I like the articles separation between hosting and other activities. I think having content available by URL and in the feed of friends/subscribers feed but never shown in discovery features to the general public is a good compromise between allowing expression and preventing extremism proliferating.
Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
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Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#12For context: This paper argues that online platforms constitute a sort of "infrastructure" similar to utilities, and that they should be regulated to guarantee equal access. This idea is not new - it has been discussed under different terms, e.g. with relation to "must carry"-rules for cable providers. To simplify a bit, the argument boils down to the question of liability and responsibility for content curation. Pla…
>, and that they should be regulated to guarantee equal access.
You mentioned the UK BBC in another comment. Here are some examples of BBC censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd...
If the government-run BBC sometimes censors certain topics, I'm confused as to how that same government becomes a watchdog & enforcer over private corporations designated as "common carrier" and not censor.
In other words, what higher power over the UK government forces them not to censor? There's an inherent contradiction enforcing an "equal access" law because the government itself doesn't follow it. This has unavoidable effects on government regulation of the private corporations it oversees.
The "common carrier" designation is easy to implement when communication is point-to-point with paid subscriptions (e.g. telephones) -- instead of broadcast funded with ads or government taxes (e.g. Facebook/Twitter, BBC). There is no government in the world that allows broadcast of any topic without interference.
Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#13For context: This paper argues that online platforms constitute a sort of "infrastructure" similar to utilities, and that they should be regulated to guarantee equal access. This idea is not new - it has been discussed under different terms, e.g. with relation to "must carry"-rules for cable providers. To simplify a bit, the argument boils down to the question of liability and responsibility for content curation. Pla…
I think this is only an issue because there is no public digital infrastructure. We need an "internet post office" whose only rules are the law, operates at-cost for users, and is completely free of liability. For example, you can't sue the post office if someone mails a pirated DVD. Would it be used almost exclusively by extremists and lunatics? Probably, but I still think it's worth having if only in light of all t…
Interestingly, there are hints that some countries are looking into providing Matrix accounts for all of their citizens.
I don't think there's been a formal announcement yet, but it was mentioned in one of their Matrix Live videos a couple of weeks ago.
Personally, I see pluses and minuses. Yay, free Matrix for everyone. Boo, your government can monitor everything you do on that server.
Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#14This can be viewed as an alternative under antitrust law. If you get big enough, either you get broken up, or you have to become a regulated monopoly. You get to pick.
"Big enough" by EU standards is where there are less than four competitors of reasonable size and reach. The US tends to tolerate a higher threshold. Amy Klobuchar's "Antitrust" book suggests 40% market share as the threshold.
Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#15For context: This paper argues that online platforms constitute a sort of "infrastructure" similar to utilities, and that they should be regulated to guarantee equal access. This idea is not new - it has been discussed under different terms, e.g. with relation to "must carry"-rules for cable providers. To simplify a bit, the argument boils down to the question of liability and responsibility for content curation. Pla…
>, and that they should be regulated to guarantee equal access. You mentioned the UK BBC in another comment. Here are some examples of BBC censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd... If the government-run BBC sometimes censors certain topics, I'm confused as to how that same government becomes a watchdog & enforcer over private corporations designated as "common carrier" and not censor…
It's more like publishing than broadcast. Somewhere in between those two I think.
Edit: the difference comes in where there are feeds and recommendations popping up to users who haven't previously subscribed to something. That and the volume/media.
Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#16So far it seems like a fairly well balanced analysis, which I think addresses the censorship concerns without violating these companies' First Amendment rights:
I’ll begin by asking in Part I whether it’s wise to ban viewpoint discrimination by certain kinds of social media platforms, at least as to what I call their “hosting function”—the distribution of an author’s posts to users who affirmatively seek out those posts by visiting a page or subscribing to a feed.
I’ll turn in Part II to whether such common-carrier-like laws would be consistent with the platforms’ own First Amendment rights, discussing the leading Supreme Court compelled speech and expressive association precedents [...] And then I’ll turn in Part III to discussing what Congress may do by offering 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1) immunity only for platform functions for which the platform accepts common carrier status, rather than offering it (as is done now) to all platform functions.
