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Justice Thomas suggests regulating tech platforms like utilities

77 points by adventured 6y ago

tombert 6y ago
I hate falling into "slippery slope" arguments, but I'm gonna be "that guy". If we treat the tech platforms like utilities, then would that force companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to allow full-on porn on their platform? How about literal neo-Nazi stuff advocating death to millions of people? Short of deleting and reporting something outright illegal (e.g. child porn), would we be forcing these companies to take a fully "hands off" approach to all their content? I just worry that if there's no content moderation, basically every platform devolves into awfulness like Gab, Parler, 8kun, or Bitchute. I'm not wholly opposed to treating big tech companies like a utility but I feel I gotta ask the annoying questions. I would honestly love to be wrong about this but it does seem like the worst parts of humanity are the most vocal when there's no moderation at all.
- cj 6y ago
  > If we treat the tech platforms like utilities, then would that force companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to allow full-on porn on their platform? Does USPS allow you to ship anything, legal or not, without question? (No) Do cable companies require that all content be accessed equally, including adult only content? (No) Will your electric company kick you off your service if you’re running a datacenter in a giant warehouse next to your residence? (Probably, unless you have a non-residential contract with them)
  - tombert 6y ago
    > Does USPS allow you to ship anything, legal or not, without question? (No) Sure, let's pull this thread. Your use of the term "legal or not" is silly, because I specifically put the caveat for the platforms to delete illegal content, so I'll only look at the scope of legal stuff. You are correct that the USPS won't let you ship anything, things like guns and large quantities of cash aren't inherently illegal but aren't allowed to be shipped. The implication of what you're saying though, is that you want the government to determine what constitutes "free speech" on the internet. If someone uploads a full-length (legally licensed) Brazzers video to YouTube, that might be classified as "porn" and be deleted. Fine. How about if, in the middle of the "action" of the porn, they go on a long detailed breakdown of wealth inequality in America. Is this still "just porn" or is that considered protected political speech that now cannot be deleted?
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      > Is this still "just porn" or is that considered protected political speech that now cannot be deleted? I'm pretty sure if you yell "Fire!" followed by a treatise on your political views, your speech is still not considered 'protected'. Similarly, I would imagine that if something has pornographic content in it at all, it would be regulated as porn.
      - tombert 6y ago
        But who gets to decide what "porn" is? If I upload a video talking about my opinions and I'm not wearing a shirt, is that porn? By which community's standard do we say something is "pornographic"? There are certain groups in America that say women showing their ankles is arousing, do we go with their standards? EDIT, Cont'd: For that matter, what if the act of sex is the actual message? As in, two people are having sex and they are doing that as a direct message towards some political entity?
        throwaway894345 6y ago
        Right, that's a bigger problem that we have to deal with in society anyway, so I don't think this introduces anything new. We just take the existing legal definition of pornography and apply it to social media.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- breckenedge 6y ago
  Not a slippery slope, it’s right there in the article: > Depending on the specific contours of such regulation, social media sites could be forced to alter or do away with many of the moderation standards they use to keep harassment, hate speech and nudity off their platforms. If Thomas had his way, he’d probably find a way to declare porn illegal, or subject to much stricter regulations.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I'm arguing from an assumption that social media giants are too powerful--they can steer public opinion and even influence national elections (think "Social Dilemma"). I also think they're just bad for our social fabric--they seem to drive up anxiety and antisocial behavior. This is the context for the rest of my comment. That said, I think you're right that without moderation, the quality of these platforms will suffer. I don't think it will look like Parler et al but rather like Mastodon which is more noisy than vile. But even still, I think it will drive people from these platforms, weakening them, and I think that's a net improvement over the status quo. I also think there's another interesting possibility which may or may not be practical for other reasons: require social media companies to implement a common protocol (e.g., the mastodon protocol; forgetting what it's called off the top of my head) such that these companies can continue to offer a moderated window into the underlying social network, but they don't own the social network. If you want, you can pack up and leave for another social media provider without leaving your friends and conversations. This weakens social media giants by breaking their monopoly and allowing competition from upstarts (including other revenue models besides ads) and it also allows these giants to moderate how they like.
  - tombert 6y ago
    Yeah, I don't know that I made it clear in my original post; I do not like having to depend on our benevolent overlords like Google and Twitter and Facebook to determine what I can handle. I think they have way too much power, I'm not opposed to breaking them up into smaller entities, and I don't think it's a dumb idea to push or require companies to use open protocols. I like Mastodon, but part of me worries that the reason that Nazis haven't ruined it is largely because a lot of them don't know about it yet. That said, if we used a decentralized protocol like Mastodon, then theoretically individual servers could moderate their posts however they'd like, and if you don't like it you could hop over to another server.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      I think we mostly agree. Specifically, we both seem to think it would be interesting and possibly ideal to require social media giants to implement an open protocol, but failing that I'm not sure whether we agree that regulating them like utilities (with the associated quality implications) is better than the status quo?
