Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers
arstechnica.com
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If you explain "literacy test" voting laws prior to the US Voting Rights Act without that sort of context people imagine well, you send one smart black teacher, they do a few lessons, next year every black person in the town can vote, while presumably many poor white folks can't right?
But that's not how it works, in practice the "test" is whether you're white or not. If you're white you "pass" and if you're black you "don't pass", and if you complain about this loudly enough well, maybe you have an unlucky "accident".
Lynchings are never this circumspect.
Accounts of lynchings also emphasize the treatment of black bodies as evidence of disdain. But even lynchings of white victims often involved mutilation and the taking of "souvenirs", as in the aforementioned lynching. Again, no doubt this was disproportionate, but even the most obvious sorts of discrimination aren't as "black & white" as popular narratives would have you believe. (NB: I'm not challenging the idea or existence of disdain regarding black bodies.)
I think these finer distinctions matter because they're fundamental to understanding the concept of systemic racism--arguably, there really is no other kind but systemic racism. To sell the idea of systemic racism, we tend to shape historical narratives to better fit how people conceive of racism. But taking that license can be counter-productive as it then makes it easier to refute or justify claims of racism, or the very notion of racism, particularly for those so inclined.
Despite the wildly disproportionate population sizes, more than three times the number of Black people were lynched compared to white people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...
Do you really believe that black and white lynchings were certainly recorded accurately? To say nothing of the proportions as someone said below.
You're providing nothing useful here. Typical softening of racism as many, for whatever reason, like to do. Cut it out.
> is often credited to Francis M. Wilhoit, who died in 2010, it was actually written in 2018 by a different Frank Wilhoit, a composer.[10]
:)
And in this article: https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...
> But in fact it’s the work of another Frank Wilhoit, this one not a professional scholar of American politics but a 63-year-old classical music composer in Ohio, who wrote the adage as part of a longer point in the comments section of the political science blog Crooked Timber [0].
[0]: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
"Rules for thee, but not for me."
Both the right and left have become supremely prescriptive in their own ways.
I want stronger local government. I have no way of trusting any of these assholes at the federal and state level. Why do they get to set standards for schools, infrastructure funding, or social policy? We have grid lock in part because there are different opinions on what's best.
So be it. We'll all do what we want, and time will prove what works best. Then we can use the federal/state levels for their intended purpose: handling externalities and international affairs.
At least with the Feds they are under a constant microscope. The most heinous corrupt shit in America almost always happens at the local level because they can get away with it
[1] https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/libertarians-took-c...
Please, no. I get the rationale. It's the local knowledge problem, combined with state/federal being more likely to be populists.
But local government irrecoverably sucks for systemic reasons that I've just started to notice.
With local governance there is no way to resolve dilemma like incentives that cause negative sum decision making, i.e. locally good but globally bad policies. For example, restrictive planning laws. Good locally, terrible globally. So terrible that it is the kind of thing that is a threat to the stability of society.
Another reason is that the competence of local governance is significantly lower than state/federal governance, who have budgets to hire actual intelligent experts. I don't know if you're interacted with local government officials. If you have, you will notice what I'm talking about.
A third reason is that corruption is worse in local governments. It flies under the radar because they're not under the microscope of journalists. There's no good mechanism to decorrupt them.
Good federal governance is the way forward.
Now you can argue that it's not actually half, and so long as it's less than that, a functioning democracy would allow you to steamroll over them. However, once enough people in a democracy consider it illegitimate, it stops functioning really fast.
Also, goodness isn't a binary switch, and goodness needs to be compared with the alternative.
I'd add that reducing local government doesn't mean that federal government has to be large and bloated. I still want a lean federal government.
I can also never pin down exactly what advocates of larger local government actually want. What powers and capabilities, specifically, should be removed from federal and done by local?
It's a nation, and students are nationals. There needs to be some national standards.
The Florida law says a social media platform "may not willfully deplatform a candidate for office" and imposes fines of up to $250,000 per day on social media companies that ban candidates for elected office. The law also says social platforms "may not apply or use post-prioritization or shadow banning algorithms for content and material posted by or about... a candidate," and may not "censor, deplatform, or shadow ban a journalistic enterprise based on the content of its publication or broadcast."
Who do they define as a candidate? If I'm running for student council would it apply to me? What requirements are there?
Similarly, who is a "journalist"? Anyone can declare they are one.
Finally, what constitutes post-prioritization? If I search for something, then ideally posts relevant to what I searched for would be prioritized in results, does this count as "shadow banning"? In any list there can only be one element that is first. Are the others "shadow banned"?
Now let's look at this and see if the circumstances justify the government seizing the right of the social media hosting company to determine what content they want to serve on their website.
