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Some private enterprises are treated like government services and regulated as such. Utilities, for example. I doubt there are many countries where the electric

Some private enterprises are treated like government services and regulated as such. Utilities, for example. I doubt there are many countries where the electricity company can fire a paying client. The key is not who manages or owns the business, but whether it's a commons platform - something needed to function in society. So yeah, there's a pretty strong case to be made that certain internet companies are like that. Can you survive without social media? Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life.

jliptzin 5y ago
Comparing social media to sewage is appropriate because they are both filled with shit, not because they are both essential to living a normal life.
gitfan86 5y ago
Electricity and Sewer can and will be cutoff if you do not follow the terms of service. If the electric company discovers that you do not have a circuit breaker you will be cutoff.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Sure, but the terms of service cannot legally include such things as "You have political opinions we dislike" as a valid reason for terminating service.
  - themitigating 5y ago
    You're poor, a.k.a a class of society.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    Why would they? They are not providing a service for sharing opinions. Twitter is a service for sharing your opinions with the public. Obviously terms of service are going to include limits around your ability to share your opinions. If the service had no terms, that would mean that you could post 1 million spam replies to every single tweet anyone made. Similarly Twitter's TOS shouldn't include anything around electricity usage.
  - cycrutchfield 5y ago
    Which website contains “you have political opinions we dislike” as a valid reason for terminating service? Unless you are arguing that threats of violence are valid political opinions.
    - glenstein 5y ago
      What's interesting is that this is a new manifestation of the free speech argument, from new social and political quarters. Prior to this version of the free speech debate, the defenders of free speech would, say, donate to ACLU, oppose laws that criminalize protests, express concern over authoritarian countries jailing reporters, oppose prosecution of whistleblowers, oppose consolidation of corporate media, etc. But this new constituency emerged after events like Gamergate and Charlottesville protests, and they show up to defend participants in events like those but can't be mobilized to become active in other issues that historically have been ones where people become involved out of principle.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      All of them? That's the whole "We reserve the right to terminate your account for any reason" clause in most ToSes
  - glenstein 5y ago
    >such things as "You have political opinions we dislike" If I wrote the rules, anytime someone used the phrase "political opinions you dislike" there would be a popup list for the following before you can submit your comment: * violent incitement * Al Qaeda and ISIS * state sponsored misinformation campaigns run by automated bots * coordinated messages from automated bots for marketing & brand management * harassment * doxxing * defamation * revenge porn & child porn * vaccine misinformation * election misinformation * spam and phishing attacks And next to each you can click a checkbox to indicate which ones you personally endorse being defended as protected speech, which you believe to be implicated. Then people can mouse over the part of your comment that says "political opinions", see the list of things you clicked on, and know what you are talking about. This way we don't have to worry that you're equivocating between garden variety political topics (e.g. the economy, taxes) and all the other stuff when you say "political opinions you dislike."
Dangeranger 5y ago
Electric utilities were granted monopoly status in order the treat them as utilities, prior to the 1930s they were just private companies that were wildly successful, and didn’t want to expand into unprofitable rural markets. That’s not the dynamic occurring today, social media is available in even the most rural setting, albeit in a reduced form to support low bandwidth. Do we really want to allow Facebook and Twitter monopoly status and then treat them as defacto government entities? Will that result in better services? I do not think so. As we’ve seen with TikTok’s rise, competition within the space leads to better outcomes, not treating social media companies as “utilities”. Social media companies are not in any way comparable to a sewer system, an electric grid, or a phone line network.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > As we’ve seen with TikTok’s rise, competition within the space leads to better outcomes I disagree. The whole social media industry is rotten and needs a dose of... something... to bring it back to sanity. Strict limits on user data collection and algorithmic "feeds" would be a good start IMHO. Otherwise the same patterns repeat themselves, where the most rage-inducing content gets spread the furthest.
  - justaman 5y ago
    I think bringing back the adventurous side of the internet is important. Back in the day if you wanted to find information about a specific topic you had to search(not google search) for it. In doing so, you weren't inundated with more and more information that starts relevant, but quickly devolves into whats trending to drive DAUs and add clicks.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    The HN front page is an algorithmic feed. Where and how do you draw that line?
    - IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
      This is important. I dont know where the line is, but we should agree that a line is needed. People are saying a line is not necessary. That is at the core, the problem. We need to agree that these companies -by accident or otherwise- have become a common good, similar to a "utility" Take a similar example: at some point a company stops being a company...and becomes a monopoly. Where is that line? We dont know. However its important we recognize private companies operating as monopolies are not in the best interests of society. Private companies operating as common goods providers should be subject to additional rules. That is what we should agree on. Then let others define what that is.
