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I've at least studied a lot of what other legal scholars have to say on the topic. I think even the most staunch free market advocates understand the danger of
by kolbe 5y ago
I've at least studied a lot of what other legal scholars have to say on the topic.
I think even the most staunch free market advocates understand the danger of monopolies. I think the same strain of thought makes them understand the danger of oversized government.
And so many of these companies are very arguably monopolies and should be either broken up or turned into a utility. In many people's minds, there's been what looks like a quid pro quo to do favors for government officials in order to avoid sensible efforts to regulate these essential communication platforms to even 1% of the level of say financial institutions.
Twitter may be a microcosm, but Twitter, Facebook and Google's communication platforms are responsible for enough speech to flip elections, to endorse or suppress vital information, and topple regimes. It's not something to be taken lightly.
- weakfish 5y agoI agree with you wrt. Twitter being a decently sized hub of possible vital information. I’m actually writing a paper for a national security course at the moment on Russia’s combined cyber warfare strategy that emphasizes misinformation and misdirection. I’m just attempting to make sense of what I view as a hypocrisy from free market advocates and point out that as far as the Constitution goes, private entities aren’t responsible for upholding your speech on their platforms. I see what you’re saying about legal scholars, and in my mind that raises the question that if monopolies should be regulated by even staunch free market advocates, shouldn’t extremely dangerous speech be regulated in some capacity on some platforms by even staunch free speech advocates? I know and recognize that can be a slippery slope, but people far smarter than me haven’t untangled it so I won’t even try. Maybe I’m wrong, please change my mind if you think I am :-)