4 ms·

Why would social networks be classified as a common carrier? There are plenty of options out there, and the capital required to start one is pretty low compared

Why would social networks be classified as a common carrier? There are plenty of options out there, and the capital required to start one is pretty low compared to something like a internet service provider or a train network. Not to mention that common carriers are also able to enter into contracts of carriage with passengers / users.

LocalH 5y ago
Because they have such an influence on discourse. I'm not saying that any old little forum should be covered by the concept. But when you have billions of users, you're necessarily a little more "public" than if you're a startup with 1000 users. ISPs aren't currently common carriers as far as I know, although I'm leaning towards the idea that they should be. There is precedent for this. I'm of the understanding that Disneyland is considered a common carrier. Facebook is certainly "delivering" users' content to other users. They have a complex algorithm to route posts to different people's feeds.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Hypothetical: current social media dominants become restricted by governments from expelling people based on their views, no matter how radical. Consequently their platforms become full of hateful propaganda by the kinds of groups that love freedom of speech for all the wrong reasons. As a response, I start up a new social media site that promises to keep people like that out, which I can do because I'm small enough to avoid the regulation. Within a year my social media site attains billions of users sick of dealing with Big Corp's platforms and their hate mobs. Unfortunately, now I'm big enough to be subject to the same regulation. Is this actually what we want?
  - maxwell 5y ago
    A federated network of social media services all with under 50 million users to avoid regulation? Sounds good to me.
    - krapp 5y ago
      Something tells me the government isn't going to be fooled when Facebook suddenly breaks up into 50 separate instances.
      - maxwell 5y ago
        As long as there's operational independence and no bias for particular nodes, what's the issue with Facebook breaking itself up and federating the Baby Books with something like Mastodon?
        krapp 5y ago
        Because the purpose of this law is to suppress the right of online platforms to moderate certain forms of speech, and to compel them to publish that speech against their will. If Facebook or any other platform breaks up in order to avoid that, the government will just rewrite the law in such a way that it still includes them.
        maxwell 5y ago
        It's harder to regulate a bunch of protocols and distributed entities. Regardless of purpose, regulation which only kicks in at 50m users seems a solid incentive to force networks to remain under that size, and that seems socially beneficial to me after the past decade. Scale benefits distributors but destroys diversity. If Facebook splits into 50 Baby Books, Zuckerberg's overall wealth likely increases, yet power is distributed. Ma Book could try to control the protocol, or a reference implementation, but they would need to do so in the open, and offer up transferable user data, which would mostly solve the issue with asymmetric access to "their" user data. Each Baby Book would need to compete on design, features, moderation/labeling/verification/filtering, branding, ad tools, etc. and that would be just fine.
- run-types 5y ago
  In the past, traditional media companies had huge effects on discourse, yet where never considered to be a common carrier. Facebook has really done very little to police its network, and we see that viral news is polarizing people and risking the stability of the nation.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > Because they have such an influence on discourse. So do newspapers, but you can't generally demand that a newspaper publishes your letter to the editor about how the illuminati are pushing people over the edge of the world, which is flat. > ISPs aren't currently common carriers as far as I know Strictly speaking, in the US, no, not at the moment. They were from 2015 to 2017.
devtul 5y ago
Are we ignoring that todays discourse happens online? People tweet, use facebook, instagram and all other major social platforms. This gaslight is so typical of people who happens to agree with the platforms bias, for them there's absolutely nothing wrong happening, until some of them get the whack then suddenly they agree the platform shouldn't be able to do that.
- run-types 5y ago
  My main discourse happens on Hacker News, because I enjoy the conversation here. I don't have a Facebook or Instagram and have plenty of ways to talk to people I care about. It's weird to me that you feel it is your right to have a Facebook account.
curryst 5y ago
> There are plenty of options out there, and the capital required to start one is pretty low compared to something like a internet service provider or a train network. A social media network with no users costs about as much as a single train station that doesn't connect anywhere: $0. They're also about equally useful. A social media network with enough users that people can talk to their friends on it is enormously expensive. It takes a lot of advertising and pushing to build up that base. Probably not as much as a train or ISP network, but certainly far beyond trivial quantities of cash. Google+ was estimated to cost $585m, it was from a company with a major internet presence, and it still failed horribly. You're also not considering that network effects heavily encourage a monopoly. If your cell phone could only call people with the same provider, you don't really have any meaningful choice. You pick whichever provider the people you want to talk to are on. In cases where consumers don't have meaningful choice, it makes sense to add additional protections for consumers.