- Does the company have a natural Monopoly due to rights given to them by the public (such as the right of way for cable/equipment installation enjoyed by other common carriers)? No. These companies enjoy no such special privileges.
- Is there a substantial cost for a competitor to enter the market? No. Software and server infrastructure are cheap compared to costs incurred to existing common carriers.
Then I do not see a justification for the government to rescind the rights of the social network operators in this way.
If social media platforms want that right, like news media platforms, they have to hire real editors and agree to be liable for the information they publish and disseminate. Why should social media platforms get an exception to this but news media platform on print, TV or radio be bound by extra restrictions (liability)?
> Is there a substantial cost for a competitor to enter the market? No. Software and server infrastructure are cheap compared to costs incurred to existing common carriers.
Yes, there is the "network effect" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect ) which is a huge barrier for any new competitor to overcome. One way to remove this barrier and provide a more level playing field would be to create and enforce a standard that would foster connection and communication between all such social network platforms. Do you think the tech companies will allow this?
A political candidate is one who is a member of a political party and is running for a public office or has already been elected to such offices in the past. (Yes, I am discounting independent candidates as they are a minor aberration that, in my opinion, shouldn't be allowed in mature democracies). Whether the democratic system is presidential or parliamentary, political parties are one of the common institutions and base political units that are part of a democratic political system.
> If I'm running for student council would it apply to me?
No, since it is not a public office. This law is targeted to protect the free speech rights and political views of active politicians and elected representatives. For example, Twitter, under pressure from the current right-wing government of India deliberately tried to sabotage the social media outreach of an elected Member of Parliament and an opposition leader:
“I want to bring your attention to what I believe is Twitter’s unwitting complicity in curbing free and fair speech in India,” Mr. Gandhi wrote in the letter to the Twitter chief executive, Parag Agrawal. “I have been reliably, albeit discreetly, informed by people at Twitter India that they are under immense pressure by the government to silence my voice.”
The proposed laws can actually protect tech platforms from this kind of government pressure too, which should be welcomed by us.
> Similarly, who is a "journalist"? Anyone can declare they are one.
Just like shouting "I declare bankruptcy" doesn't activate bankruptcy laws in your favour, "declaring" yourself a journalist doesn't make you a journalist in most countries.
Any one who publishes their work, cites their sources, and signs their (real) name is a journalist.
I don't have the heart to respond to the rest of your objections.
OK, but this can then be misused for other causes — for example, in the UK there is a deposit that general election candidates have to pay, which IIRC was introduced because too many people kept filing to be candidates because that was a way to get out of a legal obligation (draft, I think).
I expect the same here. Is anyone illegible to file for candidacy? Is this exactly the same dividing line you want between the tweeters and the tweet-nots?
(I am amused by the idea of Trump social media site being forced to host the literal Communist Party USA candidates, but that's a different matter).
> Any one who publishes their work, cites their sources, and signs their (real) name is a journalist.
This definition is so broad as to include me. Thanks, I guess, but I don't think I warrant that status.
We definitely have too many candidates. In practice, other filters, rightly or wrongly, cull the herd to only "serious candidates". Basically, ability to raise money and get endorsements. If you squint, they both kinda look like forms of social proof.
The political parties used to be the filter, but now they're impotent. For better or worse.
--
> I don't think I warrant that status.
Maybe not. But name some "journalists" in corporate media who have your credibility and authenticity.
By my definition, you are far more of a journalist than most talking heads and pundits can even claim to be. (Whereas anonymous coward me is not.)
A "professional journalist" also has the resources to do fact checking and corrections (errata).
Most of the news and analysis I consume today comes from podcasts, bloggers, and books.
That's not great.
Using Manufacturing Consent's thesis of media filters, because I don't have another model, it comes down to who is "in charge". Right now, our society's choices for mass news are corporate propaganda and corporate recommenders (algorithmic hate machines). Some people can afford to buy high quality bespoke news. Some are quirky or crazy enough (news junkies) to keep their own ledger (bozo list).
There are some exceptions. HN, metafilter, user groups (aka special interest groups) like some subreddits and ravelry.org, can also provide higher signal to noise over a longer time frame.
--
Thanks for humoring me and reading this far. I write to understand and it helps me to go thru the effort.
No, which is why no one is stopping you from typing in a URL in your browser and visiting a website.
But a computer owner should be able to decide what goes on on their computer (even google or Facebook). The network that connects everyone is what should be regulated and forced to be “free” or “unrestricted”.
How do you feel about the Civil Rights Act?
The discussion would then be about if we legally protect members of tribe with certain gender, skin color, cultural affiliation, etc, why would we not protect a tribe of certain political views, that is an interesting question that I am not sure how to delineate.
Because they're "stopping me" already, as of late.
Prop 209 then Prop 16.