On balance, I’ll argue, the common-carrier model might well be constitutional, at least as to the hosting function. But I want to be careful not to oversell commoncarrier treatment: As to some of the platform features that are most valuable to content creators—such as platforms’ recommending certain posts to users who aren’t already subscribed to their authors’ feeds—platforms retain the First Amendment right to choose what to include in those recommendations and what to exclude from them.Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#17This can be viewed as an alternative under antitrust law. If you get big enough, either you get broken up, or you have to become a regulated monopoly. You get to pick. "Big enough" by EU standards is where there are less than four competitors of reasonable size and reach. The US tends to tolerate a higher threshold. Amy Klobuchar's "Antitrust" book suggests 40% market share as the threshold.
I don't think market share is much relevant here. Small cell phone carriers can ban customer text message conversation based on political opinion, but not AT&T?
On page 8:
> Why does the law preclude the companies from doing this—even when they’re not monopolies, such as landline companies might be, but are highly competitive cell phone providers?
Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#18If social media becomes a common carrier, but ISPs do not, can Facebook just host their service on their own ISP and block unwanted users at the ISP level? "It's not Facebook blocking the user, it's the ISP, which happens to be the only ISP we host Facebook on."
All just poking holes in the idea that social media can be a common carrier while the ISPs are not. Somehow the literal carrier avoided becoming the common carrier.
Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#19For context: This paper argues that online platforms constitute a sort of "infrastructure" similar to utilities, and that they should be regulated to guarantee equal access. This idea is not new - it has been discussed under different terms, e.g. with relation to "must carry"-rules for cable providers. To simplify a bit, the argument boils down to the question of liability and responsibility for content curation. Pla…
>, and that they should be regulated to guarantee equal access. You mentioned the UK BBC in another comment. Here are some examples of BBC censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd... If the government-run BBC sometimes censors certain topics, I'm confused as to how that same government becomes a watchdog & enforcer over private corporations designated as "common carrier" and not censor…
This is a tangential argument, but of course government-provided media are not devoid of censorship/bias. That's because nobody is. The market is also not devoid of censorship/bias, neither in its supply of information nor in the resulting consumption.
Public service broadcasters are not about alleviating censorship; they are primarily a means of providing a solid base level of access to information. They cannot reasonably provide access to all information.
Your remarks on oversight are a very valid concern; that's why Germany, for example, has publicly funded (not state-funded; they get a mandatory fee from citizens over which the state has no control) but state-independent public service institutions.
There's much more to the argument, but a central point here is the shift from regulating supply to regulating consumption. One can trivially argue that platforms are harmless because any censorship they implement is not total in the sense of absolute government censorship - you're free to publish your stuff elsewhere.
But today, more and more countries are seeking to ensure healthy consumption of information, and to enable this, they need to intervene in platforms' content curation.
It's a dangerous argument, of course, because this is precisely what totalitarian states are doing. But - and this is important - regulating content is something that democracies have always had to do, e.g. banning libelous content, revenge porn etc. etc.
Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]
#20This can be viewed as an alternative under antitrust law. If you get big enough, either you get broken up, or you have to become a regulated monopoly. You get to pick. "Big enough" by EU standards is where there are less than four competitors of reasonable size and reach. The US tends to tolerate a higher threshold. Amy Klobuchar's "Antitrust" book suggests 40% market share as the threshold.
A very important point. Antitrust has entirely different conditions to be met. The EU conditions are even more complicated than Now, media regulation is an entirely different regulatory approach: It has more normative roots, and in some cases is even precautionary: Allowing sanctioning in the face of plausible threats. That's a very sharp sword and the reason why platforms fear it.
[edit] For completeness, the definition of "big enough" in the EU is called dominant position and is defined in the Hoffman-La Roche case. It means being so powerful that competitors can no longer act independently. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:61...)