scoutt 5y ago
If an electricity company sells electricity (to you), what does Twitter sell (to you)?
- typeofhuman 5y ago
  The sell you the opportunity to share your thoughts with other users.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    You're missing the point: Twitter doesn't sell you anything, you're the product. They sell ads.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Twitter sells you a voice to a possibly broad audience depending on how many followers you have, the ads are a micro-currency to facilitate these transactions between voice haver and voice hearer.
  - cbozeman 5y ago
    That's been utterly ruined by the blue check mark verification system. Promoting a specific type of user over another is antithetical to the original ideals of Internet forums - whereby the most interesting / useful / "good" content filtered to the top regardless of authorship.
- krzyk 5y ago
  Knowledge
danShumway 5y ago
> So yeah, there's a pretty strong case to be made that certain internet companies are like that. Can you survive without social media? Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life. Holy crud, then break them up if they're that powerful. The right to private moderation is part of the 1st Amendment and should only be abridged in very specific circumstances; don't get rid of the 1st Amendment just because you're scared of Facebook's lobby arm. There are lots of platforms other than Twitter/Facebook. Anti-monopoly regulation against tech companies has reasonably wide bipartisan support in the US. We also have more evidence nowadays that social media doesn't necessarily have to result in natural monopolies. There are so many things we could do rather than significantly abridge people's rights to free association. - The government could dump monetary grants into Mastodon/Matrix or otherwise subsidize federated/self-hosted alternatives the same way that we've subsidized renewable energy. - The government could stop allowing purchases by these tech giants in general. - The government could split up Facebook/Instagram/Horizon. - The government could push for more open app policies on stores or regulate sideloading (seriously, the amount of pushback this idea gets as a violation of Apple's rights, compared to the amount of support for regulating social network moderation is wild to me. Both of those are an interference in private rights, but one of those things is also a significantly bigger restriction of 1st Amendment rights than the other). - The government could force open APIs between services (Europe is trying to do this, we'll see whether or not they get it right). - If that's too much interference into the market, the government could explicitly legalize adversarial interoperability and revise the CFAA to make it easier to scrape websites. - Then there's an entire conversation to be had about payment systems online and why we have some of the market forces that we do have around monetizing eyeballs and paying for content. ---- But to immediately jump to treating Facebook as a public utility -- not only is that a really drastic step with a lot of 1st Amendment implications, it's also kind of a depressing step because it assumes we couldn't make better social networks than Facebook/Twitter, and I absolutely believe we could. It's depressing to think that we can't ever move past them and the only thing we could do is just try to reduce one specific problem that they have. I don't want Facebook to be an essential service; even if they didn't censor anything I don't want to use Facebook. I don't really care what their moderation policy is. I hate almost everything about the website; I want alternatives, not a more regulated monopoly. I don't even like the ad-supported model in the first place, I think that monetizing attention is antithetical to creating a good social network.
mvc 5y ago
> Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life. Not really but that sense of learned helplessness is certainly good for their bottom line. I imagine it increases your propensity to buy whatever crap they're spamming your feed with. In reality life without social media is a much happier existence.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  Some peopld say that about showering without soap. I tried, it stank. The whole point is for that to be a personal decision. Or if you think SM is bad, then it can be a collective decision to ban SM, like we ban heroin. But ostracism? "Free for all,except those 5". Nah, I don't see it as a good choice, society-wise.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    That specifically worked for Greek democracies, which were as much about the ability to exclude the most powerful as they were to enable the public participation in power.
    - radu_floricica 5y ago
      Worked until it didn't. When it was a small forum, yes. When it became just a popularity contest, much less so.
      - dr_dshiv 5y ago
        That where the ostracism came in. When the most popular became the most powerful they often got booted…
  - pooper 5y ago
    > Or if you think SM is bad, then it can be a collective decision to ban SM, like we ban heroin. Off topic but I don't think banning heroin did anyone any good. We still need proper labeling, packaging, and storage laws. We still need laws that prohibit drugging someone without their explicit permission. We probably need laws that don't allow sale to minors. We probably need ban on advertising "controlled substances". We might even say certain things you can only get under medical supervision by a licensed medical professional. I just don't think possession ought to be a crime like it is today. Endangering others, sure but possession is just asking for abuse by law enforcement.
jakelazaroff 5y ago
I know plenty of people who don’t have Twitter accounts and live extremely normal lives. Can you say the same thing about electricity?
- Chris2048 5y ago
  Not long ago twitter, telephony/mobiles and electricity didn't exist, and people lived normal lives - but over time "normal" is redefined. The issue isn't twitter, but online discourse in general, and what happens when it becomes "normal". There is also an issue of choice - it is normal not to read books, as many people do not; yet I wouldn't accept this means you can deprive people who want to read of a library.
  - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    The post you are responding to was talking about today, now, not "not long ago". Today, now, not having twitter is totally normal. If you think it might be a necessity in the future, then we can talk about it then, if you're right.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      By "then" it might be too late - lots of discussions leverage "too late to change now". This is how climate change is in such a horrible state. Also, who says when we "are there"? Maybe we are already?
      - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
        I don't think it's worth entertaining every prognostication on the off chance that it may eventually one day be true. As you mentioned, some of them have a convincing case behind them, though, like climate change. Those are worth entertaining, IMO
        Chris2048 5y ago
        The implication here is that this doesn't have a convincing case behind it? Then when would you act? There are already plenty of monopolies and "lobbies" in America on the basis of the same efficiency (not acting until it's a "problem") - maybe proactive caution around big business should be the norm given all the historical abuses, from beef to chemicals to medicine to tobacco?
ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
>So yeah, there's a pretty strong case to be made that certain internet companies are like that. Can you survive without social media? Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life. In my experience, there is actually not a pretty strong case to be made for that, as evidenced by all the people who say there is a strong case to be made, but then fail to make a strong case. Perhaps they mean, "a case which convinces me, specifically, 1 person who is already convinced"? Also, trying to survive without sewer is what led to The Plague's last big hit. Even the Romans knew it was unhealthy. Meanwhile, in this case, INCREASED use of social media is what's been shown to be unhealthy.
- wwweston 5y ago
  > there is a strong case to be made, but then fail to make a strong case Especially given: 1) The number of digital outlets. Utilities tend to be regulated when there are no alternatives or merely 1 alternative (especially when monopoly is being intentionally granted for the purposes of not duplicating infrastructure). We're not hurting for options in ways to talk to each other these days. 2) The abundance of very diverse conversations on display on the most popular social media. Political poles are pretty well represented with content in proportion to their influence (and all this even considering that the right of private vehicles for speech to set rules for discussion and even make editorial choices is itself a free speech right).
  - ohwellhere 5y ago
    > 1) The number of digital outlets. Utilities tend to be regulated when there are no alternatives or merely 1 alternative (especially when monopoly is being intentionally granted for the purposes of not duplicating infrastructure). We're not hurting for options in ways to talk to each other these days. It's anecdotal, but I don't feel this to be true in my personal life. I am not on Facebook by choice. But I feel like it impoverishes my life in a number of ways: 1. Most of my family and friends post their life updates on Facebook. 2. My neighborhood uses a Facebook group for most communication and coordination. 3. Several local companies use their Facebook pages to broadcast their events, sales, etc, and as their primary form of outreach. 4. Several local hobby groups do the same. In each case, this is general communication and information that I want in my life, but I can't get it easily. Even when I go out of my way to get it (private conversations, visiting websites, etc), I still miss things because Facebook has the network and it's the primary way my communities communicate. So while in principle I agree with everything you said, in my own life I empathetically agree with the subjective sense that it feels like a utility. It feels like living without something important in some ways. (It was easier when I was married and my wife was on Facebook and could relay information to me. Also anecdotal, but I've heard of this arrangement a number of times.)
lallysingh 5y ago
Yeah but Twitter just isn't that relevant. And social media is a many-dimensional gradient of often questionable value. Leaving FB properties, for example, is actually pretty nice when you've hit a certain spot in your life. Some forums give me much more than FB ever did. HN is more useful. There isn't some necessary set of social media sites everyone has to have.
atourgates 5y ago
In those cases the solution isn’t to force those companies to moderate their content differently, but to prevent them from becoming de-facto monopolies. The popularity of Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google’s core products isn’t the issue. The issue is that any time a successful competitor comes up, they can just buy them out. Imagine if Facebook wasn’t able to buy Instagram, and it had survived as a competing platform? There’s no need to apply the concept of “free speech” to private companies. There is every need to regulate monopolies so that a handful of tech giants don’t have the power to effectively suppress content across the majority of the outlets people are using every day.
mattbrewsbytes 5y ago
Literally all social media platforms could cease to exist in a second and the world would continue to still function 100% fine.
cycomanic 5y ago
So would you be happy to see ISIS recruiting videos in your feeds? What about your children's? I would consider the calls for free speech much more believable if they had been made when ISIS accounts were blocked. However, people only started calling out when it affected white supremacists or conspiracy theories popular with a portion of the white conservative constituency. This tells me that most people are quite happy with limits on free speech, just not "their side".
Grazester 5y ago
If I didn't have a sewer in my city they would throw their shit on the streets like they did 150 years ago. If I didn't have social media absolutely nothing happens. It doesn't become a public safety issue...in fact the public will be better off for it.

