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The idea that a tiny number of billionaire investors who invested early in social media startups get to decide what political speech Americans are allowed to ex

The idea that a tiny number of billionaire investors who invested early in social media startups get to decide what political speech Americans are allowed to express on the internet makes a mockery of our values as Americans. Social media is the digital equivalent of telephone or postal service and at some point the largest social media sites must be regulated the same politically-neutral way those public and privately owned communications services are.

coremoff 4y ago
I think the issue is that they want to be treated like common carriers (because then they aren't open to law suits about the content they allow) but also want to advertise and advertisers aren't keen on adverts appearing next to unmoderated content; one day they might get over the cognitive dissonance required, but I imagine that the end result will not be particularly consumer friendly, one way or the other.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I think they shouldn’t be common carriers. That said taking away their common carrier status will mean only those with the resources to sanitize at scale can compete without litigation risk. The existing players can afford it, and will likely build better and better LLM classifiers to protect themselves and auto police content. But the essential result would be there will be no new players.
ErikCorry 4y ago
The letters pages controlled by billionaire newspaper owners were "the public square" yet the courts did not intervene.
- t-writescode 4y ago
  Arguably, that was a curation and numbers issue. When it changes from 10s of letters a day to billions, curation becomes less of a concern and the argument can resurface. Edit: for an additional example of this concern in the other direction - when a company or person or government tracks the movements of 10s of its citizens who are under active investigation, that's not seen as much of a problem. It's a numbers issue. When the same can track tens of thousands or hundreds of millions, suddenly it's a human rights issue around privacy.
rektide 4y ago
This is the side of where younger me might jave started from, but it's not these billionaires fault, there's no privilege they've used other than being early (and acquiring many many would be competitors), and there's nothing holding Americans back from going elsewhere, to more favorable social network systems. I vaccilate on how bad I think the social networks are. Personally I think the calls for them being political moderators is highly overrated. But most importantly, it is the very laws in question that would allow other networks the right & capability to host their own platforms as they see fit. Social media is in no way the equivalent to the postal service or the telephone. You'd have to be insane to start a new postal competing national & internationally capable postal service or telephone company, the costs are astronomical. Social networks are literally started by random folks with a hobby, such as Mastadon. There is nothing keeping us to the social networks we have. These views that thengovernment has a right to step in & tell them what kind of speech to allow & disallow is an insane & delusional twist, goose-stepping rapidly towards insanity, and the justifications for this begging, to be guaranteed right of reach by the government anywhere & everywhere, is madcap. Absolutely not. This is a sad game of political griping gone off the rails. Media is not neutral, it has biases, and site holders have a right to make sites that express their bias. That it happens to be used by the public is immaterial, so long as the public has a choice to use it or not. I see nothing limiting what networks we travel, for the internet is a series of tubes.
- claytongulick 4y ago
  > there's nothing holding Americans back from going elsewhere Except for platform providers, such as AWS deplatforming customers, duopoly app stores doing the same, and even core infrastructure providers like cloudflare making editorial decisions. There's a real problem here, and I don't know what the solution is. I believe in the right of private companies to refuse service. However, the Orwellian silencing of dissenting opinions from qualified health care professionals during covid illustrated in the most stark way possible, that the public has an interest in free expression on the internet. I have no idea how that's achieved though, or how you balance the rights of all parties. I guess that's why we hire congress critters - to figure all that out. Whatever they come up with will inevitably make a lot of people unhappy, though.
Manuel_D 4y ago
It depends. I'm a lot less concerned about Facebook, YouTube, et al. taking content down. I'm a lot more leery about CloudFlare refusing to host content, and DNS providers kicking law abiding websites off. Online platforms have a good reason to cultivate norms and manage good conduct. Infrastructure providers curating conduct seems more unnecessary. Making CloudFlare, DNS providers, and maybe AWS and Azure common carriers would be my preferred approach.
- goodSteveramos 4y ago
  >Online platforms have a good reason to cultivate norms and manage good conduct. Sure. But Twitter Facebook and Youtube are not just three out of thousands of online platforms. They are a near monopoly that openly polices the political speech of Americans. They can either be monopolistic or censor political speech but supporting them doing both is just opposing what it means to be an American.
adamredwoods 4y ago