At first you were racist by being racist. Then you were racist for not wanting to repeal anti-racist laws.
Just like how not having blind auditions for orchestras was racist (not hiring enough minorities). And now having blind auditions is racist (not hiring enough minorities).
It does not ban nor prevent the use of the word "gay."
> 3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur [for many students]
So I guess technically you can say the word, as long as you don’t explain what it means?
This isn't remotely true. Your rural local government -
a) generally has to serve the interests of its constituents, ie the fuckup mayor or do nothing member of the county commissioners board will eventually be called out, shamed in public, and lose reelection.
b) unlike Disney, does not move in lock step chasing quarterly profit - which is a very good thing, as it allows for long term cooperative efforts, like bringing a sanitation system to a small town of 800 people.
c) Are by-and-large the most useful people when it comes to pushing back against encroachment by companies who would prefer a company town. Your county commissioner, county seat mayor, etc, almost always have interests that run counter to the largest factory in the area, which is a blessing. That's not to say corruption doesn't happen, but most people are honest, and try to help the folks they represent as best they can.
Disney is far closer to the factories that try to bully, cajole, and coerce their way to a better bottom line, than it is the elected body of a rural area.
Then Florida tells Disney to watch its step and the left come out in defense of a massive corporation - “why won’t you leave poor Disney Corp alone!!”
Really amazing to see.
In my world, corporations being subject to the government is the Hallmark of progressivism.
But no one's actually paying attention to the actual actions, just their own view of the motivation
The issue is their motive. Motive is critical.
Because that’s what the law was about.
Which is, of course, because there are two sexualities - straight, and political.
I've seen tons of recent support for censorship from ideas and speech the (left? I wouldn't consider it actually left) doesn't like. Then you have conservatives moving against these books that promote woke religion and suddenly these same people are very pro free speech.
One could argue that calls for gender-affirming surgeries or treatments are equally, if not, worse. These topics are especially prevalent in the LGBTQ community, as I have found from my experience. Nevertheless, we seem to encourage this kind of behavior whereas we. It is important to be aware of which ideas you are rejecting, especially when the community you seem to be defending is also committing acts of the same caliber.
The left has always been pro-censorship: Stalin and Mao, for instance, set up societies with lots of censorship.
The right is also pro-censorship: think Hitler, or any religious conservatives for that matter.
If you're talking about what modern Americans consider "left" and "right", though, I'd agree, but what Americans consider "left" generally isn't very far left, and it depends on who you ask: talk to an internationally-minded American and they'll say the Democratic party is centrist at best, or center-right. Talk to a Trump voter and they'll say that party is "far-left radical communists".
The right is significantly more dangerous now, but I don't see that as a historically universal truth.
Both exist on either end of the ideological spectrum. Right-wing authoritarianism is a thing, and so is left-wing libertarianism.
People on the left need to remember that if they give the government more power to regulate speech online, whether it is to fight disinformation or hate speech or whatever else, the right wing will have the same power the next time they win office. It's so short sighted.
Unless you want our society to vacillate between left-wing censorship and right-wing censorship every time power changes hands, you should oppose giving any more censorship powers to governments.
No one on the left wants the government to do this. What happens is that "many on the left" tend to yell loudly about stuff to the extent that people in power feel they need to moderate their own speech and actions. Virtually no one on the left wants "the government" to do this.
The left, in fact, is extremely dependent on its ability to exercise free speech rights to make this happen. Everyone you want to cite who got "cancelled"? They got cancelled because someone else exercised their first amendment right to a hissy fit. Literally no one is trying to censor you. They're just shouting louder (and, to some extent, better and more convincingly).
But indeed, the count-counter-messaging was too strong and it was shut down, because at the end of the day what amounts a PR organization isn't going to be very useful vs. the ammunition it can provide to people wanting to scream about censorship.
Hilariously that statement is a perfect example of the kind of disinformation and memery techniques that that (aborted) department was trying to refute.
Also none of what you said addresses the the proposed legislation.
This is not true. Net neutrality is about service providers not getting to choose which services you connect with. If your ISP decided you can use Hulu but have to pay $10/mo extra for Netflix, that's a net neutrality issue. It's not about the volume of bytes. It's about who the bytes are coming from and going to, which is a content issue.
My bro is the head tech guy for a cable company. He opposes "net neutrality". For B2B reasons. For him, it's about interconnect fees and fairness. Something like they build the pipes and someone, let's say TikTok, hogs all the bandwidth without paying their fair share.
I have no idea if my bro's narrative makes any sense. My bro also believes The Flintstones is a documentary (creationist). So I usually just smile and nod along when he starts to rant about something.
Whereas my understanding is closer to what you've stated; net neutrality is a B2C policy issue.
Whatever the case, my bro and myself, with our very different understandings and priorities, have no overlap in our positions.
