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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that Congress could consider extending "Common Carrier" legislation to cover social media networks. I'm not conv

by nradov 9mo ago

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that Congress could consider extending "Common Carrier" legislation to cover social media networks. I'm not convinced that would be an improvement over the current situation but it's an interesting idea. The telephone company doesn't censor which topics I can discuss in phone calls so perhaps other communication technologies should work in a similar way? https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-thomas-takes-aims-at-tech-and-its-power-to-cut-off-speech https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...

vel0city 9mo ago
This completely ignores the history of why common carrier regulations were originally implemented. Common carriers had such regulation on them because their infrastructure was a natural monopoly. The lone train line through the town. The single telegraph and telephone operator. The only trucking company operating that route. It's not clear to me we're at the point that Facebook is the only real way for us to talk online. It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space.
- digiown 9mo ago
  Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies. You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. I can run a chat server to talk with a few specific friends too in the same way, but will you be able to use it to talk to a random company/store/stranger? > It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space. If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers and a couple developers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. Fundamentally the idea is that you ought to be able to participate in society without undue hardship solely by the whim of the (power,phone,water,communications) company. I don't think it is that unreasonable to regulate Facebook in that sense. Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Do you think I should have to go through a hostile third party just to receive information from the government?
  - vel0city 9mo ago
    > Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies They're natural monopolies and yet I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here, right now. Strange huh, I thought they were a monopoly on internet communication. Can't possibly make a platform for people to talk without Facebook or iMessage and yet here we are. I guess Discord is also really Facebook? Signal? Telegram? I guess this is really just Facebook or iMessage behind the scenes for all of these things? > If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. If you give me less than a week and some budget that scales with users I'll have something thrown together that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users. How long did it take for Moltbook to be made? How much do you think they spent building it? You think they spent years and millions on that? Do you really think it actually cost them that many millions to make Truth Social? > You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. The lines are already run, it's called the internet. We're already all connected to each other. We can reach practically anywhere on the planet with the wire or signal coming into your home. That is a natural monopoly. There is probably only one fiber or coax provider, there's only so much useful RF bandwidth, etc. If you give me an hour I'll give you a page on the Internet saying anything you want it to say, and everyone in the world (outside of Iran or North Korea) will be able to see it and interact with it. Competition is a click away. Compared to the industries where there's often only one telephone provider, only one train company, only one major airline, etc. > Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Those agencies have websites and other means to disseminate information. They are in no way limited to only Facebook. Many have the ability to make every single phone and radio and TV station say whatever message they need to get across. They have lots of means to get information to you.
    - digiown 9mo ago
      > I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here There's no train monopoly, I can just walk to the office! A monopoly does not have to exert total control to be a problem. I shouldn't have to walk to the office because the train company has a problem with my viewpoints. I shouldn't have to spend a ton of extra effort to communicate with people and businesses because Facebook doesn't like my viewpoints, either. No private company should have that kind of power. > that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users It can scale for sure. Will it have all these users though? I can also go buy several containers worth of fiber optics cables. But that doesn't make me a competitor to the local ISP because there is such an incredible amount of human friction I must go through to compete with their network that it effectively locks out competitors.
hn_acker 9mo ago
vel0city explains (among other things) the "natural monopoly" aspect of historical common carriers very well in other comments [1][2] on this page. Another major difference between historical common carriers and social media networks is that the moment the former has delivered a specific load of cargo/data the relationship between the carrier and the user ends with respect to that load. As Mike Masnick puts it [3]: > The delivery from point A to point B is the key point here. Railroads, telegraphs, telephone systems are all in that simple business — taking people, cargo, data (voice) from point A to point B — and then having no further ongoing relationship with you. > That’s just not the case for social media. Social media, from the very beginning, was about hosting content that you put up. It’s not transient, it’s perpetual. That, alone, makes a huge difference, especially with regards to the 1st Amendment’s freedom of association. It’s one thing to say you have to transmit someone’s speech from here to there and then have no more to do with it, but it’s something else entirely to say “you must host this person’s speech forever.” (I highly recommend reading the rest of [3].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953835 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954283 [3] Why It Makes No Sense To Call Websites 'Common Carriers' - https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/25/why-it-makes-no-sense-to-call-websites-common-carriers/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/25/why-it-makes-no-sense-to...