- pessimizer 6y ago
  I support the worst parts of humanity having the ability to speak online as much as we allow them to speak in real life. If we would regulate their public speech outdoors, I'm fine with regulating their public speech online. Would we propose that racists be banned from speaking to each other in person?
  - tombert 6y ago
    No, of course not, and I'm not opposed to Nazis having their own websites like the Daily Stormer, or running their own Mastodon instance or something, or flocking to a "free speech" clone of Twitter like Parler, or uploading videos on Bitchute. I absolutely think that ISPs should be regulated like utilities.
bopbeepboop 6y ago
Great idea! Social media and cloud providers are like telephones, mail, and electricity. They should provide a service for any legal use, even if they don’t agree with the content.
- thereare5lights 6y ago
  Imagine if that applied to HN. What would be the consequences?
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    What do you imagine would be the consequences?
    - cool_dude85 6y ago
      Well, would HN be allowed to moderate the comments section, maybe except to remove illegal content?
      - happytoexplain 6y ago
        Probably not - but there's a pretty strong correlation between people who think social media should be federally regulated and people who feel disproportionately moderated (fair or not) on the current web, and who believe they would be happier with zero value/quality/civility-based moderation (i.e. only legality moderation, as you suggested).
      - bopbeepboop 6y ago
        HN wouldn’t be allowed to remove that content — but that’s different than flagging it as inappropriate (as HN does now). My vision is having HNs flagging system where the content is hidden but available by default would be acceptable — but FB or Reddit style of actually removing the comment would not be. My long term goal in forcing content to be available is to provide more control to users — such as user side content filtering on places like HN. I’m not against filtering what users see, by the users themselves: I’m against platform using their privileged position to do that filtering, in a way that enforces their political vision.
mullingitover 6y ago
We can't even get ISPs regulated as utilities.
- jedc 6y ago
  100% this. Before the top layer (apps) on the internet get regulated as utilities, the deeper layers (ISPs) should.
- uberman 6y ago
  Interestingly enough, Justice Thomas who wrote the majority opinion in the 2005 case that leaves it to the discretion of the FCC to determine if ISPs should be "utilities" now regrets his opinion and has suggested that the court review the implications of that ruling. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/clarence-thomas-regrets-ruling-that-ajit-pai-used-to-kill-net-neutrality/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/clarence-thomas-...
- adrr 6y ago
  Social networks we have a choice. I have lots of friends and family who choose not use certain social networks and the one that he's referring to is Twitter which isn't even in the top 10 of social networks in the US. Most of the USA don't have a choice in broadband providers.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  Ostensibly they are. When was the last time an ISP banned you because you wrote something on Twitter it disagreed with?
  - djoldman 6y ago
    Public utilities are generally governed by public utilities commissions. These commissions massively control the running of the business. They can affect pricing, delivery, standards, etc. etc. Denying or allowing service is but a tiny part of the equation.
paxys 6y ago
Everyone thinks tech platforms should be regulated, but everyone has wildly different (and contradictory) ideas on how that should actually be done. If no one can agree on what the problem is, there isn't ever going to be a solution.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful of corporations. Further, these corporations have demonstrated an ability to steer public opinion and credibly even unilaterally influence elections. This is simply too much power and these companies' rights to regulate their own platforms must yield to the greater need to secure our democracy. Effectively, I think it's an antitrust problem in that the power of these corporations is so great that it threatens our national sovereignty, as the large trusts of the 20s did (although I don't think the large social media companies have flexed that power as egregiously).
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful of corporations. Further, these corporations have demonstrated an ability to steer public opinion and credibly even unilaterally influence elections This is the Democratic party and Mainstream Media line. I vehemently disagree with that. So OP was correct. We can't even agree what the problem is. One half of the population blames Russia, Twitter, and 'misinformation' for their nominee's election loss and now wants blood and openly advocates for censorship of their political opponents.
    - paulmd 6y ago
