41–50 of 261 posts
So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.
You can recognize something as being bad even before you have a solution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Government should regulate Facebook, Google (Youtube), Twitter, etc. as utilities that they are. The current situation where the corporations aren't responsible for the content but can censor it is the best example of why they should be treated as utilities.
But what would be the goal of governing them as utilities? This is always said as if it were obvious what would happen once FB gets utility status. Should FB resume its banning of sexually explicit, beheading, animal torture, and ISIS videos when it is a "utility"? And how will the product of FB change as a utility? In what sense is FB a utility other than a very common place people like to go to, like concerts or a…
So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.
If any “platform” censors beyond removing illegal or copyrighted content or spam, they should have their “platform” status revoked, and they should be considered a publisher.
This prevents such companies from using “platform” status as a cost saving mechanism to help them become large monopolies. Companies like Facebook would not have been able to take over so much of the market if they had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on curating content to prevent lawsuits, etc.
I also don’t think of this as some kind of punishment. It’s perfectly reasonable to want to set up some kind of publishing company that has user-generated content; it’s just not reasonable to expect such a company to grow to such a global scale as Twitter or Facebook.
Edit: added “spam” to reasons
So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.
> One is never given Here’s an obvious one: break up Facebook. Easily splits into Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.
You can recognize something as being bad even before you have a solution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what would be the goal of governing them as utilities? This is always said as if it were obvious what would happen once FB gets utility status. Should FB resume its banning of sexually explicit, beheading, animal torture, and ISIS videos when it is a "utility"? And how will the product of FB change as a utility? In what sense is FB a utility other than a very common place people like to go to, like concerts or a…
What will happen to New York Times when its running sexually explicit, beheading, animal torture, etc? They will get sued. As soon as we can start suing them for the content they provide the sooner they will find resolution to it. The same way they will get sued if they censor content that might be deemed socially important.
The NYT isn't a public utility nor a public broadcaster. I'm curious what you think would happen to the New York Times if they were to get sued in your imaginary hypothetical?
So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.
For instance, if a climate scientist provides concrete evidence and analysis showing that climate change is happening and is problematic, we wouldn't dismiss them for not simultaneously offering a solution to the problem.
This is such an own-goal. Before worrying about censoring unwanted content, companies should spend their time on stopping promoting it (and building client side filtering controls) which is just as huge a problem and not anti-American to fix. The problem is that companies want the flamebait and toxic content to drive enragement engagement ad impressions, but don't want to be accountable for the stuff that's just too…
No, we really don't. In fact, we have mechanisms in place to keep ads away from certain categories of content. Do you have any evidence to support your statement?
So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.
I also see far too many 'work from home' adverts in discussions in the Independent newspaper's comment section (on unrelated articles), and if they took a more censorious approach to such comments then the comment section would improve.
To an extent I support censorship, and according to what I believe censorship to be, almost everyone else supports it.
If this very comment had been about some unrelated topic, such as giving an opinion about who to blame or not blame for problems in the Middle East, it would be right for the comment to be censored from this discussion, and it would be censorship from a private company, censorship of a political viewpoint no less.