by nradov 9mo ago

vel0city 9mo ago

This completely ignores the history of why common carrier regulations were originally implemented. Common carriers had such regulation on them because their infrastructure was a natural monopoly. The lone train line through the town. The single telegraph and telephone operator. The only trucking company operating that route. It's not clear to me we're at the point that Facebook is the only real way for us to talk online. It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space.

digiown 9mo ago
Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies. You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. I can run a chat server to talk with a few specific friends too in the same way, but will you be able to use it to talk to a random company/store/stranger? > It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space. If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers and a couple developers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. Fundamentally the idea is that you ought to be able to participate in society without undue hardship solely by the whim of the (power,phone,water,communications) company. I don't think it is that unreasonable to regulate Facebook in that sense. Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Do you think I should have to go through a hostile third party just to receive information from the government?
- vel0city 9mo ago
  > Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies They're natural monopolies and yet I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here, right now. Strange huh, I thought they were a monopoly on internet communication. Can't possibly make a platform for people to talk without Facebook or iMessage and yet here we are. I guess Discord is also really Facebook? Signal? Telegram? I guess this is really just Facebook or iMessage behind the scenes for all of these things? > If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. If you give me less than a week and some budget that scales with users I'll have something thrown together that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users. How long did it take for Moltbook to be made? How much do you think they spent building it? You think they spent years and millions on that? Do you really think it actually cost them that many millions to make Truth Social? > You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. The lines are already run, it's called the internet. We're already all connected to each other. We can reach practically anywhere on the planet with the wire or signal coming into your home. That is a natural monopoly. There is probably only one fiber or coax provider, there's only so much useful RF bandwidth, etc. If you give me an hour I'll give you a page on the Internet saying anything you want it to say, and everyone in the world (outside of Iran or North Korea) will be able to see it and interact with it. Competition is a click away. Compared to the industries where there's often only one telephone provider, only one train company, only one major airline, etc. > Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Those agencies have websites and other means to disseminate information. They are in no way limited to only Facebook. Many have the ability to make every single phone and radio and TV station say whatever message they need to get across. They have lots of means to get information to you.
  - digiown 9mo ago
    > I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here There's no train monopoly, I can just walk to the office! A monopoly does not have to exert total control to be a problem. I shouldn't have to walk to the office because the train company has a problem with my viewpoints. I shouldn't have to spend a ton of extra effort to communicate with people and businesses because Facebook doesn't like my viewpoints, either. No private company should have that kind of power. > that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users It can scale for sure. Will it have all these users though? I can also go buy several containers worth of fiber optics cables. But that doesn't make me a competitor to the local ISP because there is such an incredible amount of human friction I must go through to compete with their network that it effectively locks out competitors.

hn_acker 9mo ago

vel0city explains (among other things) the "natural monopoly" aspect of historical common carriers very well in other comments [1][2] on this page. Another major difference between historical common carriers and social media networks is that the moment the former has delivered a specific load of cargo/data the relationship between the carrier and the user ends with respect to that load. As Mike Masnick puts it [3]: > The delivery from point A to point B is the key point here. Railroads, telegraphs, telephone systems are all in that simple business — taking people, cargo, data (voice) from point A to point B — and then having no further ongoing relationship with you. > That’s just not the case for social media. Social media, from the very beginning, was about hosting content that you put up. It’s not transient, it’s perpetual. That, alone, makes a huge difference, especially with regards to the 1st Amendment’s freedom of association. It’s one thing to say you have to transmit someone’s speech from here to there and then have no more to do with it, but it’s something else entirely to say “you must host this person’s speech forever.” (I highly recommend reading the rest of [3].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953835 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954283 [3] Why It Makes No Sense To Call Websites 'Common Carriers' - https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/25/why-it-makes-no-sense-to-call-websites-common-carriers/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/25/why-it-makes-no-sense-to...