      Ironically the facts are essentially the exact opposite. It's Thomas who is mad about his candidate's loss and feels it's Facebook's fault for suppressing "conservative speech", and argues for common-carrier regulation so that it doesn't "happen again". Democrats and the mainstream media have nothing to do with this other than being things that you don't like that virtue signal what side you're on. On the other hand if you think Russia isn't doing their best on social media, and that they're overwhelmingly pushing for Trump... you're willfully ignoring the facts, and the conclusions of multiple law-enforcement and intelligence studies. Of course this is only a temporary thing - Russia pushes for whatever will produce the most chaos both domestic and also in our international alliances and on the world stage. Right now that is Trump and that faction of his party, but they use the green party similarly, and hypothetically if the Republican party fractures and the democrats become ascendant on the US political stage then you will see them push unqualified green-party wacko candidates to do similar kinds of damage. The healing-crystals lady (Marianne something?) already has some suspicious stuff going on iirc. Also, there is of course a point to be made here about the subtle acknowledgement that a large amount of "conservative speech" these days is in fact hate speech in political clothing, targeting immigrants, minorities, LGBT, etc, or violent extremism such as the capitol insurrection, advocating the overthrow of democratic governors (yet another incident last week from the leader of the Michigan GOP), and so on. That is what Facebook is taking down, and that is what Thomas and others choose to identify as "conservative speech".
mark_l_watson 6y ago
Ugh, this is a bad day now, awful to discover that I agree with Justice Thomas on something.
- steve_g 6y ago
  Welcome! We're glad you're here. We CT fans aren't so bad, once you get to know us!
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Justice Thomas is greatest Justice.
- seertaak 6y ago
  To my mind he's right on Google v. Oracle, too.
- djschnei 6y ago
  Are you really that tribalistic that agreeing with someone "from the other team" ruins your day?
  - mark_l_watson 6y ago
    I was being sarcastic and forgot to add metadata for that.
    - djschnei 6y ago
      Thank you for clarifying. Have a great night
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Better to embrace that you can find common ground with someone you otherwise have wildly differing views from.
foobiter 6y ago
can this work with the existing algorithms? wouldn’t it ultimately mean that social networks would need some sort of “net neutrality” style regulation where all content is delivered equally?
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Thomas is upset because his wife is specifically the sort of person who these platforms are looking to avoid.
aeternum 6y ago
I would like to see more regulations that apply only to companies over a certain size. I'm a big proponent of capitalism but competition does seem to break down once companies reach a certain size. Just too easy for the largest players to buy out competitors with life-changing amounts of money, steal customers by offering huge but temporary incentives, or push through regulatory capture. I think an ideal government would rely more on the private sector but would ensure a level playing field and foster healthy competition between companies.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  Illegal operations should be for sure banned, and scope what’s considered illegal should be expanded. But we shouldn’t simple punish companies for being successful.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    Take for example Comcast buying up all the local ISPs, Disney buying up every media company, and FB acquiring Instagram to eliminate potential competition. These were all very successful acquisitions and the right business decision. However I'm not convinced they were in the public interest.
    - justapassenger 6y ago
      Are they making customer experience worse? Sure, Comcast sucks, but when I was dealing with local small isp, I had much much worse experience. Or with fragmentation of streaming, does having more and more content in one streaming service makes my experience worse? Would Instagram be better if they didn’t have power of FB behind them, for things like abuse, spam fighting or infinite deep pockets? It’s very complex topic, just “big=bad” doesn’t capture it.
      - aeternum 6y ago
        I had great experiences with the local small ISP. Faster connection, no need for expensive installers to come try to upsell on a modem. With Instagram and FB, I wonder what FB would have done to compete with Instagram, they would have had to compete on features or privacy, it would be interesting to see what they came up with, same if they had to compete with rather than just purchase Oculus.
hawkice 6y ago
This is a strangely emotive suggestion (not sure why, most people don't care about regulatory frameworks or their utilities). It's probably better to rephrase this without the metaphor. For instance, you could say "I want to pass a law saying Facebook cannot block legal content nor use an algorithm to hide it" (David French refers to this as the "Pornography on Facebook" plan, something like that).
rangoon626 6y ago
This kind of regulation will lead to a monopoly. It will make it harder for upstarts to compete. Anne then we’ll really be trapped.
slibhb 6y ago
It is concerning that Google, Facebook, et al can, in a totally opaque manner, change what billions of people will discover on the internet. I don't know the legal niceties here. Regulating these companies as utilities may be a stretch but perhaps Congress could force them to be more transparent about how topics/pages/etc are ranked and particularly about specific decisions to boost/de-boost certain topics/pages/etc (assuming those decisions are being made).
rektide 6y ago
We're only in this situation because anti-trust has failed, and these giant platforms gobble up all the upstarts & engage in anti-competitive practice. Trying to regulate a market you've let already grow deeply unhealthy is a bullshit answer to the real problem. Generally the platforms have been too permissive about what they've allowed, acting only when absolutely necessary. They have been too generous, and allowed too much disinformation & lies[1]. It is not great that they use opaque unclear processes, but that's something competition should address, not regulation. You can be assured that whatever order & regulation Clarence Thomas wants, it is not to fix the lying & abuse. It is to require it. He is enormously sore his political buddies have gotten their wings clipped a little bit for their outrageous behaviors. That's all this is about, to Clarence Thomas. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/technology/facebook-political-ads-lies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/technology/facebook-polit...
snicker7 6y ago
Thomas is right. Social media platforms are a natural monopoly, their value for users is proportional to the size of their user-base.
qertoip 6y ago