jliptzin 5y ago

Comparing social media to sewage is appropriate because they are both filled with shit, not because they are both essential to living a normal life.

gitfan86 5y ago

Electricity and Sewer can and will be cutoff if you do not follow the terms of service. If the electric company discovers that you do not have a circuit breaker you will be cutoff.

HideousKojima 5y ago
Sure, but the terms of service cannot legally include such things as "You have political opinions we dislike" as a valid reason for terminating service.
- themitigating 5y ago
  You're poor, a.k.a a class of society.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  Why would they? They are not providing a service for sharing opinions. Twitter is a service for sharing your opinions with the public. Obviously terms of service are going to include limits around your ability to share your opinions. If the service had no terms, that would mean that you could post 1 million spam replies to every single tweet anyone made. Similarly Twitter's TOS shouldn't include anything around electricity usage.
- cycrutchfield 5y ago
  Which website contains “you have political opinions we dislike” as a valid reason for terminating service? Unless you are arguing that threats of violence are valid political opinions.
  - glenstein 5y ago
    What's interesting is that this is a new manifestation of the free speech argument, from new social and political quarters. Prior to this version of the free speech debate, the defenders of free speech would, say, donate to ACLU, oppose laws that criminalize protests, express concern over authoritarian countries jailing reporters, oppose prosecution of whistleblowers, oppose consolidation of corporate media, etc. But this new constituency emerged after events like Gamergate and Charlottesville protests, and they show up to defend participants in events like those but can't be mobilized to become active in other issues that historically have been ones where people become involved out of principle.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    All of them? That's the whole "We reserve the right to terminate your account for any reason" clause in most ToSes
- glenstein 5y ago
  >such things as "You have political opinions we dislike" If I wrote the rules, anytime someone used the phrase "political opinions you dislike" there would be a popup list for the following before you can submit your comment: * violent incitement * Al Qaeda and ISIS * state sponsored misinformation campaigns run by automated bots * coordinated messages from automated bots for marketing & brand management * harassment * doxxing * defamation * revenge porn & child porn * vaccine misinformation * election misinformation * spam and phishing attacks And next to each you can click a checkbox to indicate which ones you personally endorse being defended as protected speech, which you believe to be implicated. Then people can mouse over the part of your comment that says "political opinions", see the list of things you clicked on, and know what you are talking about. This way we don't have to worry that you're equivocating between garden variety political topics (e.g. the economy, taxes) and all the other stuff when you say "political opinions you dislike."

