their rules are about what's on-topic and what's off-topic (whether you count it as spam or as harassment or as whatever else). Absent a compelling reason otherwise, I don't think the government should be in charge of any of those decisions. I don't agree with all of those, and I certainly don't think it's impossible for them to make better-in-my-opinion decisions. But that's not for me to decide, nor is it for the FCC to decide. Come to think of it, that's probably the underlying principle behind the US (and many other countries') political philosophy: the default is that choices are in the hands of individuals, including groups of individuals who make a company, and the government overriding that is an exceptional case that requires a strong justification. It's not the only model - monarchies and authoritarian states follow the approach that everything is in the hands of the ruler / the party, and liberty is granted as an exception when there's an argument for it.

guscost 6y ago
You make good points. But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. In this context it is not at all that “government should be in charge of these decisions”, it is entirely that Twitter’s privileged status should be questioned, given the amount of control they are exercising over the amount of content they distribute. Put another way: AT&T should not be liable for what I publish on my personal website, but if they were dropping packets from my server because of a “content policy” then I would think differently!
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  > But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. That’s not quite true — Section 230 protects all platforms from liability for content produced by third parties. You enjoy that exact same immunity for comments others post on your personal website. And conversely, Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce, such as descriptions of trending topics.
  - guscost 6y ago
    > Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. It may not be as far-fetched as you think: DJ Shadow can copyright a song made entirely from snippets of other recorded music. For the record, I think the law should be changed. Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly.
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      > Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. Any challenge to what? I don’t understand what you’re proposing here. Even if Section 230 were repealed, Twitter would be perfectly free to e.g. censor all conservative content. The issue is that by doing so, they might be liable for unrelated content they allow that ends up being defamatory. > Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly. This would be a hard argument to make. There are hundreds of competing social networking communities, some of which are even bigger!