Wait, so you're saying that terms of service shouldn't be allowed? What if I make a website that meant to be a "one stop shop to watch dog (and only dog) videos", and people can upload videos of puppies playing around. Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be allowed to delete the video if someone uploads a video of a cat?
I don't know if for everything, but that definitely makes sense for "general purpose" social media like Facebook that has 2.7 billion active users. That's 34% of world population. Probably includes a lot of bots, but still.
I’m saying we should change it so you have one of two choices for your website:
- let users upload cars, puppies, and funny videos of their kids (video platform; common carrier; immunized from copyright claims, etc)
- accept editorial control, and only post puppy videos, but assume liability for copyright violations (video provider; not common carrier; no immunity)
You’d be allowed to do either of those, but not the case now where you editorialize to just puppy videos but maintain immunity for that content.
As a business owner, you’d have to choose:
Are you a platform for others to host video or a provider of exclusively puppy videos?
Social media is not a single protocol or medium like the examples you give. It's a variable set of product offerings that - at this moment in time - happen to provide a similar set of features. Perhaps if you squint, these common features resemble a protocol, but they are not.
What consistent service is it you think they should be required to provide?
In what way does what you say not apply to cellphones?
I believe I’m better off for that regulation (in telecom) and believe that I would similarly benefit if social media platforms were also regulated as common carriers.
Edit — rate limited, so replying here:
The commonality is obvious:
Passing messages of various formats to users within your network of contacts and maintaining forwarding/access rules for those messages — almost exactly what cellular service has in common.
I wonder if there's even a reasonable way to delineate what should be regulated vs what should not. For traditional utilities, the line is pretty clear about who is providing me electricity. "Social media" and "cloud provider", however, are extremely vague terms. There are a few standout examples of what might count (FB, Twitter, ISPs), but there are innumerable examples of services that are clearly "social media" or a "cloud provider" but that clearly should not be subject to the burden of regulation. Maybe the distinction is as simple as userbase size, but that too seems like a too-crude distinction.
My solution is split services into “platforms” and “providers”, where only “platforms” enjoy immunity for user uploads but are subject to common carrier regulations in exchange.
It would be up to any company to decide if they’re a “platform” or “provider”.
Let people self-select if they view themselves as platforms or providers — with benefits and costs to each option.
Not everything should be a platform; I think companies like Twitter, FB, and YT would be happy to adopt platform/common carrier status if their immunity would otherwise be revoked.
Are there still edge cases? Yep.
But let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good — this change would improve the regulatory landscape in a way that helps end users.
Even the telephone company could decline to service customers, and often did - or if it did service them, put their use of the service under heightened scrutiny.
By extension it can, by declining to service some customers.
I think internet access is a great case for common carrier, there the service exists to put two parties in direct communication with one another. I dont know that it applies well to a website, which conceptually looks more like a community newspaper, with little editorial functionality.
We have to remember that not everyone agrees on the problem that needs to be solved, much less how to solve it.
On the surface, it may make sense to adopt a Slashdot-style moderation model, where moderation is delegated to user space and only overtly-libelous or illegal content is censored at the admin level. If moderation is derived solely by consensus of user opinion, and if each individual user gets to decide how much moderation if any is applied to the posts they see, that would seem to avoid the original problem of Trump whining because Twitter banned him for expressing his views.
However, if you ask Twitter, they'll say they banned him not because of his opinions, but because he was using their platform to illegally incite violence and undermine the democratic process.
That gets to the real heart of the problem: conservatives who believe that it's OK when they do it, whatever "it" is, and who behave accordingly. No amount of tinkering with the moderation approach will solve the problem if a subset of politicians in power believe that platforms should be forced to carry speech in their favor regardless of concerns about legality. The argument regarding moderation is a red herring.
Probably not - but there's a pretty strong correlation between people who think social media should be federally regulated and people who feel disproportionately moderated (fair or not) on the current web, and who believe they would be happier with zero value/quality/civility-based moderation (i.e. only legality moderation, as you suggested).
HN wouldn’t be allowed to remove that content — but that’s different than flagging it as inappropriate (as HN does now).
My vision is having HNs flagging system where the content is hidden but available by default would be acceptable — but FB or Reddit style of actually removing the comment would not be.
My long term goal in forcing content to be available is to provide more control to users — such as user side content filtering on places like HN.
I’m not against filtering what users see, by the users themselves: I’m against platform using their privileged position to do that filtering, in a way that enforces their political vision.
It would never need to apply to HN. The site would never come close to meeting the definition of market dominance that Facebook, Google and other big tech platforms do that is drawing the regulated utility comparison.
The Federal Government is also not going to generally worry about applying anti-trust to the only pizza parlor in a small town or worry about forcing it to operate under competition and behavior agreements designed for giant monopolies.
Properly we don't apply all competition rules and restraints on all companies/entities in the same way, as all companies are not equally powerful or capable of controlling commerce.
> The Federal Government is also not going to generally worry about applying anti-trust to the only pizza parlor in a small town or worry about forcing it to operate under competition and behavior agreements designed for giant monopolies.
Reality suggests otherwise.
The biggest companies have the most money to throw against enforcement and lobbying to protect themselves.
It's why the IRS pretty much stopped auditing the big fish and only goes after the little fish now.
Social media and cloud providers are like telephones, mail, and electricity.
They should provide a service for any legal use, even if they don’t agree with the content.