Dangeranger 5y ago

Electric utilities were granted monopoly status in order the treat them as utilities, prior to the 1930s they were just private companies that were wildly successful, and didn’t want to expand into unprofitable rural markets. That’s not the dynamic occurring today, social media is available in even the most rural setting, albeit in a reduced form to support low bandwidth. Do we really want to allow Facebook and Twitter monopoly status and then treat them as defacto government entities? Will that result in better services? I do not think so. As we’ve seen with TikTok’s rise, competition within the space leads to better outcomes, not treating social media companies as “utilities”. Social media companies are not in any way comparable to a sewer system, an electric grid, or a phone line network.

AlexandrB 5y ago
> As we’ve seen with TikTok’s rise, competition within the space leads to better outcomes I disagree. The whole social media industry is rotten and needs a dose of... something... to bring it back to sanity. Strict limits on user data collection and algorithmic "feeds" would be a good start IMHO. Otherwise the same patterns repeat themselves, where the most rage-inducing content gets spread the furthest.
- justaman 5y ago
  I think bringing back the adventurous side of the internet is important. Back in the day if you wanted to find information about a specific topic you had to search(not google search) for it. In doing so, you weren't inundated with more and more information that starts relevant, but quickly devolves into whats trending to drive DAUs and add clicks.
- XorNot 5y ago
  The HN front page is an algorithmic feed. Where and how do you draw that line?
  - IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
    This is important. I dont know where the line is, but we should agree that a line is needed. People are saying a line is not necessary. That is at the core, the problem. We need to agree that these companies -by accident or otherwise- have become a common good, similar to a "utility" Take a similar example: at some point a company stops being a company...and becomes a monopoly. Where is that line? We dont know. However its important we recognize private companies operating as monopolies are not in the best interests of society. Private companies operating as common goods providers should be subject to additional rules. That is what we should agree on. Then let others define what that is.

scoutt 5y ago

If an electricity company sells electricity (to you), what does Twitter sell (to you)?

typeofhuman 5y ago
The sell you the opportunity to share your thoughts with other users.
- XorNot 5y ago
  You're missing the point: Twitter doesn't sell you anything, you're the product. They sell ads.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Twitter sells you a voice to a possibly broad audience depending on how many followers you have, the ads are a micro-currency to facilitate these transactions between voice haver and voice hearer.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  That's been utterly ruined by the blue check mark verification system. Promoting a specific type of user over another is antithetical to the original ideals of Internet forums - whereby the most interesting / useful / "good" content filtered to the top regardless of authorship.
krzyk 5y ago
Knowledge

