If you disagree, I command you to post this post on your twitter. If you don't, you're censoring me.
Surfice to say that when a corporation controls more "territory" than most state governments, when a very small number of corporations control the vast, vast majority of communication channels, the rules must change to maintain the access of the people to the new public square.
It is a bit tricky. I think there is a solid case that, once social networking companies get to a certain size, there is a dominating network effect that makes them sort of like natural monopolies. Thus I think there should be some kind of regulation of their behavior. Maybe not as strict as other types of natural monopolies, but I think they have too much power to be allowed to just do whatever their owners feel like.
Otherwise, what happens if the ISPs decide that, say, Net Neutrality cuts into their profit margins, so they're just not going to route traffic for the sites that are politically antagonistic to them right before the election?
Sure would be a shame if something happened to that site of yours, huh?
The most straightforward way would be to mandate that web services had to allow API access for everything the web interface does, so users could use client software to aggregate multiple services. But this would undermine websites ability to make money off adspam, which while great, means it's politically a non-starter.
You're misunderstanding the causality. These are private spaces. Just because lots of people show up doesn't make it public. Yankee Stadium isn't a public utility.
You're asking to make these private spaces public. That's something you have to change in the existing laws. The first amendment has nothing to do with that.
I would also argue that the government creating its own public space would be the best because then there wouldn't be this perverse idea that anything anyone creates can be taken from them by the government whenever it becomes convenient.
Well over 95% of all web traffic consumes either Google Search, Google Chrome, Google Ads or uses an Android. You almost cannot avoid Google and still use the internet.
Similarly, Facebook controls over 80% of Social Media traffic and you will find it difficult to meaningfully use your identity online to communicate.
The FAANGs aren't the destination, they're the roadways to get to virtually all online content. They literally are the utility.
Your argument is more like if Yankee Stadium got to choose who was allowed to get off the 6 train at their stop, and I think everyone would agree that would be bonkers.
The simplest example is that we have businesses seeking consumers and people seeking products. You could boost the economy enormously by forcing both though a government funnel. (with reasonable exception)
> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
> (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]
What was your point?
A website is exercising their own freedom of speech when choosing not to publish or carry something.
If we oppose this idea then we need to create an alternative to that monopoly. Either in the private, or the public sector.
I'm not a free speech absolutist and I fully agree that not everything that people publish on (say) Twitter should be allowed to stay on Twitter. The problem is the growing centralisation of power and the lack of democratic oversight. One day everyone who currently works at Twitter will be dead, but Twitter may still exist, staffed by a completely different bunch of people. Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of?
I don't know what the solution is to the problem of centralised private power to control the internet, but it baffles me that anyone could deny that it is a problem.
A counter-example for you is the following: suppose that a million companies control the internet, and all of them independently decide they don't want to publish white supremacist content. Then the problem is clearly not concentration or monopoly or collusion, but rather companies (via the people who make publishing decisions for the companies) exercising their own free speech. I think the challenge is that in this counter-example, the free speech absolutist -- not saying you are one -- needs to admit that they want to restrain one sort of speech (not wanting to publish white supremacist content) to enable another sort of speech (people publishing white supremacist content). It's an essential tension. Someone has to lose in that exchange. We need only clarify who.
It may be the case that the internet is far closer to your example than mine, though I doubt it. Even if market share of social media suggests concentration, it seems to me easier than ever to publish your content. I published my first website in 1995 and surely I have an easier time doing it today than then. Now, I might not have an easier time getting an audience, but I am also not entitled to an audience. If people don't look for me or tune me out, that's not a violation of my rights. That the public has chosen to waste less time seeking out dissenting views is maybe something we should be worried about, but probably not something we solve by legislatively privileging access of dissenting views, no matter how nuts, to platforms.
I just wanted to add one final thing. Matthew Lyon was a congressman. When John Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lyon attempted to publish a piece calling Adams a dictator and a tyrant for doing so. The local newspaper, the Rutland Herald, would not publish it. So Lyon started his own newspaper. Lyon was subsequently convicted and jailed. In this example, we see three things: (1) the government jailing Lyon is a restraint on free speech and unconstitutional. (2) The Herald not publishing his letter is not a restraint on free speech. (3) Lyon did what we would expect people to do: work to amplify their own voice when others will not.
Today it is easier than ever to "start your own newspaper". You might find that no one reads it -- but you are not entitled to their readership, just as Lyon was not.
You don't forego treating someone's symptoms just because you don't yet know how to cure the disease. You need to manage a patient's symptoms and keep them alive.
Figuring out how to unravel or limit these huge monopolies is something that will take government years to figure out, if ever, much like finding a cure for a disease. As much as we need to solve that problem, we can't just throw up our hands in the meantime and say "I guess there's nothing we can do."
Actually, when one deliberately obtains the power to design the audience those who helped to establish this are by definition not the design you are looking for. At first the useful idiots must be portrayed as model citizens and as majority opinion (by silencing everyone else) then they too need to be silenced to preserve that illusion. You don't want subjects who have reason to praise you, you want ones who praise you because they are your subjects.
A discriminatory and distasteful message to be sure but such is the tradeoff of a robust first amendment - even stupid statements are protected.
It was only in the last few years that the parade organization relented and allowed LGBTQ+ participants. Largely because public opinion (and corporate partners/advertisers) forced them to. The parade organization’s message of discrimination and exclusion was eventually drowned out with messages of pride and LGBTQ+ support. So the system may not have worked as quickly as most of us would have liked but it did indeed work.
And on the flip side, I’m grateful that I don’t have to see hate groups marching at Pride. If the City of Boston had won their case 25 years ago that’s exactly what would have happened.
But with the Network Effect naturally concentrating communication to a few sites, I'm starting to feel conflicted about that.
There's way better explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576919
Okay let's follow that logic: precisely at what point does that become a monopoly problem?
The article is about freedom of speech, not the First Amendment, and I would like to remind self-centred navel-gazing parochial Americans that they're not the same thing.