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> There is a tendency to treat social media as a mere conduit, like the post office I don't think anyone thinks of them like a government service (post office)
by esperent 1y ago
> There is a tendency to treat social media as a mere conduit, like the post office
I don't think anyone thinks of them like a government service (post office). Rather, when they talk about social media being a conduit/provider, what they have in mind is a variation on a search engine.
Do you think search engines should be liable for content? That's a slippery slope.
A stronger argument is that they are claiming to be like a search engine, but actually being nothing of the sort. So they should have a choice - make all algorithmic content opt in, with tunable, open algorithms, or be made liable for what the algorithm shows to users.
- ryandrake 1y agoSocial Media is more like the old newspaper "Letters To The Editor" than it is like the post office or phone system. On social media, you send your "post" to the S.M. company, the company reads it and decides whether or not to accept that "post" and then some time later, they publish it to the site's readers. The review process is done by a computer instead of an Editor, and takes no time at all (measured in milliseconds) but that's what's happening under the hood. They are absolutely curating and deciding what to display and what not to.