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Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

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Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#101

Post by yamtaddle »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #98
yamtaddle wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely you don't think it would be legal for Congress to pass a law preventing newspaper publishers from, for example, endorsing presidential candidates? Nah, but I also reckon there's a reason the press is mentioned specifically in that amendment.

What about a law prohibiting unions from doing so?

I wouldn't want them to—again, that's separate—but yeah, maybe, since they're also effectively chartered by the government (as they pretty much can't exist in any useful way absent special government support of some kind or another—but then, same goes for corporations).

I mean, they do in fact already dictate a lot about how both unions and corporations can operate, so yeah, prohibiting endorsement of candidates using union resources doesn't seem entirely crazy to me. Though, again, I'd rather they didn't.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#102

Post by systemvoltage »

blast wrote: post #100
klyrs wrote: post #53

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…

Well put. Welcome to contemporary political discussions. Objectivity is really scarce. The entire discussion goes down the toilet due to some form of 1) whataboutism 2) moral superiority complex 3) strawmanning 4) gas lighting. Add a dozen or so common biases and you've got a toxic brew of non-productivity. Furthermore, reconition of biases from a list like this [1] can be both good or bad. Bad in a way that it can be weaponized to shutdown conversation. Basically, everything you ever say (including this comment) would violate one of these cognitive biases, its a huge list. Feel free to use them as weapons! /s. There are also eggregious misuse of 2) which comes in the form of "For the children" or "Killing babies" or "For the good of the planet", etc.

Modernity has brought us closer to subjectivism than ever.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#103

Post by paxys »

protomyth wrote: post #4

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?

> becoming important to just do daily business

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.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#104

Post by scarface74 »

pessimizer wrote: post #28
brk wrote: post #12

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…

> This seems to be centered on politics/candidates, which IMO is the wrong motivation. Because political censorship is the worst censorship (you might argue that all censorship is political.) It's like how political prisoners are the easiest sign a place is a dictatorship. If the powerful are censoring the political process, there are no means to make any of the powerful less powerful. It becomes self-perpetuating.

There is absolutely nothing stopping conservatives from establishing their own social media platform. Conservatives love “the free market” as long as it is working for them.

Whose fault is it that Truth Social is an abysmal failure?

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#105

Post by scarface74 »

protomyth wrote: post #4

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?

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?”.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#106

Post by scarface74 »

smaryjerry wrote: post #86
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And 100% of people could live without phone companies with no impact to their daily lives, we’ve got internet right? Of course I would be the one defining impact here. You may consider impact to daily lives not substantial, but others see the substantial impact of not being able to reach their family, friends, and customers and the disadvantage that comes with others having that access but you not. It’s not like Face…

Are you really comparing the level of effort of setting a phone company to creating a social media platform or a website to get your ideas out there?

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#107

Post by fzeroracer »

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.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#108

Post by scarface74 »

layer8 wrote: post #20
Kerbonut wrote: post #9

I agree and we should classify the underlying Internet service providers, that social media providers depends on, as common carriers as well!

Also services like Cloudflare, and email providers like GMail.

How is an email server a common carrier? People have been setting up email servers for decades and there are plenty of alternatives.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#109

Post by bandyaboot »

pessimizer wrote: post #28
brk wrote: post #12

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…

> This seems to be centered on politics/candidates, which IMO is the wrong motivation. Because political censorship is the worst censorship (you might argue that all censorship is political.) It's like how political prisoners are the easiest sign a place is a dictatorship. If the powerful are censoring the political process, there are no means to make any of the powerful less powerful. It becomes self-perpetuating.

> It's like how political prisoners are the easiest sign a place is a dictatorship.

That’s an easy sign right up until you have to define “political prisoner”. According to some, people convicted of crimes committed during the January 6th insanity are “political prisoners”.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#110

Post by rayiner »

brk wrote: post #12

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…

The first amendment case law recognizes that protection for political speech is the very core of the First Amendment. It’s the whole point.

Indeed, prior to the mid-20th century, it was understood that other kinds of expressive speech (pornography, etc.) did not receive as much, if any, protection.

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