Trump's likely FCC chair wrote Project 2025 chapter on how he'd run the agency
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
He also complains that the FCC is a heavy-handed New Deal era agency ... but he also supports the agency nannying television and removing Section 230.
You can't really have it both ways.
Oh you totally can, you just have to give up consistency
> Oh you totally can, you just have to give up consistency
We need a 'CAP theorem'-like thing for political doublethink.
It recognizes that a platform is just an intermediary, not the originator.
Similar provisions are in place in most of the civilized world.
They aren't magazines or TV, where everything is under editorial control.
Not to mention, that magazines and TV outlets are also typically not liable when information in ads or third parties(such as pundits) is litigated against.
The counter to this point, is that torrent providers are also just intermediaries, not the originators.
To some extent, companies/people should be accountable for the actions they facilitate as an intermediary.
I'm just not sure how accountable.
It's wild how such a simple premise is totally willfully misconstrued (or maybe you happen to just be way off base, but there's huge ranks of people inventing all sorts of wild delusional fictions about Safe Harbor).
Up to no good.
Predictably a lobbyist in the same vien as Ajit Pai.
For example: currently if someone doesn't want to see someone posting "objectionable" content - you have to identify them, then sue them. That's a problem if there's messages you don't like but you can't make illegal. But if instead you can sue the host, you can just keep suing the host, and the host eventually starts disallowing that content on its services, even if it is legal. Like they already do for adult content.
But the incoming administration has stated that content they believe should be illegal is anything that says LGBT people have the right to exist. You see this with their consistent bans on library books, their attempts to reclassify books as fiction if they can't block them on "harmful" content, etc.
We can see that this is nothing about ensuring an ability for people to hold corporations accountable to people, but specifically to enable censorship: because the proposed removals of protection from prosecution for content they host is the only place that proposed changes increase corporate liability. Every other proposed change removes the ability hold corporations accountable, removing worker protection, removing or hamstringing the agencies responsible for regulating safety, and removing or limiting the liability for any accidents, disasters, or dumping.
No. Section 230 means you can't target the proprietor of a website/online property (whether it's a corporation, some other sort of organization or an individual) for content posted on those properties by third parties.
Revoking/removing Section 230 would allow the biggest corporations to continue hosting third-party speech, but would stop pretty much everyone else from doing so, as they likely can't afford to be sued by every crackpot who doesn't like what other folks say.
And if you don't moderate, your site turns into a cesspit of spam, illegal and disgusting stuff. Like the chans/kuns. Although even those sites are moderated to remove illegal stuff like CSAM.
So no. Not moderating isn't really a viable option if you want folks to actually post relevant/reasonable third-party content on your internet property.
I tell you what. Go ahead and implement a Pixelfed or Mastodon (or Lemmy or whatever) instance and open it up for anyone to sign up and use. Then don't moderate it in any way and see what becomes of it.
Assuming you aren't arrested for hosting CSAM, you'll likely find that your site is filled with spam and offensive garbage. So much so that the normal folks won't want to use it.
Similarly the FCC chair wouldn’t magically become “better” just because it wasn’t Trump. As crazy as Trump is in my opinion, he still comes off as rather progressive compared to much of the Republican Party he is the president for. A party which will again make the most out of Trumps wild ride, like they did last time.
These things will far outlast Trump and his followers. Followers who are probably also much more progressive than large parts of the Republican Party they elected.
And more generally:
Trump won a majority across a variety of demographics. He won every meaningful contest. The Democrats will regroup and rethink their strategy. What they’ve been doing lately is clearly not working.
Except that the US Supreme Court, the majority of whose members have a similar worldview, cannot be reprimanded in any meaningful way: just look at all the 'gifts' that Thomas has received and that nothing has been done about.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas#Nondisclosure_...
The USSC can just rule that any laws that are part of the 'reprimanding' are unconstitutional.
More generally and with less snark, get ready for high scale clientelism with Musk and Petroleum in general and generally policy based on people who were "nice to Trump" based on any sort of measure of its importance to rank and file citizens.
This is one of those moments where I'm disappointed that HN doesn't have support for GIFs, as I think the Jennifer Lawrence "OK" meme would be perfect in response to this.
> "The FCC is a New Deal–era agency. Its history of regulation tends to reflect the view that the federal government should impose heavy-handed regulation rather than relying on competition and market forces to produce optimal outcomes"
..
> The FCC should have four primary goals, Carr wrote. Those goals are "reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance."
> On Big Tech, Carr wants to implement Trump's 2020 plan to crack down on social media websites for alleged anti-conservative bias. At the time, Trump formally petitioned the FCC to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in a way that would limit social media platforms' legal protections for hosting third-party content when the platforms take down content they consider objectionable.
The only "North Star" is grievance.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/11/chris-christ...
Not what I call sustainable governance.
How do you imagine the "TikTok ban" playing out under a left vs. right administration?