How about helping competition to beat FAANG network effects by deregulating everything? Increasingly, "more regulation" seems to be the go-to solution for any and all societal problems. There seem to be no free market capitalists left on HN anymore :(
- djoldman 6y ago
  I think it's incredibly unlikely that any of FAANG will be deemed a public utility with corresponding public utility commissions overseeing them. What would you deregulate to increase competition? What is holding potential competitors back?
- mfenix 6y ago
  I think you're right. Also, some of the market response is already there (although still very small compared to the big players). A good example is the brave browser which could change a lot of things once a lot of people start using it.
- noarchy 6y ago
  There is often a gulf dividing capitalists and free market advocates. Plenty of capitalists are more than willing to embrace regulation if it protects their interests. The likes of Facebook and Twitter may jump at the chance to cement themselves as monopolies via some kind of nationalizing/utility regulation. At this stage, both major parties in the US seem to be moving in this direction. The Democrats are no surprise - what is a major surprise is how quickly the Republicans and people like Clarence Thomas are moving to agree. But getting these two sides to agree on the details of the implementation will be no small feat. So while I think some regulation is almost inevitable, I can't predict what it will look like.
paxys 6y ago
Citizens United (a 5-4 ruling along party lines which Justice Thomas voted in favor of) established that corporations have the right to free speech, which explicitly includes speech that can influence elections. I wonder if his thoughts on that have changed, but that is unlikely. The funny (and sad) thing is, this whole "large corporations can do anything they want" ethos in place today is a very recent shift in American society, steadily pushed by "Reagan conservatism" in the last few decades. The corporations then started shifting left (because that's where the money is), and the same conservatives are now calling for regulation.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  Free Speech isn't the direct issue here. YouTube and other social media platforms are engaged in an exploitive bait and switch, which happens to collide with the speech issues. However, the core issue is one where speech is just the game ball. Social Media platforms tell creators and their fans that they will act as "platforms" for the creator's free expression -- provided it's in line with the "Terms of Service." However, it the "Terms of Service" is a bugaboo. Social Media platforms are effectively manipulating the speech of their creators to tell their own ideological message, using censorship, the threat of demonetization, the threat of de-platforming, and the manipulative denial of viral spread -- in uncountable cases, with no reasonable connection to their terms of service. It would be one thing, if this were always actually to "preserve the value of their platform for advertisers" or some such, but the record bears out in innumerable instances that many of their actions are the grinding of an ideological axe by lower level company functionaries. This is a bait and switch. With one hand, the platforms are saying, "We will serve as your conduit," then with the other hand, they are saying, "You will send the ideological message that we want you to say, or else!" Many will say that this is their right as a private company. No private company has the right to say they will do one thing, but then dishonestly do the opposite through murky deception and threats. The record of illogical, nonsensical, and weird contortions "platforms" go through to hide ideological manipulation is legion. If a full accounting were entered into the record in a court of law, and if discovery to uncover collusion in such activities were carried out, I predict that it wouldn't go well for Big Tech. They know this, are afraid of this, and this explains their behavior to a T.
noarchy 6y ago
This seems to further confirm a major shift that is happening in the American Right. They've been moving pretty swiftly to the "left" on economics, with Thomas's statements following the protectionism that we saw during the Trump years. The American Right of prior decades, by contrast, was often against what the federal government of the time was doing to Microsoft (the Big Tech bogeyman of the time). And does anyone remember how the American Right stood against the Fairness Doctrine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
justapassenger 6y ago
And utilities regulation in USA is a great example of huge failure for customers. Extremely outdated power lines, that keep on lighting California on fire, water that’s killing people in cities like Flynt, blackouts like in 3rd world country, etc, etc. Tech needs changes, but regulating them as utilities it’s best way to ensure low quality outcomes for customers.
djoldman 6y ago
Thomas: > There is a fair argument that some digital platforms are sufficiently akin to common carriers or places of accommodation to be regulated in this manner Ostensibly Thomas means that these digital platforms may be analogous to "common carriers" that transport goods or people for any person or company and are responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport; or he means "places of accommodation" as noted in Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation. Neither seem particularly similar to any of the FAANG. As noted elsewhere in this thread, ISPs seems much closer to common carriers than any of FAANG.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Any place that requires a password to fully participate in, and is also owned by some third and non-governmental entity, is not a public place. It's that simple.
igetspam 6y ago
Wait, I forget, are conservatives pro regulation or pro deregulation of private business now? It's hard to track. If we regulate how twitter operates z do we then also regulate how Hobby Lobby discriminates against their employees' right to choose? Finding consistency in the right if becoming very difficult. I voted red for many years. I also own guns. I say this to preempt the socialist/leftist replies. I'm just not stupid that I can't see the hypocrisy.