I’m biased in that I work at a company that uses a lot of bandwidth. My opinions are my own.
Companies like TikTok pay their fair share. They pay their provider to take their bytes. Their provider pays one of the “big pipe” companies and passes the bytes along. Then they pass it along and charge your bro’s company. Then your bro’s company passes it along and chargers the consumer. This is oversimplified, but it’s the general flow.
What your bro wants to do is skip the line. It’s not enough to charge consumers, he wants to charge the companies, or the consumers more depending on the company.
It’s like UPS opening up your package, seeing there are Nikes in there and wanting to charge either you or Nike extra. You’re already paying for delivery.
That is the disconnect. In their mind you are 'sharing' with all the other people that bought the same thing, whereas you believe you were the only one that bought what they said they would sell you, like any other purchase works.
Ultimately, we value free speech because it leads to a more fair and just society. It's not a rule that is followed by blind faith. Personally, I think allowing unlimited corporate spending on political speech amplifies the voices of a select few so that others are not heard. Essentially censorship of the masses. I fail to see how that leads to a fair and just society.
It's all the other bad side, not the same freaking loonies that keep everything status quo and pat each others backs.
Not that you said otherwise, but... I think we should go back to a transactional mix-and-match style of politics, with different coalitions per issue, instead of the "agree with your friend tribe and disagree with your enemy tribe about everything" style that we seem to be locked into these days. There shouldn't be any shame in being part of the same coalition on one issue with people who are reprehensible on other issues. Agreeing with the Florida government about some point of social media regulation doesn't imply I agree with them about anything else.
This immediately puts massive scale social media in a very unique place. By contrast, public school libraries are anything but a monopoly. If they don't offer a book you want, there are countless other ways to get it that are no less convenient, to say nothing of the digital age and searching for 'book i want pdf.' This generalizes to other scenarios as well. At one time it was believed that private businesses out be able to restrict employment or service based on things like the race or religion of their customers/applicants. But as this started to become a more substantial issue in terms of scale, society decided otherwise.
But that's an argument against Facebook in particular, not against social media as a category.
Fundamentally, the problem is that we have allowed the modern "public square" to be in these spaces entirely owned by private companies.
What we really need is an open protocol for a federated social network that works very much like Facebook (so, not something like Mastodon, which is designed to work like Twitter, for instance—though it would probably be worthwhile to do the same with it) and have the government operate some public "reference servers" that anyone can join, while others can also operate servers that can federate with them. That way, you're still able to connect to people even if they're not on your particular server...provided they don't belong to a server that's been blocked from federation due to hate speech or something.
Everyone says they want free speech. But deep down they don't. Some don't want gay marriage written in books, and some don't want anti-vaxxers to post misinformation. Those are 2 sides of the same coin.
Freedom of speech is a critical cornerstone of liberal government. The fact that so many sides want to reduce this right is what is scary.
We have much less freedom than we think, and the freedom we do have we pay a very high price for. I often use the phrase "What price freedom?" in conversations, and unfortunately most don't understand what it means.
There is a way to get there: it's changing our voting method.
Single-choice, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all voting is effectively guaranteed to result in a two-party system.
There are a number of alternative voting systems, and all of them that I've heard of have flaws, but Ranked Choice Voting is one of the better ones, and seems to be gaining some traction recently in a few places.
If you really want to break our political duopoly, push for Ranked Choice Voting at every level you have influence over. It'll be easier the more local you get, and the more jurisdictions adopt it, the easier it will be to get others to do the same.
We desperately need elections where more than just the two dominant parties can compete without a spoiler effect.
This is happening, just FYI, up in Canada right now - there are four parties worth talking about - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Quebecois - the last two are essentially just regional parties which do occasionally win surprise seats but mostly just exist within a localized area. That is enough, in our parliamentary system to force cooperation at a federal level - but without serious action I can't see any ending in sight other than slowly devolving to American politics.
Uhm... you do realize there are plenty of us on the left who adopt exactly those positions?
The reality is, the parties are systemically more interested in self preservation than governing. So neither seem to support serious reform.
Imagine creating a forum and now the Florida government dictates what you can and can't moderate. Disastrous.
The other issue is a bit more strategic. Policy victory brings electoral victory, and you don't get to pick and choose which other policies come along for the ride when someone wins. Nobody agrees with a politician or political party on every issues of course, but it's probably not a good idea to ignore the rest of their views entirely just because they happen to back at least one policy you agree with. At the risk of invoking Goodwin, if you weren't a fan of that Hitler fellow but supported him anyways because you liked road construction, you might have regretted your choice.
Modernity has brought us closer to subjectivism than ever.
