Let’s Not Put the Government in Charge of Moderating Facebook
onezero.medium.com
onezero.medium.com
If we apply due process rules to this - we'd need a judge to sign off on every takedown which is very inefficient and probably stupid at best.
The recent government first amendment violation in San Francisco is an indication that the government still thinks it can do what it wants, we have a long way to go before any of us should trust it.
This protection should not apply to the corporations which do exercise editorial control (or, as it happens, de-facto censorship) over the content they transmit, since they're no longer common carriers but rather publishers.
And, of course, the government is already heavily involved with Facebook - just not overtly but in the worst clandestine and unaccountable way imaginable. Anyone who thinks a company executive is going to deny anything spooks ask for is rather naive.
> Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44, 49-53 (D.D.C. 1998).[25]
> The court upheld AOL's immunity from liability for defamation. AOL's agreement with the contractor allowing AOL to modify or remove such content did not make AOL the "information content provider" because the content was created by an independent contractor. The Court noted that Congress made a policy choice by "providing immunity even where the interactive service provider has an active, even aggressive role in making available content prepared by others."
Facebook is in a weird situation. The editorial control they do exert is demanded by governments and by users. A truly uncensored Facebook might start looking a lot more like Gab or Voat, and would then be attacked even more heavily by politicians as promoting hate, being anti-democracy, and so on.
I think Mark Zuckerberg is trying to pivot the company to privacy to avoid this. Not sure if it can succeed though.