Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

Why isn't the market holding Facebook accountable for the numerous transgressions we've seen coming out of that company over the last several years? Because people don't understand or care how the money is made, which fundamentally undermines the argument that the market is always right.

From broad, repeated invasions of online privacy to numerous scandals involving state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, Facebook shows time and again that they are not responsible corporate stewards of the internet.

Zuckerberg has got to be one of the least popular Fortune 500 CEOs and yet he's completely invincible, investors don't want to touch him.

So how do you propose to hold such a company accountable if not through regulation and oversight?

Switzerland seems to be a popular choice, curious if there any big negatives there (business-wise)

Well for one it's a super expensive country and the cost of doing business is huge, but we aren't talking about general business-friendliness rather about a very specific set of legal protections provided by Section 230 enabling the business models of facebook, twitter, google, reddit et al.

I don't know the specifics of Swiss legal system in that regard but the fact that nothing similar ever came out of there probably says something.

I don’t believe this is true. If an Icahn-like activist investor shorted FB and successfully triggered a mass sell off tanking FB stock, it would be really hard for Zuckerberg to survive that pressure, and he’d be financially incentivized not to. You’re right in that the board doesn’t have the power to oust him, but collective investor action could. It’s hard to find people who want to rattle one of the most consistently performing tech stocks, though. Unfortunately, I think the chance of something like this happening is nil.

They're a platform, andaren'taspecifically vested law enforcement organization.

Think about it. What you're really asking for there is for these companies to become part of the apparatus, which means by definition they can no longer be seen as private businesses and arguably, become unfit to do anything on.

Imagine a world where law enforcement is given access to an oracle by tech companies capable of spelling out every individual who broke any law in any jurisdiction at anytime, anywhere today, so long as they use the platform.

If you don't already feel uncomfortable, or see why that would impact the desirability/feasibility of the system already, you're probably not trying very hard. You're basically handing law enforcement a tool capable of handing reign of the country over to the auspices of prosecutorial discretion.

The one thing that has kept LE in check has always been the high price tag of due process involved with depriving someone of their rights. This means it is strongly confined to only that potential pool of people that generally meet the criteria for clear and present threats to society (your agreement as to the priorities over time may beg to differ, bit the point is it is fundamentally limited to a very small fraction of the population). With the integration possible through tech, you cannot afford to happily hand over records in digital format. It is simply too bloody dangerous a tool in the wrong hands.

Furthermore, no one wants to accept that sometimes societal goods are bundled with the empowerment of bad use cases since malicious actors are equally buoyed by societal infrastructure. I don't see people clamoring for TV manufacturers to start recording the inside of homes because there may be pedophiles in them. I don't see people swarming in droves to say "eavesdrop and surveil me" once they know that is essentially what goes on in tech. No one wants that. They grudgingly accept it because no one else wants to or can figure out how to implement something without that that also allows the type of information propagation people actually want, which is for people they want to know more about them to have greater access, and the rest to actually require substantial effort to get at that information.