77 points by adventured 6y ago

I hate falling into "slippery slope" arguments, but I'm gonna be "that guy". If we treat the tech platforms like utilities, then would that force companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to allow full-on porn on their platform? How about literal neo-Nazi stuff advocating death to millions of people? Short of deleting and reporting something outright illegal (e.g. child porn), would we be forcing these companies to take a fully "hands off" approach to all their content? I just worry that if there's no content moderation, basically every platform devolves into awfulness like Gab, Parler, 8kun, or Bitchute. I'm not wholly opposed to treating big tech companies like a utility but I feel I gotta ask the annoying questions. I would honestly love to be wrong about this but it does seem like the worst parts of humanity are the most vocal when there's no moderation at all.

cj 6y ago
> If we treat the tech platforms like utilities, then would that force companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to allow full-on porn on their platform? Does USPS allow you to ship anything, legal or not, without question? (No) Do cable companies require that all content be accessed equally, including adult only content? (No) Will your electric company kick you off your service if you’re running a datacenter in a giant warehouse next to your residence? (Probably, unless you have a non-residential contract with them)
- tombert 6y ago
  > Does USPS allow you to ship anything, legal or not, without question? (No) Sure, let's pull this thread. Your use of the term "legal or not" is silly, because I specifically put the caveat for the platforms to delete illegal content, so I'll only look at the scope of legal stuff. You are correct that the USPS won't let you ship anything, things like guns and large quantities of cash aren't inherently illegal but aren't allowed to be shipped. The implication of what you're saying though, is that you want the government to determine what constitutes "free speech" on the internet. If someone uploads a full-length (legally licensed) Brazzers video to YouTube, that might be classified as "porn" and be deleted. Fine. How about if, in the middle of the "action" of the porn, they go on a long detailed breakdown of wealth inequality in America. Is this still "just porn" or is that considered protected political speech that now cannot be deleted?
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > Is this still "just porn" or is that considered protected political speech that now cannot be deleted? I'm pretty sure if you yell "Fire!" followed by a treatise on your political views, your speech is still not considered 'protected'. Similarly, I would imagine that if something has pornographic content in it at all, it would be regulated as porn.
    - tombert 6y ago
      But who gets to decide what "porn" is? If I upload a video talking about my opinions and I'm not wearing a shirt, is that porn? By which community's standard do we say something is "pornographic"? There are certain groups in America that say women showing their ankles is arousing, do we go with their standards? EDIT, Cont'd: For that matter, what if the act of sex is the actual message? As in, two people are having sex and they are doing that as a direct message towards some political entity?
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        Right, that's a bigger problem that we have to deal with in society anyway, so I don't think this introduces anything new. We just take the existing legal definition of pornography and apply it to social media.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
breckenedge 6y ago
Not a slippery slope, it’s right there in the article: > Depending on the specific contours of such regulation, social media sites could be forced to alter or do away with many of the moderation standards they use to keep harassment, hate speech and nudity off their platforms. If Thomas had his way, he’d probably find a way to declare porn illegal, or subject to much stricter regulations.
throwaway894345 6y ago
I'm arguing from an assumption that social media giants are too powerful--they can steer public opinion and even influence national elections (think "Social Dilemma"). I also think they're just bad for our social fabric--they seem to drive up anxiety and antisocial behavior. This is the context for the rest of my comment. That said, I think you're right that without moderation, the quality of these platforms will suffer. I don't think it will look like Parler et al but rather like Mastodon which is more noisy than vile. But even still, I think it will drive people from these platforms, weakening them, and I think that's a net improvement over the status quo. I also think there's another interesting possibility which may or may not be practical for other reasons: require social media companies to implement a common protocol (e.g., the mastodon protocol; forgetting what it's called off the top of my head) such that these companies can continue to offer a moderated window into the underlying social network, but they don't own the social network. If you want, you can pack up and leave for another social media provider without leaving your friends and conversations. This weakens social media giants by breaking their monopoly and allowing competition from upstarts (including other revenue models besides ads) and it also allows these giants to moderate how they like.
- tombert 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't know that I made it clear in my original post; I do not like having to depend on our benevolent overlords like Google and Twitter and Facebook to determine what I can handle. I think they have way too much power, I'm not opposed to breaking them up into smaller entities, and I don't think it's a dumb idea to push or require companies to use open protocols. I like Mastodon, but part of me worries that the reason that Nazis haven't ruined it is largely because a lot of them don't know about it yet. That said, if we used a decentralized protocol like Mastodon, then theoretically individual servers could moderate their posts however they'd like, and if you don't like it you could hop over to another server.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I think we mostly agree. Specifically, we both seem to think it would be interesting and possibly ideal to require social media giants to implement an open protocol, but failing that I'm not sure whether we agree that regulating them like utilities (with the associated quality implications) is better than the status quo?
pessimizer 6y ago
I support the worst parts of humanity having the ability to speak online as much as we allow them to speak in real life. If we would regulate their public speech outdoors, I'm fine with regulating their public speech online. Would we propose that racists be banned from speaking to each other in person?
- tombert 6y ago
  No, of course not, and I'm not opposed to Nazis having their own websites like the Daily Stormer, or running their own Mastodon instance or something, or flocking to a "free speech" clone of Twitter like Parler, or uploading videos on Bitchute. I absolutely think that ISPs should be regulated like utilities.