My point was, both parties supposedly agreed on the TikTok ban. Yet the candidate for one of them suddenly did a 180 after it passed, and will in all likelihood prevent it from having any effect.
So I wouldn't really assume they have similar desires for protections (or lack thereof) for social media companies just because similar words come out of their mouths at some point in time.
Meta being responsible for lack of moderation is not the same as Meta being responsible for the specific content people post.
How a party can bill itself as a champion of the working class while also being in the pocket of dozens of billionaires is beyond me.
"It's the economy, stupid" is an old and tired cliché. Really its "the vibe of the economy"
I don’t think they care why it happened, they care about it being fixed.
Why would they think this? Has price fixing been shown to a) exist and b) be the dominant effect over some obvious and enormous effects?
The only explanation I can think of for the constituency is that people like a confident but far-fetched proposal more than an undramatic but feasible one. Slowly chipping away economic inequality and strengthening labor protections and introducing social benefits actually works, it just doesn't sound as impressive as "I will quickly and singlehandedly fix the cost of living (source: trust me)."
To summarize with my own Don Quixote analogy: The politicians are tilting at windmills to create the appearance of Doing Something. Their followers perceive them as successful because the illusory opposition (Dragons) seem to be gone, and they're merely confused when you tell them about the "unrelated" vandalism of local windmills.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/05/no-section-230-doesnt-ci...
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
What difference would that make if they do? The last time around the public hated Ajit Pai's running of the FCC. If that didn't change anything back then, what makes you think what the public thinks will impact a Trump led FCC this time around?
I don't particularly. I don't think it's their job to have that power.
Holding them accountable would make them beholden to the truth (and, partially to us)... Not to whomever they sell our private data to.
I think this is crucial distinction which may help reduce politization.
I don't understand how this would work. Who determines what's true?
It'd have to be open-source and reproducibility should be a core value (so we can start healing some of the scientific fields' reproducibility crises).
But they insert ads and content I've never subscribed to, with no way to prevent either. They also selectively suppress content that I have subscribed to. That doesn't sound like a neutral conveyance of information. In fact, it sounds like they're already exercising the power you'd prefer they not have, according to private algorithms and policies that offer none of transparency or accountability that comes with public regulation.
Whatever you'd prefer, it's already disappearing from the rear view mirror. Facebook 2024 is not Facebook 2008, nor are any of its peers.
Maybe you would prefer they wouldn't have it, but I prefer that private companies run their moderation as they see fit for the market.
If they can do that, how do you draw other lines?
And then if your answer is no, why do you think you should be able to dictate a rule that is so harmful to their business?
Who is going to pay for these court cases?
Who has the money to draw them our indefinitely?
Companies aren't, and should not be, responsible for what other people post on their websites.(See Section 230 prehistory)
But neither is a company liable just because they engage in moderation.
Why not just make a separate court system instead of tying up the existing one? We couldn't call it the Ministry of Truth because it's the US, but maybe Bureau of Truth?
No. This is one of those questions that sounds easy but is hard in practice.
Sure, it's bad for society if a lot of people promote an obviously false idea such as flat earth.
But do we want companies like Meta to suppress that information? That creates kind of its own set of problems. For example, it creates a sense of persecution, which generates more followers. ("Big tech is censoring me!")
And you can't really automate that, because then you could inadvertently block e.g. people discussing history about ancient cultures and their views of the earth.
So humans have to be involved.
Now throw politics and money into the mix and it gets murkier still. Was it misinformation when people said the state of Georgia elected President Trump even before all the votes were counted? (And the inverse: was it misinformation that CNN refused to call Georgia for President Trump even when it became mathematically impossible for Senator Harris to win it?)
It was not long ago when the COVID accidental lab leak theory was considered misinformation. Do you want Facebook censoring posts about that? Now that theory enjoys status as a real possibility. What was once considered misinformation is now considered a possible, even plausible theory.
Too often tech folks try to think in binary here: either misinformation or factual information. But reality isn't always so clear cut. I don't want social media companies being the arbiter of what's true.
I don't think that's the question. Companies like Meta are already allowed to "suppress" that information by moderating content. But that isn't an enforcement of universal "truth," since a platform can only moderate itself.
I think the question is whether the government should be allowed to determine what is and isn't truth and force all platforms to either suppress or publish based on that determination alone. That's what repealing Section 230 would lead to.
>It was not long ago when the COVID accidental lab leak theory was considered misinformation. Do you want Facebook censoring posts about that? Now that theory enjoys status as a real possibility. What was once considered misinformation is now considered a possible, even plausible theory.
OK? And were people sent to the gulags because Facebook banned discussion of it? Did it even hinder popular discussion of the lab leak theory in any significant way? From what I recall, it didn't.
>I don't want social media companies being the arbiter of what's true.