>> The idea that a tiny number of billionaire investors who invested early in social media startups get to decide what political speech Americans are allowed to express on the internet makes a mockery of our values as Americans. The Supreme Court allows it with Citizens United. Also, this idea of the minority wealthy controlling politics falls in line with the Supreme Court: it's appointed, not elected, judges can decide how to interpret a Constitutional document that has long-lasting personal impact to millions of people. On a business perspective, CEOs make these decisions every day. Consider Rupert Murdoch and his influence on Fox News? I fail to see how your stance of allowing billionaires to make arbitrary decisions for millions to be "a mockery of our values as Americans".
- goodSteveramos 4y ago
  Are you arguing that the fact that the supreme court is not very democratic means that an even less democratic and much more censorious system of billionaires should be allowed to control political speech? The supreme court has been a massive back door for billionaires to override the democratic process since the 1789 constitution took effect. America had already existed for over 150 year at that point and the principles of freedom of political speech stem from the existing people and culture not the flawed 1789 constitution.
  - adamredwoods 4y ago
    >> Are you arguing No, I'm highlighting the hypocrisy of the claim of "American values", showing how private billionaire control exists in many political influencing aspects besides social media-- and yet now how ironic it is that the SCOTUS (who are non-elected and non-accountable) is interested in reviewing the legality of such a thing. https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/paxton-stands-florida-fight-against-big-tech-censorship https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/paxton-st...
    - goodSteveramos 4y ago
      I agree the supreme court is the wrong mechanism to regulate social media. Congress should. I also agree its hypocritical of the supreme court to do it, but its not hypocritical to want free speech on social media despite billionaires controlling other political areas because billionaires controlling politics is not an American value and free speech is.
LatteLazy 4y ago
You really think we'd be better off with such sites flooded with Nazi propaganda and Conspiracy theories? Or (as is more likely) if those sites started restricting who could post things? Actual freedom requires some restraint. Every "american" freedom recognises this from speech to religion to arms. And that's without asking why a few billionaires who inherited major newspapers should be allowed to decide instead...
- sneak 4y ago
  This is the smallest fraction of the content censored by Facebook et al. The censorship machine is large and high-volume.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    I was wondering so I looked: https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/5ee0209139ca790006b69b27/Facebook-content-removal-reasons/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=960 https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/5ee020... Of course, that is right now. When people find out it's a free for all, the trolls will descend. And on many networks like facebook, it's much easier to censor 1 neo nazi than 100 fake news victims so when we stop, that nazi will likely post more than the 100 others put together.
    - sneak 4y ago
      Do you truly believe that that's the issue that will arise with uncensored platforms? Many more people want to see nudity than want to read nazi rants.
      - LatteLazy 4y ago
        Yes actually. Porn is already available and the average person feels no need to "push" it on facebook (maybe some people want to advertise their Only Fans?). Nazi or other terrorist propaganda, and conspiracy theories are ALL about recruitment.
- 4y ago
SideQuark 4y ago
>get to decide what political speech Americans are allowed to express They're not stopping you from any speech. No one, including older news papers, radio channels, tv stations, etc., ever had to let anyone promote anything. You have no right to someone else's property for the tradeoff they don't have right to yours. If anything, the social media startups gave vastly more people more voice than any previous medium. For example, we're chatting right now, something we'd not have done in any previous medium. >must be regulated the same politically-neutral way those public and privately owned communications services are be careful what you ask for - they might end up regulated like over the air TV or radio, where plenty of things expressible online are completely forbidden. If telephone calls or mail content were public, you'd get a lot more stuff banned there too.
- t-writescode 4y ago
  It sounds like you're ignoring / neglecting the "public square" argument completely out of hand, which is the general response to stances like this.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    A public square is a square of the public, not a private establishment. These are not public platforms, provided by the public for the public. They are private enterprises with a specific brand and desired code of conduct whose goal is to maximize engagement for profit. Essentially their existential risk is becoming a cesspool of toxic trolls and driving out the normals. This is the same, in the context of a public square being different than a private bar, which has an open door to the public but has discretion on who stays in the bar. Example: You certainly can be kicked out of bars for being an asshole. Source: I’m an asshole.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      That's not what "public square" means in US law. Private property is a public square if it is open to the public.
hgsgm 4y ago
The billionaires aren't choosing what you can express. You are free to email your newsletter.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  The billionaires are speaking through the masses. The information on these platforms are essentially limitless. To moderate a limitless and fluctuating sea of information is essentially speaking without speaking. You can make it "say" whatever you want.