I think the fact that you deliberately expressed what's been a complicated, and almost exclusively school-board driven, phenomenon in such a simple way shows you either haven't read much outside the headlines, or are just hoping to pull people to your side while discouraging them to do any actual research.
Either way, your comment comes across as just as transparently politically motivated as the actions you're criticizing. If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that, it's not necessary to beat around the bush.
No, I want him voted out because of specific actions and I also want every politician inclined to take those specific actions voted out. I don't hate him because he's a Republican, I don't hate him because he's a straight white Christian man, I don't hate him because he's from Florida, I don't hate him. I hate the actions that he's performed (funny thing about that MLK quote; some people just cannot tolerate being judged by the contents of their character).
To pretend that the people behind these "school-board driven" actions are not motivated by, encouraged by, and supportive of DeSantis is completely ludicrous. Anti-LGBT activists are clamoring to join school boards around the country, looking to effect the same policies.
For example?
https://www.wlrn.org/education/2022-06-09/palm-beach-county-...
I don't see how this is any different.
> District staff sent out a list of questions teachers have to answer, like — does a book encourage students to believe that people are racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously? [...] If teachers answer “yes” or “unsure” to any of the questions in the district’s guidance, the book is to be removed from the classroom for further review.
Gee, would ya look at that
Sorry, that one's actually a school board in California, but the same idea applies here, right? The state is to blame?
Relatedly, the vague "don't say gay" law has a significant impact on LGBTQ teachers right to free expression -- straight teachers are totally free to talk about their spouses, for example, but gay teachers are not. Quite reminiscent of the "don't ask don't tell" policy.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/a-viral-list-of-b...
[2] https://floridapolitics.com/archives/557111-florida-second-o...
The idea that a teacher wants to talk to their students about their personal lives is utterly foreign to me.
Maybe it's just a sign of times changing?
Edit: this thought came to me in the context of a quote I saw from a teacher upset he couldn't talk about going surfing with his husband.
There was a wide enough income gap in our school that teachers talking about vacations was frowned upon, since you never really knew which kids didn't actually ever get to go on vacations, etc.
My school also had two married teachers who shared a surname. We all knew they were married.
There were also a few teachers (band, orchestra, sports coaches) whose spouses would volunteer at events and travel with them.
Also quite a few teachers wore religious symbols -- cross on a necklace kind of thing. And quite a few of my teachers had pictures of their families on their desks. They didn't make a big deal about it, but evidence was in plain sight.
Now, I was in the high school in the 90s. I'm not sure when you think this changed.
That strikes me as odd. I recall this happening many times. Heck, there were even several pairs of teachers who met at school and got married. One teacher proposed to another teacher during a town parade where many students and teachers were present. It's not like teachers dwelled on personal details in class. It's just that it would be impossible to miss.
Many teachers also have pictures of their family on their desks, as one might in their office at any other job.
Especially in lower grades, teachers are not robots that exclusively teach content from bell to bell each day.
With cases like that, personal details end up discussed inadvertently because it's impossible to avoid. So-and-so's wife might be a teacher in the same district, or they might show up at school during late work hours and so forth. Same if they're running a club or some extracurricular activity.
I don't think that's especially weird at all.
The idea that the law restricts a male teacher from having a family photo or talking to students about what he did with his husband over vacation is completely false. That would be as illegal as preventing a teacher from praying with students in their off-time (after football games), which recently got re-affirmed by the supreme court. It only binds teachers' speech when they are operating in their official capacity as agents of the state.
While you might not agree with this particular restriction, agents of the state generally do not have free speech when they are acting in their official capacity. Teachers, DMV employees, and police officers all have lots of restrictions on their official speech. The ability of the people to restrict the speech of their agents is very important for maintaining a democracy. It keeps religion out of school curricula and it is what makes cops read you your rights when you are arrested.
Also the don't say gay bill is fake news because it doesn't say that.
Germany making pro Nazi rhetoric illegal no matter where is a ban (one I can agree with)
Florida making sure their Public money is not spent on this is not a ban. You can still own and publish these books in Florida. Or have them in a privately owned library or at a private university or school.
Let's stop hyperbolizing. It is actually totally reasonable to censor books in libraries targeted towards children. Not doing so is unreasonable.
That is a ban.
There was so much misframing and misinformation about the bill, continuing to use the Democrat and media made up name and language for the bill shows your slant. Just because many media organizations kept calling it, that doesn't mean anybody here should.
It does not ban nor prevent the use of the word "gay." Asserting so is pushing information that is false, hence misinformation.
Just like the reframing of "woke" and "critical race theory" are misinformation - right? Right?
I have accepted that reframing language is now a legitimate political tool, and from my PoV, the right has been doing it a lot, such as labelling any milquetoast protest by groups nominally on the left an "insurrection" after 1/6. I believe it's a deliberate attack akin to semantic satiation to render a word meaningless, the conservative operative bluntly admitted (on Twitter!) to successful rebranding "woke". That egg will not be unscrambled.
