[RandomDistort]

I know the law is often behind the trend because of the rate tech develops, but surely the old analogy for all technology is postal mail.

Last time I checked, the postal service had no responsibility or requirement that they don't distribute certain messages or ideas? In some cases the government can ask to intercept them, but there's no regulation requiring them to scan letters for banned content.

Why don't these same rules apply to online technology?

[tdeck]

> Last time I checked, the postal service had no responsibility or requirement that they don't distribute certain messages or ideas?

Technically the Comstock Act hasn't been repealed in the US, and Republicans have been talking about enforcing it again. Democrats heard this and did nothing about it, because of course they did.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Act_of_1873

[perihelions]

It's even the opposite: the US Postal Service is *positively obligated* by the 1st Amendment to deliver content without discrimination. E.g. Lamont v. Postmaster General (1965) (US post can't create friction for US citizens subscribing to Soviet propaganda newspapers by mail).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_v._Postmaster_General

(It's also prohibited from opening mail without a warrant, but that's an orthogonal question).

[triceratops]

Please read this article https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre... then re-consider your comment.

[macintux]

I’m not going to discuss the merits of the rules, but postal mail seems a terrible comparison to the web. Global visibility, instant transmission of ideas, effectively free (as in beer) distribution.

[croissants]

Yeah, I think this is one of those domains where frictions (or lack thereof) matter. It is much faster, cheaper, and easier to send out a significant volume of material on the Internet than through the mail. In theory, somebody could send a bunch of obscene trolling letters, but having to lick all those envelopes seems to deter most of the people who'd be otherwise tempted.

[DistractionRect]

An ISP is closer to the post office than a pastebin site. A pastebin site is closer to a factory that produces and ships content to all that order it, and thus responsible for what they ship.

It's unfortunate that things are the way they are, but I'm not sure there's a better option. If you give an inch, abusers will take a mile.

I think AI is well suited to this role, especially with new models being cable of learning and updating their weights as they go without needing retraining/finetuning.

[LocalH]

Because there are far more places to apply leverage, and they know they can get away with it precisely because online is "different". Why? Because they said so.

[coliveira]

I think the results would be similar if anyone was allowed to create their own mail delivery service. The politicians would create regulations so most people would not be allowed to run his mail delivery, and finally only a few regulated services like the postal service would remain.