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Comment by weakfish | Hacker News Reader

The thing that is absolutely puzzling to me in these conversations is it seems that people who generally believe in the free market desire what amounts to regulation on social media platforms, inversely, to protect 'free speech' when in fact Twitter has the absolute right in the free market to moderate as they see fit when free speech only protects from governmental actions.

And to those who would make the argument that Twitter is too big to not be protected under free speech, I would say that Twitter is _excellent_ at making its user base seem more important than it is. Go outside, talk to people. Twitter is just a shitty microcosm.

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Twitter holds a massive amount of soft power. And the sooner we acknowledge it, the better. It seems a matter of national security that a foreign power could accumulate the centralized reigns of Twitter as well. (not that decentralized solutions will solve this. It will actually be even riskier that they will be abused similarly)

Jack could have maneuvered so it stays in the hands of the board, but as expected he has pooched that.

Big social media companies, just like all other companies, desire regulations that solidify their market share and make it more difficult to create a new competitor. What generally happens in the US is a new regulation is drafted that theoretically achieves some good end, but whose true purpose is to make it more difficult for competitors to enter the space. That's why companies pay lobbyists.

You can't have regulatory capture if there's no regulation. They want regulatory capture so others can't join their party.

Yep, and the government enables and facilitates this malicious action for all statists that wonder what regulation could fix it.

This line of reasoning is very popular but I don't see how people take it seriously. Twitter (and other major social media platforms) have become de facto "government instrumentalities" under the dual effect of pressures from without and pressures from within.

The same revolving door policies we all recognize in other industries apply to major media companies, as well, meaning the leadership within these organizations is harmonized with the leadership of the state. Moreover, media OWNERSHIP is a subset of portfolios that have massive influence on government policy (and vice versa). Meanwhile, there have been numerous incidents of major political figures cajoling the social media giants to censor speech. When Congress and the President are threatening to regulate your industry while "asking for help," that's a significant leverage over your so-called "private" business.

And, Twitter is not "just a shitty microcosm". For good or ill, Twitter functions basically as the public slack channel of the news media industry. Twitter flame wars wag the dog of the news cycle. It's also a target of propagandists world-wide. Like it or not, Twitter has an outsized influence on public discourse.

> Twitter is _excellent_ at making its user base seem more important than it is

Most of Twitter is a shitty microcosm, yes; but on the other hand, more than a few objectively "important" people seem to only engage with the sphere of public discourse through Twitter.

Right now, that's just their voluntary engagement, and they could switch. But a single policy forcing use like e.g. "the Office of the President will make all non-press-conference communications only through Twitter" and suddenly there'd be a dire need for regulation.

> Twitter has the absolute right in the free market to moderate as they see fit when free speech only protects from governmental actions

You confuse free-speech-the-legal-concept (which yes mostly deals with governmental actions' with free-speech-the-principle. You treat the law as if it was equivalent to the moral norm, and that's just not the case.

Yes, twitter is legally allowed to moderate as they see fit. But just because what they do is legal does not mean it is right.

The notion of free speech is so central to the American ethos that, when a company which espouses to be a function of the town square idea takes it on themselves to suppress and censor "right speech", it just doesn't sit right with a lot of people. Even though a non-government entity may have the right to do it, it doesn't make it morally right.

I've at least studied a lot of what other legal scholars have to say on the topic.

I think even the most staunch free market advocates understand the danger of monopolies. I think the same strain of thought makes them understand the danger of oversized government.

And so many of these companies are very arguably monopolies and should be either broken up or turned into a utility. In many people's minds, there's been what looks like a quid pro quo to do favors for government officials in order to avoid sensible efforts to regulate these essential communication platforms to even 1% of the level of say financial institutions.

Twitter may be a microcosm, but Twitter, Facebook and Google's communication platforms are responsible for enough speech to flip elections, to endorse or suppress vital information, and topple regimes. It's not something to be taken lightly.

I agree with you wrt. Twitter being a decently sized hub of possible vital information. I’m actually writing a paper for a national security course at the moment on Russia’s combined cyber warfare strategy that emphasizes misinformation and misdirection.

I’m just attempting to make sense of what I view as a hypocrisy from free market advocates and point out that as far as the Constitution goes, private entities aren’t responsible for upholding your speech on their platforms.

I see what you’re saying about legal scholars, and in my mind that raises the question that if monopolies should be regulated by even staunch free market advocates, shouldn’t extremely dangerous speech be regulated in some capacity on some platforms by even staunch free speech advocates?

I know and recognize that can be a slippery slope, but people far smarter than me haven’t untangled it so I won’t even try.

Maybe I’m wrong, please change my mind if you think I am :-)

I don't think that's particularly puzzling. While many of them are likely simple hypocrites, there is the position that the government's job in the market is to enforce the minimum amount of regulation needed to maintain a 'free' (as in competitive) market, in which framework a push for government to step in and regulate social media is understandable due to network effects being particularly relevant for it.

Personally I would agree with the argument that Twitter (and Facebook, Reddit and Youtube) are too big to not be regulated into behaving more responsibly at minimum. They're microcosms compared to the real world, but they're big parts of the internet world and thus influence many people's lives heavily, especially young people and especially over the past 2 years.

Currently it's standard practice for social media platforms to have content policies that intentionally avoid providing specifics on unacceptable content, many of them also avoid telling users exactly what the offending content is and don't offer any way to seriously appeal decisions. I think this is responsible for the vast majority of these free speech complaints, people are effectively left to assume the worst, which is extremely irresponsible for companies so large.

We see these frequently on HN too, where someone had their twitter or youtube account banned, are assuming they've been censored for saying something about the company and can't get in touch with a responsible human to find out. Usually they're just forced to start over with a new account.

Thus, I think the fix would be regulations on content policies of sufficiently large social networks that require the policies to be more well-defined, require the specific offending content to be shown along with the exact policy violated and requiring the availability of an appeals process which at least eventually reaches a human.

It might also be worth requiring some amount of disclosure on the automated moderation system's performance (ie how many automated takedowns happened and how many had to be reinstated upon appeal).

I disagree with the framing. For some good reasons and some insane reasons the US government has decided to treat corporations as “people”. Corporations are otherwise strictly regulated in thousands of ways but somehow regulating their ability to shape narratives with selective suppression and amplification of the speech of their users is sacrosanct?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a fan of the free market and “corporations as people”. I’m just pointing out what I view as an odd hypocrisy, that being that deregulation is a good thing except when it isn’t. Maybe I’m wrong though, I’m happy to have my mind changed

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