The bans in the article you cited are done at the school district level, not the state level. Holding the executive branch of government of Florida responsible for those decisions would be similar to blaming the Biden administration for the actions of Florida's executive branch.
It also appears that the link you cited confuses curriculum selection with book banning. There's a range of what can be called a book ban. For example, when the novel Ulysses was banned, people who sold the book were arrested and imports of the book into the US were seized. That's definitely a book ban. Nothing of the sort is happening in Florida.
There are also cases where local school districts remove titles from school libraries, but those books can still be borrowed from public libraries, sold in book stores, or purchased or read online. If that's a book ban, it's not a book ban in the same sense that the ban of Ulysses was a book ban.
Then there are decisions by local school districts about what material should be used to teach classes in the schools in that district. For me, exercising control over school curriculum is not a book ban and is in no way similar to seizing copies of books and arresting people for selling those books.
One are transportation companies (including companies that transport electronic communication). The key differentiator between those and social media are that the content is private. So while they have to carry anything, the content of what they are carrying is from one party to another, and the carrier may not even know what it is. So that model shouldn't apply to social media.
The other type are broadcasters, like TV and Radio. But the way those are regulated, they don't have to show anyone's content all the time. They get to choose what content is shown, but also be liable for the content being shown.
But then there are cable companies. Which carry multiple broadcast channels. And they are not liable for the content on the channels they carry, nor do they have to carry all channels. What they do have to do however is set aside some of their capacity for public access. This is how social media should be regulated.
They can choose what channels (broadcasters) they want to carry, and the broadcaster is liable for content. Funny enough, this is already how social media works! The only change would be every social media being forced to add a section that is unmoderated for "public access" in which they would not be liable for the content.
I imagine that would go about as well as you'd expect. It would be filled with child porn, hate messages, and the occasional unpopular political opinion.
Online platforms are both communication platforms for private communication and public broadcast platforms like TV and Radio. Just apply the existing laws and regulations to both these aspects. If they don't want any liability, then they should be treated as common carriers who have to be neutral to the content that flows on their platform - let the content producer be liable. Ofcourse, this means anonymous content cannot be allowed.
Politicians really should not have special exemptions or privileges when it comes to free speech issues. Eg: they have exceptions to use robo-calls, text spam, etc.
Realistically, we probably need to define when an organization is a media influencer vs. a niche communications platform. I do think Facebook/Twitter/Etc. need to be held to a different level of accountability on things like this than say Tomshardware, or HN.
Because political censorship is the worst censorship (you might argue that all censorship is political.) It's like how political prisoners are the easiest sign a place is a dictatorship.
If the powerful are censoring the political process, there are no means to make any of the powerful less powerful. It becomes self-perpetuating.
That’s an easy sign right up until you have to define “political prisoner”. According to some, people convicted of crimes committed during the January 6th insanity are “political prisoners”.
First of all, Citation needed. Second of all, you realize that the people responsible for making prosecutorial decisions regarding Jan 6th crimes are not going to be the same people making those decisions for crimes committed during George Floyd protests and riots, right? You think they’re political prisoners because of perceived inconsistencies among decisions made by the DOJ on one hand and various people in local jurisdictions on the other? Just more of the same insanity that led to Jan 6th.
If so, that is the clearest violation of the 1st amendment. A common misunderstanding is that there is no unfettered right to free speech anywhere, anytime, free of any consequence. The 1st amendment only guarantees that the government shall not impose consequences based on speech alone (with the exception of the crowded movie theater example or incitements to imminent violence). That is very different from a movie theater asking someone to leave because they are talking (which the movie theater is perfectly in their right to deny service to anyone)
AFAIK, all Jan 6 convictions have been for trespass, obstruction of government, assault, etc.. If you know of any examples that do not fall into similar categories, that would be extremely interesting.
I think there is a balance between "social media must not interfere with blatantly false statements from politicians" and "social media can ban their political detractors without consequence". The ideal reality would be the public actually holding politicians responsible for being deceptive or treasonous, but that does not appear to be on the horizon either.
The solution being proposed is to allow administrations to keep pushing narratives that support the regime. You can't consider yourself a defender of the population against politicians while also granting them the power to suppress speech through proxies. When you find yourself favorably referring to mainstream media in the past for their ability to control the speech of elected officials, you're spiraling towards Zimbabwe.
The alternative being suggested here seems to be to allow the regime to compel media outlet to publish their propaganda, because some don't like media outlets being able to choose the views they promote.
Whose fault is it that Truth Social is an abysmal failure?
You can have a free market with monopolies/duopolies.
