Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

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What you are asking for is a new law. There is nothing wrong with that! Just important to understand that the FTC and the courts don’t make laws. They only work with the existing laws. If you want new laws the legislature is the proper place to ask for it.

There is an other problem. What you are asking for is probably going to have issues with the first amendment. This might sound weird, and you probably will feel something is off about it but as it is most often interpreted Twitter or Alphabet censoring stuff on their own platform is their right to free speech. If there would be a law like what you are asking for that would constrain their right to free speech. As you can guess it becomes complicated from there.

There's been discussion of applying Common Carrier protections and limitations to ISPs, why not to places that host public discourse?

I agree though, a new set of laws that govern online spaces is probably needed (despite my trepidation of the current crop of legislators and their general/basic understanding of tech).

The "why not" would be because in some cases the outcome is worse. I agree that ISPs should be common carriers. I disagree that social media sites should be. To me this is analogous to "everyone should be allowed to travel on public property, not everyone should be allowed in my bar".

The FTC enforces anti-competitive practices. Is that not clearly anticompetitive as of now?

Not under the Clayton Antitrust Act, no.

If you want to make the case, you have to make the case that it’s within the FTC’s wheelhouse under the statutes it is authorized to enforce. It might be anticompetitive, but if it’s not anticompetitive in a way that’s also illegal, then it’s outside the FTC’s jurisdiction. They can try it anyway under some novel legal theory or reading of the statute, but without being able to make a good case they would just be wasting everyone’s time including their own.

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