bopbeepboop 6y ago

Great idea! Social media and cloud providers are like telephones, mail, and electricity. They should provide a service for any legal use, even if they don’t agree with the content.

thereare5lights 6y ago
Imagine if that applied to HN. What would be the consequences?
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  What do you imagine would be the consequences?
  - cool_dude85 6y ago
    Well, would HN be allowed to moderate the comments section, maybe except to remove illegal content?
    - happytoexplain 6y ago
      Probably not - but there's a pretty strong correlation between people who think social media should be federally regulated and people who feel disproportionately moderated (fair or not) on the current web, and who believe they would be happier with zero value/quality/civility-based moderation (i.e. only legality moderation, as you suggested).
    - bopbeepboop 6y ago
      HN wouldn’t be allowed to remove that content — but that’s different than flagging it as inappropriate (as HN does now). My vision is having HNs flagging system where the content is hidden but available by default would be acceptable — but FB or Reddit style of actually removing the comment would not be. My long term goal in forcing content to be available is to provide more control to users — such as user side content filtering on places like HN. I’m not against filtering what users see, by the users themselves: I’m against platform using their privileged position to do that filtering, in a way that enforces their political vision.

mullingitover 6y ago

We can't even get ISPs regulated as utilities.

jedc 6y ago
100% this. Before the top layer (apps) on the internet get regulated as utilities, the deeper layers (ISPs) should.
uberman 6y ago
Interestingly enough, Justice Thomas who wrote the majority opinion in the 2005 case that leaves it to the discretion of the FCC to determine if ISPs should be "utilities" now regrets his opinion and has suggested that the court review the implications of that ruling. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/clarence-thomas-regrets-ruling-that-ajit-pai-used-to-kill-net-neutrality/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/clarence-thomas-...
adrr 6y ago
Social networks we have a choice. I have lots of friends and family who choose not use certain social networks and the one that he's referring to is Twitter which isn't even in the top 10 of social networks in the US. Most of the USA don't have a choice in broadband providers.
macspoofing 6y ago
Ostensibly they are. When was the last time an ISP banned you because you wrote something on Twitter it disagreed with?
- djoldman 6y ago
  Public utilities are generally governed by public utilities commissions. These commissions massively control the running of the business. They can affect pricing, delivery, standards, etc. etc. Denying or allowing service is but a tiny part of the equation.

paxys 6y ago

Everyone thinks tech platforms should be regulated, but everyone has wildly different (and contradictory) ideas on how that should actually be done. If no one can agree on what the problem is, there isn't ever going to be a solution.

throwaway894345 6y ago
I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful of corporations. Further, these corporations have demonstrated an ability to steer public opinion and credibly even unilaterally influence elections. This is simply too much power and these companies' rights to regulate their own platforms must yield to the greater need to secure our democracy. Effectively, I think it's an antitrust problem in that the power of these corporations is so great that it threatens our national sovereignty, as the large trusts of the 20s did (although I don't think the large social media companies have flexed that power as egregiously).
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful of corporations. Further, these corporations have demonstrated an ability to steer public opinion and credibly even unilaterally influence elections This is the Democratic party and Mainstream Media line. I vehemently disagree with that. So OP was correct. We can't even agree what the problem is. One half of the population blames Russia, Twitter, and 'misinformation' for their nominee's election loss and now wants blood and openly advocates for censorship of their political opponents.
  - paulmd 6y ago
    Ironically the facts are essentially the exact opposite. It's Thomas who is mad about his candidate's loss and feels it's Facebook's fault for suppressing "conservative speech", and argues for common-carrier regulation so that it doesn't "happen again". Democrats and the mainstream media have nothing to do with this other than being things that you don't like that virtue signal what side you're on. On the other hand if you think Russia isn't doing their best on social media, and that they're overwhelmingly pushing for Trump... you're willfully ignoring the facts, and the conclusions of multiple law-enforcement and intelligence studies. Of course this is only a temporary thing - Russia pushes for whatever will produce the most chaos both domestic and also in our international alliances and on the world stage. Right now that is Trump and that faction of his party, but they use the green party similarly, and hypothetically if the Republican party fractures and the democrats become ascendant on the US political stage then you will see them push unqualified green-party wacko candidates to do similar kinds of damage. The healing-crystals lady (Marianne something?) already has some suspicious stuff going on iirc. Also, there is of course a point to be made here about the subtle acknowledgement that a large amount of "conservative speech" these days is in fact hate speech in political clothing, targeting immigrants, minorities, LGBT, etc, or violent extremism such as the capitol insurrection, advocating the overthrow of democratic governors (yet another incident last week from the leader of the Michigan GOP), and so on. That is what Facebook is taking down, and that is what Thomas and others choose to identify as "conservative speech".