danShumway 5y ago

> So yeah, there's a pretty strong case to be made that certain internet companies are like that. Can you survive without social media? Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life. Holy crud, then break them up if they're that powerful. The right to private moderation is part of the 1st Amendment and should only be abridged in very specific circumstances; don't get rid of the 1st Amendment just because you're scared of Facebook's lobby arm. There are lots of platforms other than Twitter/Facebook. Anti-monopoly regulation against tech companies has reasonably wide bipartisan support in the US. We also have more evidence nowadays that social media doesn't necessarily have to result in natural monopolies. There are so many things we could do rather than significantly abridge people's rights to free association. - The government could dump monetary grants into Mastodon/Matrix or otherwise subsidize federated/self-hosted alternatives the same way that we've subsidized renewable energy. - The government could stop allowing purchases by these tech giants in general. - The government could split up Facebook/Instagram/Horizon. - The government could push for more open app policies on stores or regulate sideloading (seriously, the amount of pushback this idea gets as a violation of Apple's rights, compared to the amount of support for regulating social network moderation is wild to me. Both of those are an interference in private rights, but one of those things is also a significantly bigger restriction of 1st Amendment rights than the other). - The government could force open APIs between services (Europe is trying to do this, we'll see whether or not they get it right). - If that's too much interference into the market, the government could explicitly legalize adversarial interoperability and revise the CFAA to make it easier to scrape websites. - Then there's an entire conversation to be had about payment systems online and why we have some of the market forces that we do have around monetizing eyeballs and paying for content. ---- But to immediately jump to treating Facebook as a public utility -- not only is that a really drastic step with a lot of 1st Amendment implications, it's also kind of a depressing step because it assumes we couldn't make better social networks than Facebook/Twitter, and I absolutely believe we could. It's depressing to think that we can't ever move past them and the only thing we could do is just try to reduce one specific problem that they have. I don't want Facebook to be an essential service; even if they didn't censor anything I don't want to use Facebook. I don't really care what their moderation policy is. I hate almost everything about the website; I want alternatives, not a more regulated monopoly. I don't even like the ad-supported model in the first place, I think that monetizing attention is antithetical to creating a good social network.

mvc 5y ago

> Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life. Not really but that sense of learned helplessness is certainly good for their bottom line. I imagine it increases your propensity to buy whatever crap they're spamming your feed with. In reality life without social media is a much happier existence.

radu_floricica 5y ago
Some peopld say that about showering without soap. I tried, it stank. The whole point is for that to be a personal decision. Or if you think SM is bad, then it can be a collective decision to ban SM, like we ban heroin. But ostracism? "Free for all,except those 5". Nah, I don't see it as a good choice, society-wise.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  That specifically worked for Greek democracies, which were as much about the ability to exclude the most powerful as they were to enable the public participation in power.
  - radu_floricica 5y ago
    Worked until it didn't. When it was a small forum, yes. When it became just a popularity contest, much less so.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      That where the ostracism came in. When the most popular became the most powerful they often got booted…
- pooper 5y ago
  > Or if you think SM is bad, then it can be a collective decision to ban SM, like we ban heroin. Off topic but I don't think banning heroin did anyone any good. We still need proper labeling, packaging, and storage laws. We still need laws that prohibit drugging someone without their explicit permission. We probably need laws that don't allow sale to minors. We probably need ban on advertising "controlled substances". We might even say certain things you can only get under medical supervision by a licensed medical professional. I just don't think possession ought to be a crime like it is today. Endangering others, sure but possession is just asking for abuse by law enforcement.

jakelazaroff 5y ago

I know plenty of people who don’t have Twitter accounts and live extremely normal lives. Can you say the same thing about electricity?

Chris2048 5y ago
Not long ago twitter, telephony/mobiles and electricity didn't exist, and people lived normal lives - but over time "normal" is redefined. The issue isn't twitter, but online discourse in general, and what happens when it becomes "normal". There is also an issue of choice - it is normal not to read books, as many people do not; yet I wouldn't accept this means you can deprive people who want to read of a library.
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  The post you are responding to was talking about today, now, not "not long ago". Today, now, not having twitter is totally normal. If you think it might be a necessity in the future, then we can talk about it then, if you're right.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    By "then" it might be too late - lots of discussions leverage "too late to change now". This is how climate change is in such a horrible state. Also, who says when we "are there"? Maybe we are already?
    - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
      I don't think it's worth entertaining every prognostication on the off chance that it may eventually one day be true. As you mentioned, some of them have a convincing case behind them, though, like climate change. Those are worth entertaining, IMO
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        The implication here is that this doesn't have a convincing case behind it? Then when would you act? There are already plenty of monopolies and "lobbies" in America on the basis of the same efficiency (not acting until it's a "problem") - maybe proactive caution around big business should be the norm given all the historical abuses, from beef to chemicals to medicine to tobacco?

