3 ms·

But social media has their cake and eats it too. They're granted immunity from lawsuits from the government because they're a dumb pipe, but then they censor/p

by zionic 6y ago

But social media has their cake and eats it too. They're granted immunity from lawsuits from the government because they're a dumb pipe, but then they censor/promote as if they are a publisher. A business can't sue facebook for allowing a BLM riot to organize on its platform that destroyed their storefront, and similarly they have no recourse when said business gets a facebook page deleted because they complained about it.

manfredo 6y ago
Yes. If you were running a news stand, should you be sued if one of the magazines you're selling ends up inspiring a riot? If you refused to sell a certain magazine should people be able to sue you or otherwise force you to stock their paper? Freedom from compelled speech is the default. Requiring people or organizations to host speech is the exception, and is limited to things like utilities and cigarette health warnings. Making Facebook or Twitter a utility is very coarse grained. They would have to allow all legal speech. They wouldn't be able to ban users for nudity or porn, or explicitly espousing Nazism (actual Nazism, not the much more expansive post 2016 definition of "Nazi"). Both of these things are legal in the US, and a utility would have to permit them. If social media is made a utility, then social media is going to become 8chan. That's why I think it makes the most sense to apply utility status at the infrastructure layer not the application layer. Social media companies can still moderate, people on the fringes can spread their message on niche applications or on sites they build themselves.
- mbg721 6y ago
  If you carefully remove the half of the news you don't like, and your users are most of the country, sure, you deserve antitrust scrutiny. Why are we pretending that Facebook is some slack-jawed Ohioan that doesn't know exactly what it's doing?

by zionic 6y ago

manfredo 6y ago

Yes. If you were running a news stand, should you be sued if one of the magazines you're selling ends up inspiring a riot? If you refused to sell a certain magazine should people be able to sue you or otherwise force you to stock their paper? Freedom from compelled speech is the default. Requiring people or organizations to host speech is the exception, and is limited to things like utilities and cigarette health warnings. Making Facebook or Twitter a utility is very coarse grained. They would have to allow all legal speech. They wouldn't be able to ban users for nudity or porn, or explicitly espousing Nazism (actual Nazism, not the much more expansive post 2016 definition of "Nazi"). Both of these things are legal in the US, and a utility would have to permit them. If social media is made a utility, then social media is going to become 8chan. That's why I think it makes the most sense to apply utility status at the infrastructure layer not the application layer. Social media companies can still moderate, people on the fringes can spread their message on niche applications or on sites they build themselves.

mbg721 6y ago
If you carefully remove the half of the news you don't like, and your users are most of the country, sure, you deserve antitrust scrutiny. Why are we pretending that Facebook is some slack-jawed Ohioan that doesn't know exactly what it's doing?