mark_l_watson 6y ago

Ugh, this is a bad day now, awful to discover that I agree with Justice Thomas on something.

steve_g 6y ago
Welcome! We're glad you're here. We CT fans aren't so bad, once you get to know us!
baggy_trough 6y ago
Justice Thomas is greatest Justice.
seertaak 6y ago
To my mind he's right on Google v. Oracle, too.
djschnei 6y ago
Are you really that tribalistic that agreeing with someone "from the other team" ruins your day?
- mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I was being sarcastic and forgot to add metadata for that.
  - djschnei 6y ago
    Thank you for clarifying. Have a great night
toomuchtodo 6y ago
Better to embrace that you can find common ground with someone you otherwise have wildly differing views from.

foobiter 6y ago

can this work with the existing algorithms? wouldn’t it ultimately mean that social networks would need some sort of “net neutrality” style regulation where all content is delivered equally?

MisterBastahrd 6y ago

Thomas is upset because his wife is specifically the sort of person who these platforms are looking to avoid.

aeternum 6y ago

I would like to see more regulations that apply only to companies over a certain size. I'm a big proponent of capitalism but competition does seem to break down once companies reach a certain size. Just too easy for the largest players to buy out competitors with life-changing amounts of money, steal customers by offering huge but temporary incentives, or push through regulatory capture. I think an ideal government would rely more on the private sector but would ensure a level playing field and foster healthy competition between companies.

justapassenger 6y ago
Illegal operations should be for sure banned, and scope what’s considered illegal should be expanded. But we shouldn’t simple punish companies for being successful.
- aeternum 6y ago
  Take for example Comcast buying up all the local ISPs, Disney buying up every media company, and FB acquiring Instagram to eliminate potential competition. These were all very successful acquisitions and the right business decision. However I'm not convinced they were in the public interest.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    Are they making customer experience worse? Sure, Comcast sucks, but when I was dealing with local small isp, I had much much worse experience. Or with fragmentation of streaming, does having more and more content in one streaming service makes my experience worse? Would Instagram be better if they didn’t have power of FB behind them, for things like abuse, spam fighting or infinite deep pockets? It’s very complex topic, just “big=bad” doesn’t capture it.
    - aeternum 6y ago
      I had great experiences with the local small ISP. Faster connection, no need for expensive installers to come try to upsell on a modem. With Instagram and FB, I wonder what FB would have done to compete with Instagram, they would have had to compete on features or privacy, it would be interesting to see what they came up with, same if they had to compete with rather than just purchase Oculus.

hawkice 6y ago

This is a strangely emotive suggestion (not sure why, most people don't care about regulatory frameworks or their utilities). It's probably better to rephrase this without the metaphor. For instance, you could say "I want to pass a law saying Facebook cannot block legal content nor use an algorithm to hide it" (David French refers to this as the "Pornography on Facebook" plan, something like that).

rangoon626 6y ago

This kind of regulation will lead to a monopoly. It will make it harder for upstarts to compete. Anne then we’ll really be trapped.

slibhb 6y ago

It is concerning that Google, Facebook, et al can, in a totally opaque manner, change what billions of people will discover on the internet. I don't know the legal niceties here. Regulating these companies as utilities may be a stretch but perhaps Congress could force them to be more transparent about how topics/pages/etc are ranked and particularly about specific decisions to boost/de-boost certain topics/pages/etc (assuming those decisions are being made).

rektide 6y ago

We're only in this situation because anti-trust has failed, and these giant platforms gobble up all the upstarts & engage in anti-competitive practice. Trying to regulate a market you've let already grow deeply unhealthy is a bullshit answer to the real problem. Generally the platforms have been too permissive about what they've allowed, acting only when absolutely necessary. They have been too generous, and allowed too much disinformation & lies[1]. It is not great that they use opaque unclear processes, but that's something competition should address, not regulation. You can be assured that whatever order & regulation Clarence Thomas wants, it is not to fix the lying & abuse. It is to require it. He is enormously sore his political buddies have gotten their wings clipped a little bit for their outrageous behaviors. That's all this is about, to Clarence Thomas. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/technology/facebook-political-ads-lies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/technology/facebook-polit...

snicker7 6y ago

Thomas is right. Social media platforms are a natural monopoly, their value for users is proportional to the size of their user-base.