ImPostingOnHN 5y ago

>So yeah, there's a pretty strong case to be made that certain internet companies are like that. Can you survive without social media? Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life. In my experience, there is actually not a pretty strong case to be made for that, as evidenced by all the people who say there is a strong case to be made, but then fail to make a strong case. Perhaps they mean, "a case which convinces me, specifically, 1 person who is already convinced"? Also, trying to survive without sewer is what led to The Plague's last big hit. Even the Romans knew it was unhealthy. Meanwhile, in this case, INCREASED use of social media is what's been shown to be unhealthy.

wwweston 5y ago
> there is a strong case to be made, but then fail to make a strong case Especially given: 1) The number of digital outlets. Utilities tend to be regulated when there are no alternatives or merely 1 alternative (especially when monopoly is being intentionally granted for the purposes of not duplicating infrastructure). We're not hurting for options in ways to talk to each other these days. 2) The abundance of very diverse conversations on display on the most popular social media. Political poles are pretty well represented with content in proportion to their influence (and all this even considering that the right of private vehicles for speech to set rules for discussion and even make editorial choices is itself a free speech right).
- ohwellhere 5y ago
  > 1) The number of digital outlets. Utilities tend to be regulated when there are no alternatives or merely 1 alternative (especially when monopoly is being intentionally granted for the purposes of not duplicating infrastructure). We're not hurting for options in ways to talk to each other these days. It's anecdotal, but I don't feel this to be true in my personal life. I am not on Facebook by choice. But I feel like it impoverishes my life in a number of ways: 1. Most of my family and friends post their life updates on Facebook. 2. My neighborhood uses a Facebook group for most communication and coordination. 3. Several local companies use their Facebook pages to broadcast their events, sales, etc, and as their primary form of outreach. 4. Several local hobby groups do the same. In each case, this is general communication and information that I want in my life, but I can't get it easily. Even when I go out of my way to get it (private conversations, visiting websites, etc), I still miss things because Facebook has the network and it's the primary way my communities communicate. So while in principle I agree with everything you said, in my own life I empathetically agree with the subjective sense that it feels like a utility. It feels like living without something important in some ways. (It was easier when I was married and my wife was on Facebook and could relay information to me. Also anecdotal, but I've heard of this arrangement a number of times.)

lallysingh 5y ago

Yeah but Twitter just isn't that relevant. And social media is a many-dimensional gradient of often questionable value. Leaving FB properties, for example, is actually pretty nice when you've hit a certain spot in your life. Some forums give me much more than FB ever did. HN is more useful. There isn't some necessary set of social media sites everyone has to have.

atourgates 5y ago

In those cases the solution isn’t to force those companies to moderate their content differently, but to prevent them from becoming de-facto monopolies. The popularity of Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google’s core products isn’t the issue. The issue is that any time a successful competitor comes up, they can just buy them out. Imagine if Facebook wasn’t able to buy Instagram, and it had survived as a competing platform? There’s no need to apply the concept of “free speech” to private companies. There is every need to regulate monopolies so that a handful of tech giants don’t have the power to effectively suppress content across the majority of the outlets people are using every day.

mattbrewsbytes 5y ago

Literally all social media platforms could cease to exist in a second and the world would continue to still function 100% fine.

cycomanic 5y ago

So would you be happy to see ISIS recruiting videos in your feeds? What about your children's? I would consider the calls for free speech much more believable if they had been made when ISIS accounts were blocked. However, people only started calling out when it affected white supremacists or conspiracy theories popular with a portion of the white conservative constituency. This tells me that most people are quite happy with limits on free speech, just not "their side".

Grazester 5y ago

If I didn't have a sewer in my city they would throw their shit on the streets like they did 150 years ago. If I didn't have social media absolutely nothing happens. It doesn't become a public safety issue...in fact the public will be better off for it.