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Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Okay, so I think there's some nuance there, I think there's a pragmatic line to draw - I don't think someone has a right to say anything on twitter, I just don't think that's twitters role is to be neutral. But I think there's a line where we go from a product that's curated and moderated - something like twitter, to something that is truly infrastructure. The DNS example is great, I don't think a DNS company should be able to refuse to service based on the content that's being served because the role of the DNS is simply to resolve a name to an address. What's served on that address is immaterial. I think we draw a bright line between those two types of things, although I'm sure it's more difficult than that when we're trying to design a law.

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But at what point does an service cross from being an platform in an competitive market to an crucial part of the infrastructure used by an society for communication?

If twitter/facebook is allowed to serve as a primary means for an government organisation/department to serve as the primary way which it communicate it's not to hard to argue that that line have been crossed where it have to act as an "open access" common carirer, from an pragmatic real world stand point.

Putting an purely technical definition as the core of this debate is arguing over how many angels can fit on an pin needle, and not of any real value for deciding what kind of society we want.

If Twitter wants control over what's published on their site, then they give up their rights (their 'free harbor'-alike protections) to not be held responsible for the content they censor and let through.

Twitter et al. are where modern speech happens. They pushed themselves into this position, and thus upholding the human right to free speech also falls upon them.

So long as Twitter is not shut down, then perhaps some government oversight (to the limit of holding Twitter responsible for what and who they censor) is appropriate.

Free speech, in this case, trumps my intense dislike of our current administration.

>If Twitter wants control over what's published on their site, then they give up their rights (their 'free harbor'-alike protections) to not be held responsible for the content they censor and let through.

Where is this in US law? Are you confusing DMCA safe harbor issues with speech?

All platforms take control over content - otherwise they could not remove child porn, PII, etc., and they don't lose DMCA safe harbor exemptions, which only applies to copyrighted items posted by users.

It appears like you are conflating the removal of illegal content with the censorship of legal content. Two very different concepts.

I didn't conflate anything. You claimed Twitter loses "rights" by exercising control over content, and I asked where you got that idea. Where is the law that backs your claim? Do you have one?

It doesn't have to be a black and white a binary choice as you suggest. Maybe that's what you'd like because it makes the rule easier to grasp but it's possible to allow a threshold on how much they can interfere before things get to a point where a heavy handed solution like government involvement is needed to regulate them.

Even in the case of DNS, you can still use a local hosts file to use a human-readable name.

Then Twitter has to lose their protections as a 'carrier' and become a publisher with all the regulation that goes along with being a publisher.

No they don't. People seem to have this idea that either you should be liable for nothing and control nothing or liable for everything control everything. The point of these platforms is that whilst they're allowing users to post under limited conditions, they don't have any pre-publication editorial control. That is a material difference from a publisher. They also aren't totally agnostic to content (like a DNS service). This attempt to hold user-generated content to the same standard as news organisations is clearly ridiculous and I don't know why people keep trying to apply it. It's a great way of ensuring that no level of regulation will ever be applied - since the suggested level of regulation completely destroys the business model of several hundred billion dollar businesses.

This concept is already enshrined in law, the concept of free harbor. So long as a service provider doesn't do their own curation, they are not held responsible for the content that is posted. However, if they do curate, then they are responsible.

Applying this to Twitter, Facebook et al. is not that big of a leap.

> completely destroys the business model of several hundred billion dollar businesses

They are not entitled to their business model, especially not at the price of trampling upon something broadly considered to be an inherit human right.

>So long as a service provider doesn't do their own curation, they are not held responsible for the content that is posted.

Except they are held responsible if they don't curate. Look at laws like SESTA to see how platforms that don't self-curate content that could sexualize minors are legally liable.

I'm not saying SESTA is bad, I'm saying this idea that platforms need to be hands-off towards curation to maintain safe harbor protection is not true.

You’re conflating removing illegal content with removing legal content that someone doesn’t like.

Which is exactly the point, that platforms who do not self-curate some types of user-generated content are not protected by safe harbor laws.

Your idea that safe-harbor laws only apply to platforms who don't self-curate is absurd precisely because there is illegal content they, the platforms, can be held liable for instead of the users.

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