They aren't, and never have been. But you do seem to want government to be the arbiter of what's true, and that seems worse to me. Yes, mistakes can be made where attempts to adjudicate truth and misinformation are concerned, but between being banned from Facebook or having men with guns knock down my door for publishing illegal facts, I'd rather have the former.
It is, though. The parent asked, "Don't we want companies like Meta to be responsible for misinformation?"
I am responding to that question, so yes, that is the question.
> "And were people sent to the gulags because Facebook banned discussion of it?"
Must there be gulags involved for free speech to be suppressed?
And yes, it did hinder discussion of the lab leak theory. Dozens of news outlets suppressed this theory, even mislabeling it as a conspiracy theory and ostracizing those who held it.
> "They aren't, and never have been. But you do seem to want government to be the arbiter of what's true"
Wow, either there is a serious miscommunication here or you are deliberately misreading my post. I don't want government or social media companies to be the arbiters of what's true. I don't want the current or future administration mislabeling critiques of the government as "hateful" or "misinformation". Nor do I want Zuck, Pichai, or any other tech company suppressing speech because it is unpopular, hateful, or misinformation. We cannot entrust government or corporations with guarding our rights to free speech.
This one is entirely based on an accusation that Carr made publicly about NBC violating the Equal Time rule which was absolutely true, and resulted in an immediate offer of time to Harris and Kaine's opponents, likely because Lorne Michaels had said explicitly in an interview a few months ago that he wouldn't be having any of the candidates on because of that rule.
> Carr was wrong about the Equal Time rule, media advocacy group Free Press said on November 3. The group pointed to an FCC fact sheet that says the rule "does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate."
Carr didn't say that a station was required to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate.
> "Despite Carr's claim, there is no evidence that the network was trying to avoid the rules," Free Press said. "Broadcasters have no legal obligation to set aside broadcast time for opposing candidates, unless the candidates request it. Equal-opportunity requests are commonplace in the final days of a national election, and broadcasters typically honor them."
There's a "7 day rule" within the regulation, and the only reason for it is to thwart giving a favored candidate time immediately before the election so that the opposing candidates don't have time to react. This rule, repeatedly mentioned by Carr, goes completely unmentioned in this article.
> NBC did honor a request for equal time from the Trump campaign, giving him two free 60-second messages during NASCAR and NFL coverage.
NBC almost immediately reached out after Carr posted, and offered Trump and Cao time. This is how things are supposed to work. The "7 day rule" was still violated, but at least the NASCAR audience was an comparable audience. But the fact that Harris (and Kaine) got a completely produced and scripted segment on a comedy show meant to humanize them, and Trump (and underdog candidate Cao who had started to poll within a few points of Kaine in the last days of the campaign) had to whip together a pretaped ad a day before their respective elections is exactly what that rule was meant to avoid.
I'm sure Carr is shit, all Republicans who have been on the FCC have been shit, and most of the Democrats. But this is garbage, mostly recycled from some outfit called "Free Press" who I'm supposed to trust for no particular reason, and is not even meant to be read. It's meant to be a headline in social media feeds.
edit: please don't be suckered by the stream of garbage that's going to target you over the next few months. When Trump inevitably starts doing awful things, they're going to be completely obscured by the fact that people will have been shrieking for months about things they pretended he did.
Didn't NBC provide the NFL and NASCAR commercials under duress ?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/nbc-donald-trum...
I really don't want to have to dig into any more biased reporting in the attached article. It gets exhausting
I don't like the other parts, but reading this section, it's wild to me that this isn't already the case and that it's not wildly bipartisan!
The platforms are not required to carry any content and moderation is a form of speech. Eg Fox News has no obligation to report on good news for liberals and vice versa for CNN. There’s nothing the government can do there unless they can pass strict scrutiny (they almost certainly wont).
Trying to remove Section 230 protections for exercising First Amendment rights isn’t going to fly. Revoking 230 entirely is fine, but doing targeted removal of 230 protections based on speech isn’t going to go anywhere.
Conservatives are more than welcome to make their own social networks with opposing moderation, and they have. They just don’t get to try to force other platforms to moderate differently because no one wants to use Truth Social or whatever.
They're going to control the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court. Yes they do get to do exactly that.
Copy + paste across the internet. The internet would only be legally usable for corporate entities.
SCOTUS has been ignoring or re-interpreting precident when convinent for advancing conservative agenda items. If it advances the cause, the lawsuits will go the way they prefer, not with any consistency for established precident.
It is easily arguable that this court is more consistent than previous courts. Like them or not, decisions like Sebelius and Obergefell were based on much, much more wild interpretations of constitutionality ("legalistic argle-bargle") and were much more driven by a court using the ends to justify the means.
SCOTUS is broadly drawing criticism for picking and choosing winners and losers. We cannot expect there to be any consistency anymore when the only means of determining legal success looks to be whoever is favored by the most powerful judge in the room.