qertoip 6y ago

How about helping competition to beat FAANG network effects by deregulating everything? Increasingly, "more regulation" seems to be the go-to solution for any and all societal problems. There seem to be no free market capitalists left on HN anymore :(

djoldman 6y ago
I think it's incredibly unlikely that any of FAANG will be deemed a public utility with corresponding public utility commissions overseeing them. What would you deregulate to increase competition? What is holding potential competitors back?
mfenix 6y ago
I think you're right. Also, some of the market response is already there (although still very small compared to the big players). A good example is the brave browser which could change a lot of things once a lot of people start using it.
noarchy 6y ago
There is often a gulf dividing capitalists and free market advocates. Plenty of capitalists are more than willing to embrace regulation if it protects their interests. The likes of Facebook and Twitter may jump at the chance to cement themselves as monopolies via some kind of nationalizing/utility regulation. At this stage, both major parties in the US seem to be moving in this direction. The Democrats are no surprise - what is a major surprise is how quickly the Republicans and people like Clarence Thomas are moving to agree. But getting these two sides to agree on the details of the implementation will be no small feat. So while I think some regulation is almost inevitable, I can't predict what it will look like.

paxys 6y ago

Citizens United (a 5-4 ruling along party lines which Justice Thomas voted in favor of) established that corporations have the right to free speech, which explicitly includes speech that can influence elections. I wonder if his thoughts on that have changed, but that is unlikely. The funny (and sad) thing is, this whole "large corporations can do anything they want" ethos in place today is a very recent shift in American society, steadily pushed by "Reagan conservatism" in the last few decades. The corporations then started shifting left (because that's where the money is), and the same conservatives are now calling for regulation.

stcredzero 6y ago
Free Speech isn't the direct issue here. YouTube and other social media platforms are engaged in an exploitive bait and switch, which happens to collide with the speech issues. However, the core issue is one where speech is just the game ball. Social Media platforms tell creators and their fans that they will act as "platforms" for the creator's free expression -- provided it's in line with the "Terms of Service." However, it the "Terms of Service" is a bugaboo. Social Media platforms are effectively manipulating the speech of their creators to tell their own ideological message, using censorship, the threat of demonetization, the threat of de-platforming, and the manipulative denial of viral spread -- in uncountable cases, with no reasonable connection to their terms of service. It would be one thing, if this were always actually to "preserve the value of their platform for advertisers" or some such, but the record bears out in innumerable instances that many of their actions are the grinding of an ideological axe by lower level company functionaries. This is a bait and switch. With one hand, the platforms are saying, "We will serve as your conduit," then with the other hand, they are saying, "You will send the ideological message that we want you to say, or else!" Many will say that this is their right as a private company. No private company has the right to say they will do one thing, but then dishonestly do the opposite through murky deception and threats. The record of illogical, nonsensical, and weird contortions "platforms" go through to hide ideological manipulation is legion. If a full accounting were entered into the record in a court of law, and if discovery to uncover collusion in such activities were carried out, I predict that it wouldn't go well for Big Tech. They know this, are afraid of this, and this explains their behavior to a T.

noarchy 6y ago

This seems to further confirm a major shift that is happening in the American Right. They've been moving pretty swiftly to the "left" on economics, with Thomas's statements following the protectionism that we saw during the Trump years. The American Right of prior decades, by contrast, was often against what the federal government of the time was doing to Microsoft (the Big Tech bogeyman of the time). And does anyone remember how the American Right stood against the Fairness Doctrine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

justapassenger 6y ago

And utilities regulation in USA is a great example of huge failure for customers. Extremely outdated power lines, that keep on lighting California on fire, water that’s killing people in cities like Flynt, blackouts like in 3rd world country, etc, etc. Tech needs changes, but regulating them as utilities it’s best way to ensure low quality outcomes for customers.

djoldman 6y ago

Thomas: > There is a fair argument that some digital platforms are sufficiently akin to common carriers or places of accommodation to be regulated in this manner Ostensibly Thomas means that these digital platforms may be analogous to "common carriers" that transport goods or people for any person or company and are responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport; or he means "places of accommodation" as noted in Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation. Neither seem particularly similar to any of the FAANG. As noted elsewhere in this thread, ISPs seems much closer to common carriers than any of FAANG.

MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Any place that requires a password to fully participate in, and is also owned by some third and non-governmental entity, is not a public place. It's that simple.

igetspam 6y ago

Wait, I forget, are conservatives pro regulation or pro deregulation of private business now? It's hard to track. If we regulate how twitter operates z do we then also regulate how Hobby Lobby discriminates against their employees' right to choose? Finding consistency in the right if becoming very difficult. I voted red for many years. I also own guns. I say this to preempt the socialist/leftist replies. I'm just not stupid that I can't see the hypocrisy.