16 ms·

1) It's a little more complicated than just pointing out that it's a private company. They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a pla

1) It's a little more complicated than just pointing out that it's a private company. They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a platform, but in many ways are acting as publishers. Are they a publisher or platform, or both or neither depending on the circumstance? I'm not completely sure, but I do know they want to simultaneously have their cake and eat it too. 2) On the surface, it sounds great. But one problem with social media doing something like blocking/banning paid disinformation campaigns is you just have to take their word that this is what happened. Twitter or Facebook can go and ban 25 million accounts in the run-up to a future heated election. They can claim that they're deleting organized paid influencers or deleting Russian bots that are trying to subvert the election and the media will publish that explanation without a hint of proof. The reality is that there's no public proof of who has been deleted, what the evidence is against them, what algorithm or review process was used to label them a bot or paid influencer, what IP addresses were involved, and if there's any false positives. This gives them the power to just label any political opponent they want a Russian bot or organized disinformation and silence them without any pushback from media.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a platform, but in many ways are acting as publishers. Section 230 exists specifically to allow online platforms to act as publishers without publisher liability. That's the exact and only thing it does, by its own terms. And it does so specifically because Congress wanted them to actively moderate content.
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  > actively moderate content Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? I'd argue that it was the former.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? The latter, fairly explicitly. Or, more specifically, with the fairly explicit hope that platforms would overall enforce one particular dominant cultural viewpoint (which is not without political dimensions) beyond the scope of what government had the power to regulate, but that this necessarily meant delegating to private parties with potentially divergent views.of community standards was acknowledged and accepted as the cost of broader censorship than there was any argument (even as much as there was for the rest of the Communications Decency Act in which 230 was included, which was otherwise entirely struck down as a First Amendment violation) might be consistent with the Constitution.
Atlas667 5y ago
You only explained how they justify it and the drawbacks of these platforms. But it's not the vague language of a law that allows social media platforms to censor "privately". You can try and change these laws and there will come another legal justification. These tech companies are not independent or subjects of the state simply taking advantage of legal loopholes. They are a part of the state apparatus. The state is who holds power in a society, it isnt just Congress or the president or senators or a pair of political parties. They censor because it is in their own interests to. Their platforms are designed to enable this and they work with the state to determine what gets censored. Any private, public, or non profit company that is not collectively controlled will turn itself or be made into a tool for censorship and/or espionage for its own preservation. These are the great american interests.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a platform, but in many ways are acting as publishers. Section 230 exists specifically to allow online platforms to act as publishers without publisher liability. That's the exact and only thing it does, by its own terms. And it does so specifically because Congress wanted them to actively moderate content.

logicalmonster 5y ago
> actively moderate content Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? I'd argue that it was the former.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? The latter, fairly explicitly. Or, more specifically, with the fairly explicit hope that platforms would overall enforce one particular dominant cultural viewpoint (which is not without political dimensions) beyond the scope of what government had the power to regulate, but that this necessarily meant delegating to private parties with potentially divergent views.of community standards was acknowledged and accepted as the cost of broader censorship than there was any argument (even as much as there was for the rest of the Communications Decency Act in which 230 was included, which was otherwise entirely struck down as a First Amendment violation) might be consistent with the Constitution.

Atlas667 5y ago

You only explained how they justify it and the drawbacks of these platforms. But it's not the vague language of a law that allows social media platforms to censor "privately". You can try and change these laws and there will come another legal justification. These tech companies are not independent or subjects of the state simply taking advantage of legal loopholes. They are a part of the state apparatus. The state is who holds power in a society, it isnt just Congress or the president or senators or a pair of political parties. They censor because it is in their own interests to. Their platforms are designed to enable this and they work with the state to determine what gets censored. Any private, public, or non profit company that is not collectively controlled will turn itself or be made into a tool for censorship and/or espionage for its own preservation. These are the great american interests.