1. Network effects mean that there's only space for one platform in a particular niche.
2. There are reports (are they reliable?) that people who are more left wing are more habitually online and post much more.
If the above two are true, then left-wing social networks will naturally dominate.
Indeed, prior to the mid-20th century, it was understood that other kinds of expressive speech (pornography, etc.) did not receive as much, if any, protection.
Honest to goodness, the hyperventilation about how "important" social media is just amazes me.
Many businesses don't have normal websites for better or worse.
Many government agencies announce things through Twitter and Facebook for better or worse (worse in my opinion).
Facebook could get their databases and backups wiped tomorrow and I'm pretty sure nothing would substantively change in my life or my work (and I work in tech). Same goes for Twitter. I might be exposed to less second-hand stupidity on an average day.
I see lots of hand-wringing about them being somehow equivalent to power plants or water districts, but to me it seems like a tortuous justification for "make them act how I want them to act".
> Many government agencies announce things through Twitter and Facebook for better or worse
Twitter seems to be the more common of the two there. They should not do that.
How is any social network today important for daily business? You can live a perfectly normal life after deleting every single one of them, and so many people have done exactly that. Facebook is not equivalent to electricity or running water.
1 - Become a political candidate (even if a write-in for some bottom-end office in a tiny municipality)
2 - Register with social networks as a Florida-protected candidate
3 - Spend all your time spewing hate at people you don't like. Maybe automate that, to get both far more spewing and far more free time.And if the social networks are forced to follow this Florida law, and Mr. A. Troll De Vile was spewing hate at the politicians behind the law...might some social networks feel "deepest frustration" that they were, alas, legally barred from banning Mr. De Vile?
/g/ is far more entertaining than HN.
Someone in Florida will issue a terrorism threat that goes afoul of European laws or something and social media platforms will sooner side with the rest of the world than Florida. And how is Florida going to have any standing to try and sue a company in compliance that does not operate in or offer service to Florida?
It's the same as what's going down in Texas. Never mind that as another commentator mentioned these same state governments are also busy burning books and censoring other individuals so it's not a matter of equal freedom. They want the ability to threaten minorities.
And yet, because this is a party-political issue, you have the Republican Party swearing up and down that ISPs are not (presumably because common-carrier status implies net neutrality and this is unpopular with donors or something?) but that social networks are (because they exhibit "bias").
Unfortunately, my party's base is made up of people who are not super into tech unlike the Democratic party whose base is increasingly rich tech workers.
On the other hand, my fellow Republicans do jobs you may think unimportant,like farming, plumbing, construction, etc.
Perhaps, when you think about it, democrat regulations of these professions are equally ridiculous when you look at it from the perspective of someone in these professions.
Half our political discord would be solved if we just thought of ourselves in the other person's shoes and listened instead of chocking it up to stupidity or malice.
Half of my conservative friends have no idea how the internet works. They don't understand the wires behind it. When you explain to them what's going on, they become more sympathetic to net neutrality. Perhaps try explaining instead of dismissing?
> Perhaps try explaining instead of dismissing?
One can still find what happened to them chilling, but that doesn't make CloudFlare a "common carrier."
The way things are now, I can't ever in good conscious recommend any small or medium sized business own any part of the email infrastructure except the MX record, I've simply seen too many cases of the financial damage caused by not using gmail as a host.
Requiring all hosts to operate on a single, fair, well defined standard would be to the benefit of the people of the United States.
Which is to say, they are not at all.
SV corporations are spineless.
How can social media be a common carrier when it cannot be accessed through a common carrier?
It feels like we're fighting to have our one sentence displayed among the ads, while giving up the ability to create our own webpages and platforms.
Everyone already can host their own websites somewhere, AWS isn't even required.
That doesn't mean regulating them like common carries is good or workable, but we need to start by recognizing that there are first amendment claims on both sides now.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Let's please not make the mistake of saying all issues that relate to freedom of speech are First Amendment issues.
The problem is when government and social media actively collude to side step the government’s responsibility to the first amendment…the government has dragged the social media companies into first amendment territory.
You have two ways of handling this: one…have the government police itself…which it won’t do, because it is already actively trying to find ways around its responsibility to freedom of speech; Or two, start lawsuits that expose the collusion and start making it expensive for social media companies to collude with the government to censor.
The government's responsibility to the First Amendment is "don't make laws that limit freedom of religion, speech or assembly". I don't know what it means for government to collude with a third party to side-step that responsibility.
I look forward to see how cases that go to the Supreme Court are going to be handled. I personally believe that a private business like Facebook has the right to control content on their app/website.
Of course, they're unlikely to behave so blatantly, at least initially. They're more likely to just sort of hint at how anti-trust prosecutions might be started or not depending on whether the platform follows the government's "advice".
