When a state is against net neutrality, pro super PACs, pro hobby lobby/religious tests in employment, pro book banning in libraries, but wants to regulate social networks because "political freedom", their motivations are a bit suspect.
No, but seriously, they're doing this stuff in such a sloppy way that I'd definitely be looking for opportunity, e.g. the wording of one of their anti-CRT things essentially said "no one can make someone else uncomfortable about race" and I'm like "word? I can work with that."
And here I am wondering what the fuck happened to freedom.
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.
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."
If this is what the law is actually about, what's wrong here here? Do you really want corporates to decide what political views you should have access to? Every country has laws against hate speech or slander / defamation - if a politician or journalist says something inappropriate on these platform, it is the law that should punish them (even if the punishment is as light as forcing them / the platform to delete their post). (Related topic - even the Indian Supreme Court is currently deliberating on clarifying and enforcing laws on hate speech against journalist / editors / media platforms who have been increasingly indulging in hate mongering - "Where Is Our Nation Headed?", Supreme Court Expresses Concern About Hate Speech In Media, Asks Why Centre Is Standing As "Mute Witness"? - https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/where-is-our-nation-heade... ).
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.
What Florida is asking for is not different than what many on the left have been asking for. The motivation is different, but the powers they want are the same.
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.
Net neutrality was about bandwith, not content. PACs lobbies and religion are 1A protected and not specific to Florida or Republicans, they can't and don't ban book that's fake news unless you consider all books acceptable in schools such as Mein Kampf and Play Boy magazines.
Also none of what you said addresses the the proposed legislation.
Yes yes yes continue to focus on the partisan differences, tear the world apart, the other side is evil because they have an R next to their name, the other side is (D)ifferent.
It's all the other bad side, not the same freaking loonies that keep everything status quo and pat each others backs.
Meanwhile, Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. This is not about a principled approach to free speech. It's about protecting the right to enforce religious-inspired bigotry, tearing down the separation of church and state even as that bigotry becomes "unpopular."
I agree with you about that, but I also (might) agree with them about this.
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.
Florida is a state. Several counties in Florida are removing books from school libraries. There is no statewide policy in Florida to ban books from libraries in general. Libraries are generally managed at the city / county level.
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.
This seems to be centered on politics/candidates, which IMO is the wrong motivation.
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.
Welcome to the natural consequence of social networks becoming important to just do daily business. The phone companies, and other utilities, operate under strict rules. I do wonder how many and type of companies will become internet utilities?
99.5% of Americans could never log into Facebook, Twitter or anything ever again with no substantial impact on their daily lives. The remaining 0.5% have careers centered around social media and should probably find a real job.
Honest to goodness, the hyperventilation about how "important" social media is just amazes me.
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.
The phone companies and utilities are natural monopolies. Creating a social media platform isn’t. Doesn’t every senior developer interview at a BigTech company involve a question “how would you design Twitter?”.
IANAL, and have not read Florida's law, but it sounds ripe for abuse by trolls:
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.
I’ll ask the same question I asked on the other threads to all those cheering this - do you think HN will be the same without moderation? Or just another 4chan? Will r/conservative stop banning users who dare suggest trump was maybe not such a good person, even if they are otherwise extremely conservative?
It should be incredibly obvious to just about anyone that this sort of law is untenable and would just lead to social media companies either completely banning anyone from Florida from posting on their platform or putting them into their own special space completely separated from the rest of the world.
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.
That's where the cognitive dissonance here kicks in: the case for ISPs to be common-carriers looks much stronger (from any principled perspective) than does the case for social media networks.
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").
They're doing it at the wrong layer. Make the internet a common carrier and maybe regulate AWS (etc) to ensure everyone can host their own websites somewhere.
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.
That's a great angle, hasn't thought about it like that. I'm not sure it solves the "stack" problem that alternatives would face. Would that go so far as to regulate payment processors that are accepting and handling payments via internet?
At this point we need to recognize that these "private companies" are now de facto state actors. They take censorship advice from government agencies (like the CDC), ban certain people in response to political pressures, and hand over user's private data without a warrant.