LocalH 5y ago

Because they have such an influence on discourse. I'm not saying that any old little forum should be covered by the concept. But when you have billions of users, you're necessarily a little more "public" than if you're a startup with 1000 users. ISPs aren't currently common carriers as far as I know, although I'm leaning towards the idea that they should be. There is precedent for this. I'm of the understanding that Disneyland is considered a common carrier. Facebook is certainly "delivering" users' content to other users. They have a complex algorithm to route posts to different people's feeds.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Hypothetical: current social media dominants become restricted by governments from expelling people based on their views, no matter how radical. Consequently their platforms become full of hateful propaganda by the kinds of groups that love freedom of speech for all the wrong reasons. As a response, I start up a new social media site that promises to keep people like that out, which I can do because I'm small enough to avoid the regulation. Within a year my social media site attains billions of users sick of dealing with Big Corp's platforms and their hate mobs. Unfortunately, now I'm big enough to be subject to the same regulation. Is this actually what we want?
- maxwell 5y ago
  A federated network of social media services all with under 50 million users to avoid regulation? Sounds good to me.
  - krapp 5y ago
    Something tells me the government isn't going to be fooled when Facebook suddenly breaks up into 50 separate instances.
    - maxwell 5y ago
      As long as there's operational independence and no bias for particular nodes, what's the issue with Facebook breaking itself up and federating the Baby Books with something like Mastodon?
      - krapp 5y ago
        Because the purpose of this law is to suppress the right of online platforms to moderate certain forms of speech, and to compel them to publish that speech against their will. If Facebook or any other platform breaks up in order to avoid that, the government will just rewrite the law in such a way that it still includes them.
        maxwell 5y ago
        It's harder to regulate a bunch of protocols and distributed entities. Regardless of purpose, regulation which only kicks in at 50m users seems a solid incentive to force networks to remain under that size, and that seems socially beneficial to me after the past decade. Scale benefits distributors but destroys diversity. If Facebook splits into 50 Baby Books, Zuckerberg's overall wealth likely increases, yet power is distributed. Ma Book could try to control the protocol, or a reference implementation, but they would need to do so in the open, and offer up transferable user data, which would mostly solve the issue with asymmetric access to "their" user data. Each Baby Book would need to compete on design, features, moderation/labeling/verification/filtering, branding, ad tools, etc. and that would be just fine.
run-types 5y ago
In the past, traditional media companies had huge effects on discourse, yet where never considered to be a common carrier. Facebook has really done very little to police its network, and we see that viral news is polarizing people and risking the stability of the nation.
rsynnott 5y ago
> Because they have such an influence on discourse. So do newspapers, but you can't generally demand that a newspaper publishes your letter to the editor about how the illuminati are pushing people over the edge of the world, which is flat. > ISPs aren't currently common carriers as far as I know Strictly speaking, in the US, no, not at the moment. They were from 2015 to 2017.

devtul 5y ago

Are we ignoring that todays discourse happens online? People tweet, use facebook, instagram and all other major social platforms. This gaslight is so typical of people who happens to agree with the platforms bias, for them there's absolutely nothing wrong happening, until some of them get the whack then suddenly they agree the platform shouldn't be able to do that.

run-types 5y ago
My main discourse happens on Hacker News, because I enjoy the conversation here. I don't have a Facebook or Instagram and have plenty of ways to talk to people I care about. It's weird to me that you feel it is your right to have a Facebook account.

curryst 5y ago

> There are plenty of options out there, and the capital required to start one is pretty low compared to something like a internet service provider or a train network. A social media network with no users costs about as much as a single train station that doesn't connect anywhere: $0. They're also about equally useful. A social media network with enough users that people can talk to their friends on it is enormously expensive. It takes a lot of advertising and pushing to build up that base. Probably not as much as a train or ISP network, but certainly far beyond trivial quantities of cash. Google+ was estimated to cost $585m, it was from a company with a major internet presence, and it still failed horribly. You're also not considering that network effects heavily encourage a monopoly. If your cell phone could only call people with the same provider, you don't really have any meaningful choice. You pick whichever provider the people you want to talk to are on. In cases where consumers don't have meaningful choice, it makes sense to add additional protections for consumers.