I'm somewhat amazed at how poorly the people in favor of this understand what appeal these social networks was to let them grow large in the first place.
Isn't it obvious that it wasn't by letting everyone post anything? We've had that all along. No need to force social networks to do what has already always been an option (go ahead and start that personal blog and post all your thoughts on it).
But of course, that's not what the politicians mean. They use the words "common carrier" to make it sound like they aren't doing what they are actually doing: attempting to force social media companies to be megaphones for the political messages of the politicians.
De facto state media. The very opposite of free speech and the first amendment.
It would be laughable if the Supreme Court was principled.
Second, as some have already said, this is the wrong level of the Internet to manage such a concept of common carrier. Facebook isn't in the business of actually routing data between two points on the internet. Facebook handles internal data on its own internal networks that connect up to the core of the internet which then that core connects to all the edge networks (consumer facing ISPs). This approach is better as it means there's no arbitrary singling out of one provider over another (Comcast vs some random rural co-op) due to political climate. Everyone gets the same process, everyone has the same burden or benefit.
Third, this is all political theater in an age that frankly doesn't really make sense to me. How is this exactly going to get the core voters of Republicans out to the ballot box? I just see this as over the top nonsense.
[1]: https://spec.matrix.org/latest/
[2]: https://gitlab.com/cactus-comments
[3]: https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean
Basically, once a social network surpasses say, 20M users, it becomes a defacto political entity, with the power to move elections. Given this immense power, the government should regulate accordingly.
Instead of passing detailed regulations though, I am of the opinion that if a company passes 200B USD in enterprise value, that Congress should get the right to appoint 50% of the board of directors. This way, the company's responsibilities match its defacto political power to sway elections.
Basically, make Facebook into an Amtrak or USPS. If Facebook does not like this idea, then they can split the company into pieces.
Additional benefit: this functions also as anti-trust regulation. Amazon would be subject to this as well.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I am wrong. You are saying that shareholders ought to hold this immense power that say Facebook has to move elections?
Certainly, if the alternative is that those in government get to wield it instead. I would wager I've considerably more trust in government and politicians than average - I do believe that in the main they're working very hard for what they perceive to be the greater good - but I draw the line at the politicians getting to directly control the political media.
Part of this is that I don't think Facebook's power alone is "immense" - but if you had all of the large media centrally controlled then you'd be getting there.
The very idea completely compromises those "bi-annual elections". How can you effectively challenge the state when all the large media is state-controlled?
I don't think antitrust does much to Twitter. So that reduces its popularity as a solution among politicians. I feel like politicians ceded their power to Twitter. So I write it off as 'you made your bed, now lie in it'.
Then the government can profit as well, like a sovereign wealth fund
If no anti trust, then become a federal agency.
Do you really think that the in power government won’t push corporations to keep them in power?
It amazes me that people want to give the government this much power.
It amazes me that we let social media platforms run freely with whichever narrative, ideology they enforce. Government influence has in most cases a negative outcome, but letting these platforms, especially ones at the scale of Twitter and Facebook, act freely is unwise.
Would you also want the government to control RedState? FoxNews? Truth Socisl?
Sounds harsh, but the world would be a better place. Also, government agencies and political candidates should be banned from interacting on social media that is not federated. That is it.
Unfortunately, politicians don't understand the meaning of federated.
This should be done as an anti-trust action, and facebook should be broken up. Twitter should also be broken up, but it is an utterly useless product, so probably just liquidated.
Social media should be for trashy pursuits, not serious discourse. Those should be done on open fora. Hacker news as well ought to be federated.
A situation of only draconian moderation or none at all will tend towards only draconian moderation since very few users want a truly unmoderated space like the more obscure chan sites. Its the worst of both worlds.
If Reddit now has legal liability does Reddit need to moderate All subreddits by themselves? That sounds impossible.
The government makes laws about how private companies and citizens can act all the time without funding them. You think the government has to fund every auto maker in order to impose emissions standards on them? Or that every company making communications equipment/chips is funded by the government, so that they can impose regulations on what spectrum they can use?
This is a terrible precedent because there is no sane, logical way to define social networks as common carriers, and because Section 230 was specifically written to allow and encourage content moderation.
The same argument has been made against regulation since regulation existed. Government should exist in large part to reign in the private market when an obvious public good is at stake.
If you’re okay with the government controlling any legal organization do yoh feel the same way about government controlling churches? Advocacy groups?
You are kidding right? You don't think the government already controls almost everything about how companies can operate?
They were allowed to have it both ways because the Internet and especially user generated content was new and no one knew where it would go. Now I think there's been plenty of history and time to see it shake out and they should pick an option; either common carrier or publisher but not both.
/ did i use that semicolon right?
Don't turn the rest of the internet into 4chan so you can force gross ideas and content onto everyone else.