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.
It would be pretty funny, in a terrible way, if the First Amendment was gutted in the name of free speech.
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.
While actively campaigning against any form of net neutrality which is the layer on which this argument should be made. The GOP are transparent, politically pukeworthy cretins at this point. Just thinking about them makes me want to spit.
These laws just make no sense to me. First, a website is a website is a website. Whether it's Google, Facebook, or your granny's knitting blog. You can't just say because one website has X features of interaction and Y number of unique users that it must be handled differently than others as it makes the delineation arbitrary and flimsy. There has to be a basis to say Facebook must be given extra supervision by the state that makes it clear that Facebook is not alone in its own functionality. If Facebook were made the special case then it leads to making convoluted laws that are hard to decide on.
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.
I would say it is not possible to change social networks at this stage, they need to be replaced with something new. What this could be? Maybe the Matrix protocol [1], already connecting 40 Million users worldwide. There are various tools that use the Protocol already in a web-context, e.g. Cactus Comments [2] or the Matrix cerulean test [3]. Maybe something else.
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.
As much as I dislike facebook. Florida is going about this the wrong way. States should simply ban social media, especially for children. It should simply be illegal or highly restricted.
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.
Entirely reasonable either they are publishers and thus have free speech and carry full penalties for all the content they allow. Or they are carriers and thus should have no say, but also no risks of content.
This would be a terrible precedent. These are private companies, who is the government to tell them how to operate without funding them. If you don't like what you read, or if you read things that are not true that is on you as an individual to make appropriate choices. The government shouldnt meddle with social networks. They are just that, social and voluntary.
Your conclusion ("this is a terrible precedent") is correct, but the way you get there makes no sense.
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.
On the other hand, stripping corporations of their speech, reversing Hobby Lobby and Citizens United, would be great. But that isn't the real objective behind this law.
Private companies are regulated all the time. Look up the rules for any utility or communications company. They banned politicians, so that's going to get laws passed.
>This would be a terrible precedent. These are private companies, who is the government to tell them how to operate without funding them.
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.
A corporation is a creation of government. Why shouldn't they be able to regulate them any way they think best? Which isn't necessarily to say this is a good idea, but... of course government should be able to tell companies how to operate.
nah. my bank, electric company, telephone carrier, internet carrier, and social media platforms (effectively the public square) should have no choice but to carry me regardless of my opinions
social networks straddle the fence. They want to be common carriers when it comes to being responsible for the content published on their platforms and then they want to be publishers when it comes to deciding what content is curated, promoted, and publicized on their platform.
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.
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrm4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fny|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] webmobdev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munk-a|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fuckyah|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pessimizer|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] user3939382|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] _skel|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] TeeMassive|3 years ago|reply
Also none of what you said addresses the the proposed legislation.
[+] [-] buscoquadnary|3 years ago|reply
It's all the other bad side, not the same freaking loonies that keep everything status quo and pat each others backs.
[+] [-] klyrs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blast|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] imgabe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] brk|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] protomyth|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NovemberWhiskey|3 years ago|reply
Honest to goodness, the hyperventilation about how "important" social media is just amazes me.
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] scarface74|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bell-cot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buildbot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fzeroracer|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Kerbonut|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NovemberWhiskey|3 years ago|reply
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").
[+] [-] layer8|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Buttons840|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] krapp|3 years ago|reply
Everyone already can host their own websites somewhere, AWS isn't even required.
[+] [-] andrew_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mattasher|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jmull|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bergenty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ladyattis|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Helmut10001|3 years ago|reply
[1]: https://spec.matrix.org/latest/
[2]: https://gitlab.com/cactus-comments
[3]: https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean
[+] [-] favflam|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] anon291|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] duxup|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProAm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danaris|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] klyrs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ramesh31|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] yamtaddle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddof13|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ejb999|3 years ago|reply
You are kidding right? You don't think the government already controls almost everything about how companies can operate?
[+] [-] chasd00|3 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] nonethewiser|3 years ago|reply