coremoff 4y ago

I think the issue is that they want to be treated like common carriers (because then they aren't open to law suits about the content they allow) but also want to advertise and advertisers aren't keen on adverts appearing next to unmoderated content; one day they might get over the cognitive dissonance required, but I imagine that the end result will not be particularly consumer friendly, one way or the other.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
I think they shouldn’t be common carriers. That said taking away their common carrier status will mean only those with the resources to sanitize at scale can compete without litigation risk. The existing players can afford it, and will likely build better and better LLM classifiers to protect themselves and auto police content. But the essential result would be there will be no new players.

ErikCorry 4y ago

The letters pages controlled by billionaire newspaper owners were "the public square" yet the courts did not intervene.

t-writescode 4y ago
Arguably, that was a curation and numbers issue. When it changes from 10s of letters a day to billions, curation becomes less of a concern and the argument can resurface. Edit: for an additional example of this concern in the other direction - when a company or person or government tracks the movements of 10s of its citizens who are under active investigation, that's not seen as much of a problem. It's a numbers issue. When the same can track tens of thousands or hundreds of millions, suddenly it's a human rights issue around privacy.

rektide 4y ago

This is the side of where younger me might jave started from, but it's not these billionaires fault, there's no privilege they've used other than being early (and acquiring many many would be competitors), and there's nothing holding Americans back from going elsewhere, to more favorable social network systems. I vaccilate on how bad I think the social networks are. Personally I think the calls for them being political moderators is highly overrated. But most importantly, it is the very laws in question that would allow other networks the right & capability to host their own platforms as they see fit. Social media is in no way the equivalent to the postal service or the telephone. You'd have to be insane to start a new postal competing national & internationally capable postal service or telephone company, the costs are astronomical. Social networks are literally started by random folks with a hobby, such as Mastadon. There is nothing keeping us to the social networks we have. These views that thengovernment has a right to step in & tell them what kind of speech to allow & disallow is an insane & delusional twist, goose-stepping rapidly towards insanity, and the justifications for this begging, to be guaranteed right of reach by the government anywhere & everywhere, is madcap. Absolutely not. This is a sad game of political griping gone off the rails. Media is not neutral, it has biases, and site holders have a right to make sites that express their bias. That it happens to be used by the public is immaterial, so long as the public has a choice to use it or not. I see nothing limiting what networks we travel, for the internet is a series of tubes.

claytongulick 4y ago
> there's nothing holding Americans back from going elsewhere Except for platform providers, such as AWS deplatforming customers, duopoly app stores doing the same, and even core infrastructure providers like cloudflare making editorial decisions. There's a real problem here, and I don't know what the solution is. I believe in the right of private companies to refuse service. However, the Orwellian silencing of dissenting opinions from qualified health care professionals during covid illustrated in the most stark way possible, that the public has an interest in free expression on the internet. I have no idea how that's achieved though, or how you balance the rights of all parties. I guess that's why we hire congress critters - to figure all that out. Whatever they come up with will inevitably make a lot of people unhappy, though.

Manuel_D 4y ago

It depends. I'm a lot less concerned about Facebook, YouTube, et al. taking content down. I'm a lot more leery about CloudFlare refusing to host content, and DNS providers kicking law abiding websites off. Online platforms have a good reason to cultivate norms and manage good conduct. Infrastructure providers curating conduct seems more unnecessary. Making CloudFlare, DNS providers, and maybe AWS and Azure common carriers would be my preferred approach.

goodSteveramos 4y ago
>Online platforms have a good reason to cultivate norms and manage good conduct. Sure. But Twitter Facebook and Youtube are not just three out of thousands of online platforms. They are a near monopoly that openly polices the political speech of Americans. They can either be monopolistic or censor political speech but supporting them doing both is just opposing what it means to be an American.

adamredwoods 4y ago

>> The idea that a tiny number of billionaire investors who invested early in social media startups get to decide what political speech Americans are allowed to express on the internet makes a mockery of our values as Americans. The Supreme Court allows it with Citizens United. Also, this idea of the minority wealthy controlling politics falls in line with the Supreme Court: it's appointed, not elected, judges can decide how to interpret a Constitutional document that has long-lasting personal impact to millions of people. On a business perspective, CEOs make these decisions every day. Consider Rupert Murdoch and his influence on Fox News? I fail to see how your stance of allowing billionaires to make arbitrary decisions for millions to be "a mockery of our values as Americans".

goodSteveramos 4y ago
Are you arguing that the fact that the supreme court is not very democratic means that an even less democratic and much more censorious system of billionaires should be allowed to control political speech? The supreme court has been a massive back door for billionaires to override the democratic process since the 1789 constitution took effect. America had already existed for over 150 year at that point and the principles of freedom of political speech stem from the existing people and culture not the flawed 1789 constitution.
- adamredwoods 4y ago
  >> Are you arguing No, I'm highlighting the hypocrisy of the claim of "American values", showing how private billionaire control exists in many political influencing aspects besides social media-- and yet now how ironic it is that the SCOTUS (who are non-elected and non-accountable) is interested in reviewing the legality of such a thing. https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/paxton-stands-florida-fight-against-big-tech-censorship https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/paxton-st...
  - goodSteveramos 4y ago
    I agree the supreme court is the wrong mechanism to regulate social media. Congress should. I also agree its hypocritical of the supreme court to do it, but its not hypocritical to want free speech on social media despite billionaires controlling other political areas because billionaires controlling politics is not an American value and free speech is.

LatteLazy 4y ago

You really think we'd be better off with such sites flooded with Nazi propaganda and Conspiracy theories? Or (as is more likely) if those sites started restricting who could post things? Actual freedom requires some restraint. Every "american" freedom recognises this from speech to religion to arms. And that's without asking why a few billionaires who inherited major newspapers should be allowed to decide instead...

sneak 4y ago
This is the smallest fraction of the content censored by Facebook et al. The censorship machine is large and high-volume.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  I was wondering so I looked: https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/5ee0209139ca790006b69b27/Facebook-content-removal-reasons/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=960 https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/5ee020... Of course, that is right now. When people find out it's a free for all, the trolls will descend. And on many networks like facebook, it's much easier to censor 1 neo nazi than 100 fake news victims so when we stop, that nazi will likely post more than the 100 others put together.
  - sneak 4y ago
    Do you truly believe that that's the issue that will arise with uncensored platforms? Many more people want to see nudity than want to read nazi rants.
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      Yes actually. Porn is already available and the average person feels no need to "push" it on facebook (maybe some people want to advertise their Only Fans?). Nazi or other terrorist propaganda, and conspiracy theories are ALL about recruitment.
4y ago

SideQuark 4y ago

>get to decide what political speech Americans are allowed to express They're not stopping you from any speech. No one, including older news papers, radio channels, tv stations, etc., ever had to let anyone promote anything. You have no right to someone else's property for the tradeoff they don't have right to yours. If anything, the social media startups gave vastly more people more voice than any previous medium. For example, we're chatting right now, something we'd not have done in any previous medium. >must be regulated the same politically-neutral way those public and privately owned communications services are be careful what you ask for - they might end up regulated like over the air TV or radio, where plenty of things expressible online are completely forbidden. If telephone calls or mail content were public, you'd get a lot more stuff banned there too.

t-writescode 4y ago
It sounds like you're ignoring / neglecting the "public square" argument completely out of hand, which is the general response to stances like this.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  A public square is a square of the public, not a private establishment. These are not public platforms, provided by the public for the public. They are private enterprises with a specific brand and desired code of conduct whose goal is to maximize engagement for profit. Essentially their existential risk is becoming a cesspool of toxic trolls and driving out the normals. This is the same, in the context of a public square being different than a private bar, which has an open door to the public but has discretion on who stays in the bar. Example: You certainly can be kicked out of bars for being an asshole. Source: I’m an asshole.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    That's not what "public square" means in US law. Private property is a public square if it is open to the public.

hgsgm 4y ago

The billionaires aren't choosing what you can express. You are free to email your newsletter.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
The billionaires are speaking through the masses. The information on these platforms are essentially limitless. To moderate a limitless and fluctuating sea of information is essentially speaking without speaking